From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [110]
“No,” Stark said. “He was a good nigra.”
“Sure he was. Out of that whole bunch of guys he was the only one who lifted his finger to keep me from gettin knifed. The rest of them just stood and watched.”
“Ordinarily,” Stark said, handing him another pan, “I dont hold with a nigra raisin his hand to a white man. I dont like to see that. But, in this case, of course, he was right.”
“I hope to Christ he was right! That was me that guy was chasin. I loved that big black nigger. When we cooked our stew we invited him help us eat it.”
“Did he wait till he was ask?”
“Sure,” Prew said. “He was a gentleman. More gentleman than the rest of those bastards by a long shot. And by god, they didnt any of the rest of them try cut in on our stew either, dont you believe it. They were all scared of him.”
“I’m not scared of any nigra that ever lived,” Stark said. “Good or bad. But he was a good nigra. But most of them you see on the bum are bad ones, mean ones. This one just happened to be a good one.”
“You dont see what I mean,” Prew explained. “I think most any nigger on the bum is no badder than any white man on the bum. Or for that matter, off the bum.”
“No, I see what you mean,” Stark said. “But you dont know them like I do. Most nigras on the bum are runnin away from havin killed some white man or raped some white woman. Though I’ve met some good ones, too, a lot of them, on the bum. Its just like with town nigras, some are good nigras and some are bad nigras, ony most of the good ones stay home and most of the bad ones end up on the bum. They have to or they’d get lynched. You dont think I’d take anything off any nigra in my home town that I’ve known all my life, do you?”
“Well I see what you mean,” Prew said. “I wouldnt take anything off a bad nigger, but I wouldnt take anything off a bad white man either.”
“Well with white men its a little different. Theres usually some legitimate reason for them bein bad, if you look into it. But a bad nigra is just borned bad, and the ony way to cure him is to teach him a lesson, thats all. Kill or cure. We had one in our town, just plain pisspoor, mean and shiftless. They finally run him off. Ruther, he took off, to keep from gettin taught his lesson. See what I mean? No guts at all, just bad. He was a young buck and his folks died off in the flu epidemic and he just plain run out. Went on the bum, instead of finding him a good hotassed wench and settlin down, like he should of.”
“Thats the same reason I went on the bum,” Prew told him. “Except it wasnt flu killed mine. It was the goddam mines.”
“Yeah?” Stark said, handing him the last of the pans that they had got through fast, so incredibly fast Prew could not believe that they were done, was almost reluctant they were done, in the warmth of grateful friendliness he felt for the other. “Reason I went on the bum,” Stark grinned, “was they was too many mouths to feed at home.
“Well,” he said, “that does her.”
He straightened his long-bent back and pulled the plug and hung it by the chain on the faucet, looking with his fine natural style like what would have made an example picture for a Good Cook’s Handbook, if there had been such a thing.
“When you get these sinks cleaned up go on out and help them to finish peeling the spuds. Willard tries anything else, you let me know.”
“I will,” Prew said, trying to put in his voice what he could not say without killing, “I sure as hell will.”
And thinking happily that sometime, when there was less work and they had leisure, he must explain more fully to his friend Stark what he had meant to say about niggers because he had not quite got it across to him yet apparently, he washed down the sinks and went outside on the entryway porch to where Maggio, Bloom, and Readall Treadwell were still peeling at the two big No. 18 kettles of spuds, heartily disgusted because they had got no break this morning.
In the afternoon they got a break, a good long one of almost two hours, feeling after the din and frantic work of dinner l