V

Court Avenue is a straight, thin spinster of a street which even in July is cold. There is about it an air of arched eyebrows, of skirts drawn aside and comments made with a sniff. It is adorned in sparse, lean, scrawny maples, all suffering from malnutrition, and these tend to stress rather than relieve the hardness of dry, level pavements.

The dwellings are all the same pale gray and are all essentially alike, four stories tall, thin to gauntness, droop-eyed with drawn shapes, standing shoulder to shoulder in long, inhospitable rows. Stone stoops, well withdrawn from the sidewalk, lend an air of inaccessibility, and the tiny front yards that might dispel this illusion by only a bit of grass or a flower are instead uniformly laid away beneath slabs of expressionless concrete.

Twice a day, when sunlight touches the windows of this side in the morning and again of that side at night, Court Avenue smiles a chilly, crystalline smile. It is the sort of smile that goes with the words, “My dear! Can you imagine such a thing?” and you might suppose that the street was returning even the sun’s genial greeting and warm farewell with a disapproving sneer.

In short, Court Avenue is a snob of a street. Yet it is somewhat to be pitied in its pretense at ignoring the punishment that is at hand: the terribly sure approach of the swiftly spreading Negro colony.

Isaacs’ Transportation Company, which is to say old man Isadore Isaacs, would have trusted Joshua Jones with any moving job whatever. It was work that Shine loved because of the challenge it presented to his personal strength and skill. He took charge, accepted responsibility, helped execute the orders he gave. Whenever a staircase or hallway presented a difficult turn or an insufficient dimension, he was at hand to decide just how the problem should be solved. Whenever a valuable piece of ungainly size had to be dismembered, and afterwards reconstructed, his knowledge of the mysterious anatomy of furniture was wholly adequate. Whenever a piano was to be hoisted, he saw to each important item: himself selected and anchored the tackle and guided the instrument through the window that was chosen to admit it.

Pianos indeed, were his particular prey, his almost living archenemies. He personified them, and out of controlling them, handling them, directing them helpless through midair, he derived a satisfaction comparable to that of a tamer of beasts. There was a superstition that a piano would “get” a man one time or another. Jinx and Bubber had both suffered injuries from instruments that slipped from their grips. But Shine laughed at this superstition, not because it was a superstition, but because he knew that he simply couldn’t be “had.”

Even the four-ton van was to Shine a beloved companion. He called her Bess; and Bess was the only thing on earth that he coveted. She was padded within and especially designed for the moving of things fine and fragile; her engine was responsive and smooth, her treads pneumatic, single in front, double in the rear. She rode like a private ambulance and she could make forty on a level. It was Shine’s ambition one day to win her away from old man Isaacs.

The crew was usually made up only of Shine, Jinx, and Bubber, and these three in two years of cooperation had come to work together in a fashion beyond faultfinding, carefully, quickly, punctually, untrailed by patrons’ complaints.

This early summer morning Shine swung Bess, loaded with Merrit’s possessions, into the chilly Court Avenue atmosphere, and, with deliberate malice, sped up to a roar, then coasted, shifting his spark to make the motor spit.

“That’ll wake up somebody,” he grinned as Bess bang-banged like an automatic. “Come on you bomb-throwers⁠—do your stuff⁠—Let’s go!”

“Boy, lemme out this cab,” said Bubber. “This darkey done gone crazy.”

“Shuh!” complained Jinx. “Ain’t go’n’ be no rough stuff in this neighborhood. Deader’n Strivers’ Row.”

They drew up and backed against the curb before number three-thirteen. The door opened and Merrit himself came out to meet them. He wore his usual air of nonchalance and his usual cherubic grin.

“Hello, fellows,” he greeted. “Get it all on one load? That’s clever.”

All three stared. Such cordiality in a dickty was nothing short of astonishing, and it put the suspicious workers immediately on guard.

While Jinx and Bubber unfastened van-doors, Merrit went up to Shine and leaned carelessly against a tree. “What do you think of this?” he said, producing a letter.

Shine accepted the proffered note without enthusiasm. It was without heading or salutation, typewritten, and lacking a signature:

You are not wanted in this neighborhood.

If you move in, we’ll move you out.

“Where’d you get it?” Shine asked Merrit.

“Found it in the vestibule when I came up to look around yesterday.”

“Humph,” said Shine. “Jes’ let ’em start sump’m while we’re here, that’s all.” And because he disliked dickties and wanted no talk with any one of them, he changed the subject rudely. “Where you want us to put this stuff?”

“Anywhere. Spread it all over the first floor. My housekeeper’ll come in from the country-place and have it arranged later.”

“Hear that?” Jinx said to Bubber, out of sight at the rear of the van. “Thass what I say ’bout a spade. Spade can’t git a little sump’n without stretchin’ it. His housekeeper. His country-place. Humph⁠—what’s a use lyin’ like that⁠—?”

“He ain’ lyin’, fool. That jasper’s got mo’ bucks ’n you got freckles. Got a swell place on the upstate Pike, not far out o’ town. Throws big parties and raises hell jes’ like d’ fays. Folks up there didn’ know he was a jig till he had a party⁠—and they offered him a million dollars fo’ the place jes’ to git him out. He wouldn’ leave, though.”

“Million dollars?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he wouldn’ leave?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Huh! You lie wuss’n he do.”

Merrit’s words came to them repeating, “Mrs. Fuller will take care of everything later.”

“Thare now,” commented Jinx, “y’see?”

“See what?”

“Soon as a old crow gits up in d’ world, he got to grab hisse’f some other guy’s wife.”

Bubber regarded him with pity. “How you figger dat out?”

“His name ain’t Fuller, is it?”

“No. And yo’ name ain’t Sherlock. Don’t you know what a housekeper is? And ain’t you never heard of sech a thing as a widow?”

“Aw man, what you talkin’ ’bout?”

“You ought to be a policeman, brother.”

“How come?”

“ ’Cause you very suspicious and very, very dumb.”

These two had been unwrapping carefully covered hindmost pieces of furniture. Shine came around to lend a hand, and Merrit moved along the curb to a position such that he could observe them. Now he indulged in another astonishing speech.

“Don’t be too damn careful about these things. Flat didn’t have anything but junk in it, anyway. Good stuff’s in the country⁠—won’t move it in till fall. Just chuck this stuff in and let it lay.”

What manner of dickty was this? He greeted you like an equal, casually shared his troubles with you, and did not seem to care in the least what the devil you did with his furniture.

Jinx said sullenly to Bubber. “All he wants is for us to scratch up sump’m, so he kin call the five bucks off.”

Bubber said to Jinx, “That ain’t it. He’s jes’ makin’ sure o’ friends in case d’ fays start sump’m.”

Shine said to himself, “If this bird wasn’t a dickty he’d be OK. But they never was a dickty worth a damn.”

The job was finished and they were throwing byproducts into the emptied van⁠—burlap and canvas wrappers, quilting, hemp rope, leather straps. Merrit had just turned the key in his door and was facing about for departure, while Shine was on the point of climbing into the cab. At this juncture, simultaneously, everybody made an observation. It was the only observation that they all would have been likely to make at one time, and it held Merrit at attention on the stoop, rendered Shine motionless with one foot upon the step of his cab, and halted Bubber in the act of throwing a gunnysack over Jinx’s head. Along the hitherto empty street a girl was briskly approaching.

You could see that she knew they were staring, so completely did she ignore them, and the ease with which she did so, the queenly unconcern with which she passed, indicated that she was accustomed to being stared at and did not mind it at all.

There was quite obviously no reason why she should have minded it. Certainly her attire invited no criticism⁠—a brief frock of cool black satin, sheer gunmetal hose, and trim patent-leather pumps. Nor did she herself. She was tall and her face was pretty, and her body slenderly invited, though her legs perversely eluded, the persistent caress of the sedulous soft black satin.

Even if this had been all⁠—a pretty girl on that gaunt empty street at this solitary hour, the staring would have been pardonable. But there was in addition an especially extenuating circumstance: the girl was not white.

Before she quite passed beyond earshot Jinx and Bubber were indulging in low enthusiasms:

“Boy, do you see what I see?”

“Law‑a‑aw‑dy!”

“Mus’ be havin’ a recess in heaven!”

“No lie. Umh-umh-umh⁠—” Grunts to signify admiration far beyond words.

“Lady, you kin have all my week’s pay⁠—ev’y bit of it.” Bubber dived elaborately into his empty pockets, while Jinx vowed:

“I’m go’n’ get religion and die so I kin go to heaven and meet that angel⁠—yassuh!”

Suddenly comment ceased. Only two doors beyond Merrit’s house the girl turned in, traversed the short cement walk, mounted the stoop, unlocked and entered the front door.

Merrit raised his brows in a characteristic little expression of surprise. Shine saw him do so and had a swift interpretation for that expression:

“Figgerin’ on a jive already⁠—the doggone dickty hound. Why the hell dickties can’t stick to their own women ’thout messin’ around honest workin’ girls⁠—”

Bubber was rapturizing without restraint, “Man⁠—oh⁠—man! A honey with high yaller laigs! And did you see that walk? That gal walks on ball-bearin’s, she do⁠—ev’rything moves at once.” He illustrated his idea with head-wobblings, shoulder-rollings, and loose backward protrusions and retractions of buttocks. “See what I mean? Tail-conscious, man, tail-conscious⁠—”

“You jes’ a damn liar,” came unexpectedly from Shine. “She walks like what she is, a lady⁠—and you talk like what you is, a rat. Come on, it’s gettin’ late⁠—let’s go from here.”

Whereupon Jinx looked at Bubber and Bubber looked at Jinx. Here was indeed something new, Shine championing a woman.

“Well, kiss my assorted peanuts!” ejaculated Bubber.

“Guess that’s the dynamite,” was Jinx’s dyspeptic surmise.