Entrapment and Other Writings Read Online Free PDF Page B

is in prison
    He’s lost his sight they say
    I’m going for his pardon
    This cold December day
    Write me a letter
    Send it by mail
    Send it in care of
    The Birmingham Jail
    Then I fell asleep. Are you the Wreck of a Man, I thought, Consultation free.
    All that night it rained.
    In the morning I walked west down Harrison and that was when I seen this parade. Niggers was walkin’ with white men, carryin’ banners, so I stood an’ watched.
    “Them’s mighty cocky niggers,” I said to a guy.
    “We all came out of a hole, didn’t we?” the guy said back.
    “Maybe you’re a nigger yourself,” I said.
    “Maybe I am and maybe I’m not,” he answered.
    I thought for a second and then I said, “Say, guy, you want some o’ me?” And I doubled up both fists.
    “I got no time for fightin’ now, ’cause I’m getting in the parade,” said the guy and before I could spit through my teeth he was gone.
    “Black and White. Unite and Fight,” said a sign a white guy was carryin’ and I could read every letter.
    I went up to a guy and said, “Mister, I ain’t got a
goddamn
thing,” and he looked the other way.
    “I’ll get McGinnes after you,” I said, and the guy said, “Who’s McGinnes?”
    Consultation free, I thought, only I didn’t know where to go.
    “If I could just get some chippie to marry me,” I thought, “I bet I could get on relief.”
    I kept thinking of them Black and White signs all morning, till it stopped raining.
    And in the afternoon I thought, “The trouble with the whole works is Jews an’ Niggers. That’s why I’m down and out.”
    Right before dark I ran into Sully, selling a newspaper called
The American Progress
, with big red headlines on it. “It’s for Long,” Sully told me. “You could sell too if you wanted.”
    So that’s what I’m doing now. It’s a better job than the guy with the books has got.

WITHIN THE CITY
    Each day I go down to the dime burlesque, to watch the mulatto girl. She dances third from the left, her eyes half closed, while old men lean forward in their seats. This is deep in the heart of the city, where every man seems to go alone and every woman walks quietly. The mulatto girl dances slowly, without effort, with the stage-dust rising uneasily beneath her bare feet. Ten hours a day she breathes this dust, and on Saturday nights puts in an extra two hours. This is a vast and terrible city, with small lights burning all in a row. Within their gleam the ragged men wait, the men from the farms that are mortgaged now and the men from the mines that long since closed down. The men wait in a row beneath the lamps, and the mulatto girl sways slowly.
    On South State Street are many rooms, and in each one somebody lives. Someone who sells razor blades to live, or who works in a button factory, or who dances in a burlesque house. The mulatto girl lives in such a room, three flights up and two doors to the rear. There is no running water here, and in summer the smells hang in the air all down the winding staircase. She walks up slowly, her hands on her hips, counting the steps as she walks. I think that when she reaches the top she pauses and thinks, I am alone in this city now, and all about me are the alone men. They lean forward in their seats, or watch beneath the street lamps, or sit with bowed heads in the saloons.
    In summer, in Chicago, on South State, there is only the heat, and the dancing women, and the bowed men in the saloons.
    When winter comes there will be lines in front of the missions, and a tapping from the rooms. For five winters now South State has gathered its breadlines. This winter the lines will curve down Harrison toward Clark, and the salvation armies will gather them, and the missions will gather them, and the houses will gather them. The little signs will flicker, on and off, and men will pass and repass. The men who are recruiting the boys for the army will be recruiting somewhere else, and snow will lie quietly, and hunger will