“I will say, ‘Nowheres, baby, but just out for a little ride in the clouds to clean the cobwebs out of my brain. I drunk a little too much in Hong Kong last night. And don’t you know, after them Chinese bars closed the sky was so crowded, it took me nearly ten minutes to fly back to Harlem to get an aspirin. So this morning, baby, I didn’t fly nowheres but straight up in them nice cool clouds for a breath of fresh air, then right back home to you.’”

“What are you going to say if Joyce smells that African palm wine on your breath?” I asked.

“How do you know anybody can smell palm wine?” said Simple. “Maybe by that time somebody will have invented something to take the scent out of all lickers anyhow. Besides, I won’t be drinking enough to get drunk. I’d be very careful with my rocket plane so as not to run into some planet, neither no star. I will keep a clear head in the air.”

“That is more than you keep on earth, except when you’re in the hospital.”

“There you go low-rating me,” sighed Simple. “But listen, daddy-o, such another scrambling of races as there is going to be when they gets that rocket plane perfected! Why, when a man can shoot from Athens, Georgia, to Athens, Greece, in less than an hour, you know there is going to be intermarriage. I am liable to marry a Greek myself.”

“Are there any colored Greeks?”

“I would not be prejudiced toward color,” said Simple, rising on his pillow, “and if I did not like the licker they drink in Greece, I would fly to Nagasaki and drink saki. Or I might come back to Harlem and have a beer with you.”

“If you’re doing all that flying around, what makes you think I would remain here in Harlem? I might be out in my rocket, too.”

“Great stuff, daddy-o! We might bump into each other over London—who knows? Because I sure would be rocking through the sky. Why, man, I would rock so far away from this color line in the U.S.A., till it wouldn’t be funny. I might even build me a garage on Mars and a mansion on Venus. On summer nights I would scoot down the Milky Way just to cool myself off. I would not have no old-time jet-propelled plane either. My plane would run on atom power. This earth I would not bother with no more. No, buddy-o! The sky would be my roadway and the stars my stopping place. Man, if I had a rocket plane, I would rock off into space and be solid gone. Gone. Real gone! I mean gone!”

“I think you are gone now,” I said. “Out of your head.”

“Not quite,” said Simple.

Final Fear

Final Fear