“Who’s in high society?” asked Simple. “Not me, and I don’t want to be. White folks might not gnaw bones in windows, but they sure do some awful other things. They murders their mothers almost daily. I never read of so many children knocking off their parents as here of late—but you seldom read of a colored child doing such. White folks also Jim Crows colored people, which I do not think is good manners. I had rather they gnaw a bone than segregate us. White folks blows off atom bombs and burns up people, too. It looks like to me it would be better to gnaw a bone than to singe them Marshall Islanders all up, like them pictures that they showed after that big bomb test they had out in the Pacific. Them folks will never have no more hair on their heads, and them atomized Japanese fishermens never will have no more children. I think white folks would do better to set in their front windows and gnaw bones myself, even if they were not so high-tone. Bone-gnawing, to my mind, is better than bomb-bursting. Atom bombs is low-rating the tone of the whole world. When I gnaw my bone or suck my chicken neck, I am not hurting a human soul.”

“You’re hurting your wife if you make her feel bad,” I said. “So for Joyce’s sake, if not your own, you could suck your chicken necks and gnaw your pork-chop bones in private. In fact, consideration for others begins at home—which might in a sense explain the behavior of American white folks. They’ve gotten so accustomed to mistreating Negroes at home in the past that it is hard for them to care about what colored folks in Asia think. And if you keep on gnawing bones in spite of what Joyce thinks, after a while you will not care what anybody else thinks either. From your own selfishness in regard to your wife’s wishes, it is only a step to being inconsiderate of everyone everywhere. Consideration begins inside yourself first, right where you are, at home. Bones and bombs are not unrelated, pal. And certainly good manners are better than chicken necks or pork-chop bones.”

“From whence did you get such wrong information about such good food?” asked Simple.

A Dog Named Trilby

A Dog Named Trilby

“ONCE when I were a child in Virginia, I knowed an old white lady who had a dog named Trilby,” said Simple. “Trilby were black with white feet, white around the eyes, and she walked sort of sideways so you did not know if she were going or coming. Trilby and that old lady was both very old and very mean—but Trilby was the meanest. Both were mean, but that dog had her beat.