However, the secretary of the Federation of Labor pointed out, Business was resisting further decline.
Self-reliance for the penniless and government aid to those who already had more than they could use was the plan. But park benches were wet of a morning whether it rained or no; and it was possible to tire even of bananas.
Still and all times weren’t as hard as some people grew fond of pretending. All that had happened really was a withdrawal from abnormal prosperity with business progressing on a downward grade toward new planes of normality and increasing equalization of opportunity. In short, we were going full steam ahead. Only this time one exciting opportunity was precisely as good as the next exciting opportunity. Which was to say, simply, that nobody got paid any more.
The pimps alone didn’t seem to catch on that the country was progressing downward to new rates of normality. They had been progressing downward for some time without even knowing that they were in style. Now of a sudden they discovered themselves with more girls than beds to put them on. Scarcely-twenties looking for a daddy, any old daddy who’d tell them where to lie down. Landlords and landladies passed them on to the cabbies and the cabbies passed them on to the pimps. It was then, between prostitution and Prohibition, that the ancient color line was finally breached.
Negro bellboys had gained a virtual monopoly on the delivery of illicit alcohol and had found that white male guests either wanted a woman with the bottle or a bottle with the woman. This errand boys’ work evolved into soliciting. Immediately, he looked with scorn upon his own women. Like the Negro policeman, the Negro ponce was harder on his own people than was the white pander.
He saw now at first hand, that what his Mama had told him wasn’t true after alclass="underline" that ‘good’ white folks never acted like bad black ones. For he saw men and women with the best names in town, the do-right names, howling like wolves in the Saturday stews, panties on the bedpost and pants on the floor, yet knew Do-Right Daddy would be back with his family, come Sunday morning, in the pew with the best name in town.
The Negro began losing his awe of the white women there and then. He gave her the choice of moving over or being turned in to the law. The errand boy became an informer as well as solicitor. Times weren’t as bad, he felt, as the papers made out.
Everyone was out soliciting in one commodity or another. Everyone was pecking somebody else’s door. The whole town was out pecking, nobody stayed home to buy. Either you rapped doors on commission or you organized a chance of fools even sillier than yourself into crews and took your commission out of theirs. And since theirs was purely theoretical, it followed yours must be theoretical too.
If, for example, you swindled a housewife into signing for delivery of two pounds of coffee twice a week for twelve weeks, you received two theoretical dollars for perpetrating the swindle. Actually, however, you had swindled her for nothing, because the driver accredited himself with the order – ‘that party changed her mind. You know how women are,’ he advised the door-to-door man.
The driver in turn was victimized by the device of deducting two dollars from his regular salary in lieu of that same housewife’s deuce. By the time that the deuce had found its way from wife to owner’s pocket, there wasn’t a man on the street crew who had been on it the week before.
Dove Linkhorn, now in a seersucker suit and sea-green tie, stood on the corner of Calhoun and Magnolia. That here stood a man far above the blue jean and Bull Durham class was plain to be seen, for he was smoking a Picayune. Indeed, he lacked only something to sell to start making his own way down the Ladder of Success as fast as the next ambitious boy. So when he saw men encircling someone or something down the street he hurried there as fast as his butter-colored shoes could make steps, in hope that someone was throwing a fit.
But all it was was a little round man with something glistening in his hand. Dove elbowed in to see what glistened so nicely.
Cawfee pot.
Hello, pot.
Shor a purty old pot.
‘Wreneger’s the name,’ the little round man was telling his crew, ‘but you boys call me plain old “Smiley” because that’s what all my goodbuddies call me. And you know what I tell my goodbuddies? I tell them, “Goodbuddies, if you aint sellin’ you just aint tryin’,” that’s what I tell my goodbuddies. And that’s what I’m tellin’ every one of you,’ cause you all my goodbuddies too.’
Little old red ’n green cawfee pot. Well I be dawg. Bet you make right good cawfee.
‘The idea aint to see how many doors you can rap of a morning – that aint sellin’. That aint even tryin’. If you only rap two doors a whole morning and sell both, then you’re tryin’.’
I had me a cawfee pot like you, cawfee pot, I’d know where to get the chicory for you.
‘Heed the housewife’s woes, boys. Give ear to her trials and little cares. Make her joys your joys, her tears your tears. If you listen long enough sooner or later she’s going to ask, “Young man, whatever is that contraption in your hand?”’
‘Look like a cawfee pot to me,’ Dove helped the man out.
‘Thank you, Red. You work with me. The rest of you men split up two to a block, one down one side and one down the other and meet me back here at noon. If you aint sellin’ you just aint tryin’, all you good old goodbuddy buddies.’
‘Dirt-eatin’ buggers, every one,’ Smiley assured Dove the moment they’d scattered. ‘Don’t you think I know what they’re up to? Got a pencil and a receipt book so they’re going to make out five or six phony orders with addresses of empty lots ’n then go drink derail in Lafayette Square thinkin’ Old Dominion pays off on their lousy word.’ He banged Dove’s big back good-naturedly – ‘They’ll find out better soon enough, won’t they goodbuddy?’
‘They sure will, mister,’ Dove agreed gleefully.
‘That’s why I was so careful about choosing you,’ Smiley grew serious. ‘I told myself, “There now is one face I can truly trust.”’
‘I truly trustes you too, Mister,’ Dove replied, feeling happier by the minute.
‘I want you right beside me while I pitch, Red. Because when you pitch for Old Dominion you’re pitchin’ for the red, white and blue!’
‘Mister,’ Dove stopped short to offer Smiley his hand, ‘you’re talkin’ about my team now!’
Smiley shook perfunctorily. He wasn’t used to being taken literally, it made him unsure of himself. ‘The first thing to remember, son, is our own Confederate dead. When the housewife asks you how much coffee does she have to buy before the pot is legally redeemed – some are sharper than you might expect – tell her you’re J. E. B. Stuart’s grandson and your daddy is dying in Memphis. Tell her anything except that she has to take fifty pounds before she owns the pot. If she wants to know what percent of chicory we use say something about Chancellorsville.’
‘I’LL SAY I WORK FOR OLD DOMINION!’ Dove cried with so genuine a pride that Wreneger, one of those men who like to say ‘It can’t get hot enough for me,’ felt curiously wilted.
‘Stand to one side, son, I’ll show you how it’s done,’ he invited Dove into the shade of a small unpainted porch, allowing him to guard one of the pots.