6
PARTISAN REVIEW
poked the Negro. Mack followed Tex mechanically. When
Tex turned, he turned; when Tex paused, he paused; when Tex
hurried forward, he hurried forward beside him. Only once
as they went did he speak. 'Bummin' takes 'most ever' thin' outen
a feller, don't it?" he asked as they turned a corner.
Tex McKay nodded, "Sho' do. Knocks all the tallow outen'
yore pole." And to himself: "Ah better shake this shine, we
might get picked up."
When they reached a second Keep-Our-City-Clean box
Mack wanted to remove his shoe again; but his fingers slipped
around his ankle like a little child's fingers. So McKay took
it off for him, kneeling as the other sat; he pulled a wad of
paper out of the box and wadded it into the shoe's torn places.
Beside him a barefooted Mexican boy holding a small girl by
the hand stood and watched with a cynic's air. A woman with
furred shoulders went by on high heels, her head in the air and
her nose sniffing elegenatly at the sun; as though about to snort
green phlegm skyward. As Tex struggled to get the shoe back
on Mack's foot, someone behind him spat in the gutter across
his shoulder; he saw the gob, like a speckled bug, being borne
away on the stream. People were gathering behind him; it was
time to be getting on.
They had not gone half a block when Mack stopped and
complained, half-accusingly, like some petulant little pickaninny:
"It
hurts. You just made it worse you did. Now it hurts
worst." But they could not stop here, there was no place here
to stop; and Mack continued to complain with a rising irascibility.
"If
oney I had a sock. A
white
sock mind you. Hev
you
got that kind?"
That was the last thing he said to show he knew that Tex
was still with him; after that he seemed slowly to lose awareness,
he became like a man mildly drunk or doped. Tex had not
known what havoc the simple fact of over-tiredness could wreak.
Only a few hours before he had picked up with a husky young
buck; now there plodded beside him a half-helpless black boy
who depended on him to put on his shoes. Tex began to feel
a mild responsibility.
Mack stopped dead still and planted himself directly in
front of a bespectacled white youth with books in both hands.
He looked to be frightened at Mack's glance. When Tex looked
at Mack it was not hard to tell why: Mack's eyes now were
