A VETERAN FALLS
by
Langston Hughes

Saturday mid-night, Harlem, 145th and 8th avenue. Neon signs, taxis, the wail of juke boxes and the cries of push-cart peddlers all slightly muted and dampened by a dark lazy steady autumn drizzle. A tall one-legged soldier on crutches swings rapidly down the 145th Street hill in the rain. Two women trail behind him, one a little taller than the other.

In front of the Wonder Bar, just as a lively, laughing crowd emerges, the soldier slips---his crutches skid on the wet pavement. He falls in the rain headlong on his face, stunned.

The taller of the two women ran to pick him up. But the other woman stepped in her way and stopped her.

"Don't you pick him up, Jessie! I'll pick him up. He's mine! He's trying to jump salty with me tonight---but he's mine."

"I will so pick him up," said the tall woman. "He's an old friend of mine---and I will pick him up."

"He's double a friend of mine. Charlie's more to me than he is to you. I'll pick him up myself."

A VETERAN FALLS - 2 -

Both of them stooped and between them they got the soldier
to his feet. A man in the crowd handed him his crutches. The
soldier's clean, freshly pressed uniform was all wet down the
front. His trouser leg, neatly folded back over the stump of
his leg, was muddy and wet.

"What the hell's all this fuss? I just fell down, that's all," growled the soldier.

But in spite of himself his hand reached for the twitch-
ing stump of his leg. He bit his lips painfully. His calf-
less leg trembled.

"Maybe he's just on a furlough from the hospital," said a
man in the doorway of the bar.

"Sick leave, you call it," another corrected.

The woman at the curb yelled, "Cab! Cab! Cab! And,
Jessie, you leave him be."

But Jessie put one hand inside his open shirt and pressed
her head against his shoulder in the dripping rain. He pushed
her away. She went to the curb to help hail a cab, and the
women started yapping at each other again.

"I'll get a cab," said the tall woman. "I know he'll sneak
off from me to see you, but I'm the one he comes to first---like
today---first! I'm the one he gets a dollar from when he needs
it. Long as I'm working, Charlie'll eat. I'll get this cab,
and pay for it, too. Do you hear me, Jessie?"

The soldier couldn't keep his hand from the swinging stump
of his leg.

A VETERAN FALLS - 3 -

"Your crutch just slipped on the wet sidewalk," said a big dark man in the crowd. "That could happen to anybody, son."

"Sure," said the soldier, "I just slipped."

"Hurt?" asked the man.

"Naw! I just slipped, that's all."

"I mean, did it hurt your feelings?" said the man.

"No," said the soldier.

"Then it's all right," said the man.

"Baby, here's a cab!" yelled the tall woman. "Come on!"

"Here's our cab," called the other woman. Both rushed to help him.

"You better sit between them two women," said the man, "so they won't tear each other's eyes out."

"Everything's under control," said the soldier.

He pulled himself into the cab and let himself down slowly between the two women, careful of the wounded stump of his leg. Each of the women held a crutch as the taxi wheeled swiftly off through the rain, beating the red light at the corner.

"Game cat!" said the man. "One leg, two women---and he's still king!"

Softly the juke box wailed, **TO EACH HIS OWN** as the crowd in front of the bar scattered in the rain.

Somebody laughed, "I wonder how they'll divide up that man? They can't cut him in half like a cake!"

"Game cat!" said the man.