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box even as he wondered: How could any man like you so much? Any stranger? And why wouldn’t a father?
    â€œSo tonight’s the big night, eh?”
    â€œYeah, it is.” Malcolm grinned despite himself, thinking about it. “Ah, geez, I remembah my first night down in Scollay Square.” Pappy smiled, shaking his head. Before Malcolm could react he slipped a bill into the pocket of his white linen coat, just below the sandwich box.
    â€œBuy a round on me.”
    â€œThanks, Pappy.”
    â€œGo on now. An’ remembah what I told you.”
    Then he was out in the coaches, flying back down the aisles between the high, green, upholstered seats with his box. The voice in his head already going. Tom it up, Tom it up—
    â€œSandwiches! Sandwiches for sale! Eat ’em now, before they gets stale! I got some ham an’ cheese, make you weak in the knees!”
    He sold them slices of chocolate layer and coconut cake, and the sandwiches in their individual plastic bags, and boxes of Cracker Jack and bags of potato chips. Coffee from the five-gallon thermos balanced in one corner of his box, and ice cream wrapped in wax paper and kept as far from it as possible. Hershey bars and jujubes, Chicken Dinners and Three Musketeers; tar babies and licorice sticks; and Life Savers and sealed packs of cards and packs of chewing gum and cigarettes, and ten-cent cigars, and little pillows for those who wished to rest their heads and try to sleep on the sweltering, oversold train.
    The box was heavy even when it was empty, but once he worked himself into a rhythm he could make it dance. Letting the momentum of the train carry him. Letting his legs roll with the rocking of the car, and sway with the weight of the box until, after six hours on the aisles, he would feel his knees buckle when they hit concrete again, and for the rest of the night would walk as bowlegged as a sailor.
    â€œI got chicken salad an’ egg salad, I got turkey an’ that’s no baloney!” he sang out. “I got no fried fish, but I got whatever else you wish—”
    Tom it up, Tom it up now!
    â€”the sardonic little chant he sang to himself underneath all the bright patter. The way they all did, every black man on the train crew, from the porters to the dining car waiters to the baggage smashers, knowing that the more elaborate their performance, the better their tips would be. Propping the box on his knee and swinging open the door to the next car where he would, inevitably, watch the twin rows of white faces look up distractedly and suddenly brighten, just to see him standing there.
    Oh, but how they like to see us work!
    Business was good, with the war on. Every seat was filled, with more bodies jammed into the parlor cars and the diners, standing up the whole trip around the bar car. The coaches full of smooth-faced young soldiers and sailors, looking hungover and frightened. Workingmen on their way to the shipyards, and men in sharp gray business suits, and pregnant young mothers, and card sharps, and aging whores, and whole families. All of them going somewhere— to see off a loved one, or make some money, or cut a deal, and why not me ? He was on his way to Harlem after showing up in Boston six months ago still smelling of the country, with his red hair and a green suit so short his arms and legs stuck out—
    I’m in it now. I’m on my way.
    Tom it up!
    He was almost at the end of his second run down the train when he came upon the soldiers Pappy had warned him about. They had just stopped in New Bedford, and the Clipper was idling on a siding right next to the ocean, waiting while some troop trains rattled slowly by. Malcolm had finally worked his way down to the last day coach, when he wrenched open the door and spotted them immediately.
    They were standing in the narrow aisle or sprawled carelessly over the seat backs. Laughing and talking as loudly as they could, ignoring the discomfort of