The Fire in the Flint by Walter White

Early Friday morning Kenneth left for Central City, before the Atlanta Constitution appeared on the streets for sale. Soon after his train left Macon on the way South, the engine blew out a cylinder head. They remained there until another could be dispatched from Macon to replace it. There had come to his stopping-place in Atlanta, a few minutes after he had left, a telegram which had been sent from a town twenty miles distant from Central City, telling him to remain in Atlanta until further notice. Jane had paid a man liberally to drive through the country to get the telegram off in time. It would not have done to send such a wire from Central City. All these things had so happened as though the very fates themselves were in league against Kenneth.

In total ignorance of what had happened to Mamie and Bob and the eventful chain of happenings since he had left Central City three days before, Kenneth sat in the stuffy, odorous, and dirty Jim Crow car, busied with his thoughts. A noisy and malodorous Negro sat next to him who seemed to know some person at every one of the thousand and one stations at which they stopped. Kenneth sat next to the window. His companion leaned over him to stick his head out of the window to shout loud-mouthed and good-natured greetings to his friends on the ground. At those few stations where he knew no one, he would ask foolish, sometimes humorous questions of those he did not know. Kenneth stood it as long as he could and then requested the troublesome fellow to be less annoying. Kenneth, though vexed, was amused at the man's complaint to another of his kind behind him. "Humph! " he grunted. "Tha's whut I say 'bout a dressed-up nigger -- thinks he owns the train. I paid jes' as much," he declared more aggressively, "as he did, an' ef he don't like it, he can git off and walk. " At this, a long laugh at his own witty remark, but Kenneth looked out of the window and paid no attention to him. His thoughts were busy with other things.