“I couldn’t jus’ bring a ’oman wid me? I couldn’t eben carry my—my ’oman?”
“No,” said the white man_ positively. “Now I’ve got to be gettin’ along, I reckon. Just come over to the Court House in half an hour, and I’ll meet you and take you in. Only be sure to come. If you don’t show up it’s jail for you, you know.”
For a moment after the man had gone, Porgy sat immovable, with his eyes on the pavement. Then a sudden change swept over him. He cast one glance up and down the hard, clean street, walled by its uncompromising, many-eyed buildings. Then in a panic he clambered into his cart, gave a cruel twist to the tail of his astonished goat, and commenced a spasmodic, shambling race up Meeting House Road in the direction in which he knew that, miles away, the forests lay.
§
To many, the scene which ensued on the upper Meeting House Road stands out as an exquisitely humorous episode, to be told and retold with touching up of high lights and artistic embellishments. To these, in the eyes of whom the negro is wholly humorous, per se, there was not the omission of a single conventional and readily recognizable stage property.
For, after all, what could have been funnier than an entirely serious race between a negro in a dilapidated goat-cart, and the municipality’s shining new patrol wagon, fully officered and clanging its bell for the crowds to hear as it came.
The finish took place in the vicinity of the railway yards and factories, and the street was filled with workmen who smoked against the walls, or ate their lunch, sitting at the pavement’s edge—grand-stand seats, as they were quite accurately described in the telling.
The street cars ran seldom that far out; and Porgy had the thoroughfare almost entirely to himself. His face wore a demented look, and was working pitifully. In his panic, he wrung the tail of his unfortunate beast without mercy. The lunchers along the pavement saw him coming, and called to friends further along; so that as he came, he was greeted with shouts of laughter and witty sallies from the crowd.
Then the wagon appeared, a mere speck in the distance, but sending the sound of its bell before it as an advertisement of its presence. It grew rapidly until it reached the cheering crowds. Then it seemed that even the sedate officers of the law were not above a sly humor of their own, for the vehicle slackened its pace perceptibly and prolonged the final moment of capture.
The big buildings had been left behind, and there lay before Porgy only the scattered, cheap bungalows of the labor quarters; and beyond, as elusive and desirable as the white man’s heaven, glimmered the far line of the woods, misty and beautiful in the pink autumn haze.