Another White Friend
I had already bought my ticket, when a few days before the date of sailing I received a letter containing a soiled scrap bearing one of my poems, which had been reprinted in the New York Tribune. The letter was from another white friend, quite different from those before mentioned.
Ours was a curious friendship and this was the way it came about. Coming off the dining car one night, I went with another waiter to his home in one of the West Forties. His wife had company and we played cards until a late hour.
When I left I went to eat in a Greek place on Sixth Avenue. While I was waiting for the steak and looking at a newspaper, a young fellow came in, sat down at my table, and taking my cap from the chair, put it on. Before I could say a word about such a surprising thing, he said in a low, nervous voice: "It's all right, let me wear your cap. The bulls are right after me and I am trying to fool them. They won't recognize me sitting here with you, for I was bareheaded."
The Greek came with my steak and asked what the fellow wanted. He said, "A cup of coffee." He was twenty-three, of average height and size, and his kitelike face was decent enough. I saw no bulls, but didn't mind his hiding against me at all if he could get away that way. Naturally, I was curious. So I asked where the bulls had got after him, and why. He said it was down in the subway lavatory, when he was attempting to pick a man's pocket. He was refreshingly frank about it. There were three of them and he had escaped by a ruse that cannot be told.
He was hungry and I told him to order food. He became confidential. His name was Michael. He was a little pickpocket and did his tricks most of the time in the subways and parks. He got at his victims while they were asleep in the park or by getting friendly with them. He told me some illuminating things about the bulls, and so realistically that I saw them like wild bulls driving their horns into any object.
When I was leaving the restaurant, Michael asked if he could come up to Harlem, just to get away from downtown. I said that it was all right with me. Thus Michael came to Harlem.