“‘I can see through you,’ she hollered. ‘You just scared somebody will spy you talking to me out here in the broad daylight and go tell that female friend of yourn. Well, you ain’t gonna drive me off with your insulting remarks. This is a public park. I aims to set right here on this bench with you, Jess Simple, and listen to that radio until the Dodgers come on. I follows Jackie.’

“‘You will have to follow Jackie on somebody else’s radio,’ I said. ‘I will not be seen setting in the park with no uncombed woman. Neither do I know you that well, Zarita, for you to set down here with me.’

“‘I set on a bar stool with you,’ says Zarita.

“‘Not on the same stool,’ I says. ‘Woman, unhand me and lemme go.’

“Don’t you know I had trouble getting away from that girl. Zarita pitched a boogie right there in the park and she has got a voice like a steam calliope. I cut out and went up to Joyce’s house.

“When I rung Joyce’s bell, she comes to the door in her wrapper and says, ‘Baby, I thought you was going to set in the park until I got dressed.’

“I said, ‘Joyce, you took too long. Let’s go to a nice air-cooled movie instead of setting in the park listening to the ball game today. I hear Jackie’s twisted his ankle, anyhow.’ And I put that radio down and took that woman the other way, so she would not run into Zarita.”

“Your sins will find you out,” I said.

“I don’t care nothing about my sins finding me out,” said Simple, “just so Joyce don’t find out about my sins—especially when their hair ain’t combed.”

Temptation

Temptation

“WHEN the Lord said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light, what I want to know is where was us colored people?”

“What do you mean, ‘Where were we colored people?’” I said.

“We must not of been there,” said Simple, “because we are still dark. Either He did not include me or else I were not there.”

“The Lord was not referring to people when He said, ‘Let there be light.’ He was referring to the elements, the atmosphere, the air.”

“He must have included some people,” said Simple, “because white people are light, in fact, white, whilst I am dark. How come? I say, we were not there.”

“Then where do you think we were?”

“Late as usual,” said Simple, “old C. P. Time. We must have been down the road a piece and did not get back on time.”

“There was no C. P. Time in those days,” I said. “In fact, no people were created—so there couldn’t be any Colored People’s Time. The Lord God had not yet breathed the breath of life into anyone.”

“No?” said Simple.