Wha' de use yo' gwine shawl up
Now dat yo' character gone--
Dicky jump, Dicky jump
Ah wan' fi' lie down!
was unaware of Ballet slowly crouching behind her.
Becoming clairvoyantly tongue-tied, Blanche suddenly turned, and Ballet
came up to her.
Exerting a strange ripe magic over him, the girl cried, "Yo' frighten
me, Ballet, how yo' dey?"
"Too bad 'bout las' night," she said, in the low lulling tones of a
West Indian servant girl, lifting not an eyebrow, and continuing to
stir the thickening starch.
"An' me had me min' 'pon it so bad," the boy said, an intense gleam
entering his eyes.
"So it dey," responded Blanche, "sometime it hav' obtusions, de neddah
time de road are clear."
"Dat a fac'," the boy concurred sorrowfully, "it fatify de _coza_ so
dat a man can ha'dly sit down an' say 'well, me gwine do dis dis minute
an' me gwine do dis dat, fo' de devil is jes' as smaht as de uddah man
uptop."
"Up cose," said Blanche in her most refined manner, "Ah, fi' me notion
is to tek de milk fom de cow when him are willin' fi' giv' it, wheddah
it are in de mawnin' time or in de even' time--
"Wha' yo' are doin', Ballet, wait--let me put down de stick--wait, Ah
say--yo' in a hurry?"
"Wha' Sweetbread, dey? Him gone t' wuk orready?"
"Yes--me don' know but it are seem to me lik' some time muss eclapse
befo' dere is any life ah stir in dis kitchen--"
"Oh, Blanche!"
"Yo' bes' be careful, Ballet, fo' de las' time Ah had fi' scrouch
aroun' fi' hooks an' eyes an' dat dyam John Chinaman 'im not gwine giv'
me anyt'ing beout me giv' 'im somet'ing."
"All right--dere--Blanche--wait--"
"Yo' know what 'im say to me de uddah dey? Me wuz--wait, tek yo' time,
Ballet, de cock is jus' a crow, it are soon yet--oh, don't sweet--"
"'Im say to me dat Ah mus' giv' 'im somet'ing. An' me say to 'im, 'but
John, yo' no me husban'--'an' yo' know wha' de dyam yallah rascal say
'im say 'but me no fo' yo' husban' too'?"
Her hair was hard, but the marble floor of the kitchen undoubtedly
helped to stiffen its matty, tangled plaits. And in spite of the
water daily splashing over the tanks and _taches_ on to the ground,
her strong young body took nothing diminishing from it. Only,
unquestioningly the force of such a wiry, gluey, gummy impact as theirs
left her heels a little broader, and a readier prey for chiggers, by
virtue of the constantly widening crevices in them, her hair a little
more difficult to comb, and her dress in a suspiciously untidy mood.
Emerging from the slippery darkness of the kitchen, Ballet dashed up
Eighth Street. A Colon sunrise streamed in on its lazy inert life.
Opposite, some of the disciples of the High Priest of the Ever-Live,
Never-Die Sect sat moping, not fully recovered from the flowing
mephitic languor of the evening's lyrical excesses.
All the way up the street, Ballet met men of one sort or another
trekking to work--on tipsy depot wagons, shovels, picks, forks
sticking out like spikes; on foot, alone, smoking pipes, hazily
concerned.
Grog shops, chink stores and brothels were closed. The tall, bare,
paneled doors were fastened. The sun threw warmth and sting under
verandas; shriveled banana peels to crusts; darkened the half-eaten
chunks of soft pomegranates left by some extravagant epicurean, gave
manna to big husky wasps foregathering wherever there was light, sun,
warmth....
Up on the verandas there dark, bright-skirted, flame-lipped girls,
the evening before, danced in squares, holding up the tips of their
flimsy dresses, to the _coombia_ of creole island places. Creole girls
led, thwarted, wooed and burned by _obeah_-working, weed-smoking St.
Lucian men. Jamaica girls, fired by an inextinguishable warmth, danced,
whirling, wheeling, rolling, rubbing, spinning their posteriors and
their hips, in circles, their breasts like rosettes of flame, quivering
to the rhythm of the _mento_--conceding none but the scandalously
sexless. Spanish girls, white ones, yellow ones, brown ones, furiously
gay, furiously concerned over the actualities of beauty.
Over a bar of dredged in earth, Ballet sped. In the growing sunlight
figures slowly made for the converging seacoast.
Work-folk yelled to Ballet tidings of the dawn....
"Why yo' don' tek de chiggahs out o' yo' heel an' walk lik' yo' got
life in yo' body--"
"Yo' gwine be late, too."
"Yo' go 'long, bo, Oi ent hurrin' fo' de Lawd Gawd Heself dis mawnin'--"
Ahead a vision of buxom green cocoa palms spread like a crescent--from
the old rickety wooden houses walled behind the preserves of the
quarantine station all the way past the cabins of the fishing folk and
dinky bathhouses for the blacks to the unseemly array of garbage at
the dump. Out to the seacoast and the writhing palms swarmed men from
Coolie Town, Bottle Alley, Bolivar Street, Boca Grande, Silver City.
As he approached the edge of the sea, Ballet waded through grass which
rose higher and thicker, whose dew lay in glimmering crystal moistures.
Beyond the palm trees opened a vista of the river, the color of
brackish water. Empty cocoanut husks cluttered the ground. Sitting on
upturned canoes men smoked pipes and sharpened tools, murmuring softly.
All across the bay labor boats formed a lane, a lane to Toro Point,
shining on the blue horizon.
Drawing nearer the crux of things, Mouth ran up to Ballet and put an
unsteady, excited grip on his shoulder.
"Ballet, bettah don' go t' wuk teeday--"
Scorn and disdain crossed Ballet's somber black face.
"Wha' is dah?" he said, refusing to hear his ears.
"Ah, say, don' go t' wuk teeday--stan' home--"
"Why, boy?"
"Dah marine is lookin' fo' yo'."
"Lookin' fo' me?" Ballet stuck a skeptical finger in the pit of his
stomach. "Wha' he lookin' fo' me fo'?" A quizzical frown creased his
brow.
"He say yo' had no business to jook yo' mout' in de ruction yestiddy.
Dat yo' too gypsy an' if yo' know bes' fo' yo'self--"
"Oh, le' he come," cried Ballet, "de blind coward, le' he come--"
A ruffian Q.M. paced up and down the water front, brandishing a staff,
firing skyrockets of tobacco spit to right and left, strode up. "Don't
stand there, boys, getta move on! Jump in this boat--another one's
coming--no time to waste--jump in there!"
A marine lieutenant, pistol in hand, superintended the embarkment. A
squad of khakied men paraded the strip of seashore.
Ballet joined the cowed obedient retinue limping to the boats.
Curiously, in the scramble to embark the water boy got lost.
"Oh, Oi ain't do nutton. Can't do me nutton."
The passage was swift and safe through swelling seas growing darker and
deadlier as the tide mounted. Glumly the men sat, uttering few words,
standing up as the boat neared the other side of the river and jumping
prematurely ashore, getting their feet wet.
Men gathered on pump cars and on the Toro Point river edge sawing wood
to help clear the jungle or sharpening their machetes.
Gangs were forming. Driven by marines, platoons of black men went to
obscure parts of the Toro Point bush to cut paths along the swirling
lagoon back to the Painted City. Fierce against the sun moaning men
jogged with drills on their backs, pounding to dust tons of mortared
stone paving lanes through the heathen unexplored jungle.
In the crowd of men, Ballet saw a face leering at him. It was a white
face--the face of a scowling marine....
Rockingly, dizzily, it glowed up at him. He was freckled, the pistol in
his belt carelessly at hand and he slovenly sported a bayonet rifle.
"Hey--you--I'm talking to you--"
Afraid, unable to fathom the gleam penetrating the depths of the man's
eyes, Ballet started running.
"Stand up and take yer medicine, yer goddam skunk," cried the marine;
"hey, stop that man--"
Nothing for a black boy, probably a laborer, or a water boy, to do a
hide and seek with a tipsy marine....
"Stop that man--"
Ballet flew. He scaled hurdles. He bumped into men. Ugly French
colonial words, epithets deserving of a dog, were hurled at him.
Impatient, contemptuous Jamaican, colored by a highly British accent,
caught at him like shreds.
About to penetrate the dense interior of the jungle, the men sang,
soothed the blades of their cutlasses, sang pioneer sea songs, pioneer
gold songs....
Comin' Ah tell yo'!
One mo' mawin', buoy,
There was a toolshed set a little ways in. Into it Ballet burst. But a
hut, it yet had an "upstairs," and up these the boy scrambled wildly.
Behind a wagon wheel sent up there to the wheelwright to be mended,
Ballet, breathing hard, heard the marine enter.
Downstairs. A pause. A search. The top of a barrel blammed shut.
Imagine--a boy in a barrel of tar. Ludicrous--laughter snuffed out.
Heavy steps started upward, upward....
"Where the hell are yer, yer lousy bastard--yer--come sticking in yer
mouth where yer hadn't any goddam business? Minding somebody else's
business. I'll teach you niggers down here how to talk back to a white
man. Come out o' there, you black bastard."
Behind the wheel, bars dividing the two, Ballet saw the dread
khaki--the dirt-caked leggings.
His vision abruptly darkened.