Tales of the Jazz Age | Page 4

an. The Jelly-bean had been
invited to a party.
Back in the days when all the boys had detested all the girls, Clark
Darrow and Jim had sat side by side in school. But, while Jim's social
aspirations had died in the oily air of the garage, Clark had alternately
fallen in and out of love, gone to college, taken to drink, given it up,
and, in short, become one of the best beaux of the town. Nevertheless
Clark and Jim had retained a friendship that, though casual, was
perfectly definite. That afternoon Clark's ancient Ford had slowed up
beside Jim, who was on the sidewalk and, out of a clear sky, Clark
invited him to a party at the country club. The impulse that made him
do this was no stranger than the impulse which made Jim accept. The
latter was probably an unconscious ennui, a half-frightened sense of
adventure. And now Jim was soberly thinking it over.
He began to sing, drumming his long foot idly on a stone block in the
sidewalk till it wobbled up and down in time to the low throaty tune:
"One smile from Home in Jelly-bean town, Lives Jeanne, the Jelly-bean
Queen. She loves her dice and treats 'em nice; No dice would treat her
mean."

He broke off and agitated the sidewalk to a bumpy gallop.
"Daggone!" he muttered, half aloud. They would all be there--the old
crowd, the crowd to which, by right of the white house, sold long since,
and the portrait of the officer in gray over the mantel, Jim should have
belonged. But that crowd had grown up together into a tight little set as
gradually as the girls' dresses had lengthened inch by inch, as definitely
as the boys' trousers had dropped suddenly to their ankles. And to that
society of first names and dead puppy loves Jim was an outsider--a
running mate of poor whites. Most of the men knew him,
condescendingly; he tipped his hat to three or four girls. That was all.
When the dusk had thickened into a blue setting for the moon, he
walked through the hot, pleasantly pungent town to Jackson Street. The
stores were closing and the last shoppers were drifting homeward, as if
borne on the dreamy revolution of a slow merry-go-round. A street-fair
farther down a brilliant alley of varicolored booths and contributed a
blend of music to the night--an oriental dance on a calliope, a
melancholy bugle in front of a freak show, a cheerful rendition of
"Back Home in Tennessee" on a hand-organ.
The Jelly-bean stopped in a store and bought a collar. Then he
sauntered along toward Soda Sam's, where he found the usual three or
four cars of a summer evening parked in front and the little darkies
running back and forth with sundaes and lemonades.
"Hello, Jim."
It was a voice at his elbow--Joe Ewing sitting in an automobile with
Marylyn Wade. Nancy Lamar and a strange man were in the back seat.
The Jelly-bean tipped his hat quickly.
"Hi Ben--" then, after an almost imperceptible pause--"How y' all?"
Passing, he ambled on toward the garage where he had a room up-stairs.
His "How y'all" had been said to Nancy Lamar, to whom he had not
spoken in fifteen years.

Nancy had a mouth like a remembered kiss and shadowy eyes and
blue-black hair inherited from her mother who had been born in
Budapest. Jim passed her often on the street, walking small-boy fashion
with her hands in her pockets and he knew that with her inseparable
Sally Carrol Hopper she had left a trail of broken hearts from Atlanta to
New Orleans.
For a few fleeting moments Jim wished he could dance. Then he
laughed and as he reached his door began to sing softly to himself:
"Her Jelly Roll can twist your soul, Her eyes are big and brown, She's
the Queen of the Queens of the Jelly-beans-- My Jeanne of Jelly-bean
Town."
II
At nine-thirty, Jim and Clark met in front of Soda Sam's and started for
the Country Club in Clark's Ford. "Jim," asked Clark casually, as they
rattled through the jasmine-scented night, "how do you keep alive?"
The Jelly-bean paused, considered.
"Well," he said finally, "I got a room over Tilly's garage. I help him
some with the cars in the afternoon an' he gives it to me free.
Sometimes I drive one of his taxies and pick up a little thataway. I get
fed up doin' that regular though."
"That all?"
"Well, when there's a lot of work I help him by the day--Saturdays
usually--and then there's one main source of revenue I don't generally
mention. Maybe you don't recollect I'm about the champion
crap-shooter of this town. They make me shoot from a cup now
because once