Shorty Sang

…One day he needed twenty-five cents to buy his lunch.

“Just watch me get a quarter from the first white man I see,” he told me as I stood in the elevator that morning.

  A white man who worked in the building stepped into the elevator and waited to be lifted to his floor.  Shorty sang in a low mumble, smiling, rolling his eyes, looking at the white man roguishly.

   “I’m hungry, Mister White Man.  I need a quarter for lunch.”

  The white man ignored him. Shorty, his hands on the controls of the elevator, sang again:

   “I ain’t gonna move this damned old elevator till I get a quarter, Mister White Man.”

   “The hell with you, Shorty,” the white man said, ignoring him and chewing on his black cigar.

   “I’m hungry, Mister White Man.  I’m dying for a quarter,” Shorty sang, drooling, drawling, humming his words.

   “If you don’t take me to my floor, you will die,” the white man said, smiling a little for the first time.

   “But this black sonofabitch sure needs a quarter,” Shorty sang, grimacing, clowning, ignoring the white man’s threat.

   “Come on, you black bastard, I got to work,” the white man said, intrigued by the element of sadism involved, enjoying it.

   “It’ll cost you twenty-five cents, Mister White Man; just a quarter, just two bits,” Shorty moaned.

   There was silence.  Shorty threw the lever and the elevator went up and stopped about five feet shy of the floor upon which the white man worked.

   “Can’t go no more, Mister White Man, unless I get my quarter,” he said in a tone that sounded like crying.

   “what would you do for a quarter?” the white man asked, still gazing off.

   “I’ll do anything for a quarter,” Shorty sang.

   “What, for example?” the white man asked.

   Shorty giggled, swung around, bent over and poked out his broad, fleshy ass.

   “You can kick me for a quarter,” he sang, looking impishly at the white man out of the corners of his eyes.

   The white man laughed softly, jingled some coins in his pocket, took out one and thumped it to the floor.  Shorty stooped to pick it up and white man barred his teeth and swung his foot into Shorty’s rump with all the strength of his body.  Shorty let out a howling laugh that echoed up and down the elevator shaft.

   “Now, open this door, you goddamn black sonofabitch,” the white man said, smiling with tight lips.

   “Yeeeess, siiiiir,” Shorty sang; but first he picked up the quarter and put it into his mouth.  “This monkey’s got the peanuts,” he chortled.

He opened the door and the white man stepped out and looked back at Shorty as he went toward his office.

   “You’re all right, Shorty, you sonofabitch,” he said.

   “I know it!” Shorty screamed, then let his voice trail off in a gale of wild laughter.

   I witnessed this scene or its variant at least a score of times and I felt no anger or hatrd, only disgust and loathing.  Once I asked him:

   “How in God’s name can you do that?”

   “I needed a quarter and I got it,” he said soberly, proudly.

   “But a quarter can’t pay you for what he did to  you,” I said.

   “Listen, nigger,” he said to me, “my ass is tough and quarters is scarce.”

   I never discussed the subject with him after that.

~Richard Wright, Black Boy