Early the next morning there were four men who paid a visit to all the negro settlements in Tickfall. They explained that they were a canvassing committee who were soliciting members for the High Exalted Negro Flying Club. Red Cutt had told them that it was impossible to teach three hundred negroes at one time the art of aviation. The classes could not consist of more than one hundred, but he was willing to teach as many as wanted to learn. He said that he would have to divide them into three classes, and instruct just one class at a time.
It was the Tickfall Big Four who did the canvassing, and after a while there was a disagreement among them. The religious adherents of Vinegar’s church fell out like the early disciples over the question of “Who should be greatest?”
They went back to Red Cutt and presented the matter to him.
“Who’s gwine be president of dis here club?” Skeeter Butts demanded.
“I thinks you ought to be presidunt,” Red told him, “because you done had some expe’unce as a flyin’ man.”
“Ain’t dar no mo’ jobs connected wid dis club?” Vinegar Atts inquired.
“Suttinly,” Red told him. “I app’ints you observer right now.”
“What do a observer do?” Vinegar Atts inquired.
“He sets up in de airplane an’ looks at de scenery an’ lets de worl’ go by.”
“Dat suits me,” Vinegar bellowed. “Settin’ down an’ lookin’ at things is a easy, high, hon’able job.”
“I needs a job, too,” Hitch Diamond grumbled.
“I app’ints you mechanic,” Red Cutt announced promptly. “Git yo’ tools an’ all yo’ wipin’ rags an’ git ready fer de job of keepin’ dat machine in order.”
“Whut do I git to do?” Figger Bush wanted to know.
“I nomernates you stabilizer.”
“Does dat mean dat I keeps de stable whar de machine stays at?” Figger Bush inquired.
“Yep, you is de high boss keeper of the hangar, an’ yo’ job is to steady the machine when folks climbs in an’ climbs out.”
That each negro was satisfied with his job was apparent from the fact that he took out a cigarette and lighted it, and sat for a while in silent meditation. At last Vinegar spoke.
“We done collected up over a hundred dollars already.”
The eyes of Red Cutt glowed like the little green eyes of a pig. He wet his lips with his tongue as if he could already taste that money. His fingers twitched and he clasped them together covetously, saying, in a voice that was hungry with desire:
“Gimme dat money, quick, niggers. I always demands my pay in eggsvance.”
The four negroes promptly emptied their pockets of the money they had collected, and Red Cutt drew a large buckskin bag from his coat pocket and eagerly stuffed the soiled currency into its depths.
“I thinks eve’y nigger dat pays his dollar out ought to be allowed to wear some kind of badge what shows dat be belongs,” Vinegar Atts remarked.
“I forgot to tell you about dat, nigger,” Red Cutt replied promptly. “So I wants you to pass de word down de line to eve’y nigger dat paid his dollar dat he must get a chicken feather and wear it stuck up in his hat.”
By two o’clock that afternoon, one hundred negroes in Tickfall suddenly sprouted feathers, and refused to tell in answer to any inquiry just what those feathers meant, for if a negro organizes a club or lodge, it is always a secret organization.
It was Sunday afternoon.
That morning, Vinegar, at the Shoofly church, made many eloquent references to the chariot of fire, to the men from the sky, to the machine that had a wheel in the midst of a wheel, and a form of a man’s hand under the wings. It was just the sort of mysterious, high-sounding, and meaningless sermon that would catch the fancy of his emotional and imaginative parishioners and the services at the Shoofly church on that particular morning were memorable.
At the most dramatic point of Vinegar’s harangue, the colored clergyman took a letter out of his pocket and read it to his congregation with many theatrical flourishes.
There are big corporations in this country who do a large mail-order business. Of necessity, they must have a large mailing-list, and in order to acquire it they pay two cents for every name and address that is furnished them. Very much of that money is wasted in the South, and a great deal of their literature is squandered, for the reason that those who sell these addresses do not care whether it is the name of a man white or black.
Many negroes who cannot read get regular letters from great mail-order houses, and other large corporations who have something to sell will frequently address a letter to a colored man who cannot read it,............