“Great balls of fire! Looka here! See mah luck!” Jake stopped in his tracks⁠ ⁠… went on⁠ ⁠… stopped again⁠ ⁠… retraced his steps⁠ ⁠… checked himself. “Guess I won’t go back right now. Never let a woman think you’re too crazy about her. But she’s a particularly sweet piece a business.⁠ ⁠… Me and her again tonight.⁠ ⁠… Handful o’ luck shot straight outa heaven. Oh, boy! Harlem is mine!”

Jake went rolling along Fifth Avenue. He crossed over to Lenox Avenue and went into Uncle Doc’s saloon, where he had left his bag. Called for a glass of Scotch. “Gimme the siphon, Doc. I’m off the straight stuff.”

“Iszh you? Counta what?”

“Hits the belly better this way. I l’arned it over the other side.”

A slap on the shoulder brought him sharply round. “Zeddy Plummer! What grave is you arisen from?” he cried.

“Buddy, you looks so good to me, I could kish you,” Zeddy said.

“Where?”

“Everywhere.⁠ ⁠… French style.”

“One on one cheek and one on the other.”

“Savee-vous?”

“Parlee-vous?”

Uncle Doc set another glass on the counter and poured out pure Bourbon. Zeddy reached a little above Jake’s shoulders. He was stocky, thick-shouldered, flat-footed, and walked like a bear. Some more customers came in and the buddies eased round to the short side of the bar.

“What part of the earth done belch you out?” demanded Zeddy. “Nevah heared no God’s tidings a you sence we missed you from Brest.”

“And how about you?” Jake countered. “Didn’t them Germans git you scrambling over the top?”

“Nevah see’d them, buddy. None a them showed the goose-step around Brest. Have a shot on me.⁠ ⁠… Well, dawg bite me, but⁠—say, Jake, we’ve got some more stuff to booze over.”

Zeddy slapped Jake on his breast and looked him over again. “Tha’s some stuff you’re strutting in, boh. ’Tain’t ’Merican and it ain’t French.”⁠ ⁠…

“English.” Jake showed his clean white teeth.

“Mah granny an’ me! You been in that theah white folks’ country, too?”

“And don’t I look as if Ise been? Where else could a fellow git such good and cheap man clothes to cover his skin?”

“Buddy, I know it’s the trute. What you doing today?”

“No, when you make me think ovit, particular thing. And you?”

“I’m alongshore but⁠—I ain’t agwine to work thisaday.”

“I guess I’ve got to be heaving along right back to it, too, in pretty short time. I got to get me a room but⁠—”

Uncle Doc reminded Jake that his suitcase was there.

“I ain’t nevah fohgitting all mah worldly goods,” responded Jake.

Zeddy took Jake to a poolroom where they played. Jake was the better man. From the poolroom they went to Aunt Hattie’s chitterling joint in 132nd Street, where they fed. Fricassee chicken and rice. Green peas. Stewed corn.

Aunt Hattie’s was renowned among the lowly of Harlem’s Black Belt. It was a little basement joint, smoke-colored. And Aunt Hattie was weather-beaten dark-brown, cheery-faced, with two rusty-red front teeth sticking together conspicuously out of her twisted, spread-away mouth. She cooked delicious food⁠—home-cooked food they called it. None of the boys loafing round that section of Fifth Avenue would dream of going to any other place for their “poke chops.”

Aunt Hattie admired her new customer from the kitchen door and he quite filled her sight. And when she went with the dish rag to wipe the oilcloth before setting down the coconut pie, she rubbed her breast against Jake’s shoulder and a sensual light gleamed in her aged smoke-red eyes.

The buddies talked about the days of Brest. Zeddy recalled the everlasting unloading and unloading of ships and the toting of lumber. The house of the Young Men’s Christian Association, overlooking the harbor, where colored soldiers were not wanted.⁠ ⁠… The central Rue de Siam and the point near the Prefecture of Marine, from which you could look down on the red lights of the Quartier Réservé. The fatal fights between black men and white in the maisons closes. The encounters between apaches and white Americans. The French sailors that couldn’t get the Yankee idea of amour and men. And the cemetery, just beyond the old medieval gate of the town, where he left his second-best buddy.

“Poor boh. Was always bellyaching for a chance over the top. Nevah got it nor nothing. Not even a baid in the hospital. Strong like a bull, yet just knocked off in the dark through raw cracker cussedness.⁠ ⁠… Some life it was, buddy, in them days. We was always on the defensive as if the boches, as the froggies called them, was right down on us.”

“Yet you stuck t’rough it toting lumber. Got back to Harlem all right, though.”

“You bet I did, boh. You kain trust Zeddy Plummer to look out for his own black hide.⁠ ⁠… But you, buddy. How come you just vanished thataway like a spook? How did you take your tail out ovit?”

Jake told Zeddy how he walked out of it straight to the station in Brest. Le Havre. London. The West India Docks. And back home to Harlem.

“But you must keep it dark, buddy,” Zeddy cautioned. “Don’t go shooting off your mouth too free. Gov’mant still smoking out deserters and draft dodgers.”

“I ain’t told no nigger but you, boh. Nor ofay, neither. Ahm in your confidence, chappie.”

“That’s all right, buddy.” Zeddy put his hand on Jake’s knee. “It’s better to keep your business close all the time. But I’ll tell you this for your perticular information. Niggers am awful closemouthed in some things. There is fellows here in Harlem that just telled the draft to mount upstairs. Pohlice and soldiers were hunting ev’where foh them. And they was right here in Harlem. Fifty dollars apiece foh them. All their friends knowed it and not a one gived them in. I tell you, niggers am amazing sometimes. Yet other times, without any natural reason, they will just go vomiting out their guts to the ofays about one another.”

“God; but it’s good to get back home again!” said Jake.

“I should think you was hungry foh a li’l brown honey. I tell you trute, buddy. I made mine ovah there, spitin’ ov ev’thing. I l’arned her a little z’inglise and she l’arned me beaucoup plus the French stuff.⁠ ⁠… The real stuff, buddy. But I was tearin’ mad and glad to get back all the same. Take it from me, buddy, there ain’t no honey lak to that theah comes out of our own belonging-to-us honeycomb.”

“Man, what you telling me?” cried Jake. “Don’t I knows it? What else you think made me leave over the other side? And dog mah doggone ef I didn’t find it just as I landed.”

“K‑hhhhhhh! K‑hhhhhhhh!” Zeddy laughed. “Dog mah cats! You done tasted the real life a’ready?”

“Last night was the end of the world, buddy, and tonight ahm going back there,” chanted Jake as he rose and began kicking up his heels round the joint.

Zeddy also got up and put on his gray cap. They went back to the poolroom. Jake met two more fellows that he knew and got into a ring of Zeddy’s pals.⁠ ⁠… Most of them were longshoremen. There was plenty of work, Jake learned. Before he left the poolroom he and Zeddy agreed to meet the next evening at Uncle Doc’s.

“Got to work tomorrow, boh,” Zeddy informed Jake.

“Good old New York! The same old wench of a city. Elevated racketing over you’ head. Subway bellowing under you’ feet. Me foh wrastling round them piers again. Scratching down to the bottom of them ships and scrambling out. All alongshore for me now. No more fooling with the sea. Same old New York. Everybody dashing round like crazy.⁠ ⁠… Same old New York. But the ofay faces am different from those ovah across the pond. Sure they is. Stiffer. Tighter. Yes, they is that.⁠ ⁠… But the sun does better here than over there. And the sky’s so high and dry and blue. And the air it⁠—O Gawd it works in you’ flesh and blood like Scotch. O Lawdy, Lawdy! I wants to live to a hundred and finish mah days in New York.”

Jake threw himself up as if to catch the air pouring down from the blue sky.⁠ ⁠…

“Harlem! Harlem! Little thicker, little darker and noisier and smellier, but Harlem just the same. The niggers done plowed through 130th Street. Heading straight foh 125th. Spades beyond Eighth Avenue. Going, going, going Harlem! Going up! Nevah befoh I seed so many dickty shines in sich swell motorcars. Plenty moh nigger shops. Seventh Avenue done gone high-brown. O Lawdy! Harlem bigger, Harlem better⁠ ⁠… and sweeter.”

“Street and streets! 132nd, 33rd, 34th. It wasn’t 135th and it wasn’t beyond theah.⁠ ⁠… O Lawd! how did I fohgit to remember the street and number. I reeled outa there like a drunken man. I been so happy.⁠ ⁠…

“34th, 32nd, 33rd.⁠ ⁠… Only difference in the name. All the streets am just the same and all the houses ’like as peas. I could try this one heah or that one there but⁠—Rabbit foot! I didn’t even git her name. Oh, Jakie, Jake! What a big Ah-Ah you is.

“I was a fool not to go back right then when I feeled like it. What did I want to tighten up mahself and crow and strut like a crazy cat for? A grand Ah-Ah I is. Feet in mah hands! Take me back to the Baltimore tonight. I ain’t gwine to know no peace till I lay these here hands on mah tantalizing brown again.”