“That is him in the flesh,” says Scoot.

“Does you wish to touch him?” asks Valentine. “Because he don’t bite.”

“You passing through?”

“Now you got everything right.”

She waits like a drop, hands languishing together in front.

“Little-Bit, ain’t you going to bring the beer?”

She brings it, and goes behind the cash register and smiles, turning different ways. The little fillet of gold in her mouth is gleaming.

“The Mississippi River’s here,” she says once.

Now all the watching Negroes press in gently and bright-eyed through the door, as many as can get in. One is a little boy in a straw sombrero which has been coated with aluminum paint all over.

Powerhouse, Valentine, Scoot and Little Brother drink beer, and their eyelids come together like curtains. The wall and the rain and the humble beautiful waitress waiting on them and the other Negroes watching enclose them.

“Listen!” whispers Powerhouse, looking into the ketchup bottle and slowly spreading his performer’s hands over the damp, wrinkling cloth with the red squares. “Listen how it is. My wife gets missing me. Gypsy. She goes to the window. She looks out and sees you know what. Street. Sign saying Hotel. People walking. Somebody looks up. Old man. She looks down, out the window. Well? . . . Ssssst! Plooey! What she do? Jump out and bust her brains all over the world.”

He opens his eyes.

“That’s it,” agrees Valentine. “You gets a telegram.”

“Sure she misses you,” Little Brother adds.

“No, it’s night time.” How softly he tells them! “Sure. It’s the night time. She say, What do I hear? Footsteps walking up the hall? That him? Footsteps go on off. It’s not me. I’m in Alligator, Mississippi, she’s crazy. Shaking all over. Listens till her ears and all grow out like old music-box horns but still she can’t hear a thing. She says, All right! I’ll jump out the window then. Got on her nightgown. I know that nightgown, and her thinking there. Says, Ho hum, all right, and jumps out the window. Is she mad at me! Is she crazy! She don’t leave nothing behind her!”

“Ya! Ha!”

“Brains and insides everywhere, Lord, Lord.”

All the watching Negroes stir in their delight, and to their higher delight he says affectionately, “Listen! Rats in here.”

“That must be the way, boss.”

“Only, naw, Powerhouse, that ain’t true. That sound too bad.”

“Does? I even know who finds her,” cries Powerhouse. “That no-good pussyfooted crooning creeper, that creeper that follow around after me, coming up like weeds behind me, following around after me everything I do and messing around on the trail I leave. Bets my numbers, sings my songs, gets close to my agent like a Betsy-bug; when I going out he just coming in. I got him now! I got my eye on him.”

“Know who he is?”

“Why, it’s that old Uranus Knockwood!”

“Ya! Ha!”