It was two o’clock in the afternoon, but the stygian sky had plunged daylight to darkness. Lightning streaked across the sky as it glowed in a springtime thunderhead, giving an indication that the sky would soon pour out a heavy rain. John, Junior, and Jimmy quickened their step as the first raindrops fell. Jimmy held open the door to the pool hall and he followed John and Junior into the place where they liked to go on Saturdays to play billiards.
Although they were met with a mingled aroma of liquor and smoke, it was the unusual frenetic buzz that seemed out of place, one that resembled Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee.” The conversations were fast-paced as though the speaker had reason to say something quickly before he’d be interrupted.
It quickly became clear to John, Junior, and Jimmy what the buzz was about. The winds of war had been blowing across the country for some time, and even the little hamlet of Mount Hope had caught the war contagion. The winds had been fueled by talk that Congress would soon declare war against Germany for the war that was raging in Europe.
The usual mix of people—the serious pool players like them, those looking for social interaction, and those looking to get an early start on their way to inebriation, were present. Junior caught sight of an open pool table and tapped Jimmy and John on the arm, beckoning them to join him. John told Jimmy to go first as John was more interested in the buzz.
“Don’t worry, Johnny boy,” Junior said as he stroked his stick as though he were smoothing out the mane on a dog, “you’re next after I beat Jimbo.”
Jimmy fought back. “You going down today,” Jimmy said, sounding plucky. He bent his large frame over the table and broke the balls, befitting of a man who possessed great strength. After the balls settled, three of them had fallen into separate pockets, and the rest had come to a stop on the baize, causing him to look at Junior with a deeply furrowed brow as if to say the game would be over soon.
Several conversations were going on, all about the war, at the same time. As John looked around the tatty poolhall to decide which conversation he’d join, an elderly colored man with half a right ear recognized John, and said, “Ain’t that right, John?”
“Nate, you haven’t been right since I’ve known you,” John said as he walked over to Nate and playfully massaged his upper back.
“John,” a lanky, slender-faced man who was a regular patron of the pool hall said, “what you think about this here war coming?”
Because John hesitated slightly, the void was quickly filled. “They talking about our colored boys going over to Europe to fight … for freedom, they say. We get freedom here first, then we go fight,” said a bushy, gray-haired, seventy-year-old man. “My grandson talking about going overseas to fight. I’m gonna talk to my son about it; my grandson ain’t going nowhere near where they fighting.” Thunder roared from the sky as he pounded the table to emphasize his point.
Someone chuckled and said to the bushy, gray-haired man, “God must be listening to you.”
The slender-faced man decided to give John another chance; he knew that John had a son who was draft-eligible. Looking at John seated next to him, he said to him, “Man, don’t you got a son in the age to be drafted for the war?”
John had mixed feelings about the war. He believed in his country, but his country still didn’t believe in him as a colored man. He knew that things had gotten a little better for colored folks for a few years after the Civil War, but many of those gains were reversed, causing John to write in The Messenger several years ago that “freedom for colored folk was chimerical.” His country would do the right thing, he believed, if it witnessed colored soldiers fighting for it. Since he was too old to fight, he’d fight vicariously through Theo.
“We’re going to make them give us our freedom by fighting in the war,” he had told Tilla a few days ago.
He rehashed what he had told Tilla. “I want my boy to fight for his country. Besides, it’ll do him good; he can stand a little growing up.” He paused briefly, and quickly began to expostulate: “We’re going to make this country give us our rights; we’re equal citizens. When they see colored men fighting for the country, they have no choice but to honor us. You’ll see.”
The bushy, gray-haired man met John’s optimism head on by dismissing it: “Equality may be a right, but I says no power on this planet can make it a fact.”
“Look,” John said, “W. E. B. DuBois is for it. I side with him and other Negro leaders on this issue. I just can’t see how this county can deny us our freedom if we die for it.”
After swilling the last of his whiskey, the bushy, gray-haired man said, “The white man ain’t going to give us no rights, no matter how much we fight for this country.”
Cicero, a pool hall habitué, lifted his large head and suddenly awoke from his besotted state. His right eyelid drooped down to cover the missing eye he lost in a brawl a few years back. He interjected: “Yeah, that’s right. The white man has stepped all over us ever since we landed in this country. We best go back to Africa.”
“What country in Africa?” John asked rhetorically. He took a quick puff on his pipe and continued: “Africa is not your home now; it’s a strange land to us. We’re here now and we got to stay and fight for what belongs to us. That’s what I say.”
About an hour after Junior and Jimmy began their match, Junior was on the verge of winning his first game. He had one ball left and Jimmy had one. Junior realized he needed to clip his ball ever so slightly to get it to go in the side pocket. He looked at Jimmy and nodded. The shot was foozled and he cursed; the cue ball lined up nicely for Jimmy to end the game.
Jimmy shouted over the still-buzzing conversations several feet away, “Hey, John.”
John caught Jimmy’s baritone voice, stood up and looked at Jimmy, who sported a wide grin on a weathered face.
“Our boy Junior’s about to go down three times in a row.”
Jimmy steadied his stick, then struck the cue ball into the eight ball, which went in the corner pocket off a bank just liked he called, and solidifying his status of a complete pool player, the best in Mount Hope.
Junior had had enough. He extended both arms and flicked his hands as if to acknowledge he’d been beaten and had to surrender. He walked over to John’s table and joined the still-buzzing conversation about the war. Jimmy took on another player.
Junior had shaken off his defeat by Jimmy and thrust himself into the debate. Never shy of obtruding his opinions on others, he said, “No need for us to go fight in that war. Otis Jefferson fought in that war over there in Cuba or Puerto Rico; I know it was one of them places. Thousands of colored men like Otis fought for this country; that don’t mean squat to the white man. And y’all know I’m telling it like it is.”
The thunderstorm had passed, and the sun reappeared in the sky. More patrons flooded into the pool hall and the war debate rolled on like a train with no brakes. Everybody had an opinion.
John looked at his pocket watch. He had been at the pool hall for four hours; it was time to leave. Dinner would be waiting for him at home, and he needed time to prepare his thoughts about what he’d say in Sunday school the next day. He stood up and waited for Jimmy to turn his way, and when he did, John waved. Jimmy nodded. John then said to Junior, “I’ll catch up with you later.”
With the door handle in his right hand, John turned around and looked at the table he’d just left; the heated war debate roiled on. Junior was right in the middle of it.