The Walls of Jericho

Joshua fit d’ battle ob Jericho
And d’ walls come tumblin’ down—

For Glendora—

May her laugh be silver,
like her hair

Jericho

I

Despite the objections of the dickties, who prefer to ignore the existence of so-called rats, it is of interest to consider Henry Patmore’s Pool Parlor on Fifth Avenue in New York.

The truth about Fifth Avenue has only half been told, that it harbors an aristocracy of residence already yielding to an aristocracy of commerce. Has any New Yorker confessed to the rest—that when aristocratic Fifth Avenue crosses 110th Street, leaving Central Park behind, it leaves its aristocracy behind as well? Here are bargain-stores, babble, and kids, dinginess, odors, thick speech. Fallen from splendor and doubtless ashamed, the Avenue burrows into the ground—plunges beneath a park which hides it from 116th to 125th Street. Here it emerges moving uncertainly northward a few more blocks; and now—irony of ironies—finds itself in Negro Harlem.

You can see the Avenue change expression—blankness, horror, conviction. You can almost see it wag its head in self-commiseration. Not just because this is Harlem—there are proud streets in Harlem: Seventh Avenue of a Sunday afternoon, Strivers’ Row, and The Hill. Fifth Avenue’s shame lies in having missed these so-called dickty sections, in having poked its head out into the dark kingdom’s backwoods. A city jungle this, if ever there was one, peopled largely by untamed creatures that live and die for the moment only. Accordingly, here strides melodrama, naked and unashamed.

Patmore’s Pool Parlor occupied the remodeled ground floor of a once elegant apartment-house: two long low adjacent rooms, with a smaller one in the rear. You could enter either of the larger two from the street, and a doorway joined them within. There were no pretenses about these two rooms: one was a pool room, its stolid, green-covered tables extending from front to back in a long squat row; the other was a saloon, with a mahogany bar counter, a great wall mirror, a shining foot rail and brass spittoons. In the saloon you could get any drink you had courage and cash enough to order; in the pool room you could play for any stake and use any language you had the ingenuity to devise. The third room was off the pool room and behind the saloon; this gave itself over to that triad of swift exchange, poker, blackjack, and dice.

Such was Pat’s standing in the community that you might at any time find in this little rear room a policeman sitting in a card game, his coat on the back of his chair, his cap on the back of his head. For men, Pat’s was supremely the neighborhood’s social center, where you met real regular guys and rubbed elbows with authority. Henry Patmore was no piker, no sir, not by a damn sight.

In Patmore’s the discussion concerned a possible riot in Harlem, a popular topic among these men who loved battle.

Jinx Jenkins and Bubber Brown led the argument on opposite sides, reinforced by continuous expressions of vague but hearty agreement from their partisans:

“Tell ’im ’bout it!”

“That’s the time, papa!”

“There now—shake that one off yo’ butt!”

Jinx and Bubber worked at the same job every day, moving furniture. At this they got along tolerably, but after hours they were chronic enemies and were absolutely unable to agree upon anything.

Jinx was thin and elongated, habitually stooped in bearing, lean and sinewy, with freckled skin of a slick deep yellow and a chronically querulous voice.

“Fays got better sense,” said he. “Never will be no riot no mo’ ’round hyeh.”

Bubber was as different from Jinx as any man could be, short, round and bulging, with a complexion bordering on the invisible.

“ ’Tain’t due to be ’round hyeh,” he corrected. “It’s way over Court Avenue way. Darkey’s gonna move in there tomorrer and fays jes’ ain’t gon’ stand fo’ it.” Bubber spoke with a loose-lipped lisp, perfected by the absence of upper incisors.

“Who he?” Jinx inquired.

“Some lawyer ’n other name’ Merrit.”

“The one got Pat in that mess with d’ government?”

“Nobody else,” said Bubber.

“Well ef he’s a lawyer he sho’ mus’ know what he’s doin’.”

“Don’ matter what he is,” argued Bubber. “Ef he move in that neighborhood, fays’ll start sump’m sho’—and sho’ as they start it, d’ boogies’ll finish it. Won’t make no difference ’bout this Merrit man—he’ll jes’ be d’ excuse—Man, you know that. Every sence d’ war, d’ boogies is had guns and ammunition they stole from d’ army, and they jes’ dyin’ fo’ a chance to try ’em out. I know where they’s two machine guns myself, and they mus’ be a hund’ed mo’ in Harlem.”

“Yea,” said Jinx. “I’ve heard ’bout that, too. But I don’t think no shine’s got no business bustin’ into no fay neighborhood.”

“He got business bustin’ in any place he want to go. Only way for him to git anywhere is to bust in—ain’ nobody gon’ invite him in.”

“Aw, man, whut you talkin’ ’bout? Hyeh’s a dickty tryin’ his damnedest to be fay—like all d’ other dickties. When they git in hot water they all come cryin’ to you and me fo’ help.”

“And they git help, what I mean. Any time dickties start fightin’, d’ rest of us start fightin’ too. Got to. Dickties can’t fight.”

“Jes’ ’cause they can’t fight ain’ no reason how come we got to fight fo’ em.”

“ ’Tain’ nothin’ else. Fays don’ see no difference ’tween dickty shines and any other kind o’ shines. One jig in danger is ev’y jig in danger. They’d lick them and come on down on us. Then we’d have to fight anyhow. What’s use o’ waitin’?”

“Damn if you’d ever go out o’ yo’ way to fight f’ no dickties,” Jinx taunted.

“Don’ know—I might,” Bubber said.

“Huh!” discredited Jinx. “You wouldn’ go out o’ yo’ way to fight f’ yo’ own damn self—and you far from a dickty.”

“Right,” cheerfully agreed Bubber. “I’m far from a dickty, no lie. But I ain’ so far from a rat.” Jinx missed the meaning of this, so Bubber gilded up close to him and drove it home. “Fact I’m right next to one.”

Encircling grins improved Jinx’s understanding. “Next to nuthin’!” exploded he, giving the other a rough push.

“Next to nuthin’, then,” acquiesced Bubber, caroming off. “You know what you is lots better’n I do.” Whereupon he did a triumphant little buck and wing step, which ended in a single loud, dust-raising stamp. Dry dust and drier laughter floated irritatingly into Jinx’s face. Jinx was long and limber but his restraint was short and brittle. Derision snapped it in two.

“So’s yo’ whole damn family nuthin’!” he glowered, heedless of the disproportion between the trivial provocation and so violent a reaction. For it is the gravest of insults, this so-called “slipping in the dozens.” To disparage a man himself is one thing; to disparage his family is another. “Slipping” is a challenge holding all the potentialities of battle. The present example of it brought Bubber up short and promptly withdrew the bystanders’ attention from their gin.

The bystanders began “agitatin’ ”—uttering comments deliberately intended to urge the two into action. The agitators concealed their grins far up their sleeves, presenting countenances grave with apprehension and speaking in tones resigned to the inevitability of battle.

“Uh-uh! Sho’ mus’ know each other well!”

“Wha’ I come fum, dey fights fo’ less ’n dat.”

“Ef y’ can’t stand kiddin’, don’ kid, I say.”

“I don’ b’lieve he’s gon’ hit ’im, though.”

“I know what I’d do ’f anybody said that ’bout my family.”

As a matter of fact, the habitual dissension between these two was the symptom of a deep affection which neither, on question, would have admitted. Neither Jinx and Bubber nor any of their associates had ever heard of Damon and Pythias, and frank regard between two men would have been considered questionable to say the least. Their fellows would neither have understood nor tolerated it; would have killed it by derisions, conjectures, suggestions, comments banishing the association to some realm beyond normal manhood. Accordingly their own expression of this affection had to take an ironic turn. They themselves must deride it first, must hide their mutual inclination in a garment of constant ridicule and contention, the irritation of which rose into their consciousness as hostility. Words and gestures which in a different order of life would have required no suppression became with them necessarily inverted, found issue only by assuming a precisely opposite aspect, concealed a profound attachment by exposing an extravagant enmity. And this was a distortion of behavior so completely imposed upon them by their traditions and society that even they themselves did not know they were masquerading.

Bubber, his round face gone ominously blank, drew slowly closer to Jinx, who, face thrust forward a little and scowling, stood with his back to the bar counter, on which both elbows rested.

“Mean—my family?” inquired Bubber.

Jinx dared not recant. “All the way back to the apes,” he assured him “—and that ain’t so awful far back.”

“The apes in yo’ family is still livin’,” said Bubber, “but they’s go’n’ be one daid in a minute.”

“Stay where you at, you little black balloon, or I’ll stick a pin in you, you hear?”

By this time Bubber was almost within range and an initial blow was imminent. Absorbed in the impending clash, no one had noticed the arrival of a newcomer. But now this newcomer spoke and his words, soft and low though they were, commanded immediate attention.

“Winner belongs to me.”

Everybody looked—spectators holding their drinks, Bubber with his blank black face, Jinx with his murderous scowl. They saw a man at one end of the bar counter, one foot raised upon the brass rail, one elbow resting on the mahogany ledge; a young man so tall that, though he bent forward from the hips in a posture of easy nonchalance, he could still see over every intervening head between himself and the two opponents, and yet so broad that his height was not of itself noticeable; a supremely tranquil young Titan, with a face of bronze, hard, metallic, lustrous, profoundly serene. He repeated his remark in paraphrase:

“I am askin’ fo’ the winner. I am very humbly requestin’ a share in his hind-parts.”

It was apparent that the bristling antagonists bristled no longer, had limply lost interest in their quarrel.

“Aw, man,” mumbled Jinx, “what you talkin’ ’bout?”

“You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout you freckle-face giraffe, and so does ’at baby hippopotamus in front of you. We got that Court Avenue job in the mornin’, and if I got to break in one rooky on it, I might as well break in two.” The voice, too, was like bronze, heavy, rich in tone, uncompromisingly solid, with a surface shadowy and smooth as velvet save for an occasional ironic glint.

“This boogy,” explained Bubber, “thinks he’s bad. Come slippin’ me ’bout my family. He knows I don’t play nuthin’ like that.”

“Needn’t git uppity ’bout it,” mumbled Jinx sullenly.

“Ain’ gittin’ uppity. Jes’ natchly don’ like it, thass all. Keep yo’ thick lips off my family ef y’ know what’s good fo’ y’.”

He who had interrupted queried blandly, “Ain’t there gonna be no fight?”

Jinx said to Bubber—“Aw go ’haid, drabble-tail. Ain’ nobody studyin’ yo’ family.”

And this questionable apology Bubber chose to accept. “Oh,” said he. “Oh—aw right, then. Thass different.”

The atmosphere cleared, attention returned to gin and jest, and Bubber approached the giant, who now was grinning.

“Certainly am sorry th’ ain’ go’n’ be no hostilities,” sighed the latter. “Been wantin’ to spank yo’ little black bottom ev’y sence you broke that rope this mornin’.”

“Aw go ’haid, Shine. That boogy’s shoutin’ ’cause you was hyeh to protect ’im. I’m go’n’ ketch ’im one these days when you ain’ ’round, and I’m go’n’ turn ’im ev’y way but loose.”

“Don’t let ’im surprise y’. He kin wrastle the hell out of a piano.”

“Piano don’t fight back.”

“Don’t it? Well—neither will you if he get the same hold on y’.”

“Humph. Who the hell’s scared o’ that—freckle-face giraffe?”