The Homesteader: A Novel

by Oscar Micheaux

CHAPTER XI

"IT'S THE WRONG NUMBER"

JEAN BAPTISTE had come eight hundred miles after one terrible year, to the feet of his father-in-law, and when he realized that such was the case upon hanging up the receiver, his composure was gone. Bitter agony beyond description overwhelmed him when he came from the booth at the end of his brief conversation with Mrs. Pruitt. Never in his life had he been as miserable as he now was. It seemed to him that in the next hour he must surely die of agony. He found a place in the station where he was very much alone, and for a time gave up to the grief and misery that had come over him.

"Unless I find some diversion, I will be unfit for anything but suicide!" he declared, trying to see before him. Out in the West all was wrong. He was now loaded down with debt. His interest was unpaid, also his taxes. His creditors for smaller amounts he had not even called upon to say that he was unable to meet his financial obligations. He had tried being blind to everything but the instance of his wife. He had just deliberately cast everything aside until he could have her. That was it. He had made himself believe that only was it necessary to see her alone, and together they would fly back to the West. He had not reckoned that his arch enemy would be lying like a great dog right at the door he was to enter.

And now, before he was hardly in the city, he was all but confronted with his hypocritical bulk.

"Oh, I can stand it no longer, no, no, no!" he cried in agonizing tones. The world to him was lost. The strong shall be the weakest when it becomes so, it is said; and surely Jean Baptiste had come to it in this hour. He had no courage, he had no hope, he had no plans.

After minutes in which he reached nowhere; minutes when all the manhood in him crept out, and went away to hide, he staggered to his feet. He straightened his body, and also his face; he became an automaton. He had decided to seek artificial stimulation. Thereupon he made his way into the main waiting room. He looked about him as one in a daze, and finally turned his face toward the entrance of the station. When there he had arrived, he hesitated, and looked from right to left. As he did so, his mind went back to some years before when he first saw the city, and had gone about its streets in search of work. A block or two away he recalled Clark Street, that part of it which had been notorious. He recalled where one could go and see almost anything he wished.

Now, he was a man, was Jean Baptiste, a man who had loved a wife as men should; a man who had found a wife and a wife's comfort all he had longed for in life. But that one he had taken as wife had fled. She had left him to the world, and all that was worldly. He was breaking down under the strain, and his manhood was for the time gone. He became as men are, as men have been, and he was at a place where he did not care. He was alone in the world, the prairies had not been good to him, and he felt he must have rest, oh, rest.

He stepped from the station, and held himself erect with an effort. He turned to his left, and walked or rather ambled along. He did not know in particular where he was going, but going somewhere he was. He kept his face turned to the west, and after many steps, he came to a side street. It was a narrow street, and he recalled it vaguely. It was called Custom House Place, and its reputation for the worst, was equalled by none. Even from where he stood the sound of ragtime music came to his ears from a gorgeous saloon across its narrow way.

He listened to it without feeling, no thrill or inspiration did it give him. He turned into this street after some minutes, and ambled along its narrow walkway. As he went along, from force of habit, he studied the various forms of vice about. In and out of its many ways, he saw the familiar women, the painted faces and the gorgeous eyes. He came presently to where Negroes stood before a saloon. They, too, were of the type he understood. Characters with soft hands, and soft skin, and he knew they never worked. He turned into it. A bar was before him, and although for liquor he had never cared especially, he could drink. He went forward to the bar and ordered a cocktail. He drank it slowly, as he observed himself, all haggard and worn in the bar mirror, and as he did so, he could see what was passing behind him. A man sat in a small ante room near a door, and he observed that men would pass by this man to a door opening obviously to a stairway beyond. He wondered what was beyond. He ordered another cocktail, and drank it slowly, studying those who passed back and forth through the door that the man opened with a spring. He decided to venture thereforth.