He met the writer of signs whose chalked message he had seen the past November. From the first day of their meeting the old man clung to him like an evil genius. His name was Simms and he preached on the sidewalks. The winter cold had kept him indoors, but in the spring he was out on the streets all day.
His white hair was soft and ragged on his neck and he carried around with him a woman’s big silk pocketbook full of chalk and Jesus ads. His eyes were bright and crazy. Simms tried to convert him.
‘Child of adversity, I smell the sinful stink of beer on thy breath. And you smoke cigarettes. If the Lord had wanted us to smoke cigarettes He would have said so in His Book. The mark of Satan is on thy brow. I see it. Repent. Let me show you the light.’ Jake rolled up his eyes and made a slow pious sign in the air.
Then he opened his oil-stained hand. ‘I reveal this only to you,’ he said in a low stage voice. Simms looked down at the scar in his palm. Jake leaned closer and whispered: ‘And there’s the other sign. The sign you know. For I was born with them.’
Simms backed against the fence. With a womanish gesture he lifted a lock of silver hair from his forehead and smoothed it back on his head. Nervously his tongue licked the corners of his mouth. Jake laughed.
‘Blasphemer!’ Simms screamed. ‘God will get you. You and all your crew. God remembers the scoffers. He watches after me. God watches everybody but He watches me the most. Like He did Moses. God tells me things in the night. God will get you.’ He took Simms down to a corner store for Coca-Colas and peanut-butter crackers. Simms began to work on him again. When he left for the show Simms ran along behind him. ‘Come to this corner tonight at seven o’clock. Jesus has a message just for you.’ The first days of April were windy and warm. White clouds trailed across the blue sky. In the wind there was the smell of the river and also the fresher smell of fields beyond the town. The show was crowded every day from four in the afternoon until midnight. The crowd was a tough one. With the new spring he felt an undertone of trouble. One night he was working on the machinery of the swings when suddenly he was roused from thought by the sounds of angry voices. Quickly he pushed through the crowd until he saw a white girl fighting with a colored girl by the ticket booth of the flying-jinny. He wrenched them apart, but still they struggled to get at each other. The crowd took sides and there was a bedlam of noise. The white girl was a hunchback. She held something tight in her hand. ‘I seen you,’ the colored girl yelled. ‘I ghy beat that hunch off your back, too.’
‘Hush your mouth, you black nigger! ‘ ‘Low-down factory tag. I done paid my money and I ghy ride. White man, you make her give me back my ticket.’
‘Black nigger slut! ‘ Jake looked from one to the other. The crowd pressed close. There were mumbled opinions on every side. ‘I seen Lurie drop her ticket and I watched this here white lady pick it up. That the truth,’ a colored boy said. ‘No nigger going to put her hands on no white girl while--. ‘You quit that pushing me. I ready to hit back even if your skin do be white.’ Roughly Jake pushed into the thick of the crowd. ‘All right! ‘ he yelled. ‘Move on--break it up. Every damn one of you.’ There was something about the size of his fists that made the people drift sullenly away. Jake turned back to the two girls.
‘This here the way it is,’ said the colored girl. I bet I one of the few peoples here who done saved over fifty cents till Friday night. I done ironed double this week. I done paid a good nickel for that ticket she holding. And now I means to ride. Jake settled the trouble quickly. He let the hunchback keep the disputed ticket and issued another one to the colored girl. For the rest of that evening there were no more quarrels. But Jake moved alertly through the crowd. He was troubled and uneasy.
In addition to himself there were five other employees at the show--two men to operate the swings and take tickets and three girls to manage the booths. This did not count Patterson.
The show-owner spent most of his time playing cards with himself in his trailer. His eyes were dull, with the pupils shrunken, and the skin of his neck hung in yellow, pulpy folds.
During the past few months Jake had had two raises in pay. At midnight it was his job to report to Patterson and hand over the takings of the evening. Sometimes Patterson did not notice him until he had been in the trailer for several minutes; he would be staring at the cards, sunk in a stupor. The air of the trailer was heavy with the stinks of food and reefers. Patterson held his hand over his stomach as though protecting it from something. He always checked over the accounts very thoroughly.
Jake and the two operators had a squabble. These men were both former doffers at one of the mills. At first he had tried to talk to them and help them to see the truth. Once he invited them to a pool room for a drink. But they were so dumb he couldn’t help them. Soon after this he overheard the conversation between them that caused the trouble. It was an early Sunday morning, almost two o’clock, and he had been checking the accounts with Patterson. When he stepped out of the trailer the grounds seemed empty. The moon was bright.
He was thinking of Singer and the free day ahead. Then as he passed by the swings he heard someone speak his name. The two operators had finished work and were smoking together. Jake listened.
‘If there’s anything I hate worse than a nigger it’s a Red.’
‘He tickles me. I don’t pay him no mind. The way he struts around. I never seen such a sawed-off runt. How tall is he, you reckon?’
‘Around five foot But he thinks he got to tell everybody so much. He oughta be in jail. That’s where. The Red Bolshivik.’
‘He just tickles me. I can’t look at him without laughing.’
‘He needn’t act biggity with me.’
Jake watched them follow the path toward Weavers Lane. His first thought was to rush out and confront them, but a certain shrinking held him back. For several days he fumed in silence.
Then one night after work he followed the two men for several blocks and as they turned a corner he cut in front of them.
‘I heard you,’ he said breathlessly. ‘It so happened I heard every word you said last Saturday night. Sure I’m a Red. At least I reckon I am. But what are you?’ They stood beneath a street light. The two men stepped back from him. The neighborhood was deserted. ‘You pasty-faced, shrunk-gutted, ricket-ridden little rats! I could reach out and choke your stringy necks--one to each hand. Runt or no, I could lay you on this sidewalk where they’d have to scrape you up with shovels.’
The two men looked at each other, cowed, and tried to walk on. But Jake would not let them pass. He kept step with them, walking backward, a furious sneer on his face.
‘All I got to say is this: In the future I suggest you come to me whenever you feel the need to make remarks about my height, weight, accent, demeanor, or ideology. And that last is not what I take a leak with either--case you don’t know. We will discuss it together.’
Afterward Jake treated the two men with angry contempt.
Behind his back they jeered at him. One afternoon he found that the engine of the swings had been deliberately damaged and he had to work three hours overtime to fix it. Always he felt someone was laughing at him. Each time he heard the girls talking together he drew himself up straight and laughed carelessly aloud to himself as though thinking of some private joke. The warm southwest winds from the Gulf of Mexico were heavy with the smells of spring. The days grew longer and the sun was bright. The lazy warmth depressed him. He began to drink again. As soon as work was done he went home and lay down on his bed. Sometimes he stayed there, fully clothed and inert, for twelve or thirteen hours. The restlessness that had caused him to sob and bite his nails only a few months before seemed to have gone. And yet beneath his inertia Jake felt the old tension. Of all the places he had been this was the loneliest town of all. Or it would be without Singer. Only he and Singer understood the truth. He knew and could not get the don’t-knows to see. It was like trying to fight darkness or heat or a stink in the air. He stared morosely out of his window. A stunted, smoked-blackened tree at the corner had put out new leaves of a bilious green. The sky was always a deep, hard blue. The mosquitoes from a fetid stream that ran through this part of the town buzzed in the room.