Birthright Part 35

As Peter came out into the shabby little street of Hooker's Bend discouragement settled upon him. He felt as if he had come squarely against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. The black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a creature of poverty, hovels, and dirt; but amid such surroundings he could not change his psychology.

The point of these unhappy conclusions somehow turned against Cissie Dildine. The mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. Everything the merchants said against negroes became accusations against Cissie in a sharp personal way. "A n.i.g.g.e.r is a n.i.g.g.e.r"; "A thief is a thief"; "She wouldn't quit stealing if I paid her a hundred a week." Every stroke had fallen squarely on Cissie's shoulders. A n.i.g.g.e.r, a thief; and she would never be otherwise.

It was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that Peter walked down the bleak street unutterably depressed There was nothing he could do. The situation was static. It seemed best that he should go away North and save his own skin. It was impossible to take Cissie with him. Perhaps in time he would come to forget her, and in so doing he would forget the pauperism and pettinesses of all the black folk of the South. Because through Cissie Peter saw the whole negro race. She was flexuous and pa.s.sionate, kindly and loving, childish and navely wise; on occasion she could falsify and steal, and in the depth of her Peter sensed a profound capacity for fury and violence. For all her precise English, she was untamed, perhaps untamable.

Cissie was a far cry from the sort of woman Peter imagined he wanted for a mate; yet he knew that if he stayed on in Hooker's Bend, seeing her, desiring her, with her luxury mocking the loneliness of the old Renfrew manor, presently he would marry her. Already he had had his little irrational moments when it seemed to him that Cissie herself was quite fine and worthy and that her speculations were something foreign and did not pertain to her at all.

He would better go North. It would be safer up there. No doubt he could find another colored girl in the North. The thought of fondling any other woman filled Peter with a sudden, sharp repulsion. However, Peter was wise. He knew he would get over that in time.

With this plan in mind, Peter set out down the street, intending to cross the Big Hill at the church, walk over to his mother's shack, and pack his few belongings preparatory to going away.

It was not a heroic retreat. The conversation which he had had with his college friend Farquhar recurred to Peter. Farquhar had tried to persuade Peter to remain North and take a position in a system of garages out of Chicago.

"You can do nothing in the South, Siner," a.s.sured Farquhar; "your countrymen must stand on their own feet, just as you are doing."

Peter had argued the vast majority of the negroes had no chance, but Farquhar pressed the point that Peter himself disproved his own statement. At the time Peter felt there was an clench in the Illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to a.n.a.lyze it. Now the mulatto began to see that Farquhar was right. The negro question was a matter of individual initiative. Critics forgot that a race was composed of individual men.

Peter had an uneasy sense that this was exceedingly thin logic, a mere smoke screen behind which he meant to retreat back up North. He walked on down the poor village street, turning it over and over in his mind, affirming it positively to himself, after the manner of uneasy consciences.

An unusual stir among the negroes on Hobbett's corner caught Peter's attention and broke into his chain of thought. Half a dozen negroes stood on the corner, staring down toward the white church. A black boy suddenly started running across the street, and disappeared among the stores on the other side. Peter caught glimpses of him among the wretched alleyways and vacant lots that lie east of Main Street. The boy was still running toward n.i.g.g.e.rtown.

By this time Peter was just opposite the watchers on the corner. He lifted his voice and asked them the matter, but at the moment they began an excited talking, and no one heard him.

Jim Pink Staggs jerked off his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life His mummery set his audience howling.

The buffoon would have collided with Peter, but the mulatto caught Jim Pink by the arm and shoulder, brought him to a halt, and at the same time helped him keep his feet.

To Peter's inquiry what was the matter, the black fellow whirled and blared out loudly, for the sake of his audience:

"'Fo' Gawd, n.i.g.g.e.r, I sho thought Mr. Bobbs had me!" and he writhed his face into an idiotic grimace.

The audience reeled about in their mirth. Because with negroes, as with white persons, two thirds of humor is in the reputation, and Jim Pink was of prodigious repute.

Peter walked along with him patiently, because he knew that until they were out of ear-shot of the crowd there was no way of getting a sensible answer out of Jim Pink.

"Where are you going?" he asked presently.

"Thought I'd step over to n.i.g.g.e.rtown." Jim Pink's humorous air was still upon him.

"What's doing over there? What were the boys raising such a hullabaloo about?"

"Such me."

"Why did that boy go running across like that?"

Jim Pink rolled his eyes on Peter with a peculiar look.

"Reckon he mus' 'a' wanted to git on t'other side o' town."

Peter flattered the Punchinello by smiling a little.

"Come, Jim Pink, what do you know?" he asked. The magician poked out his huge lips.

"Mr. Bobbs turn acrost by de church, over de Big Hill. Da' 's always a ba-ad sign."

Peter's brief interest in the matter flickered out. Another arrest for some n.i.g.g.e.rish peccadillo. The history of n.i.g.g.e.rtown was one long series of petty offenses, petty raids, and petty punishments. Peter would be glad to get well away from such a place.

"Think I'll go North, Jim Pink," remarked Peter, chiefly to keep up a friendly conversation with his companion.

"Whut-chu goin' to do up thaiuh?"

"Take a position in a system of garages."

"A position is a job wid a white color on it," defined the minstrel.

"Whut you goin' to do wid Cissie?"

Peter looked around at the foolish face.

"With Cissie?--Cissie Dildine?"

"Uh huh."

"Why, what makes you think I'm going to do anything with Cissie?"

"M-m, visitin' roun'." The fool flung his face into a grimace, and dropped it as one might shake out a sack.

Peter watched the contortion uneasily.

"What do you mean--visiting around?"

"Diff'nt folks go visitin' roun'; Some goes up an' some goes down."

Apparently Jim Pink had merely quoted a few words from a poem he knew.

He stared at the green-black depth of the glade, which set in about half-way up the hill they were climbing.

"Ef this weather don' ever break," he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh a dry spell."

Peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. He climbed the hill in silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. He suspected he was hinting at Cissie's visit to his room. However, he did not dare ask any questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself.

The minstrel had succeeded in making Peter's walk very uncomfortable, as somehow he always did. Peter went on thinking about the matter. If Jim Pink knew of Cissie's visit, all n.i.g.g.e.rtown knew it. No woman's reputation, n.o.body's shame or misery or even life, would stand between Jim Pink and what he considered a joke. The buffoon was the crudest thing in this world--a man who thought himself a wit.

Peter could imagine all the endless tweaks to Cissie's pride n.i.g.g.e.rtown would give the octoroon. She had asked Peter to marry her and had been refused. She had humbled herself for naught. That was the very tar of shame. Peter knew that in the moral categories of n.i.g.g.e.rtown Cissie would suffer more from such a rebuff than if she had lied or committed theft and adultery every day in the calendar. She had been refused marriage. All the folk-ways of n.i.g.g.e.rtown were utterly topsyturvy. It was a crazy-house filled with the most grotesque moral measures.

It seemed to Peter as he entered the cedar-glade that he had lost all sympathy with this people from which he had sprung. He looked upon them as strange, incomprehensible beings, just as a man will forget his own childhood and look upon children as strange, incomprehensible little creatures. In the midst of his thoughts he heard himself saying to Jim Pink:

"I suppose it is as dusty as ever."