Part 4 (1/2)

He followed her through the narrow, dampish alley at the side of the house. When they came to the back yard Jake saw that two Negro men were sitting on the back steps. They were both dressed in white suits and white shoes. One of the Negroes was very tall and his tie and socks were brilliant green. The other was a light mulatto of average height. He rubbed a tin harmonica across his knee. In contrast with his tall companion his socks and tie were a hot red.

The kid pointed to the garbage can by the back fence and then turned to the kitchen window. 'Portia!' she called. 'Highboy and Willie here waiting for you.' A soft voice answered from the kitchen. 'You neen holler so loud. I know they is. I putting on my hat right now.' Jake unrolled the overalls before throwing them away. They were stiff with mud. One leg was torn and a few drops of blood stained the front. He dropped them in the can. A Negro girl came out of the house and joined the white-suited boys on the steps. Jake saw that the youngun in shorts was looking at him very closely. She changed her weight from one foot to the other and seemed excited. 'Are you kin to Mister Singer?' she asked.' Not a bit.'

'Good friend?'

'Good enough to spend the night with him.'

'I just wondered--Which direction is Main Street? ' She pointed to the right Two blocks down this way.' Jake combed his mustache with his fingers and started off. He jingled the seventy-five cents in his hand and bit his lower lip until it was mottled and scarlet. The three Negroes were walking slowly ahead of him, talking among themselves. Because he felt lonely in the unfamiliar town he kept close behind them and listened. The girl held both of them by the arm. She wore a green dress with a red hat and shoes. The boys walked very close to her. 'What we got planned for this evening?' she asked.

'It depend entirely upon you, Honey,' the tall boy said. 'Willie and me don't have no special plans.'

She looked from one to the other. 'You all got to decide.'

'Well--' said the shorter boy in the red socks. 'Highboy and me thought m-maybe us three go to church.'

The girl sang her answer in three different tones. 'O-K-And after church I got a notion I ought to go and set with Father for a while--just a short while.' They turned at the first corner, and Jake stood watching them a moment before walking on.

The main street was quiet and hot, almost deserted. He had not realized until now that it was Sunday--and the thought of this depressed him. The awnings over the closed stores were raised and the buildings had a bare look in the bright sun. He pa.s.sed the New York Cafe. The door was open, but the place looked empty and dark. He had not found any socks to wear that morning, and the hot pavement burned through the thin soles of his shoes. The sun felt like a hot piece of iron pressing down on his head. The town seemed more lonesome than any place he had ever known. The stillness of the street gave him a strange feeling. When he had been drunk the place had seemed violent and riotous. And now it was as though everything had come to a sudden, static halt.

He went into a fruit and candy store to buy a paper. The Help-Wanted column was very short. There were several calls for young men between twenty-five and forty with automobiles to sell various products on commission. These he skipped over quickly. An advertis.e.m.e.nt for a truck-driver held his attention for a few minutes. But the notice at the bottom interested him most It read: Wanted--Experienced Mechanic. Sunny Dixie Show. Apply Corner Weavers Lane & 15th Street.

Without knowing it he had walked back to the door of the restaurant where he had spent his time during the past two weeks. This was the only place on the block besides the fruit store which was not closed. Jake decided suddenly to drop in and see Biff Brannon.

The cafe was very dark after the brightness outside.

Everything looked dingier and quieter than he had remembered it. Brannon stood behind the cash register as usual, his arms folded over his chest. His good-looking plump wife sat filing her fingernails at the other end of the counter.

Jake noticed that they glanced at each other as he came in.

'Afternoon,' said Brannon.

Jake felt something in the air. Maybe the fellow was laughing because he remembered things that had happened when he was drunk. Jake stood wooden and resentful. 'Package of Target, please.' As Brannon reached beneath the counter for the tobacco Jake decided that he was not laughing. In the daytime the fellow's face was not as hard-looking as it was at night He was pale as though he had not slept, and his eyes had the look of a weary buzzard's.

'Speak up,' Jake said. 'How much do I owe you?'

Brannon opened a drawer and put on the counter a public-school tablet. Slowly he turned over the pages and Jake watched him. The tablet looked more like a private notebook than the place where he kept his regular accounts. There were long lines of figures, added, divided, and subtracted, and little drawings. He stopped at a certain page and Jake saw his last name written at the corner. On the page there were no figures--only small checks and crosses. At random across the page were drawn little round, seated cats with long curved lines for tails. Jake stared. The faces of the little cats were human and female. The faces of the little cats were Mrs. Brannon.

'I have checks here for the beers,' Brannon said. 'And crosses for dinners and straight lines for the whiskey. Let me see--' Brannon rubbed his nose and his eyelids drooped down. Then he shut the tablet. 'Approximately twenty dollars.'

'It'll take me a long time,' Jake said. 'But maybe you'll get it'

'There's no big hurry.'

Jake leaned against the counter. 'Say, what kind of a place is this town?'

'Ordinary,' Brannon said. 'About like any other place the same size.'

'What population?'

'Around thirty thousand.'

Jake opened the package of tobacco and rolled himself a cigarette. His hands were shaking. 'Mostly mills?'

That's right. Four big cotton mills--those are the main ones. A hosiery factory. Some gins and sawmills.'

'What kind of wages?'

'I'd say around ten or eleven a week on the average--but then of course they get laid off now and then. What makes you ask all this? You mean to try to get a job in a mill?'

Jake dug his fist into his eye and rubbed it sleepily. 'Don't know. I might and I might not.' He laid the newspaper on the counter and pointed out the advertis.e.m.e.nt he had just read. 'I think I'll go around and look into this.'

Brannon read and considered. 'Yeah,' he said finally. 'I've seen that show. It's not much--just a couple of contraptions such as a flying-jinny and swings. It corrals the colored people and mill hands and kids. They move around to different vacant lots in town.'

'Show me how to get there.'

Brannon went with him to the door and pointed out the direction. 'Did you go on home with Singer this morning?'

Jake nodded.

'What do you think of him?'

Jake bit his lips. The mute's face was in his mind very clearly.

It was like the face of a friend he had known for a long time.

He had been thinking of the man ever since he had left his room. 'I didn't even know he was a dummy,' he said finally.

He began walking again down the hot, deserted street. He did not walk as a stranger in a strange town. He seemed to be looking for someone. Soon he entered one of the mill districts bordering the river. The streets became narrow and unpaved and they were not empty any longer. Groups of dingy, hungry-looking children called to each other and played games. The two-room shacks, each one like the other, were rotten and unpainted. The stink of food and sewage mingled with the dust in the air. The falls up the river made a faint rus.h.i.+ng sound. People stood silently in doorways or lounged on steps.

They looked at Jake with yellow, expressionless faces. He stared back at them with wide, brown eyes. He walked jerkily, and now and then he wiped his mouth with the hairy back of his hand.

At the end of Weavers Lane there was a vacant block. It had once been used as a junk yard for old automobiles. Rusted pieces of machinery and torn inner tubes still littered the ground. A trailer was parked in one corner of the lot, and nearby was a flying-jinny partly covered with canvas.

Jake approached slowly. Two little younguns in overalls stood before the flying-jinny. Near them, seated on a box, a Negro man drowsed in the late suns.h.i.+ne, his knees collapsed against each other. In one hand he held a sack of melted chocolate.

Jake watched him stick his fingers in the miry candy and then lick them slowly.

'Who's the manager of this outfit?'

The Negro thrust his two sweet fingers between his lips and rolled over them with his tongue. 'He a red-headed man,' he said when he had finished. 'That all I know, Cap'n.'

'Where's he now? '

'He over there behind that largest wagon.' Jake slipped off his tie as he walked across the gra.s.s and staffed it into his pocket. The sun was beginning to set in the west. Above the black line of housetops the sky was warm crimson. The owner of the show stood smoking a cigarette by himself. His red hair sprang up like a sponge on the top of his head and he stared at Jake with gray, flabby eyes. 'You the manager? 'Uh-huh. Patterson's my name.'

'I come about the job in this morning's paper.'

'Yeah. I don't want no greenhorn. I need a experienced mechanic.'

'I got plenty of experience,' Jake said. 'What you ever done? 'I've worked as a weaver and loom-fixer. I've worked in garages and an automobile a.s.sembly shop. All sorts of different things.' Patterson guided him toward the partly covered flying-jinny.