Dutchman

Still on the train, Lula and Clay are discussing their plans to attend the party. Lula plans to take Clay back to her apartment to talk about his manhood, which they’ve “been talking about all this time” (25), before having sex. Lula says that Clay will tell her he loves her, “especially if you think it’ll keep me alive” (27), and he says that she’s morbid. 

Clay notices the surge of people boarding the train, and Lula asks whether they frighten him “‘[c]ause you’re an escaped nigger” (29) who “crawled through the wire and made tracks to my side” (29). Clay disagrees with Lula’s suggestion that plantations had wire, claiming that plantations “were big whitewashed places like heaven” where everyone was “just strummin’ and hummin’ all day,” and “that’s how the blues was born” (30).

Lula takes that line as a cue to start dancing and implores Clay to join her, saying, “Let’s do the nasty. Rub bellies” (30); Clay is embarrassed and does not join in. Lula gets annoyed and starts attacking Clay for being an educated black man who doesn’t fit black stereotypes, calling him a “middle-class black bastard” (31) and a “liver-lipped white man” (31). Clay tells her to sit down, and she starts screaming more about Clay’s “whiteness,” calling him an “Uncle Tom” (32). Other riders start laughing, and a drunk man starts dancing and singing with Lula. 

Clay becomes angry and grabs Lula, clubbing the drunk to the floor when he tries to interfere. Clay slaps Lula after she says he’s “afraid of white people” (33), and then launches into a lengthy speech about his pent-up rage as a black man. “You don’t know anything except what’s there for you to see” (34), Clay says. “Not the pure heart, the pumping black heart […] I sit here, in this buttoned-up suit, to keep myself from cutting all your throats” (34). Clay explains that African-American artists use art instead of violence to express their rage: “If Bessie Smith had killed some white people she wouldn’t have needed that music. She could have talked very straight and plain about the world” (35). However, Clay does not actually want to be violent and would “[…] rather be a fool” (35). His ends his speech with a request for Lula to tell her father “not to preach so much rationalism and cold logic to these niggers” because when “you really believe you can ‘accept’ [black people] into your fold,” “they’ll murder you, and have very rational explanations” (36).  

Clay wants to get off the train and cut ties with Lula, however, as he leans over her to retrieve his belongings, she plunges a knife into his chest. Lula tells the other train passengers to drag Clay’s body down the aisle, throw him off the train, and get off at the next stop; they comply. She is left alone in the train car until a young African-American man boards the train carrying books. Lula gives him a look.

An African-American conductor enters the car “doing a sort of restrained soft shoe” and says, “Hey, brother!” (38) to the young black man. The conductor tips his hat at Lula, who stares at him and follows his movements down the aisle until he leaves the car.