He accepted the price. Bess gave him eighteen cents, and a hard look. He counted the money, glanced at the hand that now hung innocently against her apron, then laughed.
“Just as yuh say, Sister. I ain’t quarrelin’ none wid yuh dis mornin’.”
Bess gave him one of the faint, cryptic smiles that always made men friends and women enemies for her, and departed for Catfish Row, as if nothing had happened to break the dull routine of the morning’s chores.
§
Saturday night, and the court had flung off its workaday clothes and mood. In the corner by Serena’s washbench a small intimate circle had gathered about a smoking kerosene lamp. Several women sat on the bench with drowsy little negroes in their laps. A man near the light leaned over a guitar, with a vague wistfulness in his face, and plucked successive chords with a swift, running vibrance of sound. Then a deep baritone hummed for a second and raised an air:
“Ain’t it hahd tuh be a nigger;
Ain’t it hahd tuh be a nigger;
Ain’t it hahd tuh be a nigger;
’Cause yuh can’t git yo’ rights w’en yuh do.
“I was sleepin’ on a pile ob lumber,
Jus’ as happy as uh man kin be,
W’en a w’ite man come wake me from my slumber,
An’ he say, ‘Yuh gots tuh work now, ’cause yuh free!’”
Then they were all in on the chorus:
“Ain’t it hahd tuh be a nigger,”
and the gloom hummed with the low, close harmonies.