"I'll show you goddam niggers how to talk back to a white man--"
About twelve, thirteen, fourteen men, but only the wind rustled. A
hastening breath of wind, struck dead on the way by the grueling
presence of the sun.
A ram-shackle body, dark in the ungentle spots exposing it, jogged,
reeled and fell at the tip of a white bludgeon. Forced a dent in the
crisp caked earth. An isolated ear lay limp and juicy, like some
exhausted leaf or flower, half joined to the tree whence it sprang.
Only the sticky milk flooding it was crimson, crimsoning the dust and
earth.
"Unna is a pack o' men, ni'," cried Ballet, outraged, "unna see de po'
boy get knock' down an' not a blind one o' wunna would a len' he a
han'. Unna is de mos'--"
But one man, a Bajan creole, did whip up the courage of voice. "Good
God, giv' he a chance, ni'. Don' kick he in de head now he is 'pon de
groun'--" and he quickly, at a nudge and a hushed, "Hey, wha' do you?
Why yo' don't tek yo' hand out o' yo' matey' saucepan?" from the only
other creole, lapsed into ruthless impassivity.
"Hey, you!" shouted Ballet at last loud enough for the Marine to hear,
"why--wha' you doin'? Yo' don' know yo' killin' dat boy, ni'?"
"Le' all we giv' he a han' boys--"
"Ah know I ain't gwine tetch he."
"Nor me."
"Nor me needah."
"Who gwine giv' me a han', ni'?"
"Ain't gwine get meself in no trouble. Go mixin' meself in de backra
dem business--"
"Hey, Ballet, if yo' know wha' is good fo' yo'self, yo' bess min' yo'
own business, yo' hear wha' me tell yo', yah."
"Wha' yo' got fi' do wit' it? De boy ain't got no business talkin' back
to de marinah man--"
"Now he mek up he bed, let 'im lie down in it."
Shocked at sight of the mud the marine's boots left on the boy's dusty,
crinkly head, Ballet mustered the courage of action. Some of the older
heads passed on, awed, incredulous.
"Yo' gwine kill dat boy," said Ballet, staggering up to the marine.
"You mind yer own goddam business, Smarty, and go back to work," said
the marine. He guided an unshaking yellow-spotted finger under the
black's warm, dilating nostrils. "Or else--"
He grew suddenly deathly pale. It was a pallor which comes to men on
the verge of murder. Mouth, the boy at issue, one of those docile,
half-white San Andres coons, was a facile affair. Singly, red-bloodedly
one handled it. But here, with this ugly, thick-lipped, board-chested
upstart, there was need for handling of an errorless sort.
"I'll git you yet," the marine said, gazing at Ballet quietly, "I'll
fill you full of lead yet, you black bastard!"
"Why yo' don't do it now," stuttered Ballet, taking a hesitating step
forward, "yo' coward, yo'--a big able man lik' yo' beatin' a lil' boy
lik' dat. Why yo' don' hit me? Betcha yo' don' put down yo' gun an'
fight me lik' yo' got any guts."
The marine continued to stare at him. "I'll git you yet," he said,
"I'll git you yet, Smarty, don't kid yourself." And he slowly moved on.
The boy got up. The sun kept up its irrepressible sizzling. The men
minded their business.
Ballet, sulking, aware of the marine on the stony hedge, aware of
the red, menacing eyes glued on him, on every single move he made,
furtively broke rocks.
* * * * *
"Boy, yo' ain't gwine t' wuk teeday, ni'? Git up!"
Exhausted by the orgy of work and even-song, Ballet snored, rolled,
half asleep.
"Get up, ni' yo' ain't hear de _korchee_ blowin' fi' go to wuk, ni?"
"Ugh--ooo--ooo--"
"Yo' ent hear me, ni? Um is six o'clock, boy, get up befo' yo' is late.
Yo' too lazy, get up, a big, lazy boy lik' yo'--"
Sitting at the head of the cot, a Bible in one hand, Ballet's mother
kept shaking him into wakefulness. In the soft flush of dawn bursting
in on the veranda, Mirrie's restless gum-moist eyes fell on her son's
shining black shoulders. He was sprawled on the canvas, a symbol of
primordial force, groaning, half-awake.
"Hey, wha' is to become o' dis boy, ni?" she kept on talking to the
emerging flow of light, "Why yo' don't go to bed at night, ni? Stayin'
out evah night in de week. Spanishtown, Spanishtown, Spanishtown, evah
night--tek heed, ni, tek heed, yo' heah--when yo' run into trouble don'
come an' say Ah didn't tell yo'."
To Ballet this was the song of eternity. From the day Mirrie discovered
through some vilely unfaithful source the moments there were for
youths such as he, in the crimson shades of _el barrio_, the psalms of
rage and despair were chanted to him.
His thin, meal-yellow singlet stiffened, ready to crack. He continued
snoring. Frowsy body _fuses_, night sod, throttled the air on the dingy
narrow porch on which they both contrived to sleep.
She shook him again. "Get up--yo' hear de _korchee_ blowin' fo' half
pas' six. Time to go to wuk, boy."
Ballet slowly rose--the lower portions of him arching upwards.
The dome of the equator swirled high above Colon--warmth, sticky sweat,
heat, malaria, flies--here one slept coverless. Mechanically uttering
words of prayer drilled into him by Mirrie, he raised himself up on the
stain-blotched cot, salaamed, while Mirrie piously turned her face to
the sun.
When he had finished, Ballet, still half asleep, angled his way into
his shirt, dragged on his blue pants, took down the skillet from the
ledge and went to the cesspool to bathe his face.
"Yo' know, mahmie," he said to Mirrie as he returned, wiping his eyes
with the edge of his shirt sleeve, "I don't feel lik' goin' to work dis
mornin'--"
"Why, bo?"
"Oh, Ah dunno." He sat down to tea.
"Yo' too lazy," she blurted out. "Yo' want to follow all o' dem nasty
vagabonds an' go roun' de streets an' interfere wit' people. Yo' go to
work, sah, an' besides, who is to feed me if yo' don' wuk? Who--answer
me dat! Boy, yo' bes' mek up yo' min' an' get under de heel o' de
backra."
Peeling the _conkee_ off the banana leaf encasing it, Ballet's
glistening half-dried eyes roved painfully at the austere lines on his
mother's aged face.
"Ah don' wan' fo' go--"
"Dah is wha' Ah get fo' bringin' unna up. Ungrateful vagybond! Dah
is wha' Ah get fo' tyin' up my guts wit' plantation trash, feedin'
unna--jes' lik' unna wuthliss pappy. But yo' go long an' bring me de
coppers when pay day come. Dah is all Ah is axin' yo' fo' do. Ah too
old fo' wash de backra dem dutty ole clothes else unna wouldn't hav'
to tu'n up unna back-side when Ah ax unna fo' provide anyt'ing fo' mah."
"Oh, yo' mek such a fuss ovah nutton," he sulked.
A stab of pain corrugated Ballet's smooth black brow. His mother's
constant dwelling on the dearth of the family fortunes produced in him
a sundry set of emotions--escape in rebellion and refusal to do as
against a frenzied impulse to die retrieving things.
The impulse to do conquered, and Ballet rose, seized the skillet
containing the _conkee_ for his midday meal and started.
A fugitive tear, like a pendant pearl, paused on Mirrie's wrinkled,
musk-brown face.
"Son, go' long--an tek care o' yo'self."
Light-heartedly Ballet galloped down the stairs. Half-way to the
garbage-strewn piazza, he paused to lean over the banister and peep
into the foggy depths of the kitchen serving the occupants of the bawdy
rooms on the street-level of the tenement.
"Up orready?" shouted Ballet, throwing a sprig of cane peeling at a
plump black figure engaged in the languid task of turning with a long
flat piece of board a _tache_ of bubbling starch.
In a disorderly flight to the piazza one foot landed on the seed of a
part-skinned alligator pear. He deftly escaped a fall. Quickly righting
himself, he made for the misty, stewy inclosure--dashing under clothes
lines, overturning a bucket of wash blue, nearly bursting a hole in
some one's sunning, gleaming sheet.
Dark kitchen; slippery and smoky; unseen vermin and strange upgrowth of
green snaky roots swarmed along the sides of washtubs, turpentine cans,
_taches_, stable ironware.
Presiding over one of the _taches_ was a girl. She was slim, young,
fifteen years old. Her feet were bare, scales, dirt black, dirt white,
sped high up her legs. The fragment of a frock, some peasant thing,
once colored, once flowered, stood stiff, rigid off the tips of her
curving buttocks.