“‘Work does not cross your mind,’ says Joyce, turning around, ‘when you’re setting up drinking beer all by yourself—so you say—at Paddy’s. I do not see why you have to mention work to me when I am enjoying myself. The way that man plays “Stardust” sends me. I swear it do. Sends me. Sends me!’

“‘Be yourself, Joyce,’ I said. ‘Put your coat around your shoulders. Are you high? We are going home.’

“I took Joyce out of there. And by Saturday, to tell the truth, I had forgot all about it. Come the week end, I says, ‘Let’s walk a little, honey. Which movie do you want to see?’

“Joyce says, ‘I do not want to see a picture, daddy. They are all alike. Let’s go to the Whistle and Rest Bar.’

“‘O.K.,’ I said, because I knowed every Friday they change the music behind that bar. They had done switched to a great big old corn-fed blues man who looked like Ingagi, hollered like a mountain-jack, and almost tore a guitar apart. He were singing:

Where you goin’, Mr. Spider,

Walking up the wall?

Spider said, I’m goin’

To get my ashes hauled.

The joint were jumping—rocking, rolling, whooping, hollering, and stomping. It was a far cry from ‘Stardust’ to that spider walking up the wall.

“When I took Joyce in and she did not see her light-dark shmoo with the conked crown curved over the piano smearing riffs, she said, ‘Is this the same place we was at last time?’

“I said, ‘Sure, baby! What’s the matter? Don’t you like blues?’

“Joyce said, ‘You know I never did like blues. I am from the North.’

“‘North what?’ I said. ‘Carolina?’

“‘I thought this was a refined cocktail lounge,’ says Joyce, turning up her nose. ‘But I see I was in error. It’s a low dive. Let’s go on downtown and catch John Garfield after all.’

“‘No, no, no. No after all for me,’ I said. ‘Here we are—and here we stay right in this bar till I get ready to go.… Waiter, a beer!… Anyhow, I do not see why you would want to see John Garfield. Garfield does not conk his hair. Neither is he light black. Neither does he play “Stardust.”’

“‘You are acting just like a Negro,’ says Joyce.

“‘It’s my Indian blood,’ I admitted.”

Banquet in Honor

Banquet in Honor

“WELL, sir, I went to a banquet the other night,” said Simple, “and I have never seen nothing like it. The chicken was good, but the best thing of all was the speech.”

“That’s unusual,” I said. “Banquet speeches are seldom good.”

“This one were a killer,” said Simple. “In fact, it almost killed the folks who gave the function.”

“Who gave it?”