§ 111 Provision for the Future
Nobody could tell a yarn of his own race better than the late Bert Williams could. I remember one story he used to tell. Hearing him tell it you felt, despite its gorgeous impossibility, that somehow it might have happened and that anyhow it should have happened. To the best of my recollection his version, delivered in his wonderful Afric drawl ran something like this:
“W’en I was a little boy I lived on the banks of a creek and I supported my whole family ketchin’ feesh and peddlin’ ’em off amongst the w’ite folks. Ever’ mawnin’ I’d ketch me a string of feesh and off I’d go wid ’em. I forgot to say that this yere creek run at the foot of a mountain seven thousand feet high and most of the w’ite folks lived up on the mountain-side.
“One hot mawnin’ I ketches me a string of feesh and I teks ’em in my hand and I starts up the mountain. I comes to the fust house but they didn’t want no feesh there; and I comes to the second house and it seems lak they don’t crave no feesh neither, and so I continues till I reaches the plum top of that mountain seven thousand feet high.
“Now, right on the plum top, in a little house, live a little white man and he’s standin’ at his do’ like he’s waitin’ fur me. I walks up to him and I bows low to him, ver’ polite, and I sez to him I sez: ‘Mister, does you want some fresh feesh?’ And he sez to me, he sez: ‘No, we don’t want no feesh to-day.’
“So I starts back down that mountain, seven thousand feet high. And w’en I’m about a third of the way down I’m overtook by one of those yere landslides and under tons of rocks and dirt and soil and daybris and stuff and truck and things I’m carried plum to the foot of that mountain. So I digs my way out frum under all that there mess, still holdin’ to my little string of feesh, and I wipes the dust out of my eyes and I looks back up the mountain to see what the landslide has done. And, lo and behole! The little man that lives in the little house on the plum top is standin’ at his do’ beck’nin’ to me. So I sez to myself: ‘Praise God, that w’ite man is done changed his mind.’
“So I climbs back ag’in up the mountain, seven thousand feet high, till I comes to the plum top and w’en I gits there the little w’ite man is still standin’ there waitin’ fur me. He waits till I’m right close to him befo’ he speaks. Then he clears his throat and he sez to me, he sez:
“‘And we don’t want none to-morrow, neither!’”