Late in the afternoon Jake Blount awoke with the feeling that he had slept enough. The room in which he lay was small and neat, furnished with a bureau, a table, a bed, and a few chairs. On the bureau an electric fan turned its face slowly from one wall to another, and as the breeze from it passed Jake’s face he thought of cool water. By the window a man sat before the table and stared down at a chess game laid out before him. In the daylight the room was not familiar to Jake, but he recognized the man’s face instantly and it was as though he had known him a very long time.

Many memories were confused in Jake’s mind. He lay motionless with his eyes open and his hands turned palm upward. His hands were huge and very brown against the white sheet. When he held them up to his face he saw that they were scratched and bruised—and the veins were swollen as though he had been grasping hard at something for a long time. His face looked tired and unkempt. His brown hair fell down over his forehead and his mustache was awry. Even his wing-shaped eyebrows were rough and tousled. As he lay there his lips moved once or twice and his mustache jerked with a nervous quiver.

After a while he sat up and gave himself a thump on the side of his head with one of his big fists to straighten himself out. When he moved, the man playing chess looked up quickly and smiled at him.

‘God, I’m thirsty,’ Jake said. ‘I feel like the whole Russian army marched through my mouth in its stocking feet.’

The man looked at him, still smiling, and then suddenly he reached down on the other side of the table and brought up a frosted pitcher of ice water and a glass. Jake drank in great panting gulps—standing half-naked in the middle of the room, his head thrown back and one of his hands closed in a tense fist. He finished four glasses before he took a deep breath and relaxed a little.

Instantly certain recollections came to him. He couldn’t remember coming home with this man, but things that had happened later were clearer now. He had waked up soaking in a tub of cold water, and afterward they drank coffee and talked. He had got a lot of things off his chest and the man had listened. He had talked himself hoarse, but he could remember the expressions on the man’s face better than anything that was said. They had gone to bed in the morning with the shade pulled down so no light could come in. At first he would keep waking up with nightmares and have to turn the light on to get himself clear again. The light would wake this fellow also, but he hadn’t complained at all.

‘How come you didn’t kick me out last night?’

The man only smiled again. Jake wondered why he was so quiet. He looked around for his clothes and saw that his suitcase was on the floor by the bed. He couldn’t remember how he had got it back from the restaurant where he owed for the drinks. His books, a white suit, and some shirts were all there as he had packed them. Quickly he began to dress himself.

An electric coffee-pot was perking on the table by the time he had his clothes on. The man reached into the pocket of the vest that hung over the back of a chair. He brought out a card and Jake took it questioningly. The man’s name—John Singer—was engraved in the center, and beneath this, written in ink with the same elaborate precision as the engraving, there was a brief message.

I am a deaf-mute, but I read the lips and understand what is said to me. Please do not shout.

The shock made Jake feel light and vacant. He and John Singer just looked at each other.

‘I wonder how long it would have taken me to find that out,’ he said.

Singer looked very carefully at his lips when he spoke—he had noticed that before. But a dummy!

They sat at the table and drank hot coffee out of blue cups. The room was cool and the half-drawn shades softened the hard glare from the windows. Singer brought from his closet a tin box that contained a loaf of bread, some oranges, and cheese. He did not eat much, but sat leaning back in his chair with one hand in his pocket. Jake ate hungrily. He would have to leave the place immediately and think things over. As long as he was stranded he ought to scout around for some sort of job in a hurry. The quiet room was too peaceful and comfortable to worry in—he would get out and walk by himself for a while.

‘Are there any other deaf-mute people here?’ he asked. ‘You have many friends?’

Singer was still smiling. He did not catch on to the words at first, and Jake had to repeat them. Singer raised his sharp, dark eyebrows and shook his head.

‘Find it lonesome?’

The man shook his head in a way that might have meant either yes or no. They sat silently for a little while and then Jake got up to leave. He thanked Singer several times for the night’s lodging, moving his lips carefully so that he was sure to be understood. The mute only smiled again and shrugged his shoulders. When Jake asked if he could leave his suitcase under the bed for a few days the mute nodded that he could.

Then Singer took his hands from his pocket and wrote carefully on a pad of paper with a silver pencil. He shoved the pad over toward Jake.

I can put a mattress on the floor and you can stay here until you find a place. I am out most of the day. It will not be any trouble.

Jake felt his lips tremble with a sudden feeling of gratefulness. But he couldn’t accept. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I already got a place.’

As he was leaving the mute handed him a pair of blue overalls, rolled into a tight bundle, and seventy-five cents. The overalls were filthy and as Jake recognized them they aroused in him a whirl of sudden memories from the past week. The money, Singer made him understand, had been in his pockets.

‘Adios,’ Jake said. ‘I’ll be back sometime soon.’

He left the mute standing in the doorway with his hands still in his pockets and the half-smile on his face. When he had gone down several steps of the stairs he turned and waved. The mute waved back to him and closed his door.

Outside the glare was sudden and sharp against his eyes. He stood on the sidewalk before the house, too dazzled at first by the sunlight to see very clearly. A youngun was sitting on the banisters of the house. He had seen her somewhere before. He remembered the boy’s shorts she was wearing and the way she squinted her eyes.

He held up the dirty roll of overalls. ‘I want to throw these away. Know where I can find a garbage can?’

The kid jumped down from the banisters. ‘It’s in the back yard. I’ll show you.’

He followed her through the narrow, dampish alley at the side of the house. When they came to the back yard Jake saw that two Negro men were sitting on the back steps. They were both dressed in white suits and white shoes. One of the Negroes was very tall and his tie and socks were brilliant green. The other was a light mulatto of average height. He rubbed a tin harmonica across his knee. In contrast with his tall companion his socks and tie were a hot red.

The kid pointed to the garbage can by the back fence and then turned to the kitchen window. ‘Portia!’ she called. ‘Highboy and Willie here waiting for you.’

A soft voice answered from the kitchen. ‘You neen holler so loud. I know they is. I putting on my hat right now.’

Jake unrolled the overalls before throwing them away. They were stiff with mud. One leg was torn and a few drops of blood stained the front. He dropped them in the can. A Negro girl came out of the house and joined the white-suited boys on the steps. Jake saw that the youngun in shorts was looking at him very closely. She changed her weight from one foot to the other and seemed excited.

‘Are you kin to Mister Singer?’ she asked.

‘Not a bit.’

‘Good friend?’

‘Good enough to spend the night with him.’

‘I just wondered——’

‘Which direction is Main Street?’

She pointed to the right. ‘Two blocks down this way.’

Jake combed his mustache with his fingers and started off. He jingled the seventy-five cents in his hand and bit his lower lip until it was mottled and scarlet. The three Negroes were walking slowly ahead of him, talking among themselves. Because he felt lonely in the unfamiliar town he kept close behind them and listened. The girl held both of them by the arm. She wore a green dress with a red hat and shoes. The boys walked very close to her.

‘What we got planned for this evening?’ she asked.

‘It depend entirely upon you, Honey,’ the tall boy said. ‘Willie and me don’t have no special plans.’

She looked from one to the other. ‘You all got to decide.’

‘Well——’ said the shorter boy in the red socks. ‘Highboy and me thought m-maybe us three go to church.’

The girl sang her answer in three different tones. ‘O—K— And after church I got a notion I ought to go and set with Father for a while—just a short while.’ They turned at the first corner, and Jake stood watching them a moment before walking on.

The main street was quiet and hot, almost deserted. He had not realized until now that it was Sunday—and the thought of this depressed him. The awnings over the closed stores were raised and the buildings had a bare look in the bright sun. He passed the New York Café. The door was open, but the place looked empty and dark. He had not found any socks to wear that morning, and the hot pavement burned through the thin soles of his shoes. The sun felt like a hot piece of iron pressing down on his head. The town seemed more lonesome than any place he had ever known. The stillness of the street gave him a strange feeling. When he had been drunk the place had seemed violent and riotous. And now it was as though everything had come to a sudden, static halt.

He went into a fruit and candy store to buy a paper. The Help-Wanted column was very short. There were several calls for young men between twenty-five and forty with automobiles to sell various products on commission. These he skipped over quickly. An advertisement for a truck-driver held his attention for a few minutes. But the notice at the bottom interested him most. It read:

Wanted—Experienced Mechanic. Sunny Dixie Show. Apply Corner Weavers Lane & 15th Street.

Without knowing it he had walked back to the door of the restaurant where he had spent his time during the past two weeks. This was the only place on the block besides the fruit store which was not closed. Jake decided suddenly to drop in and see Biff Brannon.

The café was very dark after the brightness outside. Everything looked dingier and quieter than he had remembered it. Brannon stood behind the cash register as usual, his arms folded over his chest. His good-looking plump wife sat filing her fingernails at the other end of the counter. Jake noticed that they glanced at each other as he came in.

‘Afternoon,’ said Brannon.

Jake felt something in the air. Maybe the fellow was laughing because he remembered things that had happened when he was drunk. Jake stood wooden and resentful. ‘Package of Target, please.’ As Brannon reached beneath the counter for the tobacco Jake decided that he was not laughing. In the daytime the fellow’s face was not as hard-looking as it was at night. He was pale as though he had not slept, and his eyes had the look of a weary buzzard’s.

‘Speak up,’ Jake said. ‘How much do I owe you?’

Brannon opened a drawer and put on the counter a public-school tablet. Slowly he turned over the pages and Jake watched him. The tablet looked more like a private notebook than the place where he kept his regular accounts. There were long lines of figures, added, divided, and subtracted, and little drawings. He stopped at a certain page and Jake saw his last name written at the corner. On the page there were no figures—only small checks and crosses. At random across the page were drawn little round, seated cats with long curved lines for tails. Jake stared. The faces of the little cats were human and female. The faces of the little cats were Mrs. Brannon.

‘I have checks here for the beers,’ Brannon said. ‘And crosses for dinners and straight lines for the whiskey. Let me see——’ Brannon rubbed his nose and his eyelids drooped down. Then he shut the tablet. ‘Approximately twenty dollars.’

‘It’ll take me a long time,’ Jake said. ‘But maybe you’ll get it.’

‘There’s no big hurry.’

Jake leaned against the counter. ‘Say, what kind of a place is this town?’

‘Ordinary,’ Brannon said. ‘About like any other place the same size.’

‘What population?’

‘Around thirty thousand.’

Jake opened the package of tobacco and rolled himself a cigarette. His hands were shaking. ‘Mostly mills?’

‘That’s right. Four big cotton mills—those are the main ones. A hosiery factory. Some gins and sawmills.’

‘What kind of wages?’

‘I’d say around ten or eleven a week on the average—but then of course they get laid off now and then. What makes you ask all this? You mean to try to get a job in a mill?’

Jake dug his fist into his eye and rubbed it sleepily. ‘Don’t know. I might and I might not.’ He laid the newspaper on the counter and pointed out the advertisement he had just read. ‘I think I’ll go around and look into this.’

Brannon read and considered. ‘Yeah,’ he said finally. ‘I’ve seen that show. It’s not much—just a couple of contraptions such as a flying-jinny and swings. It corrals the colored people and mill hands and kids. They move around to different vacant lots in town.’

‘Show me how to get there.’

Brannon went with him to the door and pointed out the direction. ‘Did you go on home with Singer this morning?’

Jake nodded.

‘What do you think of him?’

Jake bit his lips. The mute’s face was in his mind very clearly. It was like the face of a friend he had known for a long time. He had been thinking of the man ever since he had left his room. ‘I didn’t even know he was a dummy,’ he said finally.

He began walking again down the hot, deserted street. He did not walk as a stranger in a strange town. He seemed to be looking for someone. Soon he entered one of the mill districts bordering the river. The streets became narrow and unpaved and they were not empty any longer. Groups of dingy, hungry-looking children called to each other and played games. The two-room shacks, each one like the other, were rotten and unpainted. The stink of food and sewage mingled with the dust in the air. The falls up the river made a faint rushing sound. People stood silently in doorways or lounged on steps. They looked at Jake with yellow, expressionless faces. He stared back at them with wide, brown eyes. He walked jerkily, and now and then he wiped his mouth with the hairy back of his hand.

At the end of Weavers Lane there was a vacant block. It had once been used as a junk yard for old automobiles. Rusted pieces of machinery and torn inner tubes still littered the ground. A trailer was parked in one corner of the lot, and near-by was a flying-jinny partly covered with canvas.

Jake approached slowly. Two little younguns in overalls stood before the flying-jinny. Near them, seated on a box, a Negro man drowsed in the late sunshine, his knees collapsed against each other. In one hand he held a sack of melted chocolate. Jake watched him stick his fingers in the miry candy and then lick them slowly.

‘Who’s the manager of this outfit?’

The Negro thrust his two sweet fingers between his lips and rolled over them with his tongue. ‘He a red-headed man,’ he said when he had finished. ‘That all I know, Cap’n.’

‘Where’s he now?’

‘He over there behind that largest wagon.’

Jake slipped off his tie as he walked across the grass and stuffed it into his pocket. The sun was beginning to set in the west. Above the black line of housetops the sky was warm crimson. The owner of the show stood smoking a cigarette by himself. His red hair sprang up like a sponge on the top of his head and he stared at Jake with gray, flabby eyes.

‘You the manager?’

‘Uh-huh. Patterson’s my name.’

‘I come about the job in this morning’s paper.’

‘Yeah. I don’t want no greenhorn. I need a experienced mechanic.’

‘I got plenty of experience,’ Jake said.

‘What you ever done?’

‘I’ve worked as a weaver and loom-fixer. I’ve worked in garages and an automobile assembly shop. All sorts of different things.’

Patterson guided him toward the partly covered flying-jinny. The motionless wooden horses were fantastic in the late afternoon sun. They pranced up statically, pierced by their dull gilt bars. The horse nearest Jake had a splintery wooden crack in its dingy rump and the eyes walled blind and frantic, shreds of paint peeled from the sockets. The motionless merry-go-round seemed to Jake like something in a liquor dream.

‘I want a experienced mechanic to run this and keep the works in good shape,’ Patterson said.

‘I can do that all right.’

‘It’s a two-handed job,’ Patterson explained. ‘You’re in charge of the whole attraction. Besides looking after the machinery you got to keep the crowd in order. You got to be sure that everybody gets on has a ticket. You got to be sure that the tickets are O.K. and not some old dance-hall ticket. Everybody wants to ride them horses, and you’d be surprised what niggers will try to put over on you when they don’t have no money. You got to keep three eyes open all the time.’

Patterson led him to the machinery inside the circle of horses and pointed out the various parts. He adjusted a lever and the thin jangle of mechanical music began. The wooden cavalcade around them seemed to cut them off from the rest of the world. When the horses stopped, Jake asked a few questions and operated the mechanism himself.

‘The fellow I had quit on me,’ Patterson said when they had come out again into the lot. ‘I always hate to break in a new man.’

‘When do I start?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon. We run six days and nights a week—beginning at four and shutting up at twelve. You’re to come about three and help get things going. And it takes about a hour after the show to fold up for the night.’

‘What about pay?’

‘Twelve dollars.’

Jake nodded, and Patterson held out a dead-white, boneless hand with dirty fingernails.

It was late when he left the vacant lot. The hard, blue sky had blanched and in the east there was a white moon. Dusk softened the outline of the houses along the street. Jake did not return immediately through Weavers Lane, but wandered in the neighborhoods near-by. Certain smells, certain voices heard from a distance, made him stop short now and then by the side of the dusty street. He walked erratically, jerking from one direction to another for no purpose. His head felt very light, as though it were made of thin glass. A chemical change was taking place in him. The beers and whiskey he had stored so continuously in his system set in a reaction. He was sideswiped by drunkenness. The streets which had seemed so dead before were quick with life. There was a ragged strip of grass bordering the street, and as Jake walked along the ground seemed to rise nearer to his face. He sat down on the border of grass and leaned against a telephone pole. He settled himself comfortably, crossing his legs Turkish fashion and smoothing down the ends of his mustache. Words came to him and dreamily he spoke them aloud to himself.

‘Resentment is the most precious flower of poverty. Yeah.’

It was good to talk. The sound of his voice gave him pleasure. The tones seemed to echo and hang on the air so that each word sounded twice. He swallowed and moistened his mouth to speak again. He wanted suddenly to return to the mute’s quiet room and tell him of the thoughts that were in his mind. It was a queer thing to want to talk with a deaf-mute. But he was lonesome.

The street before him dimmed with the coming evening. Occasionally men passed along the narrow street very close to him, talking in monotones to each other, a cloud of dust rising around their feet with each step. Or girls passed by together, or a mother with a child across her shoulder. Jake sat numbly for some time, and at last he got to his feet and walked on.

Weavers Lane was dark. Oil lamps made yellow, trembling patches of light in the doorways and windows. Some of the houses were entirely dark and the families sat on their front steps with only the reflections from a neighboring house to see by. A woman leaned out of a window and splashed a pail of dirty water into the street. A few drops of it splashed on Jake’s face. High, angry voices could be heard from the backs of some of the houses. From others there was the peaceful sound of a chair slowly rocking.

Jake stopped before a house where three men sat together on the front steps. A pale yellow light from inside the house shone on them. Two of the men wore overalls but no shirts and were barefooted. One of these was tall and loose-jointed. The other was small and he had a running sore on the corner of his mouth. The third man was dressed in shirt and trousers. He held a straw hat on his knee.

‘Hey,’ Jake said.

The three men stared at him with mill-sallow, dead-pan faces. They murmured but did not change their positions. Jake pulled the package of Target from his pocket and passed it around. He sat down on the bottom step and took off his shoes. The cool, damp ground felt good to his feet.

‘Working now?’

‘Yeah,’ said the man with the straw hat. ‘Most of the time.’

Jake picked between his toes. ‘I got the Gospel in me,’ he said. ‘I want to tell it to somebody.’

The men smiled. From across the narrow street there was the sound of a woman singing. The smoke from their cigarettes hung close around them in the still air. A little youngun passing along the street stopped and opened his fly to make water.

‘There’s a tent around the corner and it’s Sunday,’ the small man said finally. ‘You can go there and tell all the Gospel you want.’

‘It’s not that kind. It’s better. It’s the truth.’

‘What kind?’

Jake sucked his mustache and did not answer. After a while he said, ‘You ever have any strikes here?’

‘Once,’ said the tall man. ‘They had one of these here strikes around six years ago.’

‘What happened?’

The man with the sore on his mouth shuffled his feet and dropped the stub of his cigarette to the ground. ‘Well—they just quit work because they wanted twenty cents a hour. There was about three hundred did it. They just hung around the streets all day. So the mill sent out trucks, and in a week the whole town was swarming with folks come here to get a job.’

Jake turned so that he was facing them. The men sat two steps above him so that he had to raise his head to look into their eyes. ‘Don’t it make you mad?’ he asked.

‘How you mean—mad?’

The vein in Jake’s forehead was swollen and scarlet. ‘Christamighty, man! I mean mad—m-a-d—mad.’ He scowled up into their puzzled, sallow faces. Behind them, through the open front door he could see the inside of the house. In the front room there was three beds and a washstand. In the back room a barefooted woman sat sleeping in a chair. From one of the dark porches near-by there was the sound of a guitar.

‘I was one of them come in on the trucks,’ the tall man said.

‘That makes no difference. What I’m trying to tell you is plain and simple. The bastards who own these mills are millionaires. While the doffers and carders and all the people behind the machines who spin and weave the cloth can’t hardly make enough to keep their guts quiet. See? So when you walk around the streets and think about it and see hungry, worn-out people and ricket-legged younguns, don’t it make you mad? Don’t it?’

Jake’s face was flushed and dark and his lips trembled. The three men looked at him warily. Then the man in the straw hat began to laugh.

‘Go on and snicker. Sit there and bust your sides open.’

The men laughed in the slow and easy way that three men laugh at one. Jake brushed the dirt from the soles of his feet and put on his shoes. His fists were closed tight and his mouth was contorted with an angry sneer. ‘Laugh—that’s all you’re good for. I hope you sit there and snicker ’til you rot!’ As he walked stiffly down the street the sound of their laughter and catcalls still followed him.

The main street was brightly lighted. Jake loitered on a corner, fondling the change in his pocket. His head throbbed, and although the night was hot a chill passed through his body. He thought of the mute and he wanted urgently to go back and sit with him awhile. In the fruit and candy store where he had bought the newspaper that afternoon he selected a basket of fruit wrapped in cellophane. The Greek behind the counter said the price was sixty cents, so that when he had paid he was left with only a nickel. As soon as he had come out of the store the present seemed a funny one to take a healthy man. A few grapes hung down below the cellophane, and he picked them off hungrily.

Singer was at home when he arrived. He sat by the window with the chess game laid out before him on the table. The room was just as Jake had left it, with the fan turned on and the pitcher of ice water beside the table. There was a panama hat on the bed and a paper parcel, so it seemed that the mute had just come in. He jerked his head toward the chair across from him at the table and pushed the chessboard to one side. He leaned back with his hands in his pockets, and his face seemed to question Jake about what had happened since he had left.

Jake put the fruit on the table. ‘For this afternoon,’ he said. ‘The motto has been: Go out and find an octopus and put socks on it.’

The mute smiled, but Jake could not tell if he had caught what he had said. The mute looked at the fruit with surprise and then undid the cellophane wrappings. As he handled the fruits there was something very peculiar in the fellow’s face. Jake tried to understand this look and was stumped. Then Singer smiled brightly.

‘I got a job this afternoon with a sort of show. I’m to run the flying-jinny.’

The mute seemed not at all surprised. He went into the closet and brought out a bottle of wine and two glasses. They drank in silence. Jake felt that he had never been in such a quiet room. The light above his head made a queer reflection of himself in the glowing wineglass he held before him—the same caricature of himself he had noticed many times before on the curved surfaces of pitchers or tin mugs—with his face egg-shaped and dumpy and his mustache straggling almost up to his ears. Across from him the mute held his glass in both hands. The wine began to hum through Jake’s veins and he felt himself entering again the kaleidoscope of drunkenness. Excitement made his mustache tremble jerkily. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and fastened a wide, searching gaze on Singer.

‘I bet I’m the only man in this town that’s been mad—I’m talking about really mean mad—for ten solid long years. I damn near got in a fight just a little while ago. Sometimes it seems to me like I might even be crazy. I just don’t know.’

Singer pushed the wine toward his guest. Jake drank from the bottle and rubbed the top of his head.

‘You see, it’s like I’m two people. One of me is an educated man. I been in some of the biggest libraries in the country. I read. I read all the time. I read books that tell the pure honest truth. Over there in my suitcase I have books by Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen and such writers as them. I read them over and over, and the more I study the madder I get. I know every word printed on every page. To begin with I like words. Dialectic materialism—Jesuitical prevarication’— Jake rolled the syllables in his mouth with loving solemnity—‘teleological propensity.’

The mute wiped his forehead with a neatly folded handkerchief.

‘But what I’m getting at is this. When a person knows and can’t make the others understand, what does he do?’

Singer reached for a wineglass, filled it to the brim, and put it firmly into Jake’s bruised hand. ‘Get drunk, huh?’ Jake said with a jerk of his arm that spilled drops of wine on his white trousers. ‘But listen! Wherever you look there’s meanness and corruption. This room, this bottle of grape wine, these fruits in the basket, are all products of profit and loss. A fellow can’t live without giving his passive acceptance to meanness. Somebody wears his tail to a frazzle for every mouthful we eat and every stitch we wear—and nobody seems to know. Everybody is blind, dumb, and blunt-headed—stupid and mean.’

Jake pressed his fists to his temples. His thoughts had careened in several directions and he could not get control of them. He wanted to go berserk. He wanted to get out and fight violently with someone in a crowded street.

Still looking at him with patient interest, the mute took out his silver pencil. He wrote very carefully on a slip of paper, Are you Democrat or Republican? and passed the paper across the table. Jake crumpled it in his hand. The room had begun to turn around him again and he could not even read.

He kept his eyes on the mute’s face to steady himself. Singer’s eyes were the only things in the room that did not seem to move. They were varied in color, flecked with amber, gray, and a soft brown. He stared at them so long that he almost hypnotized himself. He lost the urge to be riotous and felt calm again. The eyes seemed to understand all that he had meant to say and to hold some message for him. After a while the room was steady again.

‘You get it,’ he said in a blurred voice. ‘You know what I mean.’

From afar off there was the soft, silver ring of church bells. The moonlight was white on the roof next door and the sky was a gentle summer blue. It was agreed without words that Jake would stay with Singer a few days until he found a room. When the wine was finished the mute put a mattress on the floor beside the bed. Without removing any of his clothes Jake lay down and was instantly asleep.