Chapter XIX

Now Tar was growing large of body--tall and leggy. People were less conscious of him as a child. He went to ball games, to shows at the opera house.

There was a life going on outside his town. The train that brought the papers from the east went on west.

Life in the town was simple. There were no rich people. In the evening, in the summer, he saw couples walking under the trees. They were young men and women almost grown. Sometimes they kissed. When Tar saw it he became excited.

There weren’t any bad women in town, except maybe ...

To the east, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Boston, New York. To the west, Chicago.

A negro, son of the only negro in town, came to visit his father. He talked in the barber shop--in the livery barn. It was spring and all winter he had lived at Springfield, Ohio.

During the Civil War, Springfield had been one of the stations on the underground railroad--abolitionists running off niggers. Tar’s father knew all about that. Zanesville was another--and Oberlin, near Cleveland.

All such places had niggers yet--lots of them.

In Springfield there was a place called “the levee.” Nigger prostitutes mostly. The nigger who came to town to visit his father told about it in the livery stable. He was a strong young fellow who wore loud flashy clothes. All winter he had been in Springfield and two nigger women had kept him. They went out into the streets, made money and brought it to him.

“They better had. I wouldn’t stand for no foolishness. Knock ’em down. Treat ’em rough. That’s my way.”

The young negro’s father was such a respectable old man. Even Dick Moorehead, who kept all his life the Southerner’s attitude toward negroes, said, “Old Pete’s all right--if he is a nigger.”

The old negro man worked hard and so did his little dried-up wife. All their children had cut out, gone adventuring where there were other negroes. They rarely came home to visit the old couple and when one did he did not stay long.

The flashy nigger wouldn’t stay long either. He said as much. “Nothing in this town for a nigger like me. I’s a sport, I is.”

Odd thing--that kind of relationship between men and women--even for niggers--women supporting a man that way. One of the men working at the livery barn said white men and women sometimes did the same thing.

The men at the barn and some at the barber shop were envious. “A man doesn’t have to work. Money rolls in.”

All kinds of things going on in towns and cities where the trains came from, in cities to which the trains go when they go on west.

Old Pete, the father of the young negro sport, did whitewashing, he worked in people’s gardens, his wife did washing just like Mary Moorehead. On almost any day you could see the old man going through Main Street with his whitewash pail and brushes. He never swore, drank, stole. He was always cheerful, smiling, taking his hat off to white people. On Sundays he and his old wife put on their best clothes and went to the Methodist Church. They both had white kinky hair. Now and then, when there was a prayer going on, you heard the old man’s voice. “Oh, Lord, save me,” he groaned. “Yes, Lord, save me,” echoed the wife.

Not much like his son, that old black. When he was in town that time the flashy young black never went near any church.

* * * * *

At the Methodist Church, Sunday evenings--girls coming out, young fellows waiting to see them home.

“May I see you home to-night, Miss Smith?” Trying to be extra polite--speaking soft and low.

Sometimes a young fellow got the girl he wanted, sometimes he didn’t. When he failed, small boys standing about called to him. “Yi! Yi! She wouldn’t let you! Yi! Yi!”

Children John’s age, Margaret’s age, were betwixt and between. They couldn’t wait in the darkness to yell at the older boys nor could they, as yet, stand up before all the others and ask some girl to let them see her home, be asked by some young man.

To Margaret that might be happening soon, now. It wouldn’t be long before John would stand up in the line before the church door with other young men.

Better to be a kid than a betwixt and between.

Sometimes when a boy yelled “Yi! Yi!” he got caught. An older boy chased and caught him in the dark road--all the others laughing--gave him a clip side the head. Well, what of it? The thing was to take it without crying.

Then wait.

When the older boy got far enough away--so you felt pretty sure he couldn’t catch you again--you paid him out. “Yi! Yi! She wouldn’t let you. Got left, didn’t you. Yi! Yi!”

* * * * *

Tar did not want to be a betwixt and between. When he grew up he wanted to grow suddenly--go to bed a boy and wake up a man, big and strong. Sometimes he dreamed of that.

He could play ball pretty well, if he only had more time for practice, could hold down second base. The trouble was that the regular team--his age--always played on Saturdays. On Saturday afternoon he was busy selling Sunday papers. A Sunday paper was five cents. You made more than on other days.

* * * * *

Bill McCarthy came to work at McGovern’s livery stable. He had been a prize fighter, a regular one, but now he was down and out.

Too much wine and women. He said that himself.

Well, he knew things. He could teach boys how to box, teach them ring generalship. Once he had been sparring partner for Kid McAllister--the Nonpareil. A boy doesn’t get a chance to be around with a man like that--not very often in life.

Bill got up a class. It was three dollars for five lessons and Tar took. Bill made all the boys pay their money down, in advance. Ten boys went in. They were to be private lessons, one boy at a time, upstairs in the barn.

They all got what Tar got. It was a dirty trick. Bill sparred a moment with each boy and then--he pretended to let his hand slip--accidentally.

A boy got a black eye or something like that the first lesson. No one came back for more. Tar didn’t. It was an easy way for Bill. You clip a boy over the head, knock him across a barn floor, and get three dollars--don’t have to bother with the other lessons.

The ex-prize fighter doing that and the young sporty nigger getting his living that way, on the levee in Springfield, came to about the same thing, to Tar.