Peter stood in the dust-cloud, wabbly, with roaring head. His open mouth was full of dust. Then he became aware that negroes were running in from every direction, shouting. Their voices whooped out what had happened, who it was, who had licked. Tump Pack’s agonized spasms brought howls of mirth from the black fellows. Negro women were in the crowd, grinning, a little frightened, but curious. Some were in Mother-Hubbards; one had her hair half combed, one side in a kinky mattress, the other lying flat and greased down to her scalp.
When Peter gradually became able to breathe and could think at all, there was something terrible to him in Tump’s silent attack and in this extravagant black mirth over mere suffering. Cissie was gone,—had fled, no doubt, at the beginning of the fight.
The prostrate man’s tortured abdomen finally allowed him to twist around toward Peter. His eyes were popped, and seemed all yellows and streaked with swollen veins.
“I’ll git you fuh dis,” he wheezed, spitting dust “You did n’ fight fair, you—”
The black chorus rolled their heads and pounded one another in a gale of merriment.
Peter Siner turned away toward his home filled with sick thought. He had never realized so clearly the open sore of Niggertown life and its great need of healing, yet this very episode would further bar him, Peter, from any constructive work. He foresaw, too plainly, how the white town and Niggertown would react to this fight. There would be no discrimination in the scandal. He, Peter Siner, would be grouped with the boot-leggers and crap-shooters and women-chasers who filled Niggertown with their brawls. As a matter of simple fact, he had been fighting with another negro over a woman. That he was subjected to an attack without warning or cause would never become a factor in the analysis. He knew that very well.
Two of Peter’s teeth were loose; his left jaw was swelling; his head throbbed. With that queer perversity of human nerves, he kept biting his sore teeth together as he walked along.
When he reached home, his mother met him at the door. Thanks to the swiftness with which gossip spreads among black folk, she had already heard of the fight, and incidentally had formed her judgment of the matter. Now she looked in exasperation at her son’s swelling face.
“I ‘cla’ ‘fo’ Gawd!—ain’t been home a week befo’ he’s fightin’ over a nigger wench lak a roustabout!”
Peter’s head throbbed so he could hardly make out the details of Caroline’s face.
“But, Mother—” he began defensively, “I—”
“Me sweatin’ over de wash-pot,” the negress went on, “so’s you could go up North an’ learn a lil sense; heah you comes back chasin’ a dutty slut!”
“But, Mother,” he begged thickly, “I was simply walking home with Miss Dildine.”
“Miss Dildine! Miss Dildine!” exploded the ponderous woman, with an erasing gesture. “Ef you means dat stuck-up fly-by-night Cissie Dildine, say so, and don’ stan’ thaiuh mouthin’, ’Miss Dildine, Miss Dildine’!”