“It’s Percy,” said Coker. “You know Percy Van der Gould, don’t you?”
“I’ve been dancing all night at the Hilliards,” said Spaugh elegantly. “Damn! These new patent-leather pumps have ruined my feet.” He sat upon a stool, and elegantly displayed his large country feet, indecently broad and angular in the shoes.
“What’s he been doing?” said McGuire doubtfully, turning to Coker for enlightenment.
“He’s been dancing all night at the Hilliards,” said Coker in a mincing voice.
McGuire shielded his bloated face coyly with his hand.
“O crush me!” he said, “I’m a grape! Dancing at the Hilliards, were you, you damned Mountain Grill. You’ve been on a Poon–Tang Picnic in Niggertown. You can’t load that bunk on us.”
Bull-lunged, their laughter filled the nacreous dawn.
“Patent-leather pumps!” said McGuire. “Hurt his feet. By God, Coker, the first time he came to town ten years ago he’d never been curried above the knees. They had to throw him down to put shoes on him.”
Ben laughed thinly to the Angel.
“A couple of slices of buttered toast, if you please, not too brown,” said Spaugh delicately to the counterman.
“A mess of hog chitlings and sorghum, you mean, you bastard. You were brought up on salt pork and cornbread.”
“We’re getting too low and coarse for him, Hugh,” said Coker. “Now that he’s got drunk with some of the best families, he’s in great demand socially. He’s so highly thought of that he’s become the official midwife to all pregnant virgins.”
“Yes,” said McGuire, “he’s their friend. He helps them out. He not only helps them out, he helps them in again.”
“What’s wrong with that?” said Spaugh. “We ought to keep it in the family, oughtn’t we?”
Their laughter howled out into the tender dawn.
“This conversation is getting too rough for me,” said Horse Hines banteringly as he got off his stool.
“Shake hands with Coker before you go, Horse,” said McGuire. “He’s the best friend you’ve ever had. You ought to give him royalties.”
The light that filled the world now was soft and otherworldly like the light that fills the sea-floors of Catalina where the great fish swim. Flatfootedly, with kidney-aching back, Patrolman Leslie Roberts all unbuttoned slouched through the submarine pearl light and paused, gently agitating his club behind him, as he turned his hollow liverish face toward the open door.
“Here’s your patient,” said Coker softly, “the Constipated Cop.”
Aloud, with great cordiality, they all said: “How are you, Les?”
“Oh, tolable, tolable,” said the policeman mournfully. As draggled as his mustaches, he passed on, hocking into the gutter a slimy gob of phlegm.
“Well, good morning, gentlemen,” said Horse Hines, making to go.
“Remember what I told you, Horse. Be good to Coker, your best friend.” McGuire jerked a thumb toward Coker.
Beneath his thin joviality Horse Hines was hurt.
“I do remember,” said the undertaker gravely. “We are both members of honorable professions: in the hour of death when the storm-tossed ship puts into its haven of rest, we are the trustees of the Almighty.”
“Why, Horse!” Coker exclaimed, “this is eloquence!”
“The sacred rites of closing the eyes, of composing the limbs, and of preparing for burial the lifeless repository of the departed soul is our holy mission; it is for us, the living, to pour balm upon the broken heart of Grief, to soothe the widow’s ache, to brush away the orphan’s tears; it is for us, the living, to highly resolve that —”
“— Government of the people, for the people, and by the people,” said Hugh McGuire.
“Yes, Horse,” said Coker, “you are right. I’m touched. And what’s more, we do it all for nothing. At least,” he added virtuously, “I never charge for soothing the widow’s ache.”
“What about embalming the broken heart of Grief?” asked McGuire.
“I said BALM,” Horse Hines remarked coldly.
“Stay, Horse,” said Harry Tugman, who had listened with great interest, “didn’t you make a speech with all that in it last summer at the Undertakers’ Convention?”
“What’s true then is true now,” said Horse Hines bitterly, as he left the place.
“Jesus!” said Harry Tugman, “we’ve got him good and sore. I thought I’d bust a gut, doc, when you pulled that one about embalming the broken heart of Grief.”
At this moment Dr. Ravenel brought his Hudson to a halt across the street before the Post Office, and walked over rapidly, drawing his gauntlets off. He was bareheaded; his silver aristocratic hair was thinly rumpled; his surgical gray eyes probed restlessly below the thick lenses of his spectacles. He had a famous, calm, deeply concerned face, shaven, ashen, lean, lit gravely now and then by humor.
“Oh Christ!” said Coker. “Here comes Teacher!”
“Good morning, Hugh,” he said as he entered. “Are you going into training again for the bughouse?”
“Look who’s here!” McGuire roared hospitably. “Dead-eye Dick, the literary sawbones, whose private collection of gallstones is the finest in the world. When d’jew get back, son?”
“Just in time, it seems,” said Ravenel, holding a cigarette cleanly between his long surgical fingers. He looked at his watch. “I believe you have a little engagement at the Ravenel hospital in about half an hour. Is that right?”
“By God, Dick, you’re always right,” McGuire yelled enthusiastically. “What’d you tell ’em up there, boy?”
“I told them,” said Dick Ravenel, whose affection was like a flower that grew behind a wall, “that the best surgeon in America when he was sober was a lousy bum named Hugh McGuire who was always drunk.”
“Now wait, wait. Hold on a minute!” said McGuire, holding up his thick hand. “I protest, Dick. You meant well, son, but you got that mixed up. You mean the best surgeon in America when he’s not sober.”
“Did you read one of your papers?” said Coker.
“Yes,” said Dick Ravenel. “I read one on carcinoma of the liver.”
“How about one on pyorrhea of the toe-nails?” said McGuire. “Did you read that one?”
Harry Tugman laughed heavily, not wholly knowing why. McGuire belched into the silence loudly and was witlessly adrift for a moment.
“Literature, literature, Dick,” he returned portentously. “It’s been the ruin of many a good surgeon. You read too much, Dick. Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look. You know too much. The letter killeth the spirit, you know. Me — Dick, did you ever know me to take anything out that I didn’t put back? Anyway, don’t I always leave ’em something to go on with? I’m no scholar, Dick. I’ve never had your advantages. I’m a self-made butcher. I’m a carpenter, Dick. I’m an interior decorator. I’m a mechanic, a plumber, an electrician, a butcher, a tailor, a jeweller. I’m a jewel, a gem, a diamond in the rough, Dick. I’m a practical man. I take out their works, spit upon them, trim off the dirty edges, and send them on their way again. I economize, Dick; I throw away everything I can’t use, and use everything I throw away. Who made the Pope a tailbone from his knuckle? Who made the dog howl? Aha — that’s why the governor looks so young. We are filled up with useless machinery, Dick. Efficiency, economy, power! Have