Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Copyright Page
Note
I. STORM
II. CONVERSATION
III. JIMBOY’S LETTER
IV. THURSDAY AFTERNOON
V. GUITAR
VI. WORK
VII. WHITE FOLKS
VIII. DANCE
IX. CARNIVAL
X. PUNISHMENT
XI. SCHOOL
XII. HARD WINTER
XIII. CHRISTMAS
XIV. RETURN
XV. ONE BY ONE
XVI. NOTHING BUT LOVE
XVII. BARBER-SHOP
XVIII. CHILDREN’S DAY
XIX. TEN DOLLARS AND COSTS
XX. HEY, BOY!
XXI. NOTE TO HARRIETT
XXII. BEYOND THE JORDAN
XXIII. TEMPY’S HOUSE
XXIV. A SHELF OF BOOKS
XXV. POOL HALL
XXVI. THE DOORS OF LIFE
XXVII. BEWARE OF WOMEN
XXVIII. CHICAGO
XXIX. ELEVATOR
XXX. PRINCESS OF THE BLUES

I. STORM

AUNT Hager Williams stood in her doorway and looked out at the sun. The western sky was a sulphurous yellow and the sun a red ball dropping slowly behind the trees and house-tops. Its setting left the rest of the heavens grey with clouds.

“Huh! A storm’s comin’,” said Aunt Hager aloud.

A pullet ran across the back yard and into a square-cut hole in an unpainted piano-box which served as the roosting-house. An old hen clucked her brood together and, with the tiny chicks, went into a small box beside the large one. The air was very still. Not a leaf stirred on the green apple-tree. Not a single closed flower of the morning-glories trembled on the back fence. The air was very still and yellow. Something sultry and oppressive made a small boy in the doorway stand closer to his grandmother, clutching her apron with his brown hands.

“Sho is a storm comin’,” said Aunt Hager.

“I hope mama gets home ’fore it rains,” remarked the brown child holding to the old woman’s apron. “Hope she gets home.”

“I does, too,” said Aunt Hager. “But I’s skeared she won’t.”

Just then great drops of water began to fall heavily into the back yard, pounding up little clouds of dust where each drop struck the earth. For a few moments they pattered violently on the roof like a series of hammer-strokes; then suddenly they ceased.

“Come in, chile,” said Aunt Hager.

She closed the door as the green apple-tree began to sway in the wind and a small hard apple fell, rolling rapidly down the top of the piano-box that sheltered the chickens. Inside the kitchen it was almost dark. While Aunt Hager lighted an oil-lamp, the child climbed to a chair and peered through the square window into the yard. The leaves and flowers of the morning-glory vines on the back fence were bending with the rising wind. And across the alley at the big house, Mrs. Kennedy’s rear screen-door banged to and fro, and Sandy saw her garbage-pail suddenly tip over and roll down into the yard, scattering potato-peelings on the white steps.

“Sho gwine be a terrible storm,” said Hager as she turned up the wick of the light and put the chimney on. Then, glancing through the window, she saw a black cloud twisting like a ribbon in the western sky, and the old woman screamed aloud in sudden terror: “It’s a cyclone! It’s gwine be a cyclone! Sandy, let’s get over to Mis’ Carter’s quick, ’cause we ain’t got no cellar here. Come on, chile, let’s get! Come on, chile! . . . Come on, chile!”