“They showed one scene with two great big old long-horn elks locking horns on a Game Preserve somewhere out in Wyoming, fighting like mad. Nobody bothered them elks or tried to stop them from fighting. But just let me get in a little old fist fight here in this bar, they will lock me up and the Desk Sergeant will say, ‘What are you colored boys doing, disturbing the peace?’ Then they will give me thirty days and fine me twice as much as they would a white man for doing the same thing. There ought to be some place where I can fight in peace and not get fined them high fines.”

“You disgust me,” I said. “I thought you were talking about a place where you could be quiet and compose your mind. Instead, you are talking about fighting.”

“I would like a place where I could do both,” said Simple. “If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a fish to be a fish without getting hooked, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place in this American country where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed. There ought to be a law. The next time I see my congressman, I am going to tell him to introduce a bill for Game Preserves for Negroes.”

“The Southerners would filibuster it to death,” I said.

“If we are such a problem to them Southerners,” said Simple, “I should think they would want some place to preserve us out of their sight. But then, of course, you have to take into consideration that if the Negroes was taken out of the South, who would they lynch? What would they do for sport? A Game Preserve is for to keep people from bothering anything that is living.

“When that movie finished, it were sunset in Virginia and it showed a little deer and its mama laying down to sleep. Didn’t nobody say, ‘Get up, deer, you can’t sleep here,’ like they would to me if I was to go to the White Sulphur Springs Hotel.”

“‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.’”

“That is why I want a Game Preserve for Negroes,” said Simple.

Income Tax

Income Tax

ON April fourteenth, just the day before his taxes came due, Simple was sitting in a booth across from the bar, figuring, and each time he figured he put his pencil in his mouth.