“De fust thing I needs is a sack of peanuts an’ a awange to cut de dust outen my throat,” Hitch said to himself, as he walked slowly down the village street.
He entered a small grocery, made his purchases, and thrust his fingers into his hip-pocket to bring forth his money.
Instead he extracted a wad of newspapers.
Hitch stupidly unfolded the paper, gazed at it with hypnotic fascination, searched all his pockets for his lost money, then searched them again, hunting for loose change.
The disgusted clerk tossed the bag of peanuts back into the roaster, laid the orange back on the shelf, walked over to a chair and sat down, his mind spluttering like wet fireworks with his unspoken comments on the colored race in general and Hitch in particular.
Hitch stumbled stupidly out of the store, broke and broken-hearted.
He looked around him uncertainly, then dragged his ponderous feet back toward the depot, hoping to find his lost money. After half an hour’s search he gave it up and started aimlessly toward the river.
Half-way down the block he met a tall negro whose face was slightly disfigured by a broken nose. The man wore a checkerboard suit of clothes, a cowboy hat, and a sport shirt. Hitch’s eyes fell first upon the emblem of a negro lodge which the man wore on the lapel of his coat.
Hitch eagerly laid hold upon his lodge brother, “I’s in powerful bad trouble, brudder,” he moaned. “I ain’t know nobody in dis town an’ I done loss all my money on my way to dis place. Whut kin be did?”
“De next best thing is to go down to de big mill an’ set on de buzz-saw,” the brother advised.