Free Flying Home by Ralph Ellison Page B

a dying calf for? I’m through now. Go on out and play.”
    “Yessum.”
    He turned and walked slowly out of the back door.
    The cat arched its back against his leg as he went off theporch, stepping gingerly over the sun-heated boards. The ground around the steps was still moist and white where Ma had poured the suds. A stream of water trickled rapidly from the hydrant, sparkling silver in the sunlight. Suddenly he remembered why he had gone into the house. He stopped and called:
    “Maaa …”
    “What you want?”
    “Ma, what we gonna have for supper?”
    “Lawd, all you think about is your gut. I don’t know. Come on back in here and fix you some eggs if you hongery. I’m too busy to stop—and for the Lawd’s sake leave me alone!”
    Buster hesitated. He was hungry but he could not stay around Ma when she was like this. She was like this whenever something went wrong with her and the white folks. Her voice had been like a slap in the face. He started slowly around to the front of the house. The dust was thick and warm to his feet. Looking down, he broke a sprig of milk-weed between his bare toes and watched the green stem slowly bleeding white sap upon the brown earth. A tiny globe of milk glistened on his toe, and as he walked to the front of the house he dug his foot into the dry dust, leaving the sap a small spot of mud.
    He dropped down beside Riley.
    “You eat so quick?” asked Riley.
    “Naw, Ma’s mad at me.”
    “Don’t pay that no mind, man. My folks is always after me. They think all a man wants to do is what they want him to. You oughta be glad you ain’t go no ole man like I got.”
    “Is he very mean?”
    “My ole man’s so mean he hates hisself!”
    “Ma’s bad enough. Let them white folks make her mad where she works and I catch hell.”
    “My ole man’s the same way. Boy, and can he beat you! One night he come home from work and was gonna beat my ass with a piece of ’lectricity wire. But my ole lady stopped ’im. Told ’im he bet’ not.”
    “Wonder why they so mean,” Buster said.
    “Damn if I know. My ole man says we don’t git enough beatings these days. He said Gramma useta tie ’em up in a gunny sack and smoke ’em, like they do hams. He was gonna do that to me. But Ma stopped ’im. She said, ‘Don’t you come treating no chile of mine like no slave. Your Ma mighta raised you like a slave, but I ain’t raising him like that and you bet’ not harm a hair of his head!’ And he didn’t do it neither. Man, was I glad!”
    “Damn! I’m glad I don’t have no ole man,” Buster said.
    “You just wait till I get big. Boy, I’m gonna beat the hell outa my ole man. I’m gonna learn to box like Jack Johnson, just so I can beat his ass.”
    “Jack Johnson, first colored heavyweight champion of the whole wide world!” Buster said. “Wonder where he is now?”
    “I don’t know, up north in New York, I guess. But I bet
wherever
he is, ain’t nobody messing with him.”
    “You mighty right! I heard my Uncle Luke say Jack Johnson was a better fighter than Joe Louis. Said he was fast as a cat on his feet. Fast as a cat! Gee, you can throw a cat off the top a house and he’ll land on his feet. Why by golly, I bet you could throw a cat down from heaven and the son-of-a-bitch would land right side up!”
    “My ole man’s always singing:
    ‘If it hadn’t a been

for the referee

Jack Johnson woulda killed

Jim Jefferie,’ ”
    Riley said.
    The afternoon was growing old. The sun hung low in a cloudless sky and soon would be lost behind the fringe of trees across the street. A faint wind blew and the leaves on the trees trembled in the sun. They were silent now. A black-and-yellow wasp flew beneath the eaves, droning. Buster watched it disappear inside its gray honeycomblike nest, then rested back on his elbows and crossed his legs, thinking of Jack Johnson. A screen slammed loudly somewhere down the street. Riley lay beside him, whistling a tune between his