Two doors below, directly before the Post Office, Pete Mascari rolled upward with corrugated thunder the shutters of his fruit shop. The pearl light fell coolly upon the fruity architecture, on the pyramided masonry of spit-bright wine-saps, the thin sharp yellow of the Florida oranges, the purple Tokays, sawdust-bedded. There was a stale fruity odor from the shop of ripening bananas, crated apples, and the acrid tang of powder; the windows are filled with Roman candles, crossed rockets, pinwheels, squat green Happy Hooligans, and multilating Jack Johnsons, red cannoncrackers, and tiny acrid packets of crackling spattering firecrackers. Light fell a moment on the ashen corpsiness of his face and on the liquid Sicilian poison of his eyes.
“Don’ pincha da grape. Pinch da banan’!”
A street-car, toy-green with new Spring paint, went squareward.
“Dick,” said McGuire more soberly, “take the job, if you like.”
Ravenel shook his head.
“I’ll stand by,” said he. “I won’t operate. I’m afraid of one like this. It’s your job, drunk or sober.”
“Removing a tumor from a woman, ain’t you?” said Coker.
“No,” said Dick Ravenel, “removing a woman from a tumor.”
“Bet you it weighs fifty pounds, if it weighs an ounce,” said McGuire with sudden professional interest.
Dick Ravenel winced ever so slightly. A cool spurt of young wind, clean as a kid, flowed by him. McGuire’s meaty shoulders recoiled burlily as if from the cold shock of water. He seemed to waken.
“I’d like a bath,” he said to Dick Ravenel, “and a shave.” He rubbed his hand across his blotched hairy face.
“You can use my room, Hugh, at the hotel,” said Jeff Spaugh, looking at Ravenel somewhat eagerly.
“I’ll use the hospital,” he said.
“You’ll just have time,” said Ravenel.
“In God’s name, let’s get a start on,” he cried impatiently.
“Did you see Kelly do this one at Hopkins?” asked McGuire.
“Yes,” said Dick Ravenel, “after a very long prayer. That’s to give power to his elbow. The patient died.”
“Damn the prayers!” said McGuire. “They won’t do much good to this one. She called me a low-down lickered-up whisky-drinking bastard last night: if she still feels like that she’ll get well.”
“These mountain women take a lot of killing,” said Jeff Spaugh sagely.
“Do you want to come along?” McGuire asked Coker.
“No, thanks. I’m getting some sleep,” he answered. “The old girl took a hell of a time. I thought she’d never get through dying.”
They started to go.
“Ben,” said McGuire, with a return to his former manner, “tell the Old Man I’ll beat hell out of him if he doesn’t give Helen a rest. Is he staying sober?”
“In heaven’s name, McGuire, how should I know?” Ben burst out irritably. “Do you think that’s all I’ve got to do — watching your licker-heads?”
“That’s a great girl, boy,” said McGuire sentimentally. “One in a million.”
“Hugh, for God’s sake, come on,” cried Dick Ravenel.
The four medical men went out into the pearl light. The town emerged from the lilac darkness with a washed renascent cleanliness. All the world seemed as young as Spring. McGuire walked across to Ravenel’s car, and sank comfortably with a sense of invigoration into the cool leathers. Jeff Spaugh plunged off violently with a ripping explosion of his engine and a cavalier wave of his hand.
Admiringly Harry Tugman’s face turned to the slumped burly figure of Hugh McGuire.
“By God!” he boasted, “I bet he does the damnedest piece of operating you ever heard of.”
“Why, hell,” said the counterman loyally, “he ain’t worth a damn until he’s got a quart of corn licker under his belt. Give him a few drinks and he’ll cut off your damned head and put it on again without your knowing it.”
As Jeff Spaugh roared off Harry Tugman said jealously: “Look at that bastard. Mr. Vanderbilt. He thinks he’s hell, don’t he? A big pile of bull. Ben, do you reckon he was really out at the Hilliards to-night?”
“Oh for God’s sake,” said Ben irritably, “how the hell should I know! What difference does it make?” he added furiously.
“I guess Little Maudie will fill up the column tomorrow with some of her crap,” said Harry Tugman. “‘The Younger Set,’ she calls it! Christ! It goes all the way from every little bitch old enough to wear drawers, to Old Man Redmond. If Saul Gudger belongs to the Younger Set, Ben, you and I are still in the third grade. Why, hell, yes,” he said with an air of conviction to the grinning counterman, “he was bald as a pig’s knuckle when the Spanish American War broke out.”
The counterman laughed.
Foaming with brilliant slapdash improvisation Harry Tugman declaimed:
“Members of the Younger Set were charmingly entertained last night at a dinner dance given at Snotwood, the beautiful residence of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Firkins, in honor of their youngest daughter, Gladys, who made her debut this season. Mr. and Mrs. Firkins, accompanied by their daughter, greeted each of the arriving guests at the threshhold in a manner reviving the finest old traditions of Southern aristocracy, while Mrs. Firkins’ accomplished sister, Miss Catherine Hipkiss, affectionately known to members of the local younger set as Roaring Kate, supervised the checking of overcoats, evening wraps, jock-straps, and jewelry.
“Dinner was served promptly at eight o’clock, followed by coffee and Pluto Water at eight forty-five. A delicious nine-course collation had been prepared by Artaxerxes Papadopolos, the well-known confectioner and caterer, and proprietor of the Bijou Café for Ladies and Gents.
“After first-aid and a thorough medical examination by Dr. Jefferson Reginald Alfonso Spaugh, the popular GIN-ecologist, the guests adjourned to the Ball Room where dance music was provided by Zeke Buckner’s Upper Hominy Stringed Quartette, Mr. Buckner himself officiating at the trap drum and tambourine.
“Among those dancing were the Misses Aline Titsworth, Lena Ginster, Ophelia Legg, Gladys Firkins, Beatrice Slutsky, Mary Whitesides, Helen Shockett, and Lofta Barnes.
“Also the Messrs. I. C. Bottom, U. B. Freely, R. U. Reddy, O. I. Lovett, Cummings Strong, Sansom Horney, Preston Updyke, Dows Wicket, Pettigrew Biggs, Otis Goode, and J. Broad Stem.”
Ben laughed noiselessly, and bent his pointed face into the mug again. Then, he stretched his thin arms out, extending his body sensually upward, and forcing out in a wide yawn the night-time accumulation of weariness, boredom, and disgust.
“Oh-h-h-h my God!”
Virginal sunlight crept into the street in young moteless shafts. At this moment Gant awoke.
He lay quietly on his back for a moment in the pleasant yellow-shaded dusk of the sitting-room, listening to the rippling flutiness of the live piping birdy morning. He yawned cavernously and thrust his right hand scratching into the dense hairthicket of his breast.
The fast cackle-cluck of sensual hens. Come and rob us. All through the night for you, master. Rich protesting yielding voices of Jewesses. Do it, don’t it. Break an egg in them.
Sleepless, straight, alert, the counterpane moulded over his gaunt legs, he listened to the protesting invitations of the hens.
From the warm dust, shaking their fat feathered bodies, protesting but satisfied they staggered up. For me. The earth too and the