FOREWORD

liness to be sung. The Georgia Negro is not a
downtrodden soul to be uplifted: he is material
for gorgeous painting. The segregated self-
conscious brown belt of Washington is not a
topic to be discussed and exposed: it is a subject
of beauty and of drama, worthy of creation in
literary form.

It seems to me, therefore, that this is a first
book in more ways than one. It is a harbinger
of the South's literary maturity: of its emergence
from the obsession put upon its minds by the
unending racial crisis—an obsession from which
writers have made their indirect escape through
sentimentalism, exoticism, polemic, “problem”
fiction, and moral melodrama. Its marks the
dawn of direct and unafraid creation. And, as
the initial work of a man of twenty-seven, it is
the harbinger of a literary force of whose incal-
culable future I believe no reader of this book
will be in doubt.

How typical is *Cane* of the South's still virgin
soil and of its pressing seeds! and the book's
chaos of verse, tale, drama, its rhythmic rolling
shift from lyrism to narrative, from mystery to
intimate pathos! But read the book through

[ix]

FOREWORD

and you will see a complex and significant form
take substance from its chaos. Part One is the
primitive and evanescent black world of Georgia.
Part Two is the threshing and suffering brown
world of Washington, lifted by opportunity and
contact into the anguish of self-conscious strug-
gle. Part Three is Georgia again . . . the in-
vasion into this black womb of the ferment
seed: the neurotic, educated, spiritually stirring
Negro. As a broad form this is superb, and the
very looseness and unexpected waves of the
book's parts make Cane still more South, still
more of an æsthetic equivalent of the land.

What a land it is! What an Æschylean
beauty to its fateful problem! Those of you
who love our South will find here some of your
love. Those of you who know it not will per-
haps begin to understand what a warm splendor
is at last at dawn.

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
With bloodshot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth
Surprised in making folk-songs . . . .

So, in his still sometimes clumsy stride (for
[x]

FOREWORD

Toomer is finally a poet in prose) the author gives you an inkling of his revelation. An individual force, wise enough to drink humbly at this great spring of his land . . . such is the first impression of Jean Toomer. But beyond this wisdom and this power (which shows itself perhaps most splendidly in his complete freedom from the sense of persecution), there rises a figure more significant: the artist, hard, self-immolating, the artist who is not interested in races, whose domain is Life. The book's final part is no longer "promise"; it is achievement. It is no mere dawn: it is a bit of the full morn-ing. These materials . . . the ancient black man, mute, inaccessible, and yet so mystically close to the new tumultuous members of his race, the simple slave Past, the shredding Negro Present, iridescent passionate dream of the To-morrow . . . are made and measured by a craftsman into an unforgettable music. The notes of his counterpoint are particular, the themes are of intimate connection with us Americans. But the result is that abstract and absolute thing called Art.

WALDO FRANK.

[xi]

KARINTHA

Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon,
O cant you see it, O cant you see it,
Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon
. . . When the sun goes down.

MEN had always wanted her, this Karintha,
even as a child, Karintha carrying beauty,
perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. Old
men rode her hobby-horse upon their knees.
Young men danced with her at frolics when
they should have been dancing with their grown-
up girls. God grant us youth, secretly prayed
the old men. The young fellows counted the
time to pass before she would be old enough to
mate with them. This interest of the male, who
wishes to ripen a growing thing too soon, could
mean no good to her.

Karintha, at twelve, was a wild flash that
told the other folks just what it was to live. At
sunset, when there was no wind, and the pine-

[1]

CANE

smoke from over by the sawmill hugged the
earth, and you couldnt see more than a few feet
in front, her sudden darting past you was a bit
of vivid color, like a black bird that flashes in
light. With the other children one could hear,
some distance off, their feet flopping in the two-
inch dust. Karintha's running was a whir. It
had the sound of the red dust that sometimes
makes a spiral in the road. At dusk, during
the hush just after the sawmill had closed
down, and before any of the women had started
their supper-getting-ready songs, her voice, high-
pitched, shrill, would put one's ears to itching.
But no one ever thought to make her stop be-
cause of it. She stoned the cows, and beat her
dog, and fought the other children. . . Even
the preacher, who caught her at mischief, told
himself that she was as innocently lovely as a
November cotton flower. Already, rumors were
out about her. Homes in Georgia are most often
built on the two-room plan. In one, you cook
and eat, in the other you sleep, and there love
goes on. Karintha had seen or heard, perhaps
she had felt her parents loving. One could but
imitate one's parents, for to follow them was the

[2]

KARINTHA

way of God. She played "home" with a small
boy who was not afraid to do her bidding. That
started the whole thing. Old men could no
longer ride her hobby-horse upon their knees.
But young men counted faster.

Her skin is like dusk,
O cant you see it,
Her skin is like dusk,
When the sun goes down.

Karintha is a woman. She who carries beauty,
perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. She
has been married many times. Old men remind
her that a few years back they rode her hobby-
horse upon their knees. Karintha smiles, and
indulges them when she is in the mood for it.
She has contempt for them. Karintha is a
woman. Young men run stills to make her
money. Young men go to the big cities and run
on the road. Young men go away to college.
They all want to bring her money. These are
the young men who thought that all they had to
do was to count time. But Karintha is a woman,

[3]

CANE

and she had had a child. A child fell out of
her womb onto a bed of pine-needles in the for-
est. Pine-needles are smooth and sweet. They
are elastic to the feet of rabbits. . . A sawmill
was nearby. Its pyramidal sawdust pile
smouldered. It is a year before one completely
burns. Meanwhile, the smoke curls up and
hangs in odd wraiths about the trees, curls up,
and spreads itself out over the valley. . . Weeks
after Karintha returned home, the smoke was
so heavy you tasted it in water. Some one
made a song:

Smoke is on the hills. Rise up.
Smoke is on the hills, O rise
And take my soul to Jesus.

Karintha is a woman. Men do not know that
the soul of her was a growing thing ripened
too soon. They will bring their money; they
will die not having found it out. . . Karintha at
twenty, carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when
the sun goes down. Karintha. . .

[4]

REAPERS

Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that's done,
And start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,
His belly close to ground. I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.

[6]

NOVEMBER COTTON FLOWER

Boll-weevil's coming, and the winter's cold,
Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old,
And cotton, scarce as any southern snow,
Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow,
Failed in its function as the autumn rake,
Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take
All water from the streams; dead birds were found
In wells a hundred feet below the ground—
Such was the season when the flower bloomed.
Old folks were startled, and it soon assumed
Significance. Superstition saw
Something it had never seen before:
Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear,
Beauty so sudden for that time of year.

[7]

BECKY

Becky was the white woman who had two
Negro sons. She's dead; they've gone away.
The pines whisper to Jesus. The Bible flaps
its leaves with an aimless rustle on her mound.

BECKY had one Negro son. Who gave it to
her? Damn buck nigger, said the white
folks' mouths. She wouldnt tell. Common,
God-forsaken, insane white shameless wench,
said the white folks' mouths. Her eyes were
sunken, her neck stringy, her breasts fallen, till
then. Taking their words, they filled her, like
a bubble rising—then she broke. Mouth setting
in a twist that held her eyes, harsh, vacant,
staring. . . Who gave it to her? Low-down
nigger with no self-respect, said the black folks'
mouths. She wouldnt tell. Poor Catholic poor-
white crazy woman, said the black folks' mouths.
White folks and black folks built her cabin, fed
her and her growing baby, prayed secretly to
God who'd put His cross upon her and cast her
out.

[8]

BECKY

When the first was born, the white folks said
they'd have no more to do with her. And black
folks, they too joined hands to cast her out. . .
The pines whispered to Jesus. . The railroad
boss said not to say he said it, but she could
live, if she wanted to, on the narrow strip
of land between the railroad and the road. John
Stone, who owned the lumber and the bricks,
would have shot the man who told he gave the
stuff to Lonnie Deacon, who stole out there at
night and built the cabin. A single room held
down to earth. . . O fly away to Jesus . . .
by a leaning chimney. . .

Six trains each day rumbled past and shook
the ground under her cabin. Fords, and horse-
and mule-drawn buggies went back and forth
along the road. No one ever saw her. Train-
men, and passengers who'd heard about her,
threw out papers and food. Threw out little
crumpled slips of paper scribbled with prayers,
as they passed her eye-shaped piece of sandy
ground. Ground islandized between the road
and railroad track. Pushed up where a blue-
sheen God with listless eyes could look at it.

[9]

CANE

Folks from the town took turns, unknown, of
course, to each other, in bringing corn and meat
and sweet potatoes. Even sometimes snuff. . .
O thank y Jesus. . . Old David Georgia,
grinding cane and boiling syrup, never went her
way without some sugar sap. No one ever saw
her. The boy grew up and ran around. When
he was five years old as folks reckoned it, Hugh
Jourdon saw him carrying a baby. "Becky has
another son," was what the whole town knew.
But nothing was said, for the part of man that
says things to the likes of that had told itself
that if there was a Becky, that Becky now was
dead.

The two boys grew. Sullen and cunning. . .
O pines, whisper to Jesus; tell him to come and
press sweet Jesus-lips against their lips and
eyes. . . It seemed as though with those two
big fellows there, there could be no room for
Becky. The part that prayed wondered if per-
haps she'd really died, and they had buried her.
No one dared ask. They'd beat and cut a man
who meant nothing at all in mentioning that
they lived along the road. White or colored?

[10]

BECKY

No one knew, and least of all themselves. They
drifted around from job to job. We, who had
cast out their mother because of them, could we
take them in? They answered black and white
folks by shooting up two men and leaving town.
"Godam the white folks; godam the niggers,"
they shouted as they left town. Becky? Smoke
curled up from her chimney; she must be there.
Trains passing shook the ground. The ground
shook the leaning chimney. Nobody noticed it.
A creepy feeling came over all who saw that thin
wraith of smoke and felt the trembling of the
ground. Folks began to take her food again.
They quit it soon because they had a fear.
Becky if dead might be a hant, and if alive—it
took some nerve even to mention it. . . O pines,
whisper to Jesus. . .

It was Sunday. Our congregation had been
visiting at Pulverton, and were coming home.
There was no wind. The autumn sun, the bell
from Ebenezer Church, listless and heavy. Even
the pines were stale, sticky, like the smell of food
that makes you sick. Before we turned the bend
of the road that would show us the Becky cabin,

[11]

CANE

the horses stopped stock-still, pushed back their
ears, and nervously whinnied. We urged, then
whipped them on. Quarter of a mile away thin
smoke curled up from the leaning chimney. . .
O pines, whisper to Jesus. . . Goose-flesh
came on my skin though there still was neither
chill nor wind. Eyes left their sockets for the
cabin. Ears burned and throbbed. Uncanny
eclipse! fear closed my mind. We were just
about to pass. . . Pines shout to Jesus! . .
the ground trembled as a ghost train rumbled by.
The chimney fell into the cabin. Its thud was
like a hollow report, ages having passed since it
went off. Barlo and I were pulled out of our
seats. Dragged to the door that had swung
open. Through the dust we saw the bricks in a
mound upon the floor. Becky, if she was there,
lay under them. I thought I heard a groan.
Barlo, mumbling something, threw his Bible on
the pile. (No one has ever touched it.) Some-
how we got away. My buggy was still on the
road. The last thing that I remember was whip-
ping old Dan like fury; I remember nothing
after that—that is, until I reached town and
folks crowded round to get the true word of it.

[12]

CARMA

Wind is in the cane. Come along.
Cane leaves swaying, rusty with talk,
Scratching choruses above the guinea's squawk,
Wind is in the cane. Come along.

CARMA, in overalls, and strong as any man,
stands behind the old brown mule, driving
the wagon home. It bumps, and groans, and
shakes as it crosses the railroad track. She, rid-
ing it easy. I leave the men around the stove to
follow her with my eyes down the red dust road.
Nigger woman driving a Georgia chariot down
an old dust road. Dixie Pike is what they call
it. Maybe she feels my gaze, perhaps she ex-
pects it. Anyway, she turns. The sun, which
has been slanting over her shoulder, shoots prim-
itive rockets into her mangrove-gloomed, yellow
flower face. Hi! Yip! God has left the Moses-
people for the nigger. "Gedap." Using reins
to slap the mule, she disappears in a cloudy
rumble at some indefinite point along the road.

[15]

CANE

(The sun is hammered to a band of gold.
Pine-needles, like mazda, are brilliantly aglow.
No rain has come to take the rustle from the
falling sweet-gum leaves. Over in the forest,
across the swamp, a sawmill blows its closing
whistle. Smoke curls up. Marvelous web spun
by the spider sawdust pile. Curls up and
spreads itself pine-high above the branch, a
single silver band along the eastern valley. A
black boy . . . you are the most sleepiest man
I ever seed, Sleeping Beauty . . . cradled on a
gray mule, guided by the hollow sound of cow-
bells, heads for them through a rusty cotton
field. From down the railroad track, the chug-
chug of a gas engine announces that the repair
gang is coming home. A girl in the yard of a
whitewashed shack not much larger than the
stack of worn ties piled before it, sings. Her
voice is loud. Echoes, like rain, sweep the
valley. Dusk takes the polish from the rails.
Lights twinkle in scattered houses. From far
away, a sad strong song. Pungent and com-
posite, the smell of farmyards is the fragrance
of the woman. She does not sing; her body is
a song. She is in the forest, dancing. Torches

[16]

CARMA

flare . . juju men, greegree, witch-doctors . .
torches go out. . . The Dixie Pike has grown
from a goat path in Africa.

Night.

Foxie, the bitch, slicks back her ears and barks
at the rising moon.)

Wind is in the corn. Come along.
Corn leaves swaying, rusty with talk,
Scratching choruses above the guinea's squawk,
Wind is in the corn. Come along.

Carma's tale is the crudest melodrama. Her
husband's in the gang. And its her fault he
got there. Working with a contractor, he was
away most of the time. She had others. No one
blames her for that. He returned one day and
hung around the town where he picked up week-
old boasts and rumors. . . Bane accused her.
She denied. He couldnt see that she was be-
coming hysterical. He would have liked to take
his fists and beat her. Who was strong as a man.
Stronger. Words, like corkscrews, wormed to
her strength. It fizzled out. Grabbing a gun,
she rushed from the house and plunged across

[17]

CANE

the road into a cane-brake. . There, in quarter
meaven shone the crescent moon. . . Bane
was afraid to follow till he heard the gun
go off. Then he wasted half an hour gathering
the neighbor men. They met in the road where
lamp-light showed tracks dissolving in the
loose earth about the cane. The search began.
Moths flickered the lamps. They put them out.
Really, because she still might be live enough to
shoot. Time and space have no meaning in a
canefield. No more than the interminable
stalks. . . Some one stumbled over her. A cry
went up. From the road, one would have
thought that they were cornering a rabbit or a
skunk. . . It is difficult carrying dead weight
through cane. They placed her on the sofa. A
curious, nosey somebody looked for the wound.
This fussing with her clothes aroused her. Her
eyes were weak and pitiable for so strong a
woman. Slowly, then like a flash, Bane came
to know that the shot she fired, with averted
head, was aimed to whistle like a dying hornet
through the cane. Twice deceived, and one de-
ception proved the other. His head went off.
Slashed one of the men who'd helped, the man

[18]

CARMA

who'd stumbled over her. Now he's in the gang.
Who was her husband. Should she not take
others, this Carma, strong as a man, whose tale
as I have told it is the crudest melodrama?

[19]

SONG OF THE SON

Pour O pour that parting soul in song,
O pour it in the sawdust glow of night,
Into the velvet pine-smoke air to-night,
And let the valley carry it along.
And let the valley carry it along.

O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
So scant of grass, so profligate of pines,
Now just before an epoch's sun declines
Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee,
Thy son, I have in time returned to thee.

In time, for though the sun is setting on
A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set;
Though late, O soil, it is not too late yet
To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone,
Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone.

O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums,
Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air,
Passing, before they stripped the old tree bare
One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes

An everlasting song, a singing tree,
Caroling softly souls of slavery,
What they were, and what they are to me,
Caroling softly souls of slavery.

[20]

GEORGIA DUSK

The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night's barbecue,

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented
mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds,

The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill
Their early promise of a bumper crop.

Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
Where only chips and stumps are left to show
The solid proof of former domicile.

Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.

[21]

Their voices rise . . the pine trees are guitars,
Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . .
Their voices rise . . the chorus of the cane
Is caroling a vesper to the stars. .

O singers, resinous and soft your songs
Above the sacred whisper of the pines,
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.

[22]

FERN

FACE flowed into her eyes. Flowed in soft cream foam and plaintive ripples, in such a way that wherever your glance may momentarily have rested, it immediately thereafter wavered in the direction of her eyes. The soft suggestion of down slightly darkened, like the shadow of a bird's wing might, the creamy brown color of her upper lip. Why, after noticing it, you sought her eyes, I cannot tell you. Her nose was aquiline, Semitic. If you have heard a Jewish cantor sing, if he has touched you and made your own sorrow seem trivial when compared with his, you will know my feeling when I follow the curves of her profile, like mobile rivers, to their common delta. They were strange eyes. In this, that they sought nothing—that is, nothing that was obvious and tangible and that one could see, and they gave the impression that nothing was to be denied. When a woman seeks, you will have observed, her eyes deny. Fern's eyes desired nothing that you

[23]

CANE

could give her; there was no reason why they
should withhold. Men saw her eyes and fooled
themselves. Fern's eyes said to them that she
was easy. When she was young, a few men
took her, but got no joy from it. And then, once
done, they felt bound to her (quite unlike their
hit and run with other girls), felt as though it
would take them a lifetime to fulfill an obliga-
tion which they could find no name for. They
became attached to her, and hungered after find-
ing the barest trace of what she might desire.
As she grew up, new men who came to town felt
as almost everyone did who ever saw her: that
they would not be denied. Men were everlast-
ingly bringing her their bodies. Something in-
side of her got tired of them, I guess, for I am
certain that for the life of her she could not tell
why or how she began to turn them off. A man
in fever is no trifling thing to send away. They
began to leave her, baffled and ashamed, yet
vowing to themselves that some day they would
do some fine thing for her: send her candy every
week and not let her know whom it came from,
watch out for her wedding-day and give her a
magnificent something with no name on it, buy

[24]

FERN

a house and deed it to her, rescue her from some unworthy fellow who had tricked her into marrying him. As you know, men are apt to idolize or fear that which they cannot understand, especially if it be a woman. She did not deny them, yet the fact was that they were denied. A sort of superstition crept into their consciousness of her being somehow above them. Being above them meant that she was not to be approached by anyone. She became a virgin. Now a virgin in a small southern town is by no means the usual thing, if you will believe me. That the sexes were made to mate is the practice of the South. Particularly, black folks were made to mate. And it is black folks whom I have been talking about thus far. What white men thought of Fern I can arrive at only by analogy. They let her alone.

Anyone, of course, could see her, could see her eyes. If you walked up the Dixie Pike most any time of day, you'd be most like to see her resting listless-like on the railing of her porch, back propped against a post, head tilted a little forward because there was a nail in the porch

[25]

CANE

post just where her head came which for some
reason or other she never took the trouble to pull
out. Her eyes, if it were sunset, rested idly
where the sun, molten and glorious, was pouring
down between the fringe of pines. Or maybe
they gazed at the gray cabin on the knoll from
which an evening folk-song was coming. Per-
haps they followed a cow that had been turned
loose to roam and feed on cotton-stalks and corn
leaves. Like as not they'd settle on some vague
spot above the horizon, though hardly a trace of
wistfulness would come to them. If it were dusk,
then they'd wait for the search-light of the
evening train which you could see miles up the
track before it flared across the Dixie Pike, close
to her home. Wherever they looked, you'd follow
them and then waver back. Like her face, the
whole countryside seemed to flow into her eyes.
Flowed into them with the soft listless cadence of
Georgia's South. A young Negro, once, was
looking at her, spellbound, from the road. A
white man passing in a buggy had to flick him
with his whip if he was to get by without run-
ning him over. I first saw her on her porch. I
was passing with a fellow whose crusty numb-

[26]

FERN

ness (I was from the North and suspected of be-
ing prejudiced and stuck-up) was melting as he
found me warm. I asked him who she was.
“That’s Fern,” was all that I could get from
him. Some folks already thought that I was
given to nosing around; I let it go at that, so far
as questions were concerned. But at first sight
of her I felt as if I heard a Jewish cantor sing.
As if his singing rose above the unheard chorus
of a folk-song. And I felt bound to her. I too
had my dreams: something I would do for her.
I have knocked about from town to town too
much not to know the futility of mere change of
place. Besides, picture if you can, this cream-
colored solitary girl sitting at a tenement window
looking down on the indifferent throngs of Har-
lem. Better that she listen to folk-songs at dusk
in Georgia, you would say, and so would I.
Or, suppose she came up North and married.
Even a doctor or a lawyer, say, one who would
be sure to get along—that is, make money. You
and I know, who have had experience in such
things, that love is not a thing like prejudice
which can be bettered by changes of town. Could
men in Washington, Chicago, or New York,

[27]

CANE

more than the men of Georgia, bring her some-
thing left vacant by the bestowal of their bodies?
You and I who know men in these cities will
have to say, they could not. See her out and
out a prostitute along State Street in Chicago.
See her move into a southern town where white
men are more aggressive. See her become a
white man's concubine. . . Something I must
do for her. There was myself. What could I
do for her? Talk, of course. Push back the
fringe of pines upon new horizons. To what
purpose? and what for? Her? Myself? Men
in her case seem to lose their selfishness. I lost
mine before I touched her. I ask you, friend (it
makes no difference if you sit in the Pullman or
the Jim Crow as the train crosses her road),
what thoughts would come to you—that is, after
you'd finished with the thoughts that leap into
men's minds at the sight of a pretty woman who
will not deny them; what thoughts would come
to you, had you seen her in a quick flash, keen
and intuitively, as she sat there on her porch
when your train thundered by? Would you
have got off at the next station and come back
for her to take her where? Would you have

[28]

FERN

completely forgotten her as soon as you reached
Macon, Atlanta, Augusta, Pasadena, Madison,
Chicago, Boston, or New Orleans? Would you
tell your wife or sweetheart about a girl you saw?
Your thoughts can help me, and I would like to
know. Something I would do for her...

One evening I walked up the Pike on purpose,
and stopped to say hello. Some of her family
were about, but they moved away to make room
for me. Damn if I knew how to begin. Would
you? Mr. and Miss So-and-So, people, the
weather, the crops, the new preacher, the frolic,
the church benefit, rabbit and possum hunting,
the new soft drink they had at old Pap's store,
the schedule of the trains, what kind of town
Macon was, Negro's migration north, boll-
weevils, syrup, the Bible—to all these things
she gave a yassur or nassur, without further
comment. I began to wonder if perhaps my own
emotional sensibility had played one of its tricks
on me. “Lets take a walk,” I at last ventured.
The suggestion, coming after so long an isola-
tion, was novel enough, I guess, to surprise.
But it wasnt that. Something told me that men

[29]

CANE

Before me had said just that as a prelude to the
offering of their bodies. I tried to tell her with
my eyes. I think she understood. The thing
from her that made my throat catch, vanished.
Its passing left her visible in a way I'd thought,
but never seen. We walked down the Pike with
people on all the porches gaping at us. "Doesnt
it make you mad?" She meant the row of petty
gossiping people. She meant the world.
Through a canebrake that was ripe for cutting,
the branch was reached. Under a sweet-gum
tree, and where reddish leaves had dammed the
creek a little, we sat down. Dusk, suggesting
the almost imperceptible procession of giant
trees, settled with a purple haze about the cane.
I felt strange, as I always do in Georgia, par-
ticularly at dusk. I felt that things unseen to
men were tangibly immediate. It would not
have surprised me had I had vision. People
have them in Georgia more often than you would
suppose. A black woman once saw the mother
Christ and drew her in charcoal on the court-
house wall. . . When one is on the soil of one's
ancestors, most anything can come to one. . .
From force of habit, I suppose, I held Fern in

[30]

FERN

my arms—that is, without at first noticing it.
Then my mind came back to her. Her eyes,
unusually weird and open, held me. Held God.
He flowed in as I've seen the countryside flow
in. Seen men. I must have done something—
what, I dont know, in the confusion of my
emotion. She sprang up. Rushed some distance
from me. Fell to her knees, and began swaying,
swaying. Her body was tortured with some-
thing it could not let out. Like boiling sap it
flooded arms and fingers till she shook them as
if they burned her. It found her throat, and
spattered inarticulately in plaintive, convulsive
sounds, mingled with calls to Christ Jesus. And
then she sang, brokenly. A Jewish cantor sing-
ing with a broken voice. A child's voice, un-
certain, or an old man's. Dusk hid her; I could
hear only her song. It seemed to me as though
she were pounding her head in anguish upon
the ground. I rushed to her. She fainted in
my arms.

There was talk about her fainting with me in
the canefield. And I got one or two ugly looks
from town men who'd set themselves up to pro-

[31]

CANE

tect her. In fact, there was talk of making me
leave town. But they never did. They kept a
watch-out for me, though. Shortly after, I came
back North. From the train window I saw her as
I crossed her road. Saw her on her porch, head
tilted a little forward where the nail was, eyes
vaguely focused on the sunset. Saw her face
flow into them, the countryside and something
that I call God, flowing into them. . . Nothing
ever really happened. Nothing ever came to
Fern, not even I. Something I would do for her.
Some fine unnamed thing. . . And, friend, you?
She is still living, I have reason to know. Her
name, against the chance that you might happen
down that way, is Fernie May Rosen.

[32]

EVENING SONG

Full moon rising on the waters of my heart,
Lakes and moon and fires,
Cloine tires,
Holding her lips apart.

Promises of slumber leaving shore to charm the moon,
Miracle made vesper-keeps,
Cloine sleeps,
And I'll be sleeping soon.

Cloine, curled like the sleepy waters where the moon-
waves start,
Radiant, resplendently she gleams,
Cloine dreams,
Lips pressed against my heart.

[34]

ESTHER

1

Nine.

ESTHER'S hair falls in soft curls about her high-cheek-boned chalk-white face. Esther's hair would be beautiful if there were more gloss to it. And if her face were not prematurely serious, one would call it pretty. Her cheeks are too flat and dead for a girl of nine. Esther looks like a little white child, starched, frilled, as she walks slowly from her home towards her father's grocery store. She is about to turn in Broad from Maple Street. White and black men loafing on the corner hold no interest for her. Then a strange thing happens. A clean-muscled, magnificent, black-skinned Negro, whom she had heard her father mention as King Barlo, suddenly drops to his knees on a spot called the Spittoon. White men, unaware of him, continue squirting tobacco juice in his direction. The saffron fluid splashes on his

[35]

CANE

face. His smooth black face begins to glisten
and to shine. Soon, people notice him, and
gather round. His eyes are rapturous upon the
heavens. Lips and nostrils quiver. Barlo is in
a religious trance. Town folks know it. They
are not startled. They are not afraid. They
gather round. Some beg boxes from the grocery
stores. From old McGregor's notion shop. A
coffin-case is pressed into use. Folks line the
curb-stones. Business men close shop. And
Banker Warply parks his car close by. Silently,
all await the prophet's voice. The sheriff, a great
florid fellow whose leggings never meet around
his bulging calves, swears in three deputies.
"Wall, y cant never tell what a nigger like King
Barlo might be up t." Soda bottles, five fingers
full of shine, are passed to those who want them.
A couple of stray dogs start a fight. Old Good-
low's cow comes flopping up the street. Barlo,
still as an Indian fakir, has not moved. The
town bell strikes six. The sun slips in behind
a heavy mass of horizon cloud. The crowd is
hushed and expectant. Barlo's under jaw re-
laxes, and his lips begin to move.

[36]

ESTHER

"Jesus has been awhisperin strange words
deep down, O way down deep, deep in my ears."

Hums of awe of excitement.

"He called me to His side an said, 'Git down
on your knees beside me, son, Ise gwine t whis-
per in your ears.'"

An old sister cries, "Ah, Lord."

"'Ise agwine t whisper in your ears,' he said,
an I replied, 'Thy will be done on earth as it
is in heaven.'"

"Ah, Lord. Amen. Amen."

"An Lord Jesus whispered strange good words
deep down, O way down deep, deep in my ears.
An He said, 'Tell em till you feel your throat
on fire.' I saw a vision. I saw a man arise, an
he was big an black an powerful—"

Some one yells, "Preach it, preacher, preach
it!"

"—but his head was caught up in th clouds.
An while he was agazin at th heavens, heart
filled up with th Lord, some little white-ant
biddies came an tied his feet to chains. They
led him t th coast, they led him t th sea, they
led him across th ocean an they didnt set him
free. The old coast didnt miss him, an th new

[37]

CANE

coast wasnt free, he left the old-coast brothers,
t give birth t you an me. O Lord, great God
Almighty, t give birth t you an me."

Barlo pauses. Old gray mothers are in tears.
Fragments of melodies are being hummed.
White folks are touched and curiously awed.
Off to themselves, white and black preachers
confer as to how best to rid themselves of the
vagrant, usurping fellow. Barlo looks as
though he is struggling to continue. People are
hushed. One can hear weevils work. Dusk is
falling rapidly, and the customary store lights
fail to throw their feeble glow across the gray
dust and flagging of the Georgia town. Barlo
rises to his full height. He is immense. To
the people he assumes the outlines of his visioned
African. In a mighty voice he bellows:

"Brothers an sisters, turn your faces t th sweet
face of the Lord, an fill your hearts with glory.
Open your eyes an see th dawnin of th mornin
light. Open your ears—"

Years afterwards Esther was told that at that
very moment a great, heavy, rumbling voice ac-
tually was heard. That hosts of angels and of
demons paraded up and down the streets all

[38]

ESTHER

night. That King Barlo rode out of town astride
a pitch-black bull that had a glowing gold ring
in its nose. And that old Limp Underwood,
who hated niggers, woke up next morning to find
that he held a black man in his arms. This
much is certain: an inspired Negress, of wide
reputation for being sanctified, drew a portrait
of a black madonna on the court-house wall.
And King Barlo left town. He left his image
indelibly upon the mind of Esther. He became
the starting point of the only living patterns that
her mind was to know.

2

Sixteen.

Esther begins to dream. The low evening sun
sets the windows of McGregor's notion shop
aflame. Esther makes believe that they really
are aflame. The town fire department rushes
madly down the road. It ruthlessly shoves
black and white idlers to one side. It whoops.
It clangs. It rescues from the second-story win-
dow a dimpled infant which she claims for her
own. How had she come by it? She thinks of

[39]

CANE

it immaculately. It is a sin to think of it im-
maculately. She must dream no more. She
must repent her sin. Another dream comes.
There is no fire department. There are no
heroic men. The fire starts. The loafers on the
corner form a circle, chew their tobacco faster,
and squirt juice just as fast as they can chew.
Gallons on top of gallons they squirt upon the
flames. The air reeks with the stench of
scorched tobacco juice. Women, fat chunky
Negro women, lean scrawny white women, pull
their skirts up above their heads and display
the most ludicrous underclothes. The women
scoot in all directions from the danger zone.
She alone is left to take the baby in her arms.
But what a baby! Black, singed, woolly,
tobacco-juice baby—ugly as sin. Once held to
her breast, miraculous thing: its breath is sweet
and its lips can nibble. She loves it frantically.
Her joy in it changes the town folks' jeers to
harmless jealousy, and she is left alone.

Twenty-two.

Esther's schooling is over. She works behind

[40]

ESTHER

the counter of her father's grocery store. "To
keep the money in the family," so he said. She
is learning to make distinctions between the busi-
ness and the social worlds. "Good business
comes from remembering that the white folks
dont divide the niggers, Esther. Be just as
black as any man who has a silver dollar."
Esther listlessly forgets that she is near white,
and that her father is the richest colored man in
town. Black folk who drift in to buy lard and
snuff and flour of her, call her a sweet-natured,
accommodating girl. She learns their names.
She forgets them. She thinks about men. "I
dont appeal to them. I wonder why." She re-
calls an affair she had with a little fair boy while
still in school. It had ended in her shame when
he as much as told her that for sweetness he pre-
ferred a lollipop. She remembers the salesman
from the North who wanted to take her to the
movies that first night he was in town. She
refused, of course. And he never came back,
having found out who she was. She thinks of
Barlo. Barlo's image gives her a slightly stale
thrill. She spices it by telling herself his glories.
Black. Magnetically so. Best cotton picker in

[41]

CANE

the country, in the state, in the whole world for
that matter. Best man with his fists, best man
with dice, with a razor. Promoter of church
benefits. Of colored fairs. Vagrant preacher.
Lover of all the women for miles and miles
around. Esther decides that she loves him. And
with a vague sense of life slipping by, she re-
solves that she will tell him so, whatever people
say, the next time he comes to town. After the
making of this resolution which becomes a sort
of wedding cake for her to tuck beneath her pil-
low and go to sleep upon, she sees nothing of
Barlo for five years. Her hair thins. It looks
like the dull silk on puny corn ears. Her face
pales until it is the color of the gray dust that
dances with dead cotton leaves.

3

*Esther is twenty-seven.*

Esther sells lard and snuff and flour to vague
black faces that drift in her store to ask for
them. Her eyes hardly see the people to
whom she gives change. Her body is lean and

[42]

ESTHER

beaten. She rests listlessly against the counter,
too weary to sit down. From the street some one
shouts, "King Barlo has come back to town."
He passes her window, driving a large new car.
Cut-out open. He veers to the curb, and steps
out. Barlo has made money on cotton during
the war. He is as rich as anyone. Esther sud-
denly is animate. She goes to her door. She
sees him at a distance, the center of a group of
credulous men. She hears the deep-bass rumble
of his talk. The sun swings low. McGregor's
windows are aflame again. Pale flame. A
sharply dressed white girl passes by. For a
moment Esther wishes that she might be like
her. Not white; she has no need for being that.
But sharp, sporty, with get-up about her. Barlo
is connected with that wish. She mustnt wish.
Wishes only make you restless. Emptiness is a
thing that grows by being moved. "I'll not
think. Not wish. Just set my mind against it."

Then the thought comes to her that those pur-
poseless, easy-going men will possess him, if
she doesnt. Purpose is not dead in her, now
that she comes to think of it. That loose women
will have their arms around him at Nat Bowle's

[43]

CANE

place to-night. As if her veins are full of fired
sun-bleached southern shanties, a swift heat
sweeps them. Dead dreams, and a forgotten
resolution are carried upward by the flames.
Pale flames. "They shant have him. Oh, they
shall not. Not if it kills me they shant have
him." Jerky, a flutter, she closes the store and
starts home. Folks lazing on store window-
sills wonder what on earth can be the matter with
Jim Crane's gal, as she passes them. "Come to
remember, she always was a little off, a little
crazy, I reckon." Esther seeks her own room,
and locks the door. Her mind is a pink mesh-
bag filled with baby toes.

Using the noise of the town clock striking
twelve to cover the creaks of her departure,
Esther slips into the quiet road. The town, her
parents, most everyone is sound asleep. This
fact is a stable thing that comforts her. After
sundown a chill wind came up from the west.
It is still blowing, but to her it is a steady, settled
thing like the cold. She wants her mind to be
like that. Solid, contained, and blank as a sheet
of darkened ice. She will not permit herself to

[44]

ESTHER

notice the peculiar phosphorescent glitter of the
sweet-gum leaves. Their movement would ex-
cite her. Exciting too, the recession of the dull
familiar homes she knows so well. She doesn't
know them at all. She closes her eyes, and holds
them tightly. Wont do. Her being aware that
they are closed recalls her purpose. She does not
want to think of it. She opens them. She turns
now into the deserted business street. The cor-
rugated iron canopies and mule- and horse-
gnawed hitching posts bring her a strange com-
posure. Ghosts of the commonplaces of her
daily life take stride with her and become her
companions. And the echoes of her heels upon
the flagging are rhythmically monotonous and
soothing. Crossing the street at the corner of
McGregor's notion shop, she thinks that the
windows are a dull flame. Only a fancy. She
walks faster. Then runs. A turn into a side
street brings her abruptly to Nat Bowle's place.
The house is squat and dark. It is always dark.
Barlo is within. Quietly she opens the outside
door and steps in. She passes through a small
room. Pauses before a flight of stairs down
which people's voices, muffled, come. The air

[45]

CANE

is heavy with fresh tobacco smoke. It makes her sick. She wants to turn back. She goes up the steps. As if she were mounting to some great height, her head spins. She is violently dizzy. Blackness rushes to her eyes. And then she finds that she is in a large room. Barlo is before her.

"Well, I'm sholy damned—skuse me, but what, what brought you here, lil milk-white gal?"

"You." Her voice sounds like a frightened child's that calls homeward from some point miles away.

"Me?"

"Yes, you Barlo."

"This aint th place fer y. This aint th place fer y."

"I know. I know. But I've come for you."

"For me for what?"

She manages to look deep and straight into his eyes. He is slow at understanding. Guf-faws and giggles break out from all around the room. A coarse woman's voice remarks, "So that's how th dictie niggers does it." Laughs. "Mus give em credit fo their gall."

[46]

ESTHER

Esther doesn't hear. Barlo does. His fac-
ulties are jogged. She sees a smile, ugly and
repulsive to her, working upward through thick
licker fumes. Barlo seems hideous. The
thought comes suddenly, that conception with a
drunken man must be a mighty sin. She draws
away, frozen. Like a somnambulist she wheels
around and walks stiffly to the stairs. Down
them. Jeers and hoots pelter bluntly upon her
back. She steps out. There is no air, no street,
and the town has completely disappeared.

[47]

BLOOD-BURNING MOON

1

UP from the skeleton stone walls, up from
the rotting floor boards and the solid hand-
hewn beams of oak of the pre-war cotton factory,
dusk came. Up from the dusk the full moon
came. Glowing like a fired pine-knot, it illu-
mined the great door and soft showered the
Negro shanties aligned along the single street of
factory town. The full moon in the great door
was an omen. Negro women improvised songs
against its spell.

Louisa sang as she came over the crest of the
hill from the white folks' kitchen. Her skin was
the color of oak leaves on young trees in fall.
Her breasts, firm and up-pointed like ripe
acorns. And her singing had the low murmur of
winds in fig trees. Bob Stone, younger son of
the people she worked for, loved her. By the
way the world reckons things, he had won her.
By measure of that warm glow which came into
her mind at thought of him, he had won her.

[50]

BLOOD-BURNING MOON

Tom Burwell, whom the whole town called Big Boy, also loved her. But working in the fields all day, and far away from her, gave him no chance to show it. Though often enough of evenings he had tried to. Somehow, he never got along. Strong as he was with hands upon the ax or plow, he found it difficult to hold her. Or so he thought. But the fact was that he held her to factory town more firmly than he thought for. His black balanced, and pulled against, the white of Stone, when she thought of them. And her mind was vaguely upon them as she came over the crest of the hill, coming from the white folks' kitchen. As she sang softly at the evil face of the full moon.

A strange stir was in her. Indolently, she tried to fix upon Bob or Tom as the cause of it. To meet Bob in the canebrake, as she was going to do an hour or so later, was nothing new. And Tom's proposal which she felt on its way to her could be indefinitely put off. Separately, there was no unusual significance to either one. But for some reason, they jumbled when her eyes gazed vacantly at the rising moon. And from the jumble came the stir that was strangely with-

[51]

CANE

in her. Her lips trembled. The slow rhythm of
her song grew agitant and restless. Rusty black
and tan spotted hounds, lying in the dark cor-
ners of porches or prowling around back yards,
put their noses in the air and caught its tremor.
They began plaintively to yelp and howl. Chick-
ens woke up and cackled. Intermittently, all
over the countryside dogs barked and roosters
crowed as if heralding a weird dawn or some
ungodly awakening. The women sang lustily.
Their songs were cotton-wads to stop their ears.
Louisa came down into factory town and sank
wearily upon the step before her home. The
moon was rising towards a thick cloud-bank
which soon would hide it.

Red nigger moon. Sinner!
Blood-burning moon. Sinner!
Come out that fact'ry door.

2

Up from the deep dusk of a cleared spot on
the edge of the forest a mellow glow arose and
spread fan-wise into the low-hanging heavens.
And all around the air was heavy with the scent

[52]

BLOOD-BURNING MOON

of boiling cane. A large pile of cane-stalks lay
like ribboned shadows upon the ground. A
mule, harnessed to a pole, trudged lazily round
and round the pivot of the grinder. Beneath a
swaying oil lamp, a Negro alternately whipped
out at the mule, and fed cane-stalks to the
grinder. A fat boy waddled pails of fresh
ground juice between the grinder and the boiling
stove. Steam came from the copper boiling pan.
The scent of cane came from the copper pan and
drenched the forest and the hill that sloped to
factory town, beneath its fragrance. It drenched
the men in circle seated around the stove. Some
of them chewed at the white pulp of stalks, but
there was no need for them to, if all they wanted
was to taste the cane. One tasted it in factory
town. And from factory town one could see the
soft haze thrown by the glowing stove upon the
low-hanging heavens.

Old David Georgia stirred the thickening
syrup with a long ladle, and ever so often drew it
off. Old David Georgia tended his stove and
told tales about the white folks, about moon-
shining and cotton picking, and about sweet
nigger gals, to the men who sat there about his

[53]

CANE

stove to listen to him. Tom Burwell chewed
cane-stalk and laughed with the others till some-
one mentioned Louisa. Till some one said some-
thing about Louisa and Bob Stone, about the
silk stockings she must have gotten from him.
Blood ran up Tom's neck hotter than the glow
that flooded from the stove. He sprang up.
Glared at the men and said, "She's my gal."
Will Manning laughed. Tom strode over to
him. Yanked him up and knocked him to the
ground. Several of Manning's friends got up
to fight for him. Tom whipped out a long knife
and would have cut them to shreds if they hadn't
ducked into the woods. Tom had had enough.
He nodded to Old David Georgia and swung
down the path to factory town. Just then, the
dogs started barking and the roosters began to
crow. Tom felt funny. Away from the fight,
away from the stove, chill got to him. He shiv-
ered. He shuddered when he saw the full moon
rising towards the cloud-bank. He who didn't
give a godam for the fears of old women. He
forced his mind to fasten on Louisa. Bob Stone.
Better not be. He turned into the street and saw
Louisa sitting before her home. He went

[54]

BLOOD-BURNING MOON

towards her, ambling, touched the brim of a
marvelously shaped, spotted, felt hat, said he
wanted to say something to her, and then found
that he didn't know what he had to say, or if he
did, that he couldn't say it. He shoved his big
fists in his overalls, grinned, and started to move
off.

"You all want me, Tom?"

"That's what us wants, sho, Louisa."

"Well, here I am—"

"An here I is, but that ain't ahelper none, all
th same."

"You wanted to say something? ..."

"I did that, sho. But words is like th spots on
dice: no matter how y fumbles em, there's times
when they jes wont come. I dunno why. Seems
like th love I feels fo yo done stole m tongue. I
got it now. Whee! Louisa, honey, I oughtnt
tell y, I feel I oughtnt cause yo is young an goes
t church an I has had other gals, but Louisa I
sho do love y. Lil gal, I se watched y from them
first days when you all sat right here befo yo
door befo th well an sang sometimes in a way
that like t broke m heart. I se carried y with me
into th fields, day after day, an after that, an I

[55]

CANE

sho can plow when yo is there, an I can pick
cotton. Yassur! Come near beatin Barlo yes-
terday. I sho did. Yassur! An next year if
ole Stone'll trust me, I'll have a farm. My own.
My bales will buy yo what y gets from white
folks now. Silk stockings an purple dresses—
course I dont believe what some folks been
whisperin as t how y gets them things now.
White folks always did do for niggers what
they likes. An they jes cant help alikin yo,
Louisa. Bob Stone likes y. Course he does.
But not th way folks is awhisperin. Does he,
hon?

"I dont know what you mean, Tom."

"Course y dont. Ise already cut two niggers.
Had t hon, t tell em so. Niggers always tryin t
make somethin out a nothin. An then besides,
white folks aint up t them tricks so much nowa-
days. Godam better not be. Leastawise not
with yo. Cause I wouldnt stand f it. Nassur."

"What would you do, Tom?"

"Cut him jes like I cut a nigger."

"No, Tom—"

"I said I would an there aint no mo to it.
But that aint th talk f now. Sing, honey Louisa,

[56]

BLOOD-BURNING MOON

an while I'm listenin t y I'll be makin love."

Tom took her hand in his. Against the tough
thickness of his own, hers felt soft and small.
His huge body slipped down to the step beside
her. The full moon sank upward into the deep
purple of the cloud-bank. An old woman
brought a lighted lamp and hung it on the com-
mon well whose bulky shadow squatted in the
middle of the road, opposite Tom and Louisa.
The old woman lifted the well-lid, took hold the
chain, and began drawing up the heavy bucket.
As she did so, she sang. Figures shifted, restless-
like, between lamp and window in the front
rooms of the shanties. Shadows of the figures
fought each other on the gray dust of the road.
Figures raised the windows and joined the old
woman in song. Louisa and Tom, the whole
street, singing:

3

Bob Stone sauntered from his veranda out into
[57]

CANE

the gloom of fir trees and magnolias. The clear
white of his skin paled, and the flush of his
cheeks turned purple. As if to balance this outer
change, his mind became consciously a white
man's. He passed the house with its huge open
hearth which, in the days of slavery, was the
plantation cookery. He saw Louisa bent over
that hearth. He went in as a master should and
took her. Direct, honest, bold. None of this
sneaking that he had to go through now. The
contrast was repulsive to him. His family had
lost ground. Hell no, his family still owned the
niggers, practically. Damned if they did, or he
wouldnt have to duck around so. What would
they think if they knew? His mother? His
sister? He shouldnt mention them, shouldnt
think of them in this connection. There in the
dusk he blushed at doing so. Fellows about
town were all right, but how about his friends up
North? He could see them incredible, repulsed.
They didnt know. The thought first made him
laugh. Then, with their eyes still upon him, he
began to feel embarrassed. He felt the need of
explaining things to them. Explain hell. They
wouldnt understand, and moreover, who ever

[58]

BLOOD-BURNING MOON

heard of a Southerner getting on his knees to any
Yankee, or anyone. No sir. He was going to
see Louisa to-night, and love her. She was
lovely—in her way. Nigger way. What way
was that? Damned if he knew. Must know.
He'd known her long enough to know. Was
there something about niggers that you couldnt
know? Listening to them at church didnt tell
you anything. Looking at them didnt tell you
anything. Talking to them didnt tell you any-
thing—unless it was gossip, unless they wanted
to talk. Of course, about farming, and licker,
and craps—but those werent nigger. Nigger
was something more. How much more? Some-
thing to be afraid of, more? Hell no. Who
ever heard of being afraid of a nigger? Tom
Burwell. Cartwell had told him that Tom went
with Louisa after she reached home. No sir.
No nigger had ever been with his girl. He'd
like to see one try. Some position for him to be
in. Him, Bob Stone, of the old Stone family, in
a scrap with a nigger over a nigger girl. In
the good old days. . . Ha! Those were the
days. His family had lost ground. Not so much,
though. Enough for him to have to cut through

[59]

CANE

old Lemon's canefield by way of the woods, that
he might meet her. She was worth it. Beautiful
nigger gal. Why nigger? Why not, just gal?
No, it was because she was nigger that he went to
her. Sweet. . . The scent of boiling cane came
to him. Then he saw the rich glow of the stove.
He heard the voices of the men circled around it.
He was about to skirt the clearing when he heard
his own name mentioned. He stopped. Quiver-
ing. Leaning against a tree, he listened.

"Bad nigger. Yassur, he sho is one bad
nigger when he gets started."

"Tom Burwell's been on th gang three times
fo cuttin men."

"What y think he's agwine t do t Bob Stone?"

"Dunno yet. He aint found out. When he
does— Baby!"

"Aint no tellin."

"Young Stone aint no quitter an I ken tell y
that. Blood of th old uns in his veins."

"Thats right. He'll scrap, sho."

"Be gettin too hot f niggers round this away."

"Shut up, nigger. Y dont know what y talkin
bout."

Bob Stone's ears burned as though he had

[60]

BLOOD-BURNING MOON

been holding them over the stove. Sizzling heat
welled up within him. His feet felt as if they
rested on red-hot coals. They stung him to
quick movement. He circled the fringe of the
glowing. Not a twig cracked beneath his feet.
He reached the path that led to factory town.
Plunged furiously down it. Halfway along, a
blindness within him veered him aside. He
crashed into the bordering canebrake. Cane
leaves cut his face and lips. He tasted blood.
He threw himself down and dug his fingers in
the ground. The earth was cool. Cane-roots
took the fever from his hands. After a long
while, or so it seemed to him, the thought came
to him that it must be time to see Louisa. He
got to his feet and walked calmly to their meet-
ing place. No Louisa. Tom Burwell had her.
Veins in his forehead bulged and distended.
Saliva moistened the dried blood on his lips.
He bit down on his lips. He tasted blood. Not
his own blood; Tom Burwell's blood. Bob
drove through the cane and out again upon the
road. A hound swung down the path before him
towards factory town. Bob couldnt see it. The
dog loped aside to let him pass. Bob's blind

[61]

CANE

rushing made him stumble over it. He fell with
a thud that dazed him. The hound yelped.
Answering yelps came from all over the country-
side. Chickens cackled. Roosters crowed, her-
alding the bloodshot eyes of southern awaken-
ing. Singers in the town were silenced. They
shut their windows down. Palpitant between
the rooster crows, a chill hush settled upon the
huddled forms of Tom and Louisa. A figure
rushed from the shadow and stood before them.
Tom popped to his feet.

"Whats y want?"

"I'm Bob Stone."

"Yassur—an I'm Tom Burwell. Whats y
want?"

Bob lunged at him. Tom side-stepped, caught
him by the shoulder, and flung him to the
ground. Straddled him.

"Let me up."

"Yassur—but watch yo doins, Bob Stone."

A few dark figures, drawn by the sound of
scuffle, stood about them. Bob sprang to his
feet.

"Fight like a man, Tom Burwell, an I'll lick
y."

[62]

BLOOD-BURNING MOON

Again he lunged. Tom side-stepped and flung
him to the ground. Straddled him.

"Get off me, you godam nigger you."

"Yo sho has started somethin now. Get up."

Tom yanked him up and began hammering at
him. Each blow sounded as if it smashed into
a precious, irreplaceable soft something. Be-
neath them, Bob staggered back. He reached in
his pocket and whipped out a knife.

"Thats my game, sho."

Blue flash, a steel blade slashed across Bob
Stone's throat. He had a sweetish sick feel-
ing. Blood began to flow. Then he felt a sharp
twitch of pain. He let his knife drop. He
slapped one hand against his neck. He pressed
the other on top of his head as if to hold it down.
He groaned. He turned, and staggered towards
the crest of the hill in the direction of white
town. Negroes who had seen the fight slunk
into their homes and blew the lamps out.
Louisa, dazed, hysterical, refused to go indoors.
She slipped, crumbled, her body loosely propped
against the woodwork of the well. Tom Burwell
leaned against it. He seemed rooted there.

[63]

CANE

Bob reached Broad Street. White men rushed up to him. He collapsed in their arms.

"Tom Burwell. . . "

White men like ants upon a forage rushed about. Except for the taut hum of their moving, all was silent. Shotguns, revolvers, rope, kerosene, torches. Two high-powered cars with glaring search-lights. They came together. The taut hum rose to a low roar. Then nothing could be heard but the flop of their feet in the thick dust of the road. The moving body of their silence preceded them over the crest of the hill into factory town. It flattened the Negroes beneath it. It rolled to the wall of the factory, where it stopped. Tom knew that they were coming. He couldnt move. And then he saw the search-lights of the two cars glaring down on him. A quick shock went through him. He stiffened. He started to run. A yell went up from the mob. Tom wheeled about and faced them. They poured down on him. They swarmed. A large man with dead-white face and flabby cheeks came to him and almost jabbed a gun-barrel through his guts.

"Hands behind y, nigger."

[64]

BLOOD-BURNING MOON

Tom's wrist were bound. The big man shoved
him to the well. Burn him over it, and when the
woodwork caved in, his body would drop to the
bottom. Two deaths for a godam nigger.
Louisa was driven back. The mob pushed in.
Its pressure, its momentum was too great. Drag
him to the factory. Wood and stakes already
there. Tom moved in the direction indicated.
But they had to drag him. They reached the
great door. Too many to get in there. The mob
divided and flowed around the walls to either
side. The big man shoved him through the door.
The mob pressed in from the sides. Taut hum-
ming. No words. A stake was sunk into the
ground. Rotting floor boards piled around it.
Kerosene poured on the rotting floor boards.
Tom bound to the stake. His breast was bare.
Nails scratches let little lines of blood trickle
down and mat into the hair. His face, his eyes
were set and stony. Except for irregular breathing, one would have thought him already dead.
Torches were flung onto the pile. A great flare
muffled in black smoke shot upward. The mob
yelled. The mob was silent. Now Tom could
be seen within the flames. Only his head, erect,

[65]

CANE

lean, like a blackened stone. Stench of burning
flesh soaked the air. Tom's eyes popped. His
head settled downward. The mob yelled. Its
yell echoed against the skeleton stone walls and
sounded like a hundred yells. Like a hundred
mobs yelling. Its yell thudded against the thick
front wall and fell back. Ghost of a yell slipped
through the flames and out the great door of the
factory. It fluttered like a dying thing down
the single street of factory town. Louisa, upon
the step before her home, did not hear it, but her
eyes opened slowly. They saw the full moon
glowing in the great door. The full moon, an
evil thing, an omen, soft showering the homes of
folks she knew. Where were they, these people?
She'd sing, and perhaps they'd come out and
join her. Perhaps Tom Burwell would come.
At any rate, the full moon in the great door was
an omen which she must sing to:

[66]

SEVENTH STREET

Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,
Bootleggers in silken shirts,
Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,
Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.

SEVENTH STREET is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of nigger life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs, and love, thrusting unconscious rhythms, black reddish blood into the white and whitewashed wood of Washington. Stale soggy wood of Washington. Wedges rust in soggy wood. . . Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! . . the sun. Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. Prohibition would put a stop to it. Who set you flowing? White and whitewash disappear in blood. Who set you flowing? Flowing down the smooth asphalt of Seventh Street, in shanties, brick

[71]

CANE

office buildings, theaters, drug stores, resturants,
and cabarets? Eddying on the corners? Swirl-
ing like a blood-red smoke up where the buz-
zards fly in heaven? God would not dare to
suck black red blood. A Nigger God! He
would duck his head in shame and call for the
Judgment Day. Who set you flowing?

[72]

AVEY

FOR a long while she was nothing more to me
than one of those skirted beings whom boys
at a certain age disdain to play with. Just how
I came to love her, timidly, and with secret
brushes, I do not know. But that I did was
brought home to me one night, the first night
that Ned wore his long pants. Us fellers were
seated on the curb before an apartment house
where she had gone in. The young trees had
not outgrown their boxes then. V Street was
lined with them. When our legs grew cramped
and stiff from the cold of the stone, we'd stand
around a box and whittle it. I like to think now
that there was a hidden purpose in the way we
hacked them with our knives. I like to feel that
something deep in me responded to the trees,
the young trees that whinnied like colts impatient
to be let free. On the particular night I have
in mind, we were waiting for the top-floor light
to go out. We wanted to see Avey leave the flat.
This night she stayed longer than usual and gave

[76]

AVEY

us chance to complete the plans of how we were
going to stone and beat that feller on the top
floor out of town. Ned especially had it in for
him. He was about to throw a brick up at the
window when at last the room went dark. Some
minutes passed. Then Avey, as unconcerned as
if she had been paying an old-maid aunt a visit,
came out. I don't remember what she had on,
and all that sort of thing. But I do know that I
turned hot as bare pavements in the summer-
time at Ned's boast: "Hell, bet I could get her
too if you little niggers weren't always spying
and crabbing everything." I didn't say a word
to him. It wasn't my way then. I just stood
there like the others, and something like a fuse
burned up inside of me. She never noticed us,
but swung along lazy and easy as anything. We
sauntered to the corner and watched her till her
door banged to. Ned repeated what he'd said.
I didn't seem to care. Sitting around old Mush-
Head's bread box, the discussion began. "Hang
if I can see how she gets away with it," Doc
started. Ned knew, of course. There was noth-
ing he didn't know when it came to women. He
dilated on the emotional needs of girls. Said

[77]

CANE

they weren't much different from men in that
respect. And concluded with the solemn avowal:
"It does em good." None of us liked Ned much.
We all talked dirt; but it was the way he said it.
And then too, a couple of the fellers had sisters
and had caught Ned playing with them. But
there was no disputing the superiority of his
smutty wisdom. Bubs Sanborn, whose mother
was friendly with Avey's, had overhead the old
ladies talking. "Avey's mother's ont her," he
said. We thought that only natural and began
to guess at what would happen. Some one said
she'd marry that feller on the top floor. Ned
called that a lie because Avey was going to
marry nobody but him. We had our doubts
about that, but we did agree that she'd soon
leave school and marry some one. The gang
broke up, and I went home, picturing myself as
married.

Nothing I did seemed able to change Avey's
indifference to me. I played basket-ball, and
when I'd make a long clean shot she'd clap with
the others, louder than they, I thought. I'd meet
her on the street, and there'd be no difference

[78]

AVEY

in the way she said hello. She never took the
trouble to call me by my name. On the days for
drill, I'd let my voice down a tone and call for a
complicated maneuver when I saw her coming.
She'd smile appreciation, but it was an imper-
sonal smile, never for me. It was on a summer
excursion down to Riverview that she first
seemed to take me into account. The day had
been spent riding merry-go-rounds, scenic-rail-
ways, and shoot-the-chutes. We had been in
swimming and we had danced. I was a crack
swimmer then. She didn't know how. I held
her up and showed her how to kick her legs and
draw her arms. Of course, she didn't learn in
one day, but she thanked me for bothering with
her. I was also somewhat of a dancer. And I
had already noticed that love can start on a
quance floor. We danced. But though I held
her tightly in my arms, she was way away. That
college feller who lived on the top floor was
somewhere making money for the next year. I
imagined that she was thinking, wishing for
him. Ned was along. He treated her until his
money gave out. She went with another feller.
Ned got sore. One by one the boys' money gave

[79]

CANE

cut. She left them. And they got sore. Every
one of them but me got sore. This is the reason,
I guess, why I had her to myself on the top deck
of the *Jane Mosely* that night as we puffed
up the Potomac, coming home. The moon was
brilliant. The air was sweet like clover. And
every now and then, a salt tang, a stale drift of
sea-weed. It was not my mind's fault if it went
romancing. I should always have taken her in
my arms the minute we were stowed in that old
lifeboat. I dallied, dreaming. She took me in
hers. And I could feel by the touch of it that it
wasn't a man-to-woman love. It made me rest-
less. I felt chagrined. I didn't know what it
was, but I did know that I couldn't handle it.
She ran her fingers through my hair and kissed
my forehead. I itched to break through her
tenderness to passion. I wanted her to take me
in her arms as I knew she had that college feller.
I wanted her to love me passionately as she
did him. I gave her one burning kiss. Then
she laid me in her lap as if I were a child. Help-
less. I got sore when she started to hum a lull-
aby. She wouldn't let me go. I talked. I knew
damned well that I could beat her at that. Her

[80]

AVEY

eyes were soft and misty, the curves of her lips
were wistful, and her smile seemed indulgent of
the irrelevance of my remarks. I gave up at
last and let her love me, silently, in her own way.
The moon was brilliant. The air was sweet like
clover, and every now and then, a salt tang, a
stale drift of sea-weed. . .

The next time I came close to her was the
following summer at Harpers Ferry. We were
sitting on a flat projecting rock they give the
name of Lover's Leap. Some one is supposed to
have jumped off it. The river is about six hun-
dred feet beneath. A railroad track runs up the
valley and curves out of sight where part of the
mountain rock had to be blasted away to make
room for it. The engines of this valley have a
whistle, the echoes of which sound like iterated
gasps and sobs. I always think of them as crude
music from the soul of Avey. We sat there
holding hands. Our palms were soft and warm
against each other. Our fingers were not tight.
She would not let them be. She would not let
me twist them. I wanted to talk. To explain
what I meant to her. Avey was as silent as
those great trees whose tops we looked down

[81]

CANE

upon. She has always been like that. At least,
to me. I had the notion that if I really wanted
to, I could do with her just what I pleased. Like
one can strip a tree. I did kiss her. I even let
my hands cup her breasts. When I was through,
she'd seek my hand and hold it till my pulse
cooled down. Evening after evening we sat
there. I tried to get her to talk about that college
feller. She never would. There was no set
time to go home. None of my family had come
down. And as for hers, she didn't give a hang
about them. The general gossips could hardly
say more than they had. The boarding-house
porch was always deserted when we returned.
No one saw us enter, so the time was set con-
veniently for scandal. This worried me a little,
for I thought it might keep Avey from getting an
appointment in the schools. She didn't care.
She had finished normal school. They could
give her a job if they wanted to. As time went
on, her indifference to things began to pique me;
I was ambitious. I left the Ferry earlier than
she did. I was going off to college. The more I
thought of it, the more I resented, yes, hell, that's
what it was, her downright laziness. Sloppy

[82]

AVEY

indolence. There was no excuse for a healthy
girl taking life so easy. Hell! she was no better
than a cow. I was certain that she was a cow
when I felt an udder in a Wisconsin stock-
judging class. Among those energetic Swedes,
or whatever they are, I decided to forget her.
For two years I thought I did. When I'd come
home for the summer she'd be away. And be-
fore she returned, I'd be gone. We never wrote;
she was too damned lazy for that. But what a
bluff I put up about forgetting her. The girls
up that way, at least the ones I knew, havent
got the stuff: they dont know how to love. Giv-
ing themselves completely was tame beside just
the holding of Avey's hand. One day I received
a note from her. The writing, I decided, was
slovenly. She wrote on a torn bit of note-book
paper. The envelope had a faint perfume that
I remembered. A single line told me she had
lost her school and was going away. I com-
forted myself with the reflection that shame held
no pain for one so indolent as she. Neverthe-
less, I left Wisconsin that year for good. Wash-
ington had seemingly forgotten her. I hunted
Ned. Between curses, I caught his opinion of

[83]

CANE

her. She was no better than a whore. I saw
her mother on the street. The same old pinch-
beck, jerky-gaited creature that I'd always
known.

Perhaps five years passed. The business of
hunting a job or something or other had bruised
my vanity so that I could recognize it. I felt old.
Avey and my real relation to her, I thought I
came to know. I wanted to see her. I had been
told that she was in New York. As I had no
money, I hiked and bummed my way there. I
got work in a ship-yard and walked the streets
at night, hoping to meet her. Failing in this, I
saved enough to pay my fare back home. One
evening in early June, just at the time when dusk
is most lovely on the eastern horizon, I saw
Avey, indolent as ever, leaning on the arm of a
man, strolling under the recently lit arc-lights
of U Street. She had almost passed before she
recognized me. She showed no surprise. The
puff over her eyes had grown heavier. The eyes
themselves were still sleepy-large, and beautiful.
I had almost concluded—indefinite. “You look
older,” was what she said. I wanted to con-

[84]

AVEY

ince her that I was, so I asked her to walk with me. The man whom she was with, and whom she never took the trouble to introduce, at a nod from her, hailed a taxi, and drove away. That gave me a notion of what she had been used to. Her dress was of some fine, costly stuff. I suggested the park, and then added that the grass might stain her skirt. Let it get stained, she said, for where it came from there are others.

I have a spot in Soldier's Home to which I always go when I want the simple beauty of another's soul. Robins spring about the lawn all day. They leave their footprints in the grass. I imagine that the grass at night smells sweet and fresh because of them. The ground is high. Washington lies below. Its light spreads like a blush against the darkened sky. Against the soft dusk sky of Washington. And when the wind is from the South, soil of my homeland falls like a fertile shower upon the lean streets of the city. Upon my hill in Soldier's Home. I know the policeman who watches the place of nights. When I go there alone, I talk to him. I tell him I come there to find the truth that people

[85]

CANE

bury in their hearts. I tell him that I do not
come there with a girl to do the thing he's paid
to watch out for. I look deep in his eyes when
I say these things, and he believes me. He comes
over to see who it is on the grass. I say hello to
him. He greets me in the same way and goes
off searching for other black splotches upon the
lawn. Avey and I went there. A band in one
of the buildings a fair distance off was playing
a march. I wished they would stop. Their
playing was like a tin spoon in one's mouth. I
wanted the Howard Glee Club to sing "Deep
River," from the road. To sing "Deep River,
Deep River," from the road. . . Other than
the first comments, Avey had been silent. I
started to hum a folk-tune. She slipped her
hand in mine. Pillowed her head as best she
could upon my arm. Kissed the hand that she
was holding and listened, or so I thought, to
what I had to say. I traced my development
from the early days up to the present time, the
phase in which I could understand her. I de-
scribed her own nature and temperament. Told
how they needed a larger life for their expres-
sion. How incapable Washington was of un-

[86]

AVEY

derstanding that need. How it could not meet
it. I pointed out that in lieu of proper channels,
her emotions had overflowed into paths that dis-
sipated them. I talked, beautifully I thought,
about an art that would be born, an art that
would open the way for women the likes of her.
I asked her to hope, and build up an inner life
against the coming of that day. I recited some
of my own things to her. I sang, with a strange
quiver in my voice, a promise-song. And then
I began to wonder why her hand had not once
returned a single pressure. My old-time feeling
about her laziness came back. I spoke sharply.
My policeman friend passed by. I said hello
to him. As he went away, I began to visualize
certain possibilities. An immediate and urgent
passion swept over me. Then I looked at Avey.
Her heavy eyes were closed. Her breathing was
as faint and regular as a child's in slumber.
My passion died. I was afraid to move lest I
disturb her. Hours and hours, I guess it was,
she lay there. My body grew numb. I shiv-
ered. I coughed. I wanted to get up and
whittle at the boxes of young trees. I withdrew
my hand. I raised her head to waken her. She

[87]

CANE

did not stir. I got up and walked around. I
found my policeman friend and talked to him.
We both came up, and bent over her. He said it
would be all right for her to stay there just so
long as she got away before the workmen came
at dawn. A blanket was borrowed from a neigh-
bor house. I sat beside her through the night.
I saw the dawn steal over Washington. The
Capitol dome looked like a gray ghost ship
drifting in from sea. Avey's face was pale, and
her eyes were heavy. She did not have the gray
crimson-splashed beauty of the dawn. I hated
to wake her. Orphan-woman. . .

[88]

STORM ENDING

Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads,
Great, hollow, bell-like flowers,
Rumbling in the wind,
Stretching clappers to strike our ears . .
Full-lipped flowers
Bitten by the sun
Bleeding rain
Dripping rain like golden honey—
And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.

[90]

THEATER

LIFE of nigger alleys, of pool rooms and
restaurants and near-beer saloons soaks
into the walls of Howard Theater and sets them
throbbing jazz songs. Black-skinned, they
dance and shout above the tick and trill of white-
walled buildings. At night, they open doors to
people who come in to stamp their feet and
shout. At night, road-shows volley songs into
the mass-heart of black people. Songs soak the
walls and seep out to the nigger life of alleys and
near-beer saloons, of the Poodle Dog and Black
Bear cabarets. Afternoons, the house is dark,
and the walls are sleeping singers until rehearsal
begins. Or until John comes within them. Then
they start throbbing to a subtle syncopation.
And the space-dark air grows softly luminous.

John is the manager's brother. He is seated
at the center of the theater, just before rehearsal.
Light streaks down upon him from a window
high above. One half his face is orange in it.
One half his face is in shadow. The soft glow

[91]

CANE

of the house rushes to, and compacts about, the
shaft of light. John's mind coincides with the
shaft of light. Thoughts rush to, and compact,
about it. Life of the house and of the slowly
awakening stage swirls to the body of John, and
thrills it. John's body is separate from the
thoughts that pack his mind.

Stage-lights, soft, as if they shine through
clear pink fingers. Beneath them, hid by the
shadow of a set, Dorris. Other chorus girls drift
in. John feels them in the mass. And as if his
own body were the mass-heart of a black audi-
ence listening to them singing, he wants to
stamp his feet and shout. His mind, contained
above desires of his body, singles the girls out,
and tries to trace origins and plot destinies.

A pianist slips into the pit and improvises
jazz. The walls awake. Arms of the girls, and
their limbs, which . . . jazz, jazz . . . by lifting
up their tight street skirts they set free, jab the
air and clog the floor in rhythm to the music.
(Lift your skirts, Baby, and talk t papa!
Crude, individualized, and yet . . . monoto-
nous. . .

John: Soon the director will herd you, my

[92]

THEATER

full-lipped, distant beauties, and tame you, and
blunt your sharp thrusts in loosely suggestive
movements, appropriate to Broadway. (O
dance!) Soon the audience will paint your dusk
faces white, and call you beautiful. (O dance!
Soon I. . . (O dance!) I'd like. . .

Girls laugh and shout. Sing discordant
snatches of other jazz songs. Whirl with loose
passion into the arms of passing show-men.

John: Too thick. Too easy. Too monot-
onous. Her whom I'd love I'd leave before she
knew that I was with her. Her? Which? (O
dance!) I'd like to. . .

Girls dance and sing. Men clap. The walls
sing and press inward. They press the men and
girls, they press John towards a center of physi-
cal ecstasy. Go to it, Baby! Fan yourself, and
feed your papa! Put . . nobody lied . . and
take . . when they said I cried over you. No
lie! The glitter and color of stacked scenes, the
gilt and brass and crimson of the house, con-
verge towards a center of physical ecstasy.
John's feet and torso and his blood press in.
He wills thought to rid his mind of passion.

[93]

CANE

"All right, girls. Alaska. Miss Reynolds,
please."

The director wants to get the rehearsal
through with.

The girls line up. John sees the front row:
dancing ponies. The rest are in shadow. The
leading lady fits loosely in the front. Lack-life,
monotonous. "One, two, three—" Music starts.
The song is somewhere where it will not strain
the leading lady's throat. The dance is some-
where where it will not strain the girls. Above
the staleness, one dancer throws herself into it.
Dorris. John sees her. Her hair, crisp-curled,
is bobbed. Bushy, black hair bobbing about her
lemon-colored face. Her lips are curiously full,
and very red. Her limbs in silk purple stockings
are lovely. John feels them. Desires her. Holds
off.

John: Stage-door johnny; chorus-girl. No,
that would be all right. Dictie, educated, stuck-
up; show-girl. Yep. Her suspicion would be
stronger than her passion. It wouldnt work.
Keep her loveliness. Let her go.

Dorris sees John and knows that he is looking
at her. Her own glowing is too rich a thing to

[94]

THEATER

let her feel the slimness of his diluted passion.

"Who's that?" she asks her dancing partner.

"Th' manager's brother. Dictie. Nothin' doin', hon."

Dorris tosses her head and dances for him until she feels she has him. Then, withdrawing disdainfully, she flirts with the director.

Dorris: Nothin' doin'? How come? Aint I as good as him? Couldnt I have got an education if I'd wanted one? Dont I know respectable folks, lots of em, in Philadelphia and New York and Chicago? Aint I had men as good as him? Better. Doctors an lawyers. Whats a manager's brother, anyhow?

Two steps back, and two steps front.

"Say, Mame, where do you get that stuff?"

"Whatshmean, Dorris?"

"If you two girls cant listen to what I'm telling you, I know where I can get some who can. Now listen."

Mame: Go to hell, you black bastard.

Dorris: What's eatin at him, anyway?

"Now follow me in this, you girls. Its three

[95]

CANE

counts to the right, three counts to the left, and
then you shimmy—”

John: —and then you shimmy. I'll bet she
can. Some good cabaret, with rooms upstairs.
And what in hell do you think you'd get from it?
Youre going wrong. Here's right: get her to
herself—(Christ, but how she'd bore you after
the first five minutes)—not if you get her right
she wouldnt. Touch her, I mean. To herself—
in some room perhaps. Some cheap, dingy bed-
room. Hell no. Cant be done. But the point
is, brother John, it can be done. Get her to her-
self somewhere, anywhere. Go down in your-
self—and she'd be calling you all sorts of asses
while you were in the process of going down.
Hold em, bud. Cant be done. Let her go.
(Dance and I'll love you!) And keep her
loveliness.

“All right now, Chicken Chaser. Dorris and
girls. Where’s Dorris? I told you to stay on the
stage, didn’t I? Well? Now that’s enough. All
right. All right there, Professor? All right.
One, two, three—”

Dorris swings to the front. The line of girls,
four deep, blurs within the shadow of sus-

[96]

THEATER

pended scenes. Dorris wants to dance. The
director feels that and steps to one side. He
smiles, and picks her for a leading lady, one of
these days. Odd ends of stage-men emerge
from the wings, and stare and clap. A crap
game in the alley suddenly ends. Black faces
crowd the rear stage doors. The girls, catching
joy from Dorris, whip up within the footlights'
glow. They forget set steps; they find their own.
The director forgets to bawl them out. Dorris
dances.

. John: Her head bobs to Broadway. Dance
from yourself. Dance! O just a little more.

Dorris' eyes burn across the space of seats to
him.

Dorris: I bet he can love. Hell, he cant love.
He's too skinny. His lips are too skinny. He
wouldnt love me anyway, only for that. But
I'd get a pair of silk stockings out of it. Red
silk. I got purple. Cut it, kid. You cant win
him to respect you that away. He wouldnt any-
way. Maybe he would. Maybe he'd love. I've
heard em say that men who look like him (what
does he look like?) will marry if they love. O
will you love me? And give me kids, and a

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CANE

home, and everything? (I'd like to make your
nest, and honest, hon, I wouldnt run out on you.)
You will if I make you. Just watch me.

Dorris dances. She forgets her tricks. She
dances.

Glorious songs are the muscles of her limbs.

And her singing is of canebrake loves and
mangrove feastings.

The walls press in, singing. Flesh of a throbbing body, they press close to John and Dorris. They close them in. John's heart beats tensely against her dancing body. Walls press his mind within his heart. And then, the shaft of light goes out the window high above him. John's mind sweeps up to follow it. Mind pulls him upward into dream.

Dorris dances...

John dreams:

Dorris is dressed in a loose black gown splashed with lemon ribbons. Her feet taper long and slim from trim ankles. She waits for him just inside the stage door. John, collar and tie colorful and flaring, walks towards the stage door. There are no trees in the alley. But his feet feel as though they step on autumn leaves whose rustle has been pressed out of them by the passing of a million satin slippers. The air is sweet with roasting

[98]

THEATER

chestnuts, sweet with bonfires of old leaves. John's
melancholy is a deep thing that seals all senses
but his eyes, and makes him whole.

Dorris knows that he is coming. Just at the
right moment she steps from the door, as if there
were no door. Her face is tinted like the autumn
alley. Of old flowers, or of a southern canefield,
her perfume. "Glorious Dorris." So his eyes
speak. And their sadness is too deep for sweet
untruth. She barely touches his arm. They glide
off with footfalls softened on the leaves, the old
leaves powdered by a million satin slippers.

They are in a room. John knows nothing of it.
Only, that the flesh and blood of Dorris are its
walls. Singing walls. Lights, soft, as if they
shine through clear pink fingers. Soft lights, and
warm.

John reaches for a manuscript of his, and reads.
Dorris, who has no eyes, has eyes to understand
him. He comes to a dancing scene. The scene is
Dorris. She dances. Dorris dances. Glorious
Dorris. Dorris whirls, whirls, dances...

Dorris dances.

The pianist crashes a bumper chord. The whole
stage claps. Dorris, flushed, looks quick at
John. His whole face is in shadow. She seeks
for her dance in it. She finds it a dead thing in
the shadow which is his dream. She rushes from

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CANE

the stage. Falls down the steps into her dressing-room. Pulls her hair. Her eyes, over a floor of tears, stare at the whitewashed ceiling. (Smell of dry paste, and paint, and soiled clothing.) Her pal comes in. Dorris flings herself into the old safe arms, and cries bitterly.

"I told you nothin doin," is what Mame says to comfort her.

[100]

HER LIPS ARE COPPER WIRE

whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog

and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes

telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate

(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)

then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent

[101]

CALLING JESUS

HER soul is like a little thrust-tailed dog that
follows her, whimpering. She is large
enough, I know, to find a warm spot for it. But
each night when she comes home and closes the
big outside storm door, the little dog is left in
the vestibule, filled with chills till morning.
some one . . . eoho Jesus . . . soft as a cotton
boll brushed against the milk-pod cheek of
Christ, will steal in and cover it that it need not
shiver, and carry it to her where she sleeps upon
clean hay cut in her dreams.

When you meet her in the daytime on the
streets, the little dog keeps coming. Nothing
happens at first, and then, when she has forgot-
ten the streets and alleys, and the large house
where she goes to bed of nights, a soft thing like
fur begins to rub your limbs, and you hear a'low,
scared voice, lonely, calling, and you know that
a cool something nozzles moisture in your palms.
Sensitive things like nostrils, quiver. Her
breath comes sweet as honeysuckle whose pistils
bear the life of coming song. And her eyes carry

[102]

CALLING JESUS

to where builders find no need for vestibules, for
swinging on iron hinges, storm doors.

Her soul is like a little thrust-tailed dog, that
follows her, whimpering. I've seen it tagging on
behind her, up streets where chestnut trees flow-
ered, where dusty asphalt had been freshly
sprinkled with clean water. Up alleys where
niggers sat on low door-steps before tumbled
shanties and sang and loved. At night, when
she comes home, the little dog is left in the vesti-
bule, nosing the crack beneath the big storm
door, filled with chills till morning. Some
one . . . eoho Jesus . . . soft as the bare feet of
Christ moving across bales of southern cotton,
will steal in and cover it that it need not shiver,
and carry it to her where she sleeps: cradled in
dream-fluted cane.

[103]

BOX SEAT

1

HOUSES are shy girls whose eyes shine reticently upon the dusk body of the street. Upon the gleaming limbs and asphalt torso of a dreaming nigger. Shake your curled wool-blossoms, nigger. Open your liver lips to the lean, white spring. Stir the root-life of a withered people. Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream.

Dark swaying forms of Negroes are street songs that woo virginal houses.

Dan Moore walks southward on Thirteenth Street. The low limbs of budding chestnut trees recede above his head. Chestnut buds and blossoms are wool he walks upon. The eyes of houses faintly touch him as he passes them. Soft girl-eyes, they set him singing. Girl-eyes within him widen upward to promised faces. Floating away, they dally wistfully over the dusk body of the street. Come on, Dan Moore, come on. Dan sings. His voice is a little hoarse.

[104]

BOX SEAT

It cracks. He strains to produce tones in keeping with the houses' loveliness. Cant be done. He whistles. His notes are shrill. They hurt him. Negroes open gates, and go indoors, perfectly. Dan thinks of the house he's going to. Of the girl. Lips, flesh-notes of a forgotten song, plead with him. . .

Dan turns into a side-street, opens an iron gate, bangs it to. Mounts the steps, and searches for the bell. Funny, he cant find it. He fumbles around. The thought comes to him that some one passing by might see him, and not understand. Might think that he is trying to sneak, to break in.

Dan: Break in. Get an ax and smash in
Smash in their faces. I'll show em. Break into
an engine-house, steal a thousand horse-power
fire truck. Smash in with the truck. I'll show
em. Grab an ax and brain em. Cut em up.
Jack the Ripper. Baboon from the zoo. And
then the cops come. "No, I aint a baboon. I
aint Jack the Ripper. I'm a poor man out of
work. Take your hands off me, you bull-necked
bears. Look into my eyes. I am Dan Moore.
I was born in a canefield. The hands of Jesus

[105]

CANE

touched me. I am come to a sick world to heal
it. Only the other day, a dope fiend brushed
against me— Dont laugh, you mighty, juicy,
meat-hook men. Give me your fingers and I
will peel them as if they were ripe bananas."

Some one might think he is trying to break in.
He'd better knock. His knuckles are raw bone
against the thick glass door. He waits. No one
comes. Perhaps they havent heard him. He
raps again. This time, harder. He waits. No
one comes. Some one is surely in. He fancies
that he sees their shadows on the glass. Shadows
of gorillas. Perhaps they saw him coming and
dont want to let him in. He knocks. The
tension of his arms makes the glass rattle. Hur-
ried steps come towards him. The door opens.

"Please, you might break the glass—the bell—
oh, Mr. Moore! I thought it must be some
stranger. How do you do? Come in, wont you?
Muriel? Yes. I'll call her. Take your things
off, wont you? And have a seat in the parlor.
Muriel will be right down. Muriel! Oh
Muriel! Mr. Moore to see you. She'll be right
down. You'll pardon me, wont you? So glad
to see you."

[106]

BOX SEAT

Her eyes are weak. They are bluish and watery from reading newspapers. The blue is steel. It gimlets Dan while her mouth flaps amiably to him.

Dan: Nothing for you to see, old mussel-head. Dare I show you? If I did, delirium would furnish you headlines for a month. Now look here. Thats enough. Go long, woman. Say some nasty thing and I'll kill you. Huh. Better damned sight not. Ta-ta, Mrs. Pribby.

Mrs. Pribby retreats to the rear of the house. She takes up a newspaper. There is a sharp click as she fits into her chair and draws it to the table. The click is metallic like the sound of a bolt being shot into place. Dan's eyes sting. Sinking into a soft couch, he closes them. The house contracts about him. It is a sharp-edged, massed, metallic house. Bolted. About Mrs. Pribby. Bolted to the endless rows of metal houses. Mrs. Pribby's house. The rows of houses belong to other Mrs. Pribbys. No wonder he couldn't sing to them.

Dan: What's Muriel doing here? God, what a place for her. What's she doing? Putting her stockings on? In the bathroom. Come

[107]

CANE

out of there, Dan Moore. People must have their
privacy. Peeping-toms. I'll never peep. I'll
listen. I like to listen.

Dan goes to the wall and places his ear against
it. A passing street car and something vibrant
from the earth sends a rumble to him. That
rumble comes from the earth's deep core. It is
the mutter of powerful underground races. Dan
has a picture of all the people rushing to put
their ears against walls, to listen to it. The next
world-savior is coming up that way. Coming
up. A continent sinks down. The new-world
Christ will need consummate skill to walk upon
the waters where huge bubbles burst. . . Thuds
of Muriel coming down. Dan turns to the piano
and glances through a stack of jazz music sheets.
Ji-ji-bo, JI-JI-BO!" . .

"Hello, Dan, stranger, what brought you
here?"

Muriel comes in, shakes hands, and then
clicks into a high-armed seat under the orange
glow of a floor-lamp. Her face is fleshy. It
would tend to coarseness but for the fresh fra-
grant something which is the life of it. Her hair
like an Indian's. But more curly and bushed

[108]

BOX SEAT

and vagrant. Her nostrils flare. The flushed
ginger of her cheeks is touched orange by the
shower of color from the lamp.

"Well, you haven't told me, you haven't answered my question, stranger. What brought you here?"

Dan feels the pressure of the house, of the
rear room, of the rows of houses, shift to Muriel.
He is light. He loves her. He is doubly heavy.

"Dont know, Muriel—wanted to see you—
wanted to talk to you—to see you and tell you
that I know what you’ve been through—what
pain the last few months must have been—"

"Lets dont mention that."

"But why not, Muriel? I—"

"Please."

"But Muriel, life is full of things like that.
One grows strong and beautiful in facing them.
What else is life?"

"I don't know, Dan. And I don't believe I
care. What's the use? Let's talk about some-
thing else. I hear there's a good show at the
Lincoln this week."

"Yes, so Harry was telling me. Going?"

"To-night."

[109]

CANE

Dan starts to rise.

"I didn't know. I don't want to keep you."

"It's all right. You don't have to go till Ber-
nice comes. And she won't be here till eight. I'm
all dressed. I'll let you know."

"Thanks."

Silence. The rustle of a newspaper being
turned comes from the rear room.

Muriel: Shame about Dan. Something
awfully good and fine about him. But he don't
fit in. In where? Me? Dan, I could love you
if I tried. I don't have to try. I do. O Dan,
don't you know I do? Timid lover, brave talker
that you are. What's the good of all you know if
you don't know that? I won't let myself. I?
Mrs. Pribby who reads newspapers all night
wont. What has she got to do with me? She
is me, somehow. No she's not. Yes she is.
She is the town, and the town wont let me love
you, Dan. Don't you know? You could make it
let me if you would. Why wont you? Youre
selfish. I'm not strong enough to buck it. Youre
too selfish to buck it, for me. I wish you'd go.
You irritate me. Dan, please go.

"What are you doing now, Dan?"

[110]

BOX SEAT

"Same old thing, Muriel. Nothing, as the
world would have it. Living, as I look at
things. Living as much as I can without—"

"But you cant live without money, Dan. Why
dont you get a good job and settle down?"

Dan: Same old line. Shoot it at me, sister.
Hell of a note, this loving business. For ten
minutes of it youve got to stand the torture of an
intolerable heaviness and a hundred platitudes.
Well, damit, shoot on.

"To what? my dear. Rustling newspapers?"

"You mustnt say that, Dan. It isnt right.
Mrs. Pribby has been awfully good to me."

"Dare say she has. What's that got to do
with it?"

"Oh, Dan, youre so unconsiderate and selfish.
All you think of is yourself."

"I think of you."

"Too much—I mean, you ought to work more
and think less. Thats the best way to get
along."

"Mussel-heads get along, Muriel. There is
more to you than that—"

"Sometimes I think there is, Dan. But I
dont know. I've tried. I've tried to do some-

[111]