The lovely trees of Seventh Avenue were a vivid flame-green. Children, lightly clad, skipped on the pavement. Light open coats prevailed and the smooth bare throats of brown girls were a token as charming as the first pussy-willows. Far and high over all, the sky was a grand blue benediction, and beneath it the wonderful air of New York tasted like fine dry champagne.

Jake loitered along Seventh Avenue. Crossing to Lenox, he lazied northward and over the 149th Street bridge into the near neighborhood of the Bronx. Here, just a step from compactly-built, teeming Harlem, were frame houses and open lots and people digging. A colored couple dawdled by, their arms fondly caressing each other’s hips. A white man forking a bit of ground stopped and stared expressively after them.

Jake sat down upon a mound thick-covered with dandelions. They glittered in the sun away down to the rear of a rusty-gray shack. They filled all the green spaces. Oh, the common little things were glorious there under the sun in the tender spring grass. Oh, sweet to be alive in that sun beneath that sky! And to be in love⁠—even for one hour of such rare hours! One day! One night! Somebody with spring charm, like a dandelion, seasonal and haunting like a lovely dream that never repeats itself.⁠ ⁠… There are hours, there are days, and nights whose sheer beauty overwhem us with happiness, that we seek to make even more beautiful by comparing them with rare human contacts.⁠ ⁠… It was a day like this we romped in the grass⁠ ⁠… a night as soft and intimate as this on which we forgot the world and ourselves.⁠ ⁠… Hours of pagan abandon, celebrating ourselves.⁠ ⁠…

And Jake felt as all men who love love for love’s sake can feel. He thought of the surging of desire in his boy’s body and of his curious pure nectarine beginnings, without pain, without disgust, down home in Virginia, Of his adolescent breaking-through when the fever-and-pain of passion gave him a wonderful strange-sweet taste of love that he had never known again. Of rude contacts and swift satisfactions in Norfolk, Baltimore, and other coast ports.⁠ ⁠… Havre.⁠ ⁠… The West India Dock districts of London.⁠ ⁠…

“Only that cute heartbreaking brown of the Baltimore,” he mused. “A day like this sure feels like her. Didn’t even get her name. O Lawdy! what a night that theah night was. Her and I could sure make a hallelujah picnic outa a day like this.”⁠ ⁠…

Jake and Billy Biasse, leaving Dixie Red’s poolroom together, shuffled into a big excited ring of people at the angle of Fifth Avenue and 133rd Street. In the ring three bad actors were staging a rough play⁠—a yellow youth, a chocolate youth, and a brown girl.

The girl had worked herself up to the highest pitch of obscene frenzy and was sicking the dark strutter on to the yellow with all the filthiest phrases at her command. The two fellows pranced round, menacing each other with comic gestures.

“Why, ef it ain’t Yaller Prince!” said Jake.

“Him sure enough,” responded Billy Biasse. “Guess him done laid off from that black gal why she’s shooting her stinking mouth off at him.”

“Is she one of his producing goods?”

“She was. But I heard she done beat up anether gal of hisn⁠—a fair-brown that useta hand over moh change than her and Yaller turn’ her loose foh it.”⁠ ⁠…

“You lowest-down face-artist!” the girl shrieked at Yaller Prince. “I’ll bawl it out so all a Harlem kain know what you is.” And ravished by the fact that she was humiliating her onetime lover, she gesticulated wildly.

“Hit him, Obadiah!” she yelled to the chocolate chap. “Hit him I tell you. Beat his mug up foh him, beat his mug and bleed his mouf.” Over and over again she yelled: “Bleed his mouf!” As if that was the thing in Yaller Prince she had desired most. For it she had given herself up to the most unthinkable acts of degradation. Nothing had been impossible to do. And now she would cut and bruise and bleed that mouth that had once loved her so well so that he should not smile upon her rivals for many a day.

“Two-faced yaller nigger, you does ebery low-down thing, but you nevah done a lick of work in you lifetime. Show him, Obadiah. Beat his face and bleed his mouf.”

“Yaller nigger,” cried the extremely bandy-legged and grim-faced Obadiah, “Ise gwine kick you pants.”

“I ain’t scared a you, black buzzard,” Yaller Prince replied in a thin, breathless voice, and down he went on his back, no one knowing whether he fell or was tripped up. Obadiah lifted a bottle and swung it down upon his opponent. Yaller Prince moaned and blood bubbled from his nose and his mouth.

“He’s a sweet-back, all right, but he ain’t a strong one,” said someone in the crowd. The police had been conspicuously absent during the fracas, but now a baton tap-tapped upon the pavement and two of them hurried up. The crowd melted away.

Jake had pulled Yaller Prince against the wall and squatted to rest the bleeding head against his knee.

“What’s matter here now? What’s matter?” the first policeman, with revolver drawn, asked harshly.

“Nigger done beat this one up and gone away from heah, tha’s whatsmat,” said Billy Biasse.

They carried Yaller Prince into a drugstore for first aid, and the policeman telephoned for an ambulance.⁠ ⁠…

“We gotta look out foh him in hospital. He was a pretty good skate for a sweetman,” Billy Biasse said.

“Poor Yaller!” Jake, shaking his head, commented; “it’s a bad business.”

“He’s plumb crazy gwine around without a gun when he’s a-playing that theah game,” said Billy, “with all these cut-thwoat niggers in Harlem ready to carve up one another foh a li’l insisnificant humpy.”

“It’s the same ole life everywhere,” responded Jake. “In white man’s town or nigger town. Same bloody-sweet life across the pond. I done lived through the same blood-battling foh womens ovah theah in London. Between white and white and between white and black. Done see it in the froggies’ country, too. A mess o’ fatheaded white soldiers them was knocked off by apaches. Don’t tell me about cut-thwoat niggers in Harlem. The whole wul’ is boody-crazy⁠—”

“But Harlem is the craziest place foh that, I bet you, boh,” Billy laughed richly. “The stuff it gives the niggers brain-fevah, so far as I see, and this heah wolf has got a big-long horeezon. Wese too thick together in Harlem. Wese all just lumped together without a chanst to choose and so we nacherally hate one another. It’s nothing to wonder that you’ buddy Ray done runned away from it. Why, jest the other night I witnessed a nasty stroke. You know that spade prof that’s always there on the Avenue handing out the big stuff about niggers and their rights and the wul’ and bolschism.⁠ ⁠… He was passing by the poolroom with a bunch o’ books when a bad nigger jest lunges out and socks him bif! in the jaw. The poah frightened prof started picking up his books without a word said, so I ups and asks the boxer what was the meaning o’ that pass. He laughed and asked me ef I really wanted to know, and before he could squint I landed him one in the eye and pulled mah gun on him. I chased him off that corner all right I tell you, boh, Harlem is lousy with crazy-bad niggers, as tough as Hell’s Kitchen, and I always travel with mah gun ready.”

“And ef all the niggers did as you does,” said Jake, “theah’d be a regular gun-toting army of us up here in the haht of the white man’s city.⁠ ⁠… Guess ef a man stahts gunning after you and means to git you he will someways⁠—”

“But you might git him fierst, too, boh, ef youse in luck.”

“I mean ef you don’t know he’s gunning after you,” said Jake. “I don’t carry no weapons nonetall, but mah two long hands.”

“Youse a punk customer, then, I tell you,” declared Billy Biasse, “and no real buddy o’ mine. Ise got a A number one little barker I’ll give it to you. You kain’t lay you’self wide open lak thataways in this heah burg. No boh!”

Jake went home alone in a mood different from the lyrical feelings that had fevered his blood among the dandelions. “Niggers fixing to slice one another’s throats. Always fighting. Got to fight if youse a man. It ain’t because Yaller was a p.i.⁠ ⁠… It coulda been me or anybody else. Wese too close and thick in Harlem. Need some moh fresh air between us.⁠ ⁠… Hitting out at a edjucated nigger minding his own business and without a word said.⁠ ⁠… Guess Billy is right toting his silent dawg around with him. He’s gotta, though, when he’s running a gambling joint. All the same, I gambles mahself and you nevah know when niggers am gwineta git crazy-mad. Guess I’ll take the li’l dawg offn Billy, all right. It ain’t costing me nothing.”⁠ ⁠…

In the late afternoon he lingered along Seventh Avenue in a new nigger-brown suit. The fine gray English suit was no longer serviceable for parade. The American suit did not fit him so well. Jake saw and felt it.⁠ ⁠… The only thing he liked better about the American suit was the pantaloons made to wear with a belt. And the two hip pockets. If you have the American habit of carrying your face-cloth on the hip instead of sticking it up in your breast pocket like a funny decoration, and if, like Billy Biasse, you’re accustomed to toting some steely thing, what is handier than two hip pockets?

Except for that, Jake had learned to prefer the English cut of clothes. Such first-rate tweed stuff, and so cheap and durable compared with American clothes! Jake knew nothing of tariff laws and naively wondered why the English did not spread their fine cloth all over the American clothes market.⁠ ⁠… He worked up his shoulders in his nigger-brown coat. It didn’t feel right, didn’t hang so well. There was something a little too chic in American clothes. Not nearly as awful as French, though, Jake horse-laughed, vividly remembering the popular French styles. Broad-pleated, long-waisted, tight-bottomed pants and close-waisted coats whose breast pockets stick out their little comic signs of color.⁠ ⁠… Better color as a savage wears it, or none at all, instead of the Frenchman’s peeking bit. The French must consider the average bantam male killing handsome, and so they make clothes to emphasize all the angular elevated rounded and pendulated parts of the anatomy.⁠ ⁠…

The broad pavements of Seventh Avenue were colorful with promenaders. Brown babies in white carriages pushed by little black brothers wearing nice sailor suits. All the various and varying pigmentation of the human race were assembled there: dim brown, clear brown, rich brown, chestnut, copper, yellow, near-white, mahogany, and gleaming anthracite. Charming brown matrons, proud yellow matrons, dark nursemaids pulled a zigzag course by their restive little charges.⁠ ⁠…

And the elegant strutters in faultless spats; West Indians, carrying canes and wearing trousers of a different pattern from their coats and vests, drawing sharp comments from their Afro-Yank rivals.

Jake mentally noted: “A dickty gang sure as Harlem is black, but⁠—”

The girls passed by in bright batches of color, according to station and calling. High class, menial class, and the big trading class, flaunting a front of chiffon-soft colors framed in light coats, seizing the fashion of the day to stage a lovely leg show and spilling along the Avenue the perfume of Djer-kiss, Fougere, and Brown Skin.

“These heah New York gals kain most sartainly wear some moh clothes,” thought Jake, “jest as nifty as them French gals.”⁠ ⁠…

Twilight was enveloping the Belt, merging its life into a soft blue-black symphony.⁠ ⁠… The animation subsided into a moment’s pause, a muffled, tremulous soul-stealing note⁠ ⁠… then electric lights flared everywhere, flooding the scene with dazzling gold.

Jake went to Aunt Hattie’s to feed. Billy Biasse was there and a gang of longshoremen who had boozed and fed and were boozing again and, touched by the tender spring night, were swapping love stories and singing:

“Back home in Dixie is a brown gal there,
Back home in Dixie is a brown gal there,
Back home in Dixie is a brown gal there,
Back home in Dixie I was bawn in.

“Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
And I wonder what nigger is saying to her a bootiful good mawnin’.”

A red-brown West Indian among them volunteered to sing a Port-of-Spain song. It immortalized the drowning of a young black sailor. It was made up by the bawdy colored girls of the port, with whom the deceased had been a favorite, and became very popular among the stevedores and sailors of the island.

“Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
But the sharks won’t puke him up.
Oh, ring the bell again.

“Empty is you’ room,
Empty is you’ room,
Empty is you’ room,
But you find one in the sea.
Oh, empty is you’ room.

“Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
But we know who feel the pain.
Oh, ring the bell again.”

The song was curious, like so many Negro songs of its kind, for the strange strengthening of its wistful melody by a happy rhythm that was suitable for dancing.

Aunt Hattie, sitting on a low chair, was swaying to the music and licking her lips, her wrinkled features wearing an expression of ecstatic delight. Billy Biasse offered to stand a bottle of gin. Jake said he would also sing a sailor song he had picked up in Limehouse. And so he sang the chanty of Bullocky Bill who went up to town to see a fair young maiden. But he could not remember most of the words, therefore Bullocky Bill cannot be presented here. But Jake was boisterously applauded for the scraps of it that he rendered.

The singing finished, Jake confided to Billy: “I sure don’t feel lak spending a lonesome night this heah mahvelous night.”

“Ain’t nobody evah lonely in Harlem that don’t wanta be,” retorted Billy. “Even yours truly lone Wolf ain’t nevah lonesome.”

“But I want something as mahvelous as mah feelings.”

Billy laughed and fingered his kinks: “Harlem has got the right stuff, boh, for all feelings.”

“Youse right enough,” Jake agreed, and fell into a reverie of full brown mouth and mischievous brown eyes all composing a perfect whole for his dark-brown delight.

“You wanta take a turn down the Congo?” asked Billy.

“Ah no.”

“Rose ain’t there no moh.”

Rose had stepped up a little higher in her profession and had been engaged to tour the West in a Negro company.

“All the same, I don’t feel like the Congo tonight,” said Jake. “Le’s go to Sheba Palace and jazz around a little.”

Sheba Palace was an immense hall that was entirely monopolized for the amusements of the common workaday Negroes of the Belt. Longshoremen, kitchen-workers, laundresses, and W.C. tenders⁠—all gravitated to the Sheba Palace, while the upper class of servitors⁠—bellboys, butlers, some railroad workers and waiters, waitresses and maids of all sorts⁠—patronized the Casino and those dancings that were given under the auspices of the churches.

The walls of Sheba Palace were painted with garish gold, and tables and chairs were screaming green. There were green benches also lined round the vast dancing space. The music stopped with an abrupt clash just as Jake entered. Couples and groups were drinking at tables. Deftly, quickly the waiters slipped a way through the tables to serve and collect the money before the next dance.⁠ ⁠… Little white-filled glasses, little yellow-filled glasses, general guzzling of gin and whisky. Little saucy brown lips, rouged maroon, sucking up iced crème de menthe through straws, and many were sipping the golden Virginia Dare, in those days the favorite wine of the Belt. On the green benches couples lounged, sprawled, and, with the juicy love of spring and the liquid of Bacchus mingled in fascinating white eyes curious in their dark frames, apparently oblivious of everything outside of themselves, were loving in every way but⁠ ⁠…

The orchestra was tuning up.⁠ ⁠… The first notes fell out like a general clapping for merrymaking and chased the dancers running, sliding, shuffling, trotting to the floor. Little girls energetically chewing Spearmint and showing all their teeth dashed out on the floor and started shivering amorously, itching for their partners to come. Some lads were quickly on their feet, grinning gayly and improvising new steps with snapping of fingers while their girls were sucking up the last of their crème de menthe. The floor was large and smooth enough for anything.

They had a new song-and-dance at the Sheba and the black fellows were playing it with éclat.

Brown gal crying on the corner,
Yaller gal done stole her candy,
Buy him spats and feed him cream,
Keep him strutting fine and dandy.

Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma,
Yaller gal can’t make you fall,
For Ise got some loving pa-pa
Yaller gal ain’t got at all.

“Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma.” The black players grinned and swayed and let the music go with all their might. The yellow in the music must have stood out in their imagination like a challenge, conveying a sense of that primitive, ancient, eternal, inexplicable antagonism in the color taboo of sex and society. The dark dancers picked up the refrain and jazzed and shouted with delirious joy, “Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma.” The handful of yellow dancers in the crowd were even more abandoned to the spirit of the song. “White,” “green,” or “red” in place of “yaller” might have likewise touched the same deep-sounding, primitive chord.⁠ ⁠…

Yaller gal sure wants mah pa-pa,
But mah chocolate turns her down,
’Cause he knows there ain’t no loving
Sweeter than his loving brown.

Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma,
Yaller gal can’t make you fall,
For Ise got some loving pa-pa
Yaller gal ain’t got atall.

Jake was doing his dog with a tall, shapely quadroon girl when, glancing up at the balcony, he spied the little brown that he had entirely given over as lost. She was sitting at a table while “Tell me pa-pa” was tickling everybody to the uncontrollable point⁠—she was sitting with her legs crossed and well exposed, and, with the aid of the mirror attached to her vanity case, was saucily and nonchalantly powdering her nose.

The quadroon girl nearly fell as Jake, without a word of explanation, dropped her in the midst of a long slide and, dashing across the floor, bounded up the stairs.

“Hello, sweetness! What youse doing here?”

The girl started and knocked over a glass of whisky on the floor: “O my Gawd! it’s mah heartbreaking daddy! Where was you all this time?”

Jake drew a chair up beside her, but she jumped up: “Lawdy, no! Le’s get outa here quick, ’cause Ise got somebody with me and now I don’t want see him no moh.”

“ ’Sawright, I kain take care of mahself,” said Jake.

“Oh, honey, no! I don’t want no trouble and he’s a bad actor, that nigger. See, I done break his glass o’ whisky and tha’s bad luck. Him’s just theah in the lav’try. Come quick. I don’t want him to ketch us.”

And the flustered little brown heart hustled Jake down the stairs and out of the Sheba Palace.

“Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma⁠ ⁠…”

The black shouting chorus pursued them outside.

“There ain’t no yaller gal gwine get mah honey daddy thisanight.” She took Jake’s arm and cuddled up against his side.

“Aw no, sweetness. I was dogging it with one and jest drops her flat when I seen you.”

“And there ain’t no nigger in the wul’ I wouldn’t ditch foh you, daddy. O Lawdy! How Ise been crazy longing to meet you again.”