 Section 22 of Kane by Jean Tumor. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Theater, life's 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 volleys, 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 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 off as if they shine through clear pink fingers beneath them hid by the shadow of a set doors. Other chorus girls drift in. John feels them in the mass and as if his own body were the mass heart of a black audience 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 lifts 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 and rhythm to the music. Lift your skirts baby and talk to papa. Crude individualized and yet monotonous. John soon the director will hurt you my full-lipped distant beauties and tame you and blunt your sharp thrust and loosely suggestive movements appropriate to Broadway. Oh dance. Soon the audience will paint your dusk faces white and call you beautiful. Oh dance. Soon I, oh dance. I'd like girls laughed and shout singing discordant snatches above the jazz songs. World with loose passion into the arms of passing showmen. John too thick too easy to monotonous. Her whom I'd love I'd leave before she knew that I was with her. Her which oh 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 the center of physical ecstasy. Go to it baby than yourself and feed your papa. Put nobody live and take. When they said I cried over you no lie. The glitter and color of stacked scenes. The guilt and brass and crimson of the house converge 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. 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. Black life monotonous. One, two, three music starts. The song is somewhere where it will not strain the leading lady's throat. The dance is somewhere where it will not strain the girls. Above the staleness one dancer throws herself into it. Doris, John sees her. Her hair, crisp curl is bond. 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 wouldn't work. Keep her loveliness. Let her go. Doris sees John and knows that he's looking at her. Her own glowing is too rich a thing to let her feel the slimness of his diluted passion. Who's that? She asks her dancing partner, the manager's brother. Dictie, nothing doing, hun. Doris tosses her head and dances for him until she feels she has him. Then withdrawing disdainfully, she flirts with the director. Doris, nothing doing. How come? Ain't as good as him. Couldn't I have got an education if I'd wanted one? Don't I know of respectable folks, lots of them, in Philadelphia and New York and Chicago? Ain't I had men as good as him? Better, doctors and lawyers. What's up, manager's brother anyhow? Two steps back and two steps front. Say, main, where do you get that stuff? What's Jameen, Doris? If you two girls can't listen to what I'm telling you, I know where I can get some who can. Now listen, main, go to hell. You black bastard. Doris, what's eating at him anyway? Now follow me in this, you girls. There's three counts to the right, three counts to the left and then you shimmy, John. And then you shimmy, I bet she can. Some good cabaret with rooms upstairs. And what in hell do you think you get from it? You're 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 wouldn't touch her, I mean, to herself in some room perhaps, some cheap, dingy bedroom. Hell no, can't be done. But the point is, brother, John, it can be done. Get her to herself somewhere anywhere, go down in yourself, and she'd be calling you all sorts of asses while you were in the process of going down. Hold them, bud, can't be done, let her go, dance, and I'll love you and keep her loveliness. All right now, chicken chaser, Doris and girls, where's Doris? I told you to stay on that stage, did not? Well, now that's enough, all right, all right there, Professor, all right, one, two, three. Doris swings to the front, the line of girls, four deep, blurs within the shadow of suspended scenes. Doris 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 Doris, whip up within the footlights, glow. They forget, set steps, they find their own, the director forgets to ball them out, Doris dances. John, her head bobs to Broadway, dance from yourself, dance, oh, just a little more. Doris' eyes burn across the space of seats to him. Doris, I bet he can love, hell, he can't love, he's too skinny, his lips are too skinny, he wouldn't love me anyway, only for that. But I get a pair of silk stockings out of it, red silk, I got purple, got a kid, you can't win him to respect you that away. He wouldn't anyway, maybe he would, maybe he'd love. I've heard him say that men who look like him, what does he look like? Well, Mary, if they love, oh, will you love me and give me kids and a home and everything, I'd like to make your nest an honest hunt, I wouldn't run out on you. You will if I make you, just watch me. Doris dances, she forgets her tricks, she dances, glorious songs are the muscles of her limbs and her singing is of cane break gloves and mangrove feastings, the walls press in, singing, flesh of a throbbing body, they press close to John and Doris, 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, Doris dances, John dreams. Doris 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 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. Doris 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 cane field, her perfume, glorious Doris, so his eyes speak and their sadness is too deep for a 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 Doris 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, Doris who has no eyes has eyes to understand him, he comes to a dancing scene, the scene is Doris, she dances, Doris dances, glorious Doris, Doris whirls, whirls, dances, Doris dances, the pianist crashes a bumper cord, the whole stage claps, Doris flushed, looks quick at John, his whole face is in shadow, she seeks for a dance and she finds it a dead thing in the shadow which is his green, she rushes from the stage, falls down the steps into her dressing room, pulls her hair, her eyes over a flood of tears stare at the whitewashed ceiling, smell of dry paste and paint and soil clothing, her pal comes in, Doris flings herself into the old safe arms and cries bitterly, I told you, nothing doing is what Mame says to comfort her. End of section 22, section 23 of Cain by Jean Tumor, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain, her lips are copper wire, whisper of yellow globes gleaming on lamp posts that sway like bootleg liquor drinkers in the fog and let your breath be moist against me like bright beads on yellow globes, telephone the powerhouse 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. End of section 23, section 24 of Cain by Jean Tumor, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain, section 24 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. Someone echo Jesus soft as a cotton bowl, 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 forgotten 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 pistols bear the life of coming song and her eyes carry 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 flowered, where dusty asphalt had been freshly sprinkled with clean water up alleys, where niggers sat on low doorsteps before tumbled shanties and sang in loud. At night when she comes home, the little dog is left in the vestibule, nosing the crack beneath the big storm door filled with chills till morning. Someone echoed 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-blooded cane. End of section 24, section 25 of Cain by Gene Tumer. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Box seat one. 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 niggers are street songs that woo virginal houses. Dan Moore walks outward on 13th street, the low limbs of budding chestnut trees recede above his head. Chestnut buds and blossoms of 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, it cracks. He strains to produce tones in keeping with the house's loveliness. Can't be done, he whistles, his notes are shrill. They hurt him, it grows 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 it, the side street opens an iron gate bangs it to, mounts the steps and searches for the bell. Funny, he can't find it, he fumbles around. The thought comes to him that someone passing by might see him and not understand. Might think that he is trying to sneak to break in. Dan, break in, get an axe and smash in. Smash in their faces, I'll show them. Break into an engine house, steal a thousand horsepower fire truck. Smash in with the truck, I'll show them. Grab an axe and brain them. Cut them up, jack the ripper, baboon from the zoo. And then the cops come. No, I ain't a baboon, I ain't jack the ripper. I'm a poor man out of work. Take your hands off me, you bull-neck bears. Look into my eyes, I'm Dan Moore. I was born in a cane field. The hands of Jesus touched me. I've come to a sick world to heal it. Only the other day a dope fiend brushed against me, don't laugh. You mighty juicy meat hook men. Give me your fingers and I will peel them as if they were ripe bananas. Someone might think he is trying to break in. He'd better knock his knuckles a raw bone against the thick glass door. He waits, no one comes. Perhaps they haven't heard him. He wraps again. This time harder. He waits, no one comes. Someone is surely in. He fancies that he sees their shadows on the glass. Shadows of gorillas, perhaps they saw him coming and don't want to let him in. He knocks the tension of his arms, makes the glass rattle. Hurried 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, won't you? Muriel, yes, I'll call her. Take your things off, won't 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 will pardon me, won't you? So glad to see you. Her eyes are weak. They are bluish and watery from reading newspapers. The blue is steel. It jimlets Dan, while her mouth flaps amably to him. Dan, nothing for you to see, old muscle head. Dare I show you? If I did, Delirium would furnish you headlines for a month. Now look here, that's enough. Go long, woman. Say some nasty thing and I'll kill you, huh? Better damn sight not, ta ta, Mrs. Pribby. Mrs. Pribby retreats to the rear of the house. She takes up a newspaper. There is a sharp clicker. She fits in 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, masked, 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. Pribby's. 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 out of there, Dan Moore. People must have their privacy. Peeping tums. I'll never peep, I'll listen. I like to listen. Dan goes to the wall and places his ear against it. A passing streetcar and something vibrant from the earth sends a rumble to him. That rumble comes from the earth's decor. It is the mother 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 rural 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. Gidget bow, gidget bow. 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 fragrant something, which is the life of it. Her hair, like an Indian's, but more curly and brushed 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. Don't 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. Let's don't 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 something else. I hear there's a good show at the Lincoln this week. Yes, so Harry was telling me, going tonight. 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 Bernice 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 try. I don't have to try. I do. Oh, 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. Bribby, who reads newspapers all night, won't. 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 won't let me love you, Dan. Don't you know? You could make it let me if you would. Why won't you? You're selfish. I'm not strong enough to buck it. You're too selfish to buck it. For me, I wish you'd go. You irritate me. Dan, please go. What are you doing now, Dan? 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 can't live without money, Dan. Why don't 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 10 minutes of it, you've got to stand the torture of an intolerable heaviness and a hundred platitudes. Well, damn it, shoot on. To what, my dear, rusting newspapers. You mustn't say that, Dan. It isn't right. Mrs. Pribby has been awfully good to me. Dare say she has. What's that got to do with it? Oh, Dan, you're 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. That's the best way to get along. Muscle heads get along, Muriel. There is more to you than that. Sometimes I think there is, Dan, but I don't know. I've tried. I've tried to do something with myself. Something real and beautiful, I mean. But what's the good of trying? I've tried to make people everyone I come in contact with happy. Dan looks at her directly, her animalism, still unconquered by zoo restrictions and keeper taboo stirs him. Passion tilts upward, bringing with it the elements of an old desire. Muriel's lips become the flesh notes of a futile, planted longing. Dan's impulse to director is its fresh life. Happy Muriel, no, not happy. Your aim is wrong. There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to perfect joy or perfect pain with no contrasting element to define them would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death. Not happy Muriel, say that you have tried to make them create. Say that you have used your own capacity for life to cradle them. Do start them upward flowing. Or if you can't, say that you have, then say that you will. My talking to you will make you aware of your power to do so. Say that you will love that you will give yourself in love. Do you, Dan? Dan's consciousness crudely swerves into passions. They flare up in his eyes. They set up quivers in his abdomen. He is suddenly over tense and nervous. Muriel. The newspaper rustles in the rear room. Muriel. Dan rises. His arms stretch towards her, his fingers and his palms. Pink in the lamplight are glowing irons. Muriel's chair is close and stiff about her. The house, the rows of houses locked about her chair. Dan's fingers and arms are at fire, to melt and bars to wrench and force and pry. Her arms hang looser, hands are hot and moist. Dan takes them, he slips to his knees before her. Dan, you mustn't. Muriel. Dan, really, you mustn't. No, Dan, no. Oh, come, Muriel, must I. Shh, Dan, please, get up, please. Mrs. Briby is right in the next room. She'll hear you. She may come in. Don't, Dan, she'll see you. Well then, let's go out. I can't. Let go, Dan. Oh, won't you please let go? Muriel tries to pull her hands away. Dan tightens his grip. He feels the strength of his fingers. His muscles are tight and strong. He stands up, thrusts out his chest. Muriel shrinks from him. Dan becomes aware of his crude absurdity. His lips curl, his passion chills. He has an obstinate desire to possess her. Muriel, I love you. I want you, whatever the world of Briby says. Dan, you're Briby. Who is she to dictate my love? I've stood enough of her. Enough of you, come here. Muriel's mouth works in and out. Her eyes flash and waggle. She wrenches her hands loose and forces them against his breast. To keep him off, Dan grabs her wrists. Wedges in between her arms. Her face is close to him. It is hot and blue and moist, ugly. Come here now. Don't, Dan. Oh, don't. What are you killing? What's weak in both of us and a whole litter of Briby's? For once in your life, you're going to face what's real by God. A sharp wrap on the newspaper in the rear room cuts between them. The wrap is like cool, thick glass. Between them, Dan is hot on one side. Muriel, hot on the other. They straighten, gaze fearfully at one another. Neither moves. A clock in the rear room, in the rear room. The rear room strikes eight. Eight slow, cool sounds. Bernice, Muriel fastens on her image. She smooths her dress. She adjusts her skirt. She becomes prim and cool, rising. She skirts Dan as if to keep the glass between them. Dan, gyrating nervously above the easy swing of his limbs, follows her to the parlor door. Muriel retreats before him till she reaches the landing of the steps that lead upstairs. She smiles at him. Dan sees his face in the hall mirror. He runs his fingers through his hair, reaches for his hat and coat and puts them on. He moves towards Muriel. Muriel steps backward up one step. Dan's jaw shoots out Muriel, jerks her arm in mourning of Mrs. Bribe. She gasps and turns and starts to run. Noise of a chair scraping as Mrs. Bribe rises from it, ratchets down the hall. Dan stops. He makes a right face. Wheels round, goes out and slams the door. Two people come in slowly, mutter, laughs, flutter, wish, shudder, wash. I've changed my work clothes and filled vacant seats of Lincoln Theater. Muriel leading Bernice who is across between a washer woman and a blue blood lady. A washer, blue, a washer lady wanders down the right aisle to the lower front box. Muriel has on an orange dress with its color would clash with the crimson box. Great breeze, its color would contradict the sweet rose smile. Her face is bathed in should she take her coat off. She'll keep it on pale purple, shadows rest on the plains of her cheeks. Deep purple comes from her thick, shocked hair. Orange of the dress goes well with these. Muriel presses her coat down from around her shoulders. Teachers are not supposed to have bobbed hair. She'll keep her hat on. She takes the first chair and indicates that Bernice is to take the one directly behind her. Seated thus her eyes are level with and near to the face of an imaginary man upon the stage. To speak to Bernie, she must turn when she does the audience square upon her. People come in slowly. From our Sunday go to meeting dress. Oh glory God. Oh shout any man and fill vacant seats of Lincoln Theater. Each one is up bolt that shoots into a slot and is locked there. Suppose the Lord should ask where it was Moses when the light went out. Suppose Gabriel should blow his trumpet. The seats are slots. The seats are bolted houses. The mask grows denser. Its weight at first is impalpable upon the box. Then Muriel begins to feel it. She props her arm against the brass. Box rail to ward it off. Silly. These people are friends of hers. A parent of a child she teaches an old school friend. She smiles at them. They return her courtesy and she is free to chat with Bernie. Bernie's tongue started. Ones on and on. Oh washer blue. Oh washer lady. Muriel never see Dan again. He makes me feel queer. Starts things he doesn't finish. Upsets me. I'm not upset. I'm perfectly calm. I'm going to enjoy the show. Good show. I've had some show. This damn tame thing. Oh Dan won't see Dan again. Not alone. Have Mrs. Privy come in. She wasn't. Keep Dan out. If I love him. Can I keep him out? Well then I don't love him. Now he's out. Who is that coming in? Blind is a bat. Ding bat. Looks like Dan. He mustn't see me. Silly. He can't reach me. He won't dare come in here. He put his head down like a goring bull and charged me. He'd trample them. He'd gore. He'd rape. Bernie. He won't dare come in here. Bernie. Who was that? Who just came in? I haven't my glasses. A friend of yours. A good friend. So I hear Mr. Daniel Moore. Lord. Oh he's no friend of mine. No I hear he is. Well he isn't. Dan is ushered down the aisle. He has to squeeze past the knees of seated people to reach his own seat. He treads on up man's corns. The man grumbles and shoves them off. He shrivels close beside a portly niggress whose huge rows of flesh meet about the bones of seat arms. A soil so fragrance comes from her through the cement floor her strong roots sink down. They spread under the asphalt streets screaming the streets roll over on their bellies and suck their glossy health from them. Her strong roots sink down and spread under the river and disappear in bloodlines that waver south. Her roots shoot down. Dan's hands follow them. Roots throb. Dan's heart beats violently. He places his palms upon the earth to cool them. Earth throbs. Dan's heart beats violently. He sees all the people in the house rush through the walls to listen to the rumble. A new world Christ is coming up. Dan comes up. He is startled. The eyes of the woman don't belong to her. They look at him unpleasantly. From either aisle bolted masses press him. He doesn't fit. The mask grows agitant. For an instant Dan's and Muriel's eyes meet. His weight there slides the weight on her. She braces an arm against the brass rail and turns her head away. Muriel, Dan fool. Dear Dan, what did you want to follow me here for? Oh, can't you ever do anything right? Must you always pain me and make me hate you? I do hate you. I wish someone would come in with a horse whip and lash you out. I wish someone would drag you up a back alley and bring you with the whip. But Muriel glances at her wrist watch. Quarter of nine. Bernie, what time have you? Eight 40. Time to begin. Oh, look Muriel, that woman with the plume. Doesn't she look good? They say she's going with, oh, what's his name? You know, too much powder. I can see it from here. Here's the orchestra now. Oh, fine. Jim Clem at the piano. The men fill the pit. Instruments run the scale and tune. The saxophone moans and throws a fit. Jim Clem poised over the piano is ready to begin. His head nods forward, opening crash. The house snaps dark. The curtain recedes upward from the blush of the headlights. Jazz overture is over. The first act is on. Dan, oh, stuff. Muriel, bored. Must be but she'll smile and she'll clap. Do what your bid you she slave. Look at her sweet tame woman in a brass box seat. Clap, smile, fawn, clap. Do what your bid. Drag me in with you. Dirty me, brought me in your brass box seat. I'm there, am I not? Because of you, he slave. Slave of a woman who is a slave. I'm a damn sight worse than you are. I sing your praises, beauty. I exalt thee, oh Muriel. A slave thou art greater than all freedom because I love thee. Dan fidgets and disturbs his neighbors. His neighbors glare at him. He glares back without seeing them. The man whose corns have been trod upon speaks to him. Keep quiet, can't you, mister? Other people have paid their money besides yourself to see the show. The man's face is a blur about two sullen liquid things that are his eyes. The eyes dissolve in the surrounding vagueness. Dan suddenly feels that the man is an enemy whom he has long been looking for. Dan bristles, glares furiously at the man. All right, all right then, look at this show. I'm not stopping you. Shh, from someone in the rear, Dan turns around. It's that man there who started everything. I didn't say a thing to him until he tried to start something. What have I got to do with whether he has paid his money or not? That's the manager's business. Do I look like the manager? Shh, you're right, shh. Don't tell me to, shh, tell him. That man there, he started everything. If what he wanted was to start a fight, why didn't he say so? The man leans forward. Better be quiet, Sonny. I ain't said a thing about fight yet. It's a good thing you haven't. Shh, Dan grips himself. Another actor's on, dwarfs. Dressed like prize fighters. Foreheads bulging like boxing gloves are led upon the stage. They are going to fight for the heavyweight championship. Bruce and Dan glances at Muriel. He imagines that she shudders. His mind curves back into himself and picks up tail ends of experiences. His eyes are open mechanically. The dwarfs pound and bruise and bleed each other on his eyeballs. Dan, ah, but she was some baby and not vulgar either. Funny how some women can do those things. Muriel dancing like that, hell. She rolled and wobbled. Her buttocks rocked. She pulled up her dress and showed her pink drawers. Baby. And then she caught my eyes. Don't know what my eyes had in them. Yes, I do. God, don't I, though. Sometimes I think, Dan Moore, that your eyes could burn clean. Burn clean. Burn clean. The gong rings. The dwarfs set to they spar grotesquely, playfully until one lands a stiff blow. This makes the other sore. He commences slugging. A real scrap is on. Time. The dwarfs go to their corners and are sponged and fanned off. Gloves balled from their wrists. Their wrists are necks for the tight-faced gloves. The fellow to the right lets his eyes roam over the audience. He cites Muriel. He grins. Dan, those silly women arguing feminism. Here's what I should have said to them. It should be clear to you women that the proposition must be stated thus. Me, horizontally above her. Action, perfect strokes, downward oblique. Hence man dominates because of limitation or so it shall be until women learn their stuff. So framed, the proposition is a mental filler dentist. I want gold teeth. It should become cherished of the technical intellect. I hereby offer it to posterity as one of the important machine age designs. PS, it should be noted that because it is an achievement of this age, its growth and hence its causes up to the point of maturity and to date machinery. Airy, the gong rings. No fooling this time. The dwarfs set to they clench. The referee parts them. One swings a cruel upper cut and knocks the other down. A huge head hits the floor. Pop, the house roars. The fighter groggy scrambles up. The referee whispers to the contenders not to fight so hard. They ignore him. They charge their heads jabbed like boxing gloves. They kick and spit and bite. They pound each other furiously. Muriel pounds. The house pounds. Cut lips, bloody noses. The referee asks for the gong. Time, the house roars. The dwarfs bow or made to bow. The house wants more. The dwarfs are led from the stage. Dan, strange I never really noticed him before. Been sitting there for years. Born a slave, slavery not so long ago. He'll die in his chair. Swing low, sweet chariot. Jesus will come and roll him down the river Jordan. Oh, come along, Moses. You'll get lost. Stretch out your rod and come across. Let my people go. Oh, man knows everyone who passes the corners. Saw the first horse cars, the first O's mobile, and he was born in slavery. I did see his eyes, never miss eyes, but they were bloodshot and watery. It hurt to look at them. It hurts to look in most people's eyes. He saw Grant and Lincoln. He saw Walt. Oh, man, did you see Walt Whitman? Did you see Walt Whitman? Strange force that drew me to him. And I went up to see. The woman thought I saw crazy. I told him to look into the heavens. He did and smiled. I asked him if he knew what that rumbling is that comes up from the ground. Christ, what a stroke that was. And the jabbering idiots crowding around. And the crossing cop leaving his job to come over and wheel him away. The house applies. The house wants more. The dwarfs are led back. But no encore must give the house something. The attendant comes out and announces that Mr. Barry, the champion will sing one of his own songs for your approval. Mr. Barry grins at Muriel as he wobbles from the wing. He holds a fresh white rose and a small mirror. He wipes blood from his nose. He signals Jim Clem. The orchestra starts a sentimental love song. Mr. Barry sings first to one girl and then another in the audience. He holds the mirror in such a way that it flashes in the face of each one. He sings to the light swings around. Dan, I'm going to reach up and grab the girders of this building and pull them down. The crash will be a signal hid by the smoke and dust and more will arise. In his right hand will be a dynamo. In his left, a God's face that will flash white light. From Ebony, I'll grab a girder and swing it like a walking stick. Lightning will flash, I'll grab his black knob and swing it like a crippled cane. Lightning, someone's flashing, someone's flashing. Who in hell is flashing that mirror? Take it off me, God damn you. Dan's eyes are half blinded. He moves his head. The light follows. He hears the audience laugh. He hears the orchestra. A man with a high-pitched sentimental voice is singing. Dan sees the door along the mirror. Flash, the song comes. Dan ducks his head. The audience roars. The light swings around to Muriel. Dan looks. Muriel is too close. Mr. Barry covers his mirror. He sings to her. She shrinks away, nausea. She clutches the brass box rail. She moves to face away. The audience is square upon her. Its eyes smile. Its hands itch to clap. Muriel turns to the dwarf and forces a smile from him. With a showy glare of orchestration, the song comes to his close. Mr. Barry bows. He offers Muriel the rose, first having kissed it. Blood of his battered lips is a vivid stain upon its petals. Mr. Barry offers Muriel the rose. The house applause Muriel flinches back. The dwarf steps forward, diffident, threatening. Hate pops from his eyes and crackles like a brittle heat about the box. The thick hide of his face is drawn in tortured wrinkles. Above his eyes, the bulging, tight skinbrow. Dan looks at it. It grows calm and massive. It grows profound. It is a thing of wisdom and tenderness of suffering and beauty. Dan looks down. The eyes are calm and luminous. Words come from them. Arms of the audience reach out, grab Muriel and hold her there. Claps are her steel fingers that manacle her wrists and move them forward to acceptance. Bernie leans forward and whispers. It's all right. Go on. Take it. Words form in the eyes of the dwarf. Do not shrink. Do not be afraid of me. Jesus, see how my eyes look at you, the Son of God. I too was made in His image. Was once, I give you the rose. Muriel, tight in her revulsion, sees black and dainty, reaches for the offering. As her hand touches it, Dan springs up in his seat and shouts, Jesus was once a leper. Dan steps down. He is as cool as a green stem that has just shed its flower. Rows of gaping faces strain towards him. They are distant, and beneath him, impalpable, squeezing out. Dan again, treads upon the cornfoot man. The man shoves him. Watch where you're going, mister. Crazier note, you ain't going to walk over me. Watch where you're going there. Dan turns and serene and tweaks the fellow's nose. The man jumps up. Dan is jammed against a seatback. A slight swift anger flicks him. His fist hooks the other's jaw. Now you have started something. Ain't no man living can hit me and get away with it. Come on. On the outside, the house tumultuously stirring, grabs its wraps and follows the man. The man leads Dan up a black alley. The alley air is thick and moist with smells of garbage and wet trash. In the morning, singing niggers will drive by and ring their gongs, heavy with the scent of rancid flowers and with the scent of fight. The crowd pressing forward is a hollow roar. Eyes of houses, soft girl eyes glow, reticently upon the hubbub and blink out. The man stops, takes off his hat and coat. Dan, having forgotten him, keeps going on. End of section 25, section 26 of Cain by Jean Tumor. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Prayer. My body is opaque to the soul, driven of the spirit. Long have I sought to temper it, unto the spirit's longing. But my mind too is opaque to the soul. A closed lid is my soul's flesh eye. O spirits of whom my soul is but a little finger, directed to the lid of its flesh eye. I am weak with much giving. I am weak with the desire to give more. How strong a thing is the little finger. So weak that I have confused the body with the soul and the body with its little finger. How frail is the little finger. My voice could not carry to you. Did you dwell in stars? O spirits of whom my soul is but a little finger. End of section 26, section 27 of Cain by Jean Tumor. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Harvest song. I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled. But I am too chilled and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it. I've been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger. My eyes are caked with dust of oat fields at a harvest time. I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stacked fields of other harvesters. It would be good to see them crooked, split, and iron ringed handles of the sides. It would be good to see them dust caked and blind. I hunger. Dust is a strange, feared sheath. Their blades are dulled in. My throat is dry. And should I call a cracked grain like the oats? E-O-Ho. I fear to call. What should they hear me and offer me their grain? Oats or wheat or corn? I've been in the fields all day. I fear I could not taste it. I fear knowledge of my hunger. My ears are caked with dust of oat fields at harvest time. I am a deaf man who strains to hear the calls of other harvesters whose throats are also dry. It would be good to hear their songs, reapers of the sweet stalked cane, cutters of the corn, even though their throats cracked and the strangeness of their voices deafened me. I hunger. My throat is dry. Now that the sun has set and I am chilled, I fear to call. E-O-Ho. My brothers. I am a reaper. E-O-Ho. All my oats are cradled, but I am too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. I crack a grain. It has no taste to it. My throat is dry. Oh, my brothers. I beat my palms still soft against the stubble of my harvesting. You beat your soft palms too. My pain is sweet, sweeter than the oats or wheat or corn. It will not bring me knowledge of my hunger. End of section 27, section 28 of Cain by Jean Tumor. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Bona and Paul, one, on the school gymnasium floor, young men and women are drilling. They're going to be teachers and go out into the world, thud, thud, and give precision to the movements of sick people who all their lives have been drilling. One man is out of step in step. The teacher glares at him. A girl in bloomers seated on a mat in the corner because she has told the director that she is sick, sees that the footfalls of the men are rhythmical and syncopated. The dance of his blue trousered limbs thrills her. Bona, he is a candle that dances in a grove, swung with pale balloons. Columns of the drillers thud towards her. He is in the front row. He is in no row at all. Bona can look close at him. His red-brown face. Bona, he is a harvest moon. He is an autumn leaf. He is a nigger. Bona, but don't all the dorm girls say so and don't you when you are sane say so? That's why I love. Oh, nonsense, you have never loved a man who didn't first love you. Besides, Columns thud away from her, come to a halt in line formation rigid. The period bell rings and the teacher dismisses them. A group collects around Paul. They are choosing sides for basketball. Girls against boys. Paul has his. He is limbering up beneath the basket. Bona runs to the girl captain and asked to be chosen. The girls fuss. The director comes to quiet them. He hears what Bona wants. But Miss Hale, you were excused. So I was Mr. Boynton, but you can play basketball, but you are too sick to drill. If you wish to put it that way, she swings away from him to the girl captain. Helen, I want to play and you must let me. This is the first time I've asked and I don't see why. That's just it, Bona. We have our team. Well, team or no team I want to play and that's all there is to it. She snatches the ball from Helen's hands and charges down the floor. Helen shrugs. One of the weaker girls says that she'll drop out. Helen accepts this. The team is formed. The whistle blows. The game starts. Bona in center is jumping against Paul. He plays with her. Out jumps her, makes a quick pass, gets a quick return and shoots a goal from the middle of the floor. Bona burns crimson. She fights and tries to guard him. One of her teammates advises her not to play so hard. Paul shoots his second goal. Bona begins to feel a little dizzy and all in. She drives on, almost hugs Paul to guard him. Near the basket, he attempts to shoot and Bona lunges into his body and tries to beat his arms. His elbow, going up, gives her a sharp crack on the jaw. She whirls, he catches her, her body stiffens, then becomes strangely vibrant and bursts to a swift life within her anger. He is about to give way before her hatred when a new passion flares at him and makes his stomach fall. Bona squeezes him. He suddenly feels stifled and wonders why in hell the ring of silly gaping faces that's caked about him doesn't make way and give him air. He has a swift illusion that it is himself who has been struck. He looks at Bona, whir, whir. They seem to be human distortion spinning tensely in a fog. Spinning, dizzy, spinning. Bona jerks herself free, flushes a startling crimson, breaks through the bewildered teams and rushes from the hall. Two, Paul is in his room of two windows. Outside the south side L track cuts them in two. Bona is one window, one window Paul. Hurdling, loop jammed L trains throw them in swift shadow. Paul goes to his gray slanting roofs of houses or tinted lavender in the setting sun. Paul follows the sun over the stockyards where a fresh stench is just arising across weedlands that are still waving about their stubble into the sun. Paul follows the sun to a pine matted hillock in Georgia. He sees the slanting roofs of gray unpainted cabins, tinted lavender, a negrous chance of lullaby beneath the mate eyes of a southern planter. Her breasts are ample for the suckling of a song. She weans it and sends it curiously weaving among lush melodies of cane and corn. Paul follows the sun into himself in Chicago. He is at Bona's window with his own glow. He looks through a dark pane. Paul's roommate comes in, say, Paul, I've got a date for you. Come on, shake a leg will you. His blind hair is comb slick. His vest is snug about him. He is like the electric light which he snaps on. What do you say, Paul? Get a wiggle on. Come on, we haven't gotten much time by the time we eat and dress and everything. His bustling concentrates on the brushing of his hair. Art, what in hell's getting into Paul of late anyway? Christ, but he's getting moony. It's his blood, dark blood, moony. Doesn't get anywhere unless you boost it. You've got to keep it going. Say, Paul, or it'll go to sleep on you, dark blood, nigger. That's what those jealous she-hands say, not boner though, or she from the south wouldn't want me to fix a date for him and her. Hell of a thing that Paul's dark. You've got to always be answering questions. Say, Paul, for Christ's sake, leave that window, can't you? What's it, Art? Hell, I've told you about 50 times. Got a date for you, come on. With you, Art, he didn't used to ask. Now he does, getting up in the air, getting funny. Here's your hat, wanna smoke? Paul, here, I've got a match. Now come on, and I'll tell you all about it on the way to supper. Paul, he's going to life this time. No doubt of that, quit your kidding. Someday, dear Art, I'm going to kick the living slats out of you, and you won't know what I've done it for, and your slats will bring forth life. Beautiful woman, pure food restaurant. Bring me some soup with a lot of crackers, understand, and then a roast beef dinner. Same for you, eh, Paul? Now, as I was saying, you've got a swell chance with her, and she's game best proof. She don't give a damn what the dorm girls say about you and her in the gym, or about the funny looks that Boynton gives her, or about what they say about, well, hell, you know, Paul. And say, Paul, she's a sweetheart, tall, not puffy, and pretty, more serious and deep, the kind you like these days, and they say she's got a car, and say she's on fire, but you know all about that. She got Helen to fix it up with me. The four of us, remember the last party? Crimson Gardens, boy. Paul's eyes take on a light that art can settle in. Three, art has on his patent leather pumps and fancy vest. A loose fall coat is swung across his arm. His face has been massaged and over a close shave, powdered. It is a healthy pink, the blue of evening tints, a purple pallor. Art is happy and confident in the good looks that his mirror gave him. Bubbling over it with a joy, he must spend now if the night is to contain it all. His bubbles, too, are curiously tinted purple as Paul watches them. Paul, contrary to what he had thought he would be like his school, like the dusk, and like the dusk, detached. His dark face is a floating shade. In evening's shadow, he sees art curiously. Art is a purple fluid, carbon charged, but effervesces besides him. He loves art, but is it not queer, this pale purple facsimile of a red-blooded Norwegian friend of his? Perhaps for some reason, white skins are not supposed to live at night. Surely enough nights would transform them fantastically or kill them. And their red passion, night pale, that, too, and made it moony. Moony, that's what art thought of him. Bona didn't, even in the daytime. Bona, would she be pale and possible? Not that red glow, but the conviction did not set his emotion flowing. Come right in, won't you? The young ladies will be right down. Oh, Mr. Carl Strum, do you play something for us while you are waiting? We just love to listen to your music. You play so well. Houses and dorm sitting rooms are places where white faces seclude themselves at night. There is a reason. Art sat on the piano and simply tore it down. Jazz, the picture of our poets, tongue perilously. Ball, I've got to get the kid to play that stuff for me in the daytime. Might be different, more himself, more nigger, different. There is, curious, though. The girls come in, art stops playing, and almost immediately takes up a petty quarrel where he had last left it with Helen. Bona, black hair, curl, staccato, sharply contrasting with Helen's puffy yellow, holds Paul's hand. She squeezes it, her own emotion supplements the return pressure. And then, for no tangible reason, her spirits drop. Without them, she is nervous and slightly afraid. She resents this. Paul's eyes are critical. She resents Paul. She flares at him. She flares to poise and security. Shall we be on our way? Yes, Bona, certainly. The boulevard is sleek in asphalt and with arc lights and limousines aglow. Dry leaves scamper behind the whir of cars. The scent of exploded gasoline that mingles with them is faintly sweet. Melo stone mansions over shadow-clabbered homes, which now resemble negro shanties in some southern alley. Bona and Paul and Art and Helen move along in island life, far-stretching strip of leaf soft ground. Above them, worlds of shadow planes and solids silently moving. As if on one of these, Paul looks down on Bona. No doubt of it, her face is pale. She is talking. Her words have no field to them. One sees them. They are pink petals that fall upon velvet cloth. Bona is soft and pale and beautiful. Paul, tell me something about yourself, or would you rather wait? I'll tell you anything you'd like to know. Not what I want to know, Paul. What you want to tell me. You have the beauty of a gem thousands undersea. I feel that, but I don't want to be. I want to be near you. Perhaps I will be if I tell you something. Paul, I love you. The sea casts up its jewel into his hands and burns them furiously. To tuck her arm under his and hold her hand will ease the burn. What can I say to you, brave dear woman? I can't talk love. Love is a dry grain in my mouth unless it is wet with kisses. You would dare, right here on the boulevard, before Arthur and Helen, before myself I dare. Here then, Bona in the slim shadow of a tree trunk pulls Paul to her. Suddenly she stiffens, stops. But you have not said you love me. I can't, yet, Bona. Ock, you never will, you're cold, cold. Bona, colored, cold, wrong somewhere. She hurries and catches up with art in Helen. Four, crimson gardens, hurrah, so one feels, people, University of Chicago students, members of the Stock Exchange, a large Negro in crimson uniform who guards the door, had watched them enter, had leaned towards each other over ash, smeared tablecloths and highballs and whispered, what is he, a Spaniard, an Indian, an Italian, a Mexican, a Hindu, or a Japanese? Art had at first fidgeted under their stairs. What are you looking at? You goddamn pack of Al-Aid hyenas. But soon settled into his fuzz with Helen and forgot them, a strange thing happened to Paul. Suddenly he knew that he was apart from the people around him, apart from the pain which they had unconsciously caused. Suddenly he knew that people saw not attractiveness in his dark skin but difference, their stairs giving him to himself filled something long empty within him and were like green blades sprouting in his consciousness. There was fullness and strength and peace about it all. He saw himself cloudy but real. He saw the faces of the people at the tables around him. White lights, or as now the pink lights of the crimson gardens gave a glow and immediacy to white faces. The pleasure of it equal to that of love or dream of seeing this art and boner and Helen. He'd look, they were wonderfully flushed and beautiful, not for himself because they were distantly, who were they anyway? God, if he knew them, he'd come in with them. Of that he was sure, come where, into light. Yes, no, into the crimson gardens, a part of life. A carbon bubble, would it look purple if we went out into the night and looked at it? His sudden starting to rise almost upset the table. What in hell, pardon, what's the matter, Paul? I forgot my cigarettes, you're a smoking one. So I am, pardon me. The waiter straightens them out, takes their order. Art, what in hell's eating Paul? Mooney, ain't the word for it, from bad to worse. And those goddamn people staring so. Paul's a queer fish, doesn't seem to mind, he's my pal. Let me tell you, you horn-rimmed, I'll hide Hyena at that table, and a lot better than you, whoever you are. Queer about him, I could stick up for him if he'd only come out one way or the other and tell a fella, besides a roommate has a right to know. Things I won't understand, said so. He's got a swell head when it comes to brains, all right. God, he's a good straight fella though. Only Mooney, nut, nut-ish, nut-ery, nut-make. What'd you say, Helen? I was talking to Bono, thank you. Well, it's nothing to get spiffy about. What? Oh, of course not. Please, let's don't start some silly argument all over again. Well, well, now that's enough. Say, waiter, what's the matter with our order? Make it snappy, will you? Crimson gardens, hurrah, so one feels. The drinks come for high balls. Heart passes, cigarettes a girl, dressed like a bareback rider in flaming pink, makes her way through tables to the dance floor. All lights are dim til they seem a lush afterglow of crimson. Spotlights the girl, she sings, Liza, little Liza Jane. Paul is rosy before his window. He moves slightly towards Bono. With his own glow, he seeks to penetrate the dark pain. Paul, from the south, what does that mean? Precisely, except that you'll love or hate a nigger. That's a lot. What does it mean, except that in Chicago, you'll have the courage to neither love or hate a priority. But it would seem that you have queer words, aren't these for a man who wears blue pants on a gym floor in the daytime? Well, never matter. You matter. I'd like to know you, whom I look at. No, not love, not that knowing is a greater pleasure, but that I have just found the joy of it. You came just a month too late, even this afternoon I dreamed. Tonight along the boulevard, you found me cold. Paul jumps in cold. That's a good one, eh? Art, you fine old stupid fellow you, but I feel good the color and the music in the song. A negrous chance of lullaby beneath. The mate eyes about Southern planter owe song and those flushed faces. Eager brilliant eyes, hard to imagine them as unawakened, your own owe. They're awake all right and you know it too, don't you, Bono? What Paul, the truth of what I was thinking. I'd like to know, I know, something of you. You will before the evening's over, I promise it. Grims and gardens hurrah, so one feels. The bearback writer balances, adjoily, on the applause, which is the tale of her song. Orchestral instruments warm up for jazz. The flute is a cat that ripples its fur against the deep purring saxophone. The drum throws sticks, thick cat jumps on the piano keyboard. I diddle, I diddle the cat and the fiddle. Grims and gardens hurrah, jumps over the moon. Grims and gardens, Helen, oh Eliza, rabbit eyes sparkling, plays up to and tries to placate what she considers to be Paul's contempt. She always does that. Little Eliza Jane wants home. She burns with the thought of what she's done. She says all manner of snidey things about him and swears that she'll never go out again when he is along. She tries to get art to break with him saying that if Paul, whom the whole dormitory calls a nigger, is more to him than she is, well, she's through. She does not break with art. She goes out as often as she can with art and Paul. She explains this to herself by a piece of information which a friend of hers had given her, men like him, Paul, can fascinate. One is not responsible for fascination. Not one girl had really loved Paul. He fascinated them, but when he didn't, only thought she did, time would tell. And of course, she didn't. Eliza, she plays up to and tries to play Kate Paul. Paul is so deep these days and I'm so glad he's found someone to interest him. I don't believe I do. The thought escapes from Bono just a moment before her anger, that having said it, Bono, you little puffy cat, I do, I do. Don't I, Paul? Her eyes ask. Her answer is a crash of jazz from the palm hidden orchestra. Crimson gardens as a body whose blood flows to a clot upon the dance floor. Art and Helen clot. Soon Bono and Paul. Paul finds her a little stiff and his mind wandering to Helen. Silly little kid who wants every high ball spoon. Her hands touch for a souvenir. Supple, perfect little dancer wishes for the next dance when he and Art will exchange. Bono knows that she must win him to herself since when have men like you grown cold? The first philosopher. I thought you were a poet or a gym director. Hence your failure to make love. Bono's eyes flare, water grow red about the rims. She would like to tear away from him and dash across the clotted floor. What do you mean? Mental concepts rule you if they were flush with mine. Good, I don't believe they are. How do you know, Mr. Philosopher? Mostly a priori. You talk well for a gym director and you. I hate you, ooh. She presses away, Paul, conscious of the convention in it, pulls her to him. Her body close, her head still strains away. He nearly crushes her, she tries to pinch him, then sees people staring and lets her arms fall. Their eyes meet, both contemptuous. The dance takes blood from their minds and packs it, tingling in the torsos of their swaying bodies. Passionate blood leaps back into their eyes. They are a dizzy blood clot on a gyrating floor. They know that the pink-faced people have no part in what they feel. Their instinct leads them away from art and hellen and towards the big, uniformed black man who opens and closes the gilded exit door. The cloakroom girl is tolerant of their impatience over such trivial things as wraps and slightly superior. As the black man swings the door for them, his eyes are knowing. Too many couples have passed out, flushed and fidgety for him not to know. The chill air is a shock to Paul. A strange thing happens. He sees the garden's purple as if he were way off and a spot is in the purple. The spot comes furiously towards him, face of the black man it leers. It smiles sweetly like a child. Paul leaves Bona and darts back so quickly that he doesn't give the doorman a chance to open. He swings in, stops before the huge bulk of the Negro. You're wrong, Yasser. Brother, you're wrong. I came back to tell you, to shake your hand and tell you that you are wrong. That something beautiful is going to happen. That the gardens are purple, like a bed of roses would be at dusk. That I came into the gardens into life in the gardens with one whom I did not know that I danced with her and did not know her. That I felt passion, contempt and passion for her, whom I did not know that I thought of her. That my thoughts were matches thrown into a dark window and all the while the gardens were purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk. I came back to tell you, brother, that white faces are petals of roses. That dark faces are petals of dusk. That I'm going out and gather petals. That I'm going out and know her, whom I brought here with me to these gardens, which are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk. Paul and the black man shook hands when he reached the spot where they had been standing. Bona was gone. End of section 28, section 29 of Cain by Jean Tumor. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Cabinus, part one, one. Ralph Cabinus propped in his bed, tries to read, to read himself to sleep. An oil lamp on a chair near his elbow burns unsteadily. The cabin room is spaced fantastically about it. Whitewashed hearth and chimney black with sooty, salty. Ceiling patterned by the fringed globe of the lamp. The walls unpainted are seasoned to rosin yellow. And cracks between the boards are black. These cracks are the lips the night winds used for whispering. Night winds in Georgia are vagrant poets whispering. Cabinus against his will lets his book slip down and this is to them. The warm whiteness of his bed, the lamp light, do not protect him from the weird chill of their song. White man's land niggers sing, burn bare black children till poor rivers bring rest and sweet glory in campground. Cabinus thin hair is streaked on the pillow. His hand strokes the slim silk of his mustache. His thumb pressed under his chin seems to be trying to give squareness and projection to it. Brown eyes stare from a lemon face. Moisture gathers beneath his armpits. He slides down beneath the cover seeking release. Cabinus near me now. Whoever you are, my warm glowing sweetheart, do not think that the face that rests beside you is the real Cabinus. Ralph Cabinus is a dream and dreams are faces with large eyes and weak gins and broad bras that get smashed by the fists of square faces. The body of the world is bull necked. A dream is a soft face that fits uncertainly upon it. God, if I could develop that in words, give what I know a bull neck and a heaving body, all would go well with me wouldn't it sweetheart. If I could feel that I came to the south to face it, if I, the dream, not what is weak and afraid in me could become the face of the south. How my lips would sing for it, my songs being the lips of its soul, soul, soul, hell. There ain't no such thing. What in hell was that? A rat had run across the thin boards of the ceiling. Cabinus thrusts his head out from the covers through the cracks of powdery faded red dust sprays down on him. Dust of slave fields dried, scattered, no use to read. Christ, if he only could drink himself to sleep, something as sure as fate was going to happen, he couldn't stand this thing much longer. A hen perched on a shelf in the adjoining room begins to tread. Her nails scrape the soft wood, her feathers gruffle. Get out of that you egg-laying bitch. Cabinus hurls a slipper against the wall. The hen flies from her perch and cackles as if the skunk were after her. Now cut out that racket. I'll ring your neck for you. Answering cackles arise in the chicken yard. Why in Christ's hell can't you leave me alone? Dammit, I wish your cackle would choke you. Choke every mother, son of them, in this God forsaken hole. Go away. By God, I'll ring your neck for you if you don't. Hell of a mess I've got him. Even the poultry is hostile. Go away, go away. By God, I'll. Cabinus jumps from his bed, his eyes are wild. He makes for the door. Burst through it, the hen driving blindly at the window pane screams, then flies and flops around, trying to elude him. Cabinus catches her. Got you now, you ski bitch. With his fingers about her neck, he thrusts open the outside door and steps out into the serene loveliness of Georgian autumn moonlight. Some distance off down in the valley, a band of pine smoke, silver gauze drifts steadily. The half moon is a white child that sleeps upon the tree tops of the forest. White winds croon its sleep song. Locker by baby, black mother sways, holding a white child on her bosom when the bow bends. Her breath hums through pine curbs. Gradle will fall. Tea, moon children, at your breaths, down will come baby, black mother. Cabinus whirls the chicken by its neck and throws the head away, picks up the hopping body warm, sticky and hides it in a clump of bushes. He wipes blood from his hands onto the coarse scant grass. Cabinus, that's done. Oh, Chromo, in the big house there, will wonder what's become of her pet hen. Well, it'll teach her a lesson, not to make a hen coop of my quarters. Quarters, hell of a fine quarters I've got. Five years now, look at me now, earth's child. The earth, my mother, God is a profligate, red-nosed man about town. Bastardy, me, a bastard son has got a right to curse his maker. God, Cabinus is about to shake his fists heavenward. He looks up and the night's beauty strikes him dumb. He falls to his knees, sharp stones cut through his thin pajamas. The shock sends a shiver over him. He quivers, tears mist his eyes, he rides. God almighty, dear God, dear Jesus, do not torture me with beauty. Take it away, give me an ugly world. Ha, ugly, stinking like unwashed niggers. Dear Jesus, do not chain me to myself and set these hills and valleys heaving with folk songs so close to me that I cannot reach them. There's a radiant beauty in the night that touches and tortures me. Ugg, hell, get up, you damn fool. Look around, what's beautiful there? Hog pens and chicken yards, dirty red mud, stinking out house, what's beauty anyway? But ugliness, if it hurts, you. God, he doesn't exist, but nevertheless he is ugly. Hence, what comes from him is ugly, lynchers and businessmen, and that cockroach, Hanby especially. How come that he gets to be principal of a school? Of the school I'm driven to teach him. God's handy work, doubtless. God and Hanby, they belong together. Two goddamn mauls, powders. Oh no, I won't let that emotion come up in me. Stay down, stay down, I tell you. Oh Jesus, thou art beautiful. Come Ralph, pull yourself together. Curses and adoration don't come from what is sane. This loneliness, dumbness, awful, intangible oppression is enough to drive a man insane. Miles from nowhere, a speck on a Georgia hillside. Jesus, can you imagine it? An atom of dust in agony on a hillside. That's a spectacle for you. Come Ralph, oh man, pull yourself together. Cadness has stiffened. He is conscious now of the night wind and of how it chills him. He rises, he totters as a man would, who for the first time uses artificial limbs as a completely artificial man would. The large framehouse squatting on brick pillars where the principal of the school, his wife and the boarding girls sleep seems a curious shadow of his mind. He tries but cannot convince himself of its reality. His gaze drifts down into the veil across the swamp up over the solid dusk bank of pines and rests bewildered like on the courthouse tower. It is dull silver in the moonlight, white child that sleeps upon the top of pines, cabinets, mine, clears. He sees himself yanked beneath that tower. He sees white mines with indolent assumption, juggled justice and a nigger, somewhere far off in the straight line of his sight is Augusta, Christ cut off from everything he is. And hours, hours north, why not say a lifetime north Washington sleeps? It's still peaceful streets, how desirable they are. It's people whom he had always halfway despised. New York, impossible, it was a fiction. He had dreamed it an impotent nostalgia grips him. It becomes intolerable. He forces himself to narrow to a cabin, silhouetted on a knoll about a mile away. Peace, niggers within it are content. They farm, they sing, they love, they sleep. Cabinus wonders if perhaps they can feel him. If perhaps he gives them bad dreams, things are so immediate in Georgia. Thinking that now he can go to sleep, he reenters his room. He builds a fire in the open heart. The room dances to the tongues of flames and sings to the crackling and spurting of the logs. Wind comes up between the floorboards through the black cracks of the walls. Cabinus can't sleep like a cigarette. If that old bastard comes over here and smells smoke, I'm done for. Hell of a note, can't even smoke. The stillness of it, where they burn and hang men, you can't smoke. Can't take a swig of liquor. What do they think this is anyway, some sort of temperance school? How did I ever land in such a whole? Ugg, one might just as well be in his grave. Still is a grave. Jesus, how still everything is. Does the world know how still it is? People make noise. They were afraid of silence, of what lives and God, of what dies in silence. There must be many dead things moving in silence. They come here to touch me. I swear I feel their fingers. Come Ralph, pull yourself together. What in hell was that? Only the rustle of leaves, I guess. You know Ralph, old man. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see a ghost. People don't think there are such things. They rationalize their fear and call their cowardice science. Fine bunch they are. Damn it, that was a noise. And not the wind either, a chicken maybe. Hell chickens don't wander around this time of night. What in hell is it? A scraping sound like a piece of wood dragging over the ground is coming near. Ha, ha, the ghosts down this way haven't got any chains to rattle. So they drag trees along with them. That's a good one, but no joke. Something is outside this house, as sure as hell. Whatever it is, it can get a good look at me and I can't see it, Jesus Christ. Cabinets pours water on the flames and blows his lamp out. He picks up a poker and stealthily approaches the outside door, swings it open and lurches into the night. A calf carrying a yoke of wood bolts away from him and scampers down the road. Well, I'm damned. This goddamn place is sure getting the best of me. Come Ralph, old man, pull yourself together. Nights can't last forever. Thank God for that. It's Sunday already, first time in my life. I've ever wanted Sunday to come. Hell of a day and down here, there's no such thing as ducking church. Well, I'll see Halsey and layman and get a good square meal. That's something and Halsey's a damn good fellow. Can't talk to him though. Who in Christ's world can I talk to? I can, God, myself. I'm going bats, no doubt of that. Come now Ralph, go in and make yourself go to sleep. Come now in the door, that's right. Put the poker down there. All right, slip under the sheets. Close your eyes, think nothing. A long time, nothing, nothing. Don't even think nothing, blank, not even blank. Count, no mustn't count, nothing blank, nothing blank, space without stars in it. No, nothing, nothing. Cabinus sleeps the winds like soft-voiced vagrant poets sing. White man's land, niggers sing. Burn, bare black children till poor rivers bring rest and sweet glory in campground. To the parlor of Fred Halsey's home. There's a seediness about it. It seems as though the fittings have given a frugal service to at least seven generations of middle-class shop owners. An open grape burns cheerfully in contrast to the great cold-changed autumn weather. An old-fashioned mantelpiece supports a family clock not running a figure or two in imitation bronze and two small group pictures directly above it in a heavy oak frame. The portrait of a bearded man, black hair thick and curly intensifies the parlor of the high forehead. The eyes are daring, the nose sharp and regular, the poise suggests the tendency to adventure, check by the necessities of absolute command. The portrait is that of an English gentleman who has retained much of his culture in that money has enabled him to escape being drawn through a land-grubbing pioneer life. His nature and features modified by marriage and circumstances have been transmitted to his great-grandson Fred. To the left of this picture, spaced on the wall, is a smaller portrait of the great-grandmother that here there is a negro strain, no one would doubt, but it is difficult to say and precisely what feature it lies. On close inspection, her mouth has seemed to be wistfully twisted. The expression of her face seems to shift before one's gaze, now ugly repulsive, now sad and somehow beautiful in its pain. A tin wood box rests on the floor below to the right of the great-grandfather's portrait, hangs a family group, the father, mother, two brothers, and one sister of Fred. It includes himself some 30 years ago when his face was in olive white and his hair luxuriant and dark and wavy. The father is a rich brown, the mother practically white of the children. The girl quite young is like Fred, the two brothers darker. The walls of the room are plastered and painted green. An old upright piano is tucked into the corner near the window. The window looks out on a full-on box-like white-washed-framed church. Negroes are gathering on foot, driving questionable gray and brown mules and in an occasional ford for afternoon service. Beyond, Georgia Hills roll off into the distance. Their dreary aspect heightened by the gray spots of unpainted one and two room shanties. Clumps of pine trees here and there are the dark points. The whole landscape is approaching. The church bell tolls. Above is squat tower. A great spiral of buzzards reaches far into the heavens. An ironic comment upon the path that leads into the Christian land. Three rocking chairs are grouped around the grate. Sunday papers scattered on the floor indicate a recent usage. Halsey, a well-built stocky fellow. Hair crop-close enters the room. His Sunday clothes smell of wood and glue for it is his habit to potter around his wagon shop even on the Lord's Day. He is followed by Professor Lehmann, tall, heavy, loose, jointed Georgia Negro by terms teacher and preacher who has traveled in almost every nook and corner of the state and hence knows more than would be good for anyone other than a silent man. Cabinets trying to force through are gathering heaviness trails in behind them. They slip into chairs before the fire. Lehmann, showly fine. Mr. Halsey, showly fine. This town's right good at feeding folks better than most towns in the state, even for preachers. But I can say this beats them all. Yes, sir. Now ain't that right, Professor Cabinets? Cabinets, yes, sir. This beats them all, all right. That's the best I've had and that's the fact. Though my comparison doesn't carry far, you know. Lehmann, how's that, Professor Cabinets? Well, this is my first time out. Lehmann, for a fact, ain't CG round so much. What's the trouble? Don't like our folks down this the way? Halsey, ain't that Lehmann? He ain't like most northern niggers that way. Ain't a thing stuck up about him. He likes us, you and me, maybe all. It's that red mud over yonder that gets stuck in it and can't get out last. And then he loves the fire, so warm as it's been. Cold as Yankee I've ever seen, but I'm going to get him out now in a Jiffy A. Cabinets? Cabinets, sure. I should say so, sure. Don't think it's because I don't like folks down this way, just the opposite in fact. There's more hospitality and everything. That is, there's lots of northern exaggeration about the South. It's not half the terror they picture. Things are not half bad. As one could easily figure out for himself without ever crossing the Mason and Dixon line, all these people wouldn't stay down here, especially the rich, the ones that could easily leave if conditions were so mighty bad. And then too, sometime back, my family were at Southern, as you know, from Georgia in fact, layman, nothing to feel proud about. Professor, neither your folks nor mine, Halsey in a mock religious tone. Amen to that, brother layman. Amen, turning to Cabinets, half faithful, yet somehow dead and earnest. And Mr. Cabinets, kindly remember, you're in the land of cotton, hell of a land. The white folks get the bowl, the niggas get the stalk, and don't you dare touch the bowl or even look at it. They'll swing you show. Laughs. Cabinets, but they wouldn't touch a gentleman. Fellows, men like us three here. Layman, niggers a nigger down this array, Professor, and only two dividends, good and bad. And even they ain't permanent categories. They sometimes mixes them up. When it comes to lynching, I've seen them do it. Halsey, don't let the fear into you. Though, Cabinets, this county's a good one. Ain't been a stringin' up, I can remember. Laughs. Layman, this is a good town and a good county, but there's some that makes up for it. Cabinets, things are better now, though, since that's stir about those pia, nage cases, aren't they? Layman, ever hear tell of a single shot killin'? More than one rabbit, Professor. Cabinets, no, of course not. That is, but then Halsey. Now, I know you weren't born yesterday. Sprung up so rapid like you ain't heard of the brick thrown in the hornet's nest. Laughs. Cabinets, hardly, hardly, I know. Halsey, course you do, too, Layman. See, nor the niggers ain't as dumb as they make out to be. Cabinets, overlooking the remark, just stirs them up to sting Halsey to perfection and put just like a professor should put it. Cabinets, that's what actually did happen, Layman. Well, if it ain't so's only because the stingers already movin' just as fast as they can go and been goin' ever since I can remember and then some oh, though I don't usually make mention of it, Halsey. Damn sight, better not. Say, Layman, you come from where they're always swarmin', don't you? Layman, yes, sir, I do that show. Don't want to mention it, but it's a fact I've seen the time when there weren't no use to even stretch out, flight upon the ground, seen him shoot and cut a man to pieces who had died the night before. Yes, sir, and they didn't stop when they found out he was dead, just went on, I can have him anyway. Cabinets, what did you do? What did you say to them, professor? Layman, them's the things you neither does a thing or talks about if you want to stay around this away, professor. Halsey, listen to what he's telling you, Cabinets. May come in handy someday. Cabinets, can't something be done? But of course, not this preacher ridden race. Pray and shout, they're in the preacher's hands, that's what it is, and the preacher's hands are in the white man's pockets. Halsey, present company always accepted. Cabinets, the professor knows I wasn't referring to him. Layman, preacher is a preacher anywhere as you turn, no use accepting. Cabinets, well, of course, if you look at it that way, I didn't mean, but can't something be done? Layman, show, yes, sir, and done first raiding well, just like Sam Raymond done it. Cabinets, how's that? What did he do? Layman, the white folks recognize and tell it, have just not two others like you kill a cow, brained them with an axe when they caught Sam Raymond by a stream. They was about to do for him when he up and says, white folks, I gotta die, I knows that, but won't you let me die in my own way? Some was for getting after him, but the boss held them back and says, just so long, the nigger dies. And Sam fell down onto his knees and prayed, oh, Lord, I was coming to you. And he up and jumps in the stream. Singing from the church becomes audible, above it rising and falling in a plaintive moan, a woman's voice swells to shouting. Cabinets hears it, his face gives way to an expression of mingled fear, contempt, and pity. Layman takes no notice of it. Halsey grins at Cabinets. He feels like having a little sport within. Halsey, let's go to church. Hey, Cabinets, Cabinets, seeking control. All right, no, sir, not by a damn sight. Once a day is enough for me, Christ, but that stuff gets to me, meaning no reflection on you, professor. Halsey, of course not. Say, Cabinets, notice to you this morning, what do you get up for and go out? Cabinets couldn't stand the shouting, and that's the fact. We don't have that sort of thing up north. We do, but that is someone should see to it that they are stopped or put out when they get so bad the preacher has to stop their sermon for them. Halsey, is that the way you all sit on sisters up north? Cabinets, in the church, I used to go to no one ever shouting. Halsey, lungs we, Cabinets, hardly. That is Halsey. Yankees are right up the minute in telling folk how to turn a trick. They always were good at talking. Cabinets, well, anyway, they should be stopped. Layman, that's right, that's true. And it's the worst ones in the community that comes into the church to shout. I've sort of made a study of it. You take a man, what drinks, the biggest liquor head around will come into the church and yell the loudest. And the sister, what's done wrong and is always doing wrong, will sit down in the amen corner and swing her arms and shout her head off. Seems as if they can't control themselves out in the world. They can't control themselves in church. Now, don't that sound logical, Professor? Halsey, reckon it's as good as any, but I heard that queer cuss over yonder. You know him, don't you, Cabinets? Well, you ought to, you ought to run in with your boss the other day, same as you'll have if you don't walk the child climb, and the quicker the better. I hate that handbie, ornery bastard. I'll smash his mouth in one of these days. Well, as I was saying that fella, Lewis's name, I heard him saying something about a stream, what's damned has got to cut loose somewheres. And that sounds good. I know the feeling myself, he strikes me as a no, a bucket full about most things that fella does. Seems like he doesn't want to talk and does sometimes like layman here. Damn queer fella, him. Layman can't make heads or tails with him, and I've seen lots of queer possums in my day. Everybody's wondering about him. White folks do, he'll have to leave here soon. That's show, always asking questions, and I ain't see his lips move once, poking around and noting something. Noted what I said the other day, and that weren't for notein' down. Cabinets, what was that? Layman, oh, a lynching that took place about a year ago. The worst I know of round these parts. Halsey, Bill Burnham, Layman, Nah, Mame Lankins, Halsey Grunts, but says nothing. The preacher's voice rolls from the church in an insistent, janting monotone. At regular intervals, it rises to a crescendo note. The sister begins to shout her voice, high pitched and hysterical, is almost perfectly attuned to the nervous key of Cabinets. Halsey notices his distress and is amused by it. Layman's face is expressionless. Cabinets wants to hear the story of Mame Lankins. He does not want to hear it. It can be no worse than the shouting. Cabinets, his chair rocking faster. What about Mame Lankins? Halsey tellin' Layman. The preacher momentarily stops the choir together with the entire congregation. Sings an old spiritual. The music seems to quiet. The shout of her heavy breathing has the sound of evening winds that blow through pine cones. Layman's voice is uniformly low and soothing. A cane break murmuring the tail to its neighbor road would be more passionate. Layman, white folks know that niggers talk and they don't mind just so long as nothing comes of it. So here goes. She was in the family way Mame Lankins was. They killed her in the street and some white man seen the rise in her stomach as she laid there a sappy in her blood like any cow took and ripped her belly open and the kid fell out. It was living but a nigger baby ain't supposed to live. So he jabbed his knife in it and stuck it to a tree. And then they all went away. Cabinets, Christ know what have she done? Layman tried to hide her husband when they was after him. A shriek pierces the room. The bronze pieces on the mantle hum. This sister cries frantically, Jesus, Jesus. I found Jesus, oh Lord, glory to God. One mode, sinner is a common home. At the height of this a stone wrapped round with paper crashes through the window. Cabinets springs to his feet terrifically. Layman is worried. Halsey picks up the stone, takes off the wrapper, smooths it out and reads, you northern nigger is time for you to leave. Get along now. Cabinets knows that the command is meant for him. Fear squeezes him, caves him in. As a violent external pressure would. Fear flows inside him. It fills him up. He blots. He saves himself from bursting by dashing wildly from the room. Halsey and Layman stare stupidly at each other. The stone, the crumpled paper are things, huge things that weigh them. Their thoughts are vaguely concerned with the texture of the stone with the color of the paper. Then they remember the words and begin to shift them about in sentences. Layman even construes them grammatically. Suddenly the sense of them comes back to Halsey. He grips Layman by the arm and they both follow after Cabinets. A false dusk has come early. The country side is ashen, chill. Cabins and roads and cane breaks whisper. The church choir dipping into a long silence seems. My Lord, what a morning. My Lord, what a morning. My Lord, what a morning when the stars begin to fall. Softly luminous over the hills and valleys, the faint spray of a scattered star. Three, a splotchy figure drives forward along the cane and corn stalk hemmed in the road. A scarecrow replica of Cabinets, awkwardly animate. Fantastically plastered with red Georgia mud. It skirts the big house whose windows shine like mellow lanterns in the dusk. Its shoulder jogs against a sweet gum tree. The figure caroms off against the cabin door and lunges in. It slams the door as if to prevent someone entering after it. God Almighty, they're here after me, on me. All along the road I saw their eyes flaring from the cane. Hounds, shouts, what in God's name did I run here for? A mud-hole trap I stumbled on a rope. Oh, God, a rope, their clammy hands were like the love of death, playing up and down my spine, trying to trip my legs, to trip my spine, up and down my spine, my spine, my legs. Why in hell didn't they catch me? Cabinets wheels around, half defiant, half numbed with a more immediate fear. Wanted to trap me here, get out of there. I see you. He grabs a broom from beside the chimney and violently pokes it under the bed. The broom strikes a tin wash tub. The noise bewilders, he recovers. Not there in the closet. He throws the broom aside and grips the poker, starts towards the closet door, towards somewhere in the perfect blackness behind the chimney. I'll bring you. He stops short. The barks of hounds evidently in pursuit, reach him. A voice liquid in distance yells, hi, hi. Oh, God, they're after me. Holy Father, Mother of Christ, hell, this ain't no time for prayer. Voices just outside the door, reckon he's here. Don't see no light, though. The doors flung open. Cabinets, give back or I'll kill you. He braces himself, brandishing the poker. Halsey coming in, ain't as bad as all that. Put that thing down. Layman, it's only us, professor. Nobody else after you. Cabinets, Halsey, Layman, close that door. Don't light that light. For God's sake, get away from there. Halsey, nobody's after you. Cabinets, I'm telling you. Put that thing down and get yourself together. Cabinets, I tell you they are. I saw them, I heard the hounds. Halsey, these ain't the days of hounds and Uncle Tom's Cabinfeller. White folks ain't in for all them theatrics these days. They's more direct than that. If what they wanted was to get you, they'd have just marched right in and took you where you sat. Somebody's down by the branch chasing rabbits and a tree in possums. A shot is heard. Halsey, got him, I reckon. Saw Tom going out with his gun. Tom's pretty lucky most times. He goes to the bureau and lights the lamp. The circular fringe is patterned on the ceiling. The moving shadows of the men are huge against the bare wall boards. Halsey walks up to Cabinets, takes the poker from his grip, and without more, a dude pushes him into a chair before the dark heart. Halsey, you're a mess. Here, layman, get some trash and start a fire. Layman fumbles around, finds some newspapers and old bags, puts them in the heart, arranges the wood and kindles the fire. Halsey sets a black iron kettle where it soon will be boiling, then takes from his hip pocket a bottle of corn liquor, which he passes to Cabinets. Halsey here, this'll straighten you out a bit. Cabinets nervously draws the cork and gulps the liquor down. Cabinets, ah, good stuff. Thanks, thank you, Halsey. Halsey, good stuff, you're damn right. Hanby there, don't think so. Wonder he doesn't come over to find out who's burning his oil. Miserly bastard, him, the boys. What made this stuff? Are you listening to me, Cabinets? The boys, what made this stuff? I've got the art down like I heard you say. You'd like to be with words. A, have some, layman. Layman, don't think I care for them. Thank you, just the same, Mr. Halsey. Halsey care hell, of course you care. Everybody cares around these parts, preachers and schoolteachers and everybody. Here, here, take it. Don't try that line on me. Layman limbers up a little, but he cannot quite forget that he is on school ground. Layman, that's right. That's true, show, shining is the only business what pays in these hard times. He takes a nip and passes the bottle to Cabinets. Cabinets is in the middle of a long swig when it wraps sounds on the door. He almost spills the bottle but manages to pass it to Halsey just as the door swings open and Hanby enters. He is a well-dressed, smooth, rich, black-skinned negro who thinks there is no one quite so suave and polished as himself. To members of his own race, he affects manners of a wealthy white planter or when he is up north, he lets it be known that his ideas are those of the best New England tradition to white men he bows without ever completely humbling himself. Traseman in the town tolerate him because he spends his money with them. He delivers his words with a full consciousness of his moral superiority. Hanby, error, Professor Cabinets, to come straight to the point, the progress of the negro race is jeopardized whenever the personal habits and examples set by its guides and mentors fall below the acknowledged and hard won standard of its average member. This institution of which I am the humble president was founded and has been maintained at a cost of great labor and untold sacrifice. Its purpose is to teach our youth to live better, cleaner, more noble lives. To prove to the world that the negro race can be just like any other race. It hopes to attain this aim partly by the salutary examples set by its instructors. I cannot hinder the progress of a race simply to indulge a single member. I thought the matter out beforehand. I can assure you therefore, if I find your resignation on my desk by tomorrow morning, Mr. Cabinets, I shall not feel obliged to call in the sheriff. Otherwise, Cabinets, a fellow, can take a drink in his own room if he wants to in the privacy of his own room. Hanby, his room, but not the institution's room, Mr. Cabinets. Cabinets, this is my room while I'm in it. Hanby, Mr. Claiborne, the sheriff, can inform you as to that. Cabinets, oh well, what do I care? Glad to get out of this mud hole. Hanby, I should think so from your looks. Cabinets, you needn't get sarcastic about it. Hanby, no, that is true. And I needn't wait for your resignation either, Mr. Cabinets. Cabinets, oh, you'll get that all right. Don't worry. Hanby, and I should like to have the room thoroughly aired and cleaned and ready for your successor by tomorrow morning, Professor. Cabinets, trying to rise. You can have your goddamn room right away. I don't want it. Hanby, but I won't have your cursing. Halsey pushes Cabinets back into his chair. Halsey, sit down, Cabinets. Till I wash your Hanby to Halsey, I would rather not have drinking men on the premises. Mr. Halsey, you will oblige me. Halsey, I'll oblige you by staying right on this spot. This spot, get me till I get damned ready to leave. He approaches Hanby, Hanby retreats, but manages to hold his dignity. Halsey, let me get you told right now. Mr. Samuel Hanby, now listen to me. Ain't no slick-and-span slave you've hired and don't you think it for a minute. You've bullied enough about this town. And besides, where's that bill you've been owing me? Listen to me. If I don't get it paid in by tomorrow noon, Mr. Hanby, he mockingly assumes Hanby's tone and manner, I shall feel obliged to call the sheriff. And that sheriff will be my cellful, catch you in the road and pull you out your buggy and rightly attend to you. You heard me. Now leave him alone. I'm taking him home with me. I got it fixed before you came in. He's going to work with me, shaping shafts and building wagons. We'll make a man of him. What nobody can give me, what nobody can take advantage of, that's all. Halsey burrs off into begging incoherent comment, pause, disagreeable, lame as eyes or grazed on the spurting fire. Cabinus wants to rise and put both Halsey and Hanby in their places. He vaguely knows that he must do this, else the power of direction were completely slipped from him to those outside. The conviction is just strong enough to torture him, to bring a feverish quick passing flare into his eyes, to mother words soggy and hot saliva, to jerk his arms upward in futile protest. Halsey, noticing his gestures, thinks it is water that he desires. He brings a glass to him. Cabinus swings it to the floor, heated the conviction dies, his arms crumple, his upper lip, his mustache, quiver. Wrap, wrap on the door, the sounds slap Cabinus. They bring a hectic color to his cheeks like huge cold fingertips. They touch his skin and goose flesh it. Hanby strikes a commanding pose. He moves toward layman. Layman's face is innocently immobile. Halsey, who's there? Voice, Lewis, Halsey, come in, Lewis, come on in. Lewis enters, he is the queer fellow who has been referred to. A tall, wiry, copper-colored man, 30 perhaps, his mouth and eyes suggest purpose, guided by an adequate intelligence. He is what a stronger Cabinus might have been, and in an odd faint way resembles him. As he steps towards the others, he seems to be issuing sharply from a vivid dream. Lewis shakes hands with Halsey, nods perfunctorily to Hanby, who has stiffened to meet him, smiles rapidly at layman, and settles with real interest on Cabinus. Lewis, Cabinus passed me on the road, had a piece of business of my own and couldn't give here any sooner, thought I might be able to help him some way or other. Halsey, a good baths about all he needs now and something to put his mind to rest. Lewis, I think I can give him that. That note was meant for me. Some Negroes have grown uncomfortable at my being here. Cabinus, you mean Mr. Lewis? Some colored folks threw it Christ Almighty. Halsey, that's what he means and just as I told you, white folks more direct than that. Cabinus, what are they after you for? Lewis, it's a long story, Cabinus, too long for now and that might involve present company. He laughs pleasantly and gestures vaguely in the direction of Hanby. Tell you about it later on, perhaps. Cabinus, you're not going. Lewis, not till my month's up. Halsey, how's that? Lewis, I'm on a sort of contract with myself. He's about to leave. Well, glad it's nothing serious. Halsey, come around to the shop sometime. Why don't you, Lewis? I've asked you enough. I'd like to have a talk with you. I ain't as dumb as I look. Cabinus and me will be in most any time. Not much worth these days. Wish the hell there was. This bird gets to me when there ain't. In answer to Lewis's question, he's going to work with me. Yeah, right there, the side of the branch. Ain't good for him. Looks at Hanby, laughs. Lewis, I see. His eyes turn to Cabinus. In the instant of their shifting a vision of a life, they are to me. Cabinus, a promise of a soil-soaked beauty, uprooted, thinning out, suspended a few feet above the soil whose touch would resurrect him, arms length removed from him, whose will to help. There is a swift, intuitive interchange of consciousness. Cabinus has a sudden need to rush into the arms of this man. His eyes call, brother. And then a savage, cynical twist about within him mocks his impulse and strengthens him to repulse Lewis. His lips curl cruelly. His eyes laugh. They are glittering needles stitching with a throbbing ache. They draw Lewis to. Lewis brusquely wheels on Hanby. Lewis, I'd like to see you, sir, a moment. If you don't mind. Hanby's tight collar and vest effectively preserve him. Hanby, yes, sir. Mr. Lewis, right away. Lewis, see you later, Halsey. Halsey, so long. Thanks. Show hope so, Lewis. As he opens the door, and Hanby passes out a woman. Miles down the valley begins to sing. Her song is a spark that travels swiftly to the nearby cabins, like purple tallow flames. Songs jet up. They spread a ruddy haze over the heavens. The haze swings low. Now the whole countryside is a soft chorus. Lord, oh Lord. Lewis closes the door behind him, a flame jets out. The kettle is boiling. Halsey notices it. He pulls the wash tub from beneath the bed. He arranges for the bath before the fire. Halsey told you them theatrics didn't fit a white man. The niggers just like I told you. And after him ain't surprising, though. He ain't bowed to none of them. Nah, sir, to nary one of them nary an inch, nary a time. And only mixed when he was good and ready. Cabinus, that song Halsey, do you hear it? Halsey, that's a man. Hear me, Cabinus. A man. Cabinus, Jesus, do you hear it? Halsey, hear it? Hear what? Of course I hear it. Listen to what I'm telling you. A man, get me. They'll get him yet if he don't watch out. Cabinus is jolted into his fear. Cabinus, get him. What do you mean? Hal, not lynching. Halsey, nah, take a shotgun and shoot his eyes clear out. Well, anyway, it wasn't for you, just like I told you. You will stay over at the house and work with me, a boy, good to get away from his knobs, eh? Damn big stiff though him and you're not the first and I can tell you, laughs. He bustles and fusses about Cabinus as if he were a child. Cabinus submits weirdly. He has no will to resist him. Lehman, his voice is like a deep hollow echo. That's right, that's true, show. Everybody's been expecting that the bust up was coming. Surprised them all, you held on as long as you did. Teaching in the south ain't the thing for you. Nassar, you ought to be way back up north where sometimes I wish I was, but I've hung on down this away so long. Halsey, and there'll never be no Lehman time for you. End of section 29.