A long way from home

by Claude McKay

The cabarets of Harlem in those days enthralled me more than any theater downtown. They were so intimate. If they were lacking in variety they were rich in warmth and native excitement. At that time the hub of Harlem was One Hundred Thirty-fifth Street between Fifth Avenue and Seventh. Between Seventh Avenue and Eighth the population was still white. The saloons were run by the Irish, the restaurants by the Greeks, the ice and fruit stands by the Italians, the grocery and haberdashery stores by the Jews. The only Negro businesses, excepting barber shops, were the churches and the cabarets. And Negro Harlem extended from One Hundred Thirtieth to One Hundred Forty-fifth Streets, bounded on the East by Madison Avenue and on the West by Seventh Avenue. There, coming off the road like homing birds, we trainmen came to rest awhile and fraternize with our friends in the city—elevator runners and porters—and snatch from saloon and cabaret and home a few brief moments of pleasure, of friendship and of love.

On the morning after my meeting with Michael, Manda said she had been to see me twice the night before. She had telephoned the commissary and was told that my dining car was in. She went to the kitchen in the basement and prepared a big breakfast of ham and eggs and fried potatoes with coffee. I asked Mr. Morris, my landlord, to join us, for I wanted to introduce Michael to him.

He, too, had no liking for "poor white trash." He was a strapping light-brown man and doing well with the lease of two private houses and an interest in one of the few Negro-owned saloons. He came from the South, but had been living many years in the North. When he was a young man in the South, he had "sassed" a white man. And for that he was struck. He struck back, and barely escaped with his life. He was a kind landlord and a pleasant mixer, especially in saloons. But he could be bitter when he got to talking about the South. He was decent to Michael, who was a northerner, for my sake. I had been his tenant for a long time and I exercised the freedom of a friend in that house. We drank together and I got my friends sometimes to patronize his saloon (thus contributing my little to help Negro business).

So Michael came to make Harlem his hideout, while he performed his petty tricks downtown. I told Mr. Morris and Manda that he was the ne'er-do-well son of a former boss, and had taken a liking to me. Whatever they really thought of him I never knew, for they never said. But they were aware that our relationship was not a literary one; they knew that he was not one of those white folks who were interested in the pattern of words I was always making. For Michael made no pretense of being intellectual. However, they liked him, for there was a disarming cleanliness and wholesomeness about his appearance, so that they never imagined that he was what he was. And it would never have occurred to them that I could be friendly with a crook. One never can tell about appearances, and so we all make mistakes by it. For example, when some of my strutting railroad friends came to know Manda, they couldn't believe their eyes: seeing is less penetrating than feeling.

When I was away on the railroad, Michael used my place if he needed it. He did not have a key, but I instructed Morris to let him in. I never felt any concern about anything, although I had some dandy suits in my closet and three Liberty Bonds in my trunk. Michael was profoundly sentimental about friendship, the friends of his friend, and anyone who had befriended him. He could even feel a little sorry for some of his victims after he had robbed them. That was evident from the manner in which he talked about their embarrassment. His deep hatred was directed against the bulls, and his mind was always occupied with outwitting and playing tricks on them. There were two classes of them, he said: the burly-brute, heavy-jawed type, which was easy to pick out, and the dapper college-student type, which was the more dangerous. He said that the best victims to single out were men in spectacles, but that sometimes the bulls disguised themselves and looked Harold Lloydish.

When Michael had no money he ate at the house. The landlord and Manda were sympathetic. At least they could understand that a wild and perhaps disinherited scion might be reduced to a state of hunger. The tabloids often carried sentimental stuff about such personages. When Michael had something he was extravagant. I remember one day when he brought in a fine ham. Manda cooked it in delicious Virginia style, thinking, as she said, that Michael's father had relented and that we were eating a slice of his inheritance. Michael and I exchanged looks. I felt like saying something impish to stir up Manda's suspicion. But Michael was now well established as a disinherited son instead of a "poor white trash" and I decided not to risk upsetting his position.

Also I was fond of Manda and had no desire to disturb her black Baptist conscience. She was a good woman. When she did my shirt and things in the laundry of the house where she worked, she bought her own soap and utilized her own spare time. And she would never take home any discarded rags or scraps of food that were not actually given to her.

Michael didn't hit it off so well with the fellows from the railroad, though, except for the lackadaisical one, who liked everybody. Michael was not a boozer, nor hard-boiled. In appearance he was like a nice college student. He was brought up in a Catholic home for boys which was located somewhere in Pennsylvania. He was put in there when he was about nine and kept there for twelve years.... Oh yes, and besides bulls, he hated priests and the Catholic Church.

I liked him most when he was telling about his escapades. There was that big-time representative of an ancient business who had his bags checked in the Grand Central Terminal. Michael managed to get the ticket away from him and refused to give it back unless the man paid twenty-five dollars. The man did not have the money on him and was afraid of a scandal. He had to telephone a friend for it and was even ashamed to do that. He walked along Broadway with Michael until they found a drugstore from which he could telephone. And he begged the lad to remain out of sight, so that his friend should not think the money was for him. "Gee!" Michael said. "And I was scared crazy all the time, thinking he would call a cop and have me arrested. But I faced it out and got the dough. The big stiff."