That Old Grey Train

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After a long, long time, they unlocked the gate for me and they let me go. I stood in the warden’s office and felt the cloth of the cheap suit where my hands hung next to my thighs, and he said, “Washburn, you did your stretch like a man and I don’t think you’re going to get into any more trouble.”

There were so many things I couldn’t say to him — I couldn’t tell him how my folks had wanted to educate one of the kids and sent me to Howard University, thinking they were going to have a colored boy that could make a living with the books in a white man’s world. I was a junior when the dough got low, and I found a way to make some money. In those days I was lean and tough and fast. I did me some boxfighting, and the big trouble was, I was too good at it. If only I’d met a real good boy when I was first fighting.

You remember me. First they called me Young Washburn, then I got the name of “Singer” Washburn. I’d be in there with a good boy, the fight would be tough and then the music of it would get to me, the rhythm of it, and somewhere deep in my throat would start a tuneless chant, a heavy throbbing that must have been some kind of cousin to the war chants back in Africa. I know I’ve got some Senegalese blood in me and they’re supposed to be pretty hard boys.

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