“How do you know?” asked Simple. “You ain’t Irish.”

“No,” I said, “but I read books.”

“You don’t learn everything in books,” said Simple.

“It wouldn’t hurt you to read one once in a while,” I said.

“Not to change the subject, but I need a beer to help me figure up this income tax,” said Simple. “Bartender, a couple of beers on my friend here—who reads books.”

“I do not like your tone of voice,” I said. “I will not pay for beer to entertain a man who has nothing but contempt for the written word.”

“Buddy-o, daddy-o, pal, I do not want to argue with you this evening because I haven’t got time. You are colored just like me, so set down and help me figure up my taxes for these white folks. What did you say that book says about taxation?”

“Without representation, it’s tyranny.”

“If you don’t know how to add, subtract, multiply, erase, deduct, steal, stash, save, conceal, and long-divide, it is worse than that,” said Simple. “Taxes is hell! Buddy-o, here’s our beer.”

“It seems to me you should understand mathematics,” I said. “You’ve been to school.”

“I didn’t learn much,” said Simple, “which is why I have to run my feet off all day long and work hard. What your head don’t understand, your feet have to stand.”

“Well, you certainly have opinions about everything under the sun,” I said. “You ought to have a newspaper since you have so much to say.”

“I can talk,” said Simple, “but I can’t write.”

“Then you ought to be an orator.”

“Uh-um, I’m scared of the public. My place is at the bar.”

“Of Justice?”

“Justice don’t run no bar.”

No Alternative

No Alternative

“MAN, you don’t know how I have suffered these last few weeks,” Simple groaned into an empty glass. “Joyce’s birthday, the Urban League ball we had to go to, income tax, hospital bill, and so forth—”

“What’s ‘and so forth’?” I asked.

“My landlady,” said Simple. “That woman has no respect for her roomers a-tall. In fact, she cares less for her roomers than she does for her dog.”

“What kind of dog has she got?”

“A little old houndish kind of dog,” said Simple. “But is she crazy about that hound! She will put a roomer out—dead out in the street—when he does not pay his rent, but she does not put out that dog, not even when it chews up her favorite Teddy bear which her second husband give her for her birthday. That dog is her heart. She would feed that dog before she would feed me. When I went down in the kitchen last week to give her my room rent, I saw her hand Trixie a whole chicken leg—and she did not offer me a bite.”

“Were you hungry?” I asked.