"I'm gwine down to de river,

Set down on de ground.

If de blues overtake me,

I'll jump overboard and drown..

Big Joe Turner was singing a rock-and-roll adaptation of _Dink's Blues. The loud licking rhythm blasted from the jukebox with enough heat to melt bones. A woman leapt from her seat in a booth as though the music had struck her full of tacks. She was a lean black woman clad in a pink jersey dress and red silk stockings. She pulled up her skirt and began doing a shake dance as though trying to throw off the tacks one by one. Her mood was contagious. Other women jumped down from their high stools and shook themselves into the act. The customers laughed and shouted and began shaking too. The aisle between the bar and the booths became stormy with shaking bodies. Big Smiley, the giant-sized bartender, began doing a flatfooted locomotive shuffle up and down behind the bar. The colored patrons of Harlem's Dew Drop Inn on 129th Street and Lenox Avenue were having the time of their lives that crisp October night. A white man standing near the middle of the bar watched them with cynical amusement. He was the only white person present. He was a big man, over six feet tall, dressed in a dark gray flannel suit, white shirt and blood-red tie. He had a bigfeatured, sallow face with the blotched skin of dissipation. His thick black hair was shot with gray. He held a dead cigar butt between the first two fingers of his left hand. On the third finger was a signet ring. He looked about forty. The colored women seemed to be dancing for his exclusive entertainment. A slight flush spread over his sallow face. The music stopped. A loud grating voice said dangerously above the panting laughter: "Ah feels like cutting me some white motherraper's throat." The laughter stopped. The room became suddenly silent.