Right after one Eighth the celebrants began laying by their savings against the coming of the next Eighth. It was Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July crowded into the compass of one day—a whole year of anticipation packed in and tamped down into twenty-four hours of joyous realization. There never were enough excursion trains to bring all those from a distance who wanted to come in for the Eighth. Some, travelers, the luckier ones, rode in state on packed day coaches and the others, as often as not, came from clear down below the Tennessee line, on flat cars, shrieking with nervous joy as the engine jerked them around the sharp curves, they being meantime oblivious alike to the sun shining with midsummer fervor upon their unprotected heads, and the coal cinders, as big as buttons, that rained down in gritty showers. There was some consolation then in having a complexion that neither sun could tan nor cinders blacken.
For that one day out of the three hundred and sixty-five and a fourth, the town was a town of dark joy. The city authorities made special provision for the comfort and the accommodation of the invading swarms and the merchants wore pleased looks for days beforehand and for weeks afterward—to them one good Eighth of August was worth as much as six Court Mondays and a couple of circus days. White people kept indoors as closely as possible, not for fear of possible race clashes, because we didn't have such things; but there wasn't room, really, for anybody except the celebrants. The Eighth was one day when the average white family ate a cold snack for dinner and when family buggies went undrivered and family washing went unwashed.
On a certain Eighth of August which I have in mind, Judge Priest spent the simmering day alone in his empty house and in the evening when he came out of Clay Street into Jefferson, he revealed himself as the sole pedestrian of his color in sight. Darkies, though, were everywhere—town darkies with handkerchiefs tucked in at their necks in the vain hope of saving linen collars from the wilting-down process; cornfield darkies whose feet were cramped, cabin'd, cribb'd and confined, as the saying goes, inside of stiff new shoes and sore besides from much pelting over unwontedly hard footing; darkies perspiry and rumpled; darkies gorged and leg weary, but still bent on draining the cup of their yearly joy to its delectable dregs. Rivers of red pop had already flowed, Niagaras of lager beer and stick gin had been swallowed up, breast works of parched goobers had been shelled flat, and blade forests of five cent cigars had burned to the water's edge; and yet here was the big night just getting fairly started. Full voiced bursts of laughter and yells of sheer delight assaulted the old Judge's ears. Through the yellowish dusk one hired livery stable rig after another went streaking by, each containing an unbleached Romeo and his pastel-shaded Juliet.
A corner down town, where the two branches of the car lines fused into one, was the noisiest spot yet. Here Ben Boyd and Bud Dobson, acknowledged to be the two loudest mouthed darkies in town, contended as business rivals. Each wore over his shoulder the sash of eminence and bore on his breast the badge of much honor. Ben Boyd had a shade the stronger voice, perhaps, but Bud Dobson excelled in native eloquence. On opposite sidewalks they stood, sweating like brown stone china ice pitchers, wide mouthed as two bull-alligators.
“Come on, you niggers, dis way to de-real show,” Ben Boyd would bellow unendingly, “Remember de grand free balloom ascension teks place at eight o'clock,” and Ben would wave his long arms like a flutter mill.
“Don't pay no 'tention, friends, to dat cheap nigger,” Bud Dobson would vociferously plead, “an' don't furgit de grand fire works display at mah park! Ladies admitted free, widout charge! Dis is de only place to go! Tek de green car fur de grand annual outin' an' ball of de Sisters of the Mysterious Ten!”
Back it would come in a roar from across the way:
“Tek de red car—dat's de one, dat's de one, folks! Dis way fur de big gas balloom!” Both of them were lying—there was no balloon to go up, no intention of admitting anybody free to anything. The pair expanded their fictions, giving to their work the spontaneous brilliancy of the born romancer. Like straws caught in opposing cross currents, their victims were pulled two ways at once. A flustered group would succumb to Bud's blandishments and he would shoo them aboard a green car. But the car had to be starting mighty quick, else Bud Dobson's siren song would win them over and trailing after their leader, who was usually a woman, like blade sheep behind a bell wether they would pile off and stampede over to where the red car waited. Some changed their minds half a dozen times before they were finally borne away.
These were the country darkies, though—the town bred celebrants knew exactly where they were going and what they would do when they got there. They moved with the assured bearing of cosmopolitans, stirred and exhilarated by the clamor but not confused by it. Grand in white dresses, with pink sashes and green headgear, the Imperial Daughters of the Golden Star rolled by in a furniture van. The Judge thought he caught a chocolate-colored glimpse of Aunt Dilsey, his cook, enthroned on a front seat, as befitting the Senior Grand Potentate of the lodge; anyhow, he knew she must be up front there somewhere. If any cataclysm of Providence had descended upon that furniture van that night many a kitchen beside his would have mourned a biscuit maker par excellence. Sundry local aristocrats of the race—notably the leading town barber, a high school teacher and a shiny black undertaker in a shiny high hat—passed in an automobile, especially loaned for the occasion by a white friend and customer of the leading barber. It was the first time an automobile had figured in an Eighth of August outing; its occupants bore themselves accordingly.
Further along, in the centre of the business district, the Judge had almost to shove a way for himself through crowds that were nine-tenths black. There was no actual disorder, but there was an atmosphere of unrestrained race exultation. You couldn't put your hand on it, nor express it in words perhaps, but it was there surely. Turning out from the lit-up and swarming main thoroughfare into the quieter reaches of a side street, Judge Priest was put to it to avoid a collision with an onward rush of half grown youths, black, brown, and yellow. Whooping, they clattered on by him and never looked back to see who it was they had almost run over.