"I don't know. I might. Anyway, my writing makes it possible for me to stand being a slave on a lousy job."
Weeks passed sometimes and I never saw Michael, although he was often in Harlem, for usually when I was in he was out. He was as busy at his job as I was on mine, with shiploads of soldiers returning from Europe and the railroad service engaged to its utmost capacity. Doubling-out became like a part of the regular schedule, there was so much of it.
One day when I was in the city Michael dropped in. Seeing a revolver on the table, he asked what was the meaning of it. I said that the revolver had been in my possession for some years, ever since I used to manage an eating place in a tough district of Brooklyn. But why was I carrying it, he asked, when it might get me into trouble with the police? He never carried one himself, although his was a dangerous trade, for he was safer without it if he were picked up by the bulls.
I explained that I, like the rest of my crew, was carrying the revolver for self-defense, because of the tightened tension between the colored and the white population all over the country. Stopping-over in strange cities, we trainmen were obliged to pass through some of the toughest quarters and we had to be on guard against the suddenly aroused hostility of the mob. There had been bloody outbreak after outbreak in Omaha, Chicago, and Washington, and any crazy bomb might blow up New York even. I walked over to a window and looked out on the back yard.
Michael said: "And if a riot broke in Harlem and I got caught up here, I guess I'd get killed maybe."
"And if it were downtown and I was caught in it?" said I, turning round.
Michael said: "And if there were trouble here like that in Chicago between colored and white, I on my side and you on yours, we might both be shooting at one another, eh?"
"It was like that during the war that's just ended," I said, "brother against brother and friend against friend. They were all flapped in it and they were all helpless."