Flight

Flight

By Walter White.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Dedication
4. Flight
   1. I
   2. II
   3. III
   4. IV
   5. V
   6. VI
   7. VII
   8. VIII
   9. IX
   10. X
   11. XI
   12. XII
   13. XIII
   14. XIV
   15. XV
   16. XVI
   17. XVII
   18. XVIII
   19. XIX
   20. XX
   21. XXI
   22. XXII
   23. XXIII
   24. XXIV
5. Colophon
6. Uncopyright

Imprint

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For my daughter
Jane

Flight

I

The long train rumbled and swayed, whistle blowing intermittently, screeching discordantly, past smoky factory and office buildings, through rows of one-storied, two- or three-room cottages, outside which on hard packed clay earth played here towheaded white children or there black or brown or yellow ones. It plunged suddenly into cavernous darkness under a bridge, thick acrid smoke pouring into the open windows of the wooden coaches.

“Union Station⁠—Atlanty. All out for Atlanty,” bawled a grinning Negro porter as the train rolled into a long, dingy shed with low-hung roof. Eager, laughing Negroes matched boxes and bundles of varied shapes from the racks over the seats or pulled mates to them from under the seats. Mimi awoke with a start as Jean shook her gently.

“We’re there, petite Mimi,” he told her. Through the throng, peering vainly through the murky air, redolent of stale banana and orange skins and of bodies in need of washing, she made her way to remove the worst of the soot and grime from her face.

“My father’ll be here to meet us,” Mary told Jean.

Though he disliked Mr. Robertson intensely Jean was happy to receive the news. He felt bewildered, lost, a malady bordering on nausea at the hubbub around him. Methodically he obeyed his wife’s commands to gather their bags and parcels. Then with Mimi, refreshed, alert, her weariness dropped from her as she would have discarded a cape, they made their way out of the coach in the van of the surging throng.

Incisive Mr. Robertson kissed Mary and Mimi brusquely, shook hands with Jean and hustled them through the waiting room labeled “For Coloured” to the sidewalk where a horse-drawn surrey was waiting.

“No⁠—No,” shouted Mr. Robertson as the driver started down the street. “Go around by Pryor Street and from there down Auburn Avenue.” To the Daquins he explained: “If he’d gone that way he’d have carried you through Decatur and Ivy Streets⁠—that’s the slum district⁠—saloons and houses⁠—” He paused significantly, looking at Mimi. “Pretty bad,” he added. “Lowest kind of Negroes.”

But Mimi did not hear him nor even the newsboy who ran alongside the cab shouting: “Extry! All about the Japs licking the Rooshians! All about th’ big battle!” Because it was terra incognita to her she tried to see everything as eagerly as she had watched the land from the car window in the long ride from New Orleans. Spring was in the air. The cab, to the accompaniment of various cluckings, “gid-daps,” “go-long-theres” of the ancient driver, joggled and bounced over the Belgian block pavement. Mimi sniffed the air eagerly, anticipatorily.

The carriage rumbled and jerked through the ghostly confines of shut business houses, turned into Auburn Avenue lined with blowzy boarding houses, their porches lined with men and women, a loud, staccato, mirthless laugh occasionally floating on the breeze. Soon the scene changed. Black and brown and yellow faces replaced the white, the laughs became more frequent, more rich, more spontaneous. The April evening seemed more filled with the sheer joy of living. To Mimi the sudden change was pleasant, warming, inviting. Jean, sunk dejectedly in the seat beside the driver so that only the top of his black, crumpled felt hat showed above the high seat, was too engrossed in delightfully painful nostalgia for his New Orleans to notice anything. Mary and her father were eagerly discussing the change in the lives of the Daquins, which to them both seemed so altogether admirable and desirable there was no questioning of its wisdom.

“Got to rush right back to Chicago Thursday⁠—election this fall and two or three important deals⁠—had to see you get started off right⁠—” floated in Mr. Robertson’s crisp tones to Jean.

“You were a darling to come all the way to Atlanta,” gushed Mary.

“Nothing at all⁠—nothing at all,” declared her father. He pronounced it “nothing a-tall.”

“Wanted to see you get introduced in the right circles, too. Gene thinks his Creole crowd’s stuck-up and exclusive⁠—these Atlanta Negroes’ll show him a trick or two for fair. Got to get in right⁠—or you’ll never get in.”

Jean, who squirmed every time Mr. Robertson familiarly called him “Gene,” found his old hostility to Mr. Robertson, his voice, his ideas, his