“I’m aware of that noble fact, Dad. I’ve seen him captaining in the bank…. Cap, excuse me for my bumptiousness. I have some reason for being in a temper. I’ve just been in God’s holy temple, listening to the Reverend Dr. Jat Snood, that Kansas Fundamentalist Evangelist and all-around bastard. I doubt if I’d ever have gotten in if the ushers had known I’m a spook, blast their worm-eaten souls and slimy handshakes. But I did, and I heard Snood explain that Jesus wants the frozen-toed Christians up here in Minnesota to chase all us niggers back to Georgia. So the Captain must excuse me if I get rough when I find one of the pious ofays here in this low shack.”

“Ryan,” said Mr. Woolcape, “shut up!”

“Ryan,” said Mrs. Woolcape, “Mr. Kingsblood is not a white man, legally.”

(–-I knew I shouldn’t’ve told!)

“He is one of us, Ryan. He’s just found it out. You’re under pledge of complete secrecy, by the way. He came to us for advice and friendship, and then you go and talk like a Texas sheriff!”

Ryan held out his heavy paw to Neil, smiled like a happy giant, and grunted, “I don’t know whether to be pleased or sympathetic, but I always thought you looked like a good guy, for an officer, and now I understand why. Welcome! Sure, I’ll say nothing, and I’m sorry I shot my mouth off. But in the Army you get to hate all white officers.”

Neil demanded, “Why? Did you really run into much discrimination? It happens I didn’t serve with any colored troops.”

“I’ll tell you, Cap. One camp where I was in the South, the white G.I.‘s had movies or U.S.O. shows every night, in a big theater, and swell rooms for playing cards and writing letters, and all the buses they wanted into town, and dozens of bars. We had movies only once a week, no place to write letters, and we had to walk two miles to a bus, and not enough buses and no bars, and the white M.P.‘s watching you, making you feel like a criminal.

“And our colored officers had no power—they were just token officers, to keep the black vote happy. Colored colonels on shaky old jimcrow cars. One colored captain, in uniform, traveling on official business, was thrown into a civilian jail because there was no phone in the colored waiting-room, so he had to step into the white waiting-room to telephone—to his commanding officer!

“But I did get one thing out of it: a trip to Burma and Java, where I learned what the local boys thought about their being jimcrowed and how glad they’ll be to join us American untouchables against the whole damn world oligarchy of whites!”