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"Gray Eyes"

A Story by "Jack Howard" of the Baltimore Colored High School

[[inset photo of a toddler]][[caption written on photo reads: CLOUD PHOTO KNOXVILLE]]

I LOVED Mary Arden, my schoolmate, with her black curls and gray, shadow eyes; but Mary loved the handsome, reckless, Alton Brice, who ruined her and cast her off when she was but eighteen.  I followed her one night and saw Brice spurn her and knock her down.  I struck him with all the force I could command.  The fellows pulled me off, but Price lay inert.  "Oh! God! he's killed him!"  cried Mary.  I ran wildly away and took refuge on a cattleship bound for England.

Oh, the utter blackness of the days that followed; the fear, the dread of the law's heavy hand; the stern reality of the present life.  Before that time I had never known real hardship or undergone great physical pain.  I was the youngest man aboard ship.  I was different too, and the men seemed to hate me for it.  Every strapping stevedore tried to become my master, as the mate was his, and the great bearded-captain his.  I fought at first but they were great, hard, hairy men and I had no chance.  They beat me until I cried out in pain or lay upon the hay-strewn floor stunned and bleeding.  Many a night I have rolled about in the corner which was alotted me to sleep in, trying to keep from crying aloud.  And sometimes I have stood for hours by the rail under the cold stars, thinking of home; wondering if they would ever track me across the seemingly trackless ocean and take me back.  Even when I slept horrible dreams broke in upon me.  I dreamed of Alton Brice and his death-pale face.  I fought with men who sought to drag me down into the deep, black waters.  Often I saw Mary's face as I had seen it last.  Sometimes she stretched her arms toward me, appealing aid; at other times she forced me from her in anguish and the rushing waves echoed her cry, " Oh, God!  He's killed him!"

No detective waited for me on the docks at London and yet I hated the city, with its impenetrable fogs and foreboding, gray stone buildings.  I went to sea again and plunged into the maze of the life that paupers know, a life that grinds and grinds until it kills body and soul.

For four long years I wandered around the world on sea and land.  And God! the sights that I have seen; the truths that I have had branded into my soul with growing irons.  I wonder now that I could ever have dreamed or hoped or cared.  You who have lived in guarded homes far from the real world that writhes and suffers can never fully know the Hell that life can be.  Civilization——what is it but an outer covering, a veil, a mask that men throw over their conceited eyes to blind themselves to others' rights and others' sufferings?  A mask that makes them feel themselves above the common herd in longings, feelings, yearnings, sensibilities; that makes them speak of slavery as a forward step in the development of man, because one man is raised upon another's back.  One man is raised; another crushed.

The man who smirks and smiles and says the world is good and grand lies damnably.  I have seen like in all its forms and death is common to me now.  Only two months ago I saw a woman on the quays at Venice,

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wallowing in her blood, three ghastly knife wounds in her slender body; an infant wrapped and swaddled, sleeping by her side.  Last year I saw an English officer murder a brakesman as he would a dog.  I have seen peons working in the fields of Mexico and my own people in the South's black belt afraid to raise their tired eyes lest they should die.  I have looked in on sweatshops where women work, their backs bent and cramped; their pale faces pinched and drawn because they dare not stop lest they should die.  I wonder not at War but rather at the crushing Hell of Peace.  I wonder that the poor believe in God; I wonder that the Maker of this world lets this world live on.  Some day, you say, the good must conquer; right will prevail.  I wish that I could say it and believe it, but it seems to me a dream and I must dream no more.

A week ago I took my greatest risk and came here to Washington, just forty miles from home.  I secured this wretched lodging here amid the filth and squalor which I have learned to bear without flinching.

"I must not drink," I told myself, "for it will do me no good.  I will but brood and dream the more."  But mad desire came.  Oh yes, it is a habit now.  I drank and creamed again of Mary and a boy's romantic love.

Yesterday I came out of a bar and there, standing beside a black touring car was Jimmy Scott, well and happy.  I drew back then, laughing at my folly, hurried on.  Hw would not know me.  But he did know me, in spite of all the change he knew my face.

"Clark Hayward!" he cried as he grasped my hand in his old free manner.  "Where the devil have you been all these years?"

The old animal fear for my freedom burst out.

"I suppose you are going to give me up?" I asked.

"For what?" he demanded in surprise.

I thought he was trying to play with me, "Oh Hell," I said bitterly.  "Don't play with me.  For the murder of Alton Brice, of course.  You saw me kill him."

He placed his hands firmly on my shoulders and looked into my face.  "Clark," he said, "haven't you heard?  You did not kill him.  He came to in half an hour's time and went home."

I could not answer him for a long moment and when I did speak it was not of the man but of the woman.

"And Mary?  What became of her?" I asked.

"God knows.  She left town with her child a few weeks after the fight."

"Didn't ne marry her?" I asked.  "Didn't he——?  By God, I will kill him now!"

Jimmy smiled.  "A woman has saved you the trouble.  He was killed, shot dead in a New York café.  So cheer up and come with me home for dinner."

I thanked him but refused.  "There is one other thing I want to know," I said.  "My father.  Is he still alive?"

"No, Clark," he replied.  "He died the year before we moved over here."

I shook his hand again and, turning, left him wondering, his youthful brow furrowed in pity; his eyes gazing sadly after me.  Dear old Jimmy, never too good or too bad.  He sympathized in his boyish way with the sorrows of others; he laughed the next moment I his own happiness.  He knew naught of like and thought little of death.  And yet how happy he was, how blindly, how selfishly happy!

I reached this dusty lodging house early last night and went to bed, but I could not sleep.  In the little room across the hall a child cried piteously and a woman groaned.  Somehow it unnerved me.  It made me symbolize the spirit of the world, a child's cry; a woman's groan; a man's soul-racking, tight-lipped silence.

About midnight the landlady knocked gently on the door.  She is a poor old soul, her mind weakened by rum and hardship, but underneath it all her heart is good.  She knows suffering and understands.  She is not so far removed from the rest of God's creatures that she can laugh at pain and scorn the suffering of a human being.

"Mr. Thompson," she called (I had gone by that name to avoid arrest).  Would you go to the drug store on the corner an' call up a doctor?  I hates to bother you but I kin hardly walk tonight and can't go out in this rain."

I assured her that it would be no trouble and, leaping out of bed, dressed hurriedly, and went upon my errand.  I called some