Flight

The long train rumbled and swayed, whistle blowing intermittently, screeching discordantly, past smoky factory and office buildings, through rows of one-storied, two- or three-room cottages, outside which on hard packed clay earth played here towheaded white children or there black or brown or yellow ones. It plunged suddenly into cavernous darkness under a bridge, thick acrid smoke pouring into the open windows of the wooden coaches.

“Union Station⁠—Atlanty. All out for Atlanty,” bawled a grinning Negro porter as the train rolled into a long, dingy shed with low-hung roof. Eager, laughing Negroes matched boxes and bundles of varied shapes from the racks over the seats or pulled mates to them from under the seats. Mimi awoke with a start as Jean shook her gently.

“We’re there, petite Mimi,” he told her. Through the throng, peering vainly through the murky air, redolent of stale banana and orange skins and of bodies in need of washing, she made her way to remove the worst of the soot and grime from her face.

“My father’ll be here to meet us,” Mary told Jean.

Though he disliked Mr. Robertson intensely Jean was happy to receive the news. He felt bewildered, lost, a malady bordering on nausea at the hubbub around him. Methodically he obeyed his wife’s commands to gather their bags and parcels. Then with Mimi, refreshed, alert, her weariness dropped from her as she would have discarded a cape, they made their way out of the coach in the van of the surging throng.

A hot Saturday afternoon, traditionally a half-holiday, had brought into town hundreds of country people. Saloons were doing a rushing business, those labelled “For White” and those bearing signs, “For Coloured Only.” Late in the afternoon an elderly white woman had gone to a window to close the shutters. A Negro was passing on the sidewalk. Her mind inflamed with the news stories she had read, she screamed. Someone telephoned for the police. Newspapers got wind of the story, rushed “extras” on the street bearing letters five inches high, “Another Woman Assaulted.” Before the police could reach her house, the woman telephoned it was all a mistake⁠—she had only been hysterical. In the meantime, too late to be stopped, presses had begun to rumble and roar and belch forth flaming sheets of alarm, the ink smearing in its freshness. Others followed, “Second Assault,” “Third Assault,” “Fourth Assault.”

At first it was a gentle murmur of hatred. Then it began to swell. Papers were snatched eagerly from panting newsboys. Over the shoulders of each purchaser hung a group, standing on tiptoe to grasp the story of the latest outrage. The grumbling grew. Little flames of violent words shot up. They grew in number. They shot higher. They combined in volume until one great peal of implacable Negro-phobia went up like the din of a continuous thunderclap, like a pipe organist treading angrily on his foot-pedals in dissonant roaring. The entire city was as a huge boil, packed tight with putrescence. A pinprick was applied, the festering, purulent tumour burst open and flung high its venom. Spattering, smearing, befouling matter came down and sprang, like the sown dragon’s teeth, into howling, murder-bent mobs.⁠ ⁠…

“Hello,” he casually greeted them both. Mimi stiffened, it was the same word he had used five years before.

“How do you do?” she questioned but in a tone that said plainly she did not expect nor did she want an answer to her inquiry.

Carl grinned.

“My! You’re upstagy. Will you dance with me?”

“Thanks, no. You’d better dance with Hilda,” was Mimi’s answer as she turned away.

Hilda had stood there, saying nothing, but fighting to keep her eyes free from tears. She felt the electrical current that flashed between the two of her friends heavily charged with antagonism⁠—but Hilda was too wise to let that ill feeling reassure her. His five years’ absence had not changed Carl⁠—she knew he cared no more for her now than he did then. And here was Mimi, the only girl with whom she had ever felt completely happy, the girl she loved passionately, catching and holding Carl’s interest and attention. Hilda knew Mimi was not doing so deliberately. She knew Mimi too well to believe that. She knew, too, Mimi would rather have done almost anything than hurt her. Despite these reassurances of herself Hilda felt the first bitterness in her heart against her friend, the first twinges of jealousy. Her pride was hurt, it was true, but beneath that and far deeper was the pain caused by the sudden realization that Carl had never been, was not now, and never would be interested in her. She wanted to cry, to dash madly through the woods nearby, to get away from everybody and everything and cry until no more tears would come.

All this raced through her mind at Mimi’s words. She smiled bravely.

“I don’t know,” Carl answered, a faint note of bafflement, almost of despair, creeping into his voice. “All my life I’ve been just what you called me a kicker. I’ve tried to conform⁠—but all the time I find myself saying: ‘Is that so?’ when some greybeard starts to lecture me. And most of the things that everybody accepts as axiomatic, as truths never to be questioned, seem to me false and absolutely without value. In college I ran across a passage one day from Spinoza that fits it exactly where he says that ‘truths are the falsehoods grown hoary with age.’ ”

“You’re just pessimistic⁠—you’ll settle down in time,” counselled Mimi, finding herself interested in spite of herself.

Carl picked up her words.

“Pessimistic! Settle down! I’ve heard those words with variations a thousand times! Why should I settle down? If I’d only work like a slave for ten or fifteen years, make some money, marry some respectable but dull girl who’d have a lot of babies and get fat in a few years, and then drop into a rut from which I’d never get out, then I’d meet the approval of all those tabbies over there as a ‘fine, upright, Christian young man’!” His last five words were filled with distaste for the respectability the community wished for him.

“I don’t want a lot of money,” he went on vehemently. “I want to see things and live things and⁠—and⁠—” He peered at Mimi, somewhat doubtfully and hesitantly, then blurted it out as though he expected to be spanked: “write.”

One Thursday afternoon as she came down the stairs from the room where she always worked she met the husband of her employer.

“Hello,” he greeted her, “and who are you?”

She told him. After answering various questions regarding the length of time she had worked there and listening to his surprised comment that he had not seen her during all that time, he let her pass. But the following Thursday he was there again, this time earlier than before. He came into the room where she was hurrying through her work.

“Tell me about yourself,” he demanded, pleasantly, too pleasantly Mimi thought.

“There’s little to tell. I work for my living.”

“Your husband’s dead, then?” he remarked, looking at her black dress. Mimi yet wore mourning, partly because she could afford no new clothes. She began to gather her work to avoid his questions.

“You don’t mean to tell me you’re coloured?” he pursued, incredulously. “My wife told me about having a coloured girl sewing for her but I never expected to see anybody looking like you!”

“I am coloured.” Mimi assured him firmly as she tried to leave the room.

“Wait a minute⁠—wait a minute,” he hastened to add. “I don’t mean any harm. I was born in the South and I always liked Negroes.”

“That’s very kind of you⁠—but I’ve got to hurry home,” Mimi nervously answered as she sought to leave the room. He stood in front of her, his hands clasped behind his back, and the smile on his face made her think instinctively of a fat, sleepy-eyed and sleek cat teasing a mouse before devouring it.