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By Root 10362 0

and he had gone home carrying his handkerchief, as if he kept it there, and never again had things been the same, and funny, time had passed, and here he was, and Lucy was married. He hoped to Jesus Christ she’d get fat as a pig, have ten kids, and a husband who’d kick the Christ out of her, dose her, and blow out. He looked at the house, with lights behind shaded windows. Niggers now lived in it, and the house was probably stinking because niggers always stunk, and it was dirty because niggers were dirty. He tried to whistle. He heard some vague sounds, and stood convinced that they were human voices, and somehow he felt as if he was hearing Lucy, and Dan and Helen Shires, and all of them talking once again.

He turned back towards Fifty-eighth, cut through the vacant lot, where they’d played, into the alley, out on Fifty-eighth Street and over to Michigan. He crossed Michigan and looked at the playground, dark and gloomy, with the school building half visible. It was misty, an autumn mist, a night like many nights he’d known around the neighborhood, when they’d all get together in the poolroom or at the corner, Slug and Red, Tommy and Les. And they’d goof around, listen to the punks, or go to a show, or get a bottle. He turned around, and walked back. The same railing stood by the grass plot, in front of the corner buildings at the northeast corner of Fifty-eighth and Michigan. Sometimes as a kid he used to jump back and forth over it. He vaulted over it. He vaulted back. He put his feet together to make a standing jump over it. He looked at the railing. He didn’t jump, might not make it that way. He was stiffened up, heavy on his feet. He felt his belly. Jesus, was he going to get a belly like the old man?

He walked back to Indiana. On the east side of the alley between Michigan and Indiana, there was still that row of shacks. Poor people had lived there. He looked in and saw a dirty, disrumpled Negro home, lit by a kerosene lamp.

A buck nigger came along. Studs took his hands out of his pockets and tried to look tough. The nigger passed, singing.

He wondered where the guys were. He turned and walked south along Indiana towards St. Patrick’s. He started singing:

“Gee, but I’d give the world to see

That old Gang of mine,

I can’t forget that old quartette,

That sang, ‘Sweet Adeline.’ “

Goodby forever, old fellows and pals.. .

He stuck his hands in his pockets. He took them out, and swung them at his side. He lit a cigarette. The night was swell, that mist, the moon, just a little bit damp, all like some mystery or song or something. He thought of Lucy, and of that girl he’d knelt next to at mass. Wonder what had become of her. Was Lucy happy? Hell, things were all funny. He guessed he, too, might as well get a girl and marry. What the hell else was there to do? Red Kelly had his girl. Sooner or later a guy married... if he could find somebody to marry him.

Ahead of him, he saw the lights of an elevated train appear, disappear. He heard the echoes from the train.

A long time ago, he had walked along the same sidewalk with Lucy. He stopped under the elevated structure, just south of Fifty-ninth Street. A train rumbled overhead. Sometimes they’d played shinny, or had fights here. He moved on past a row of apartment buildings. In his time, they’d looked new and modern, with lawns and trimmed bushes in front of them. Now they seemed old. The niggers, all over again, running down a neighborhood. He heard a Victrola record going:

I hate to see de evening sun go down,

I hate to see de evening sun go down,

An elevated train blotted the song out momentarily, then he heard it again:

St. Louis woman, wid her diamond rings...

He walked on. Niggers living in all these buildings, living their lives, jazzing, drinking, and having their kids, and flashing razors at each other.

He crossed Sixtieth, and, quickening his pace, he saw the sisters’ convent, and the east side of the church grounds, with a bare flag-pole half distinct, in the center. And the school building. He looked at it, a long, low building, now like a shadow,