“Whatever it is, I want no feathers flying. I want peace and calm, quiet and no arguments, that is, in my private life. There is also one more resolve I have resolved. Believe it or not, buddy-o, and that is this: To let the Race Problem roll off my mind like water off a duck’s back—pay it no attention any more. I have been worrying as long as I have been black. Since I have to be black a long time yet, what is the sense of so much worriation? The next time I read where they have lynched or bombed a Negro, I will just shrug my shoulders and say, ‘It warn’t me.’ The next time I hear tell of a colored singer barred out of Constitution Hall in Washington, I will say, ‘I ain’t no singer.’ Next time I hear that colored folks can’t eat in the Stork Club, I will say, ‘Chitterlings is better than filet mignon anyhow.’”

“The New Year will completely change your character,” I said. “You will no longer be yourself.”

“I am already changed,” said Simple. “Like the camel, I have been threaded through the eye of a needle and come out a new man. Like the sow’s ear, I am a silk purse—only it is empty. Like the Liberty Bell, I ring for freedom. I’ve crossed the Ohio! Lend me a half, since it’s a holiday week, and I will buy us both a bottle of Bud.”

“That old habit of yours, buying drinks with borrowed money—after all those resolutions!”

“My resolutions don’t cover other people’s money,” said Simple.

Sometimes I Wonder

Sometimes I Wonder

“WHAT’s on your mind this evening?” I asked one cold January night when it was quiet at the bar, and Simple seemed depressed.

“I am trying to figure out how to stay alive until I die,” he said. “The way things are happening to me, I might not live my time out. I got troubles. It makes me sick to think of them.”

“You know what the preacher said, don’t you? ‘You might get too sick to eat. You might get too sick to sleep, too sick to work, too sick to talk—but you never get too sick to die.’”

“I know a man with all that sickness is liable to wake up some morning and find himself dead,” said Simple. “But I blame all my troubles on talking. I did not want Joyce to know I took Zarita to the Bartenders Ball—but telephone, telegraph, tell-a-Negro—and the news is out. The last is fastest—a Negro. I told Joyce’s girl friend’s boy friend, and the boy friend told his girl friend. His girl friend told Joyce. Then the rumble were on! From here on in, I will never tell nobody nothing again.”

“That is a safe rule,” I observed.