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It was Porgy’s custom, when the day’s work was done and he had exchanged a part of his collections for his evening meal of fish and bread, to sit at his front window and watch the world pass by. The great cotton wharves lay up the river, beyond the Row; and when the cotton season was on, he loved to sit in the dusk and see the drays go by. They would sweep into view with a loud thunder of wheels on the cobbles; and from his low seat they loomed huge and mysterious in the gathering dark. Sometimes there would be twenty of them in a row, with great swiftly-stepping mules, crouched figures of drivers, and bales piled toweringly above them. Always Porgy experienced a vague and not unpleasant fear when the drays swung past. There was power, vast, awe-inspiring; it could so easily crush him were he in its path. But here, safe within his window, he could watch it with perfect safety. At times when the train was unusually long, the sustained, rhythmic thunder and the sweep of form after form past his window produced an odd pleasurable detachment in his mind, and pictures of strange things and places would brighten and fade. But the night following the killing, the window was closed, and through the open door behind him beat the rhythm of a dirge from Robbins’ room.
“What de matter, chillen?” came the strophe. And the antistrophe swelled to the answer:
“Pain gots de body, an’ I can’t stan’ still.”
Porgy sat upon his floor counting the day’s collection: one dollar and twenty cents. It had been a good day. Perhaps the sorrow that had brooded over his spirit had quickened the sympathy of the passers-by.
“What de matter, Sister?”
“Jedus gots our brudder, an’ I can’t stan’ still.”
Ever since Porgy had come home the air had swung to the rhythm of the chant. He divided his pile into equal portions, and commenced to pocket one. The burden swayed out again.
“Pain gots de body, an’ I can’t stan’ still.”
He hesitated a moment, poured all the coins together again, selected a twenty-five-cent piece which he put into his pocket, and, taking the remainder in his hand, went out and drew himself across the short distance to the room of mourning.
The body lay upon a bed in the corner of the room, sheeted to the eyes, and upon its breast rested a large blue saucer. Standing in a circle about the bed, or seated upon the floor, backs to the wall, were a score of negroes, some singing, and others swaying, patting the floor with their large feet. For not a single moment since the body had been laid out had the rhythm slackened. With each hour it gathered weight until it seemed to swing the massive structure.
Porgy had heard that Robbins had left no burial insurance, the customary Saturday night festivities having consumed the slender margin between daily wage and immediate need. Now, at sight of the saucer, he knew that rumor had not erred. It had been an old custom among penniless negroes to prepare the corpse thus, then to sing dirges until neighborhood sympathy provided the wherewithal for proper interment. Recent years had introduced the insurance agent and the “buryin’ lodge,” and the old custom had fallen into disuse. It had even become a grievous reproach to have a member of the family a “saucer-buried nigger.”
At the foot of the bed, bowed by the double weight of sorrow and disgrace, the widow sat swaying to the rhythm like a beach palm in the ebb and flow of a bleak sea wind.
The sight of her grief, the close room, the awful presence beneath the sheet, and the unceasing pulse of sound that beat against his ears, all contributed to stir a strange desire into being within Porgy. Suddenly he threw his head back and wailed long and quaveringly. In rushed a vast feeling of relief. He wailed again, emptied his handful of small coins into the saucer, and sank to the floor at the head of the bed. Presently he commenced to croon with the others, and a sense of exaltation flooded his being, compelling him from the despair of the dirge to a more triumphant measure.
“Oh, I gots a little brudder in de new grabe-yahd. What outshine de sun,” he sang.
Without missing the beat, the chorus shifted: “An’ I’ll meet um in the primus lan’.”
Then came a rude interruption. A short yellow negro bustled into the room. His voice was low, oily, and penetrating. He was dressed entirely in black, and had an air of great importance. The song fell away to scarcely more than a throbbing silence. The man crossed the room to where the widow sat huddled at the foot of the bed, and touched her on the shoulder. She raised a face like a burned out ember.
“How de saucer stan’ now, my sister?” he whispered, at the same time casting an appraising glance toward the subject of his inquiry.
“Dere ain’t but fifteen dollar,” she replied in a flat, despairing voice.
“An’ he gots tuh git buried termorrer,” called an awed voice, “or de boahd ob healt’ will take um, an’ give um tuh de students.”
The widow’s scream shrilled wildly. She rose to her knees and clutched the man’s hand between both of hers. “Oh, fuh Gawd’s sake bury um in de grabe-yahd. I goin’ tuh work Monday, and I swear tuh Gawd I goin’ tuh pay yuh ebery cent.”
For a second even the rhythm ceased, leaving an aching suspense in the air. Watchers waited tensely. Wide eyes, riveted on the man’s face, pleaded silently. Presently his professional manner slipped from him. “All right, Sister,” he said simply. “Wid de box, an’ one ca’age it will cost me more dan twenty-five. But I’ll see yuh t’rough. Yuh can all be ready at eight tumorruh. It’s a long trip tuh de cemetery.”
The woman relaxed silently across the foot of the bed, her head between her out-flung arms. Then from the narrow confines of the room, the song beat up and out triumphantly:
“Oh, I gots a little brudder in de new grabe-yahd. What outshine de sun!”
The rhythm swelled, and voices in the court and upper rooms took it up, until the deeply-rooted old walls seemed to rock and surge with the sweep of it.