THE WHISTLE BLOWS AND EVERYTHING moves like it’s been electrified. The radio crackles over the dishwashing station, and Bessie Smith’s “Downhearted Blues” winds its way through the chaos as I enter the kitchen. The cook waves over a guy named LJ, as per the name tag on his jacket, who can’t be but a few years older than me. His hair is shaved almost to the scalp and he’s got a gap in his teeth that makes it sound like he’s whistling when he talks.
“You know how to serve?” he asks me.
I shake my head. I don’t know anything but running numbers, which made me perfect for luggage service, straightforward labor, but I’ve never waited a table a day in my life.
“No worry, all you really need to know is to do what you’re told. Think you can do that?”
I nod.
“Good, ’cause you just lucked into the best-paying job on the line. Now, hip this, I didn’t say it was the best job on the line, just the one that pays the most. Most fellas wait years for their chance at service. If you’re good, you can put that sweet thing you got at home in a nice apartment and them kids you don’t like into fine shoes with steak dinners every night. Keep your mouth shut and it won’t get you into trouble. That’s the first thing that’ll steal this job from under you. Sass. No matter what the passengers tell you to do or how they tell you to do it, you hop to and you do it with a smile. You got a name?”
“Yeah, Fayard, but everybody calls me Big Time.”
“Not anymore. Now your name is George.”
I like to say I’ve got a poker face, but sometimes I falter. My jaw ticks, but I don’t move.
“Don’t look so put out, kid. My name’s George too, and so’s his and his over there. When you’re on the floor, that’s who you are. When you get off the floor, you’re Big Time again. Got it?”
I nod. I do get it. We’re not paid to be people with hearts, feelings, and dreams of our own. We’re paid—no, tipped is more accurate—we’re tipped to be buckets, willing to take whatever the customer pours out. No matter how bad a white man’s day goes, he can always rest easy if it was better than the day of the colored man next to him.
I shadow LJ as I try to get my bearings. He’s quick but thorough and explains everything twice so he knows I got it.
Right before we’re done for the night, a couple of drunk white boys, not much older than us, try to get LJ to cluck like a chicken for a dollar. I feel every bit of the train wobble and shake as goose bumps ripple across my skin, and I’m waiting to see how he’ll react—will he need a brother to go to war with him? Will this end in a fight or worse? I swallow hard. When he does it—chooses shame instead of pride—I close the book on him. You can’t trust a man who’ll give up his dignity for spare change. A guy like that will trade your life for his, or worse.
I don’t ask any questions, though. I catch his eye after his little performance, and I think he knows he’s lost me. His lips turn down just a bit at the corners and he doesn’t meet my gaze again. For four hours I keep my head down; I smile; I hustle. At the end of dinner I shake off the snide comments, the rudeness, the casual and common inhumanity of well-heeled white folks, and take my pocketful of tips back to the laundry car for the real work. I haven’t been on the train a full day yet and I already know there’s no fighting who you really are.
Now there’s only two things on my mind—policy and that girl I saw on the platform. It takes nothing but a whisper to get a numbers game going. Policy is like the lottery—well, not like, is—and every colored man with some change in his pocket plays. In Harlem, the New York Clearing House sets the numbers for the winner of the day at ten a.m. on the dot. I hear in Detroit they pick balls from a machine. And right now, on Mr. Pullman’s train, I’m the only man with a plan.
For the remainder of the night, I slide in and out of each car like a pocket of air. Coins jingle so bad in my pockets that I sound like Christmas in July. I inhale big gulps of smoke-laced air, let it settle in my lungs and mark my journey. Soon my only wish is that I had a bit of mistletoe to take with me. I’ve got a date with destiny.