De Railroad Track

The third act of Mule Bone - the play Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes wrote together in 1930 and led to them permanently falling out - opens with Jim being hounded out of town after he is found guilty of assaulting his friend Dave. He walks disconsolately along the railroad track that leads from Eatonville to Orlando, Florida.

Before long he is joined by Daisy, the girl they fought over. Then Dave himself turns up and the rivalry flares up again, but it becomes clear that Daisy is impressed by neither of her suitors. They are free spirits who have no wish to be tied down to a routine manual job in order to support her, and for a moment the audience expects Dave and Jim to head into the sunset together, seeking out a new life elsewhere.

But in a bitter-sweet recognition that this option - however satisfying - would be a little implausible in the Jim Crow South, the authors have Dave suddenly announce:

'Guess I better be gittin' on back - it's 'most dark. Where you goin', Jim?'

Jim assumes he has no option but to keep on walking down the track, but Dave urges him to return with him into town, where his home is. After all, if he's with Dave, no one is likely to stop him. And, arm in arm, their differences now well and truly buried, they head back to whence they came.