Read Online Strivers Row by Kevin Baker - Free Book Online

twisted up in undisguised agony, the tears running freely down her face, while her rough, thick hands twisted violently at the handle of her pocketbook. But Malcolm noticed that no one stopped to talk or to console her, those men and women who walked by her looking annoyed, even angry, as they might pass someone with a contagious cough.
    There was the sound of singing then, a beautiful woman’s voice with a light Irish brogue descending from above. So beautiful and startling that he slid to a stop, his flat sweet-potato shoes skidding on the smooth marble floor. He peered into the ropes of cigarette smoke that twisted up to the reaches of the vaulted honeycombed ceiling far above him, trying to discern where the voice was coming from. Dizzied by the sheer scale and beauty of it, the vertiginous marble columns and the lustrous amber walls—realizing only dimly that the lovely Irish voice was not singing at all, merely reading out endless lists of departing trains, and their destinations.
    â€œWhat you gawkin’ at, boy? Those Harlem frails ain’t gonna wait forever!”
    Sandy Thorne thumped him on the back, pushing him on.
    â€œOh, man, this is the place!” Malcolm exclaimed. “Just like I thought!”
    â€œMr. High Pockets, out on a bat!”
    They rushed on, under a huge, blue-and-buff mural of the Western Hemisphere, then down a hall past a long arcade of shops and offices, their functions skimming by in peeling, gold-leaf paint: LOST-FOUND*NATION L TICK T RES VATIONS*FAR DESTINATIONS —Laughing and shoving each other, weaving in and around the mobs of people. The rest of them, Lionel and Willard and Sandy still in their white crew uniforms, but heads turned as he ran by in his sharkskin zoot—the faces of the soldiers and sailors smirking or frowning or laughing derisively; Malcolm uncaring, grinning into their stares.
    They ran on out to the taxi portico, where the other three stood in front of him, trying to hide the zoot from view, but it was no use. The huge, flying-saucer hat stood out like an electric sign, an advertisement for social deviance, and they had to wait for a colored hack before they got a cab up to Harlem. Piling into the cavernous backseat of his Checker, the others forcing Malcolm to sit facing them, like a little boy, on the lower, foldable jump seat.
    â€œHo, ho—stay there, Square! We got to look you over!”
    â€œGot to make sure you’re ready for the chippies uptown!”
    Their teasing more good-natured now—Malcolm still the hero from his fight with the sailors back at the New Bedford siding. The whole rest of the run they had hustled to pack up his box for him, and left his drape alone. He would even have sworn, when he put it back on, that the high, rigid shoulders of the coat had been given a careful brushing. His pockets stuffed with the additional bills Pappy Cousins had slipped into them; the outrageous, guilty tips from every one of the passengers riding in the car from which he had so forcibly evicted those soldiers.
    Everyone—except for that preacher himself. His wife had looked at him, all right, her fierce brown eyes just as grateful as they had been imploring. But not her husband. Every time Malcolm had returned, singing out his wares, the man had turned his smooth, sensitive, all-but-white face toward the window, as if he could not abide the sight of him. Snotty yaller bastard—
    The rest of the crew were giggling like schoolboys, shrugging off their kitchen uniforms in the cab. Struggling into suits that were more conservatively cut than Malcolm’s but still sharp—light blues and greens, and creamy whites, with bright, skinny ties that gave him a pang of consternation.
    â€œI thought you said this was a righteous town,” he scoffed at them. “How’m I gonna be gunnin’ the hens with you three togged like that?”
    â€œListen to Mr. Samuel D. Home,” Paddy scoffed at him.