“Check this one off,” said Jennings Ware, “if you can’t collect next time. She owes for six weeks now.”
“This one,” he said, flipping a paper quietly on a door mat, “is good pay. They’re good niggers. You’ll get your money every Wednesday.”
“There’s a High Yaller in here,” he said, hurling the paper against the door with a whizzing smack and smiling, as a young full-meated woman’s yell of indignation answered, a thin devil’s grin. “You can have that if you want it.”
A wan smile of fear struggled across Eugene’s mouth. Jennings Ware looked at him shrewdly, but did not press him. Jennings Ware was a good-hearted boy.
“She’s a pretty good old girl,” he said. “You’ve got a right to a few dead-heads. Take it out in trade.”
They walked on down the dark unpaved street, folding papers rapidly during the intervals between delivery.
“It’s a hell of a route,” said Jennings Ware. “When it rains it’s terrible. You’ll go into mud up to your knees. And you can’t collect from half the bastards.” He hurled a paper viciously.
“But, oh man,” he said, after a moment. “If you want Jelly Roll you’ve come to the right place. I ain’t kidding you!”
“With—with niggers?” Eugene whispered, moistening his dry lips.
Jennings Ware turned his red satirical face on him.
“You don’t see any Society Belles around here, do you?” he said.
“Are niggers good?” Eugene asked in a small dry voice.
“Boy!” The word blew out of Jennings Ware’s mouth like an explosion. He was silent a moment.
“There ain’t nothing better,” he said.
At first, the canvas strap of the paper-bag bit cruelly across his slender shoulders. He strained against the galling weight that pulled him earthwards. The first weeks were like a warring nightmare: day after day he fought his way up to liberation. He knew all the sorrow of those who carry weight; he knew, morning by morning, the aerial ecstasy of release. As his load
