Clingman Street: the women worked uncomplainingly in the support of the young men. Eugene went here with Helen often: she liked the vulgarity, the humor, the excitement of their lives—and it amused her particularly to listen to Mary’s obscene earthy conversation.
Upon the first of every month, Nan and Mary gave to the boys a portion of their earnings, for pocket money and for their monthly visit to the women of Eagle Crescent.
“Oh, SURELY not, Mary? Good heavens!” said Helen with eager unbelief.
“Why, hell yes, honey,” said Mary, grinning her coarse drawl, taking her snuff-stick out of the brown corner of her mouth, and holding it in her strong hand. “We always give the boys money fer a woman once a month.”
“Oh, NO! You’re joking,” Helen said, laughing.
“Good God, child, don’t you know THAT?” said Mary, spitting inaccurately at the fire. “Hit’s good for their health. They’d git sick if we didn’t.”
Eugene began to slide helplessly toward the floor. He got an instant panorama of the whole astonishing picture of humor and solemn superstition—the women contributing their money, in the interests of sanitation and health, to the debauches of the two grinning hairy nicotined young louts.
“What’re you laughin’at, son?” said Mary, gooching him roughly in the ribs, as he lay panting and prostrate. “You ain’t hardly out of didies yet.”
She had all the savage passion of a mountaineer: crippled, she lived in the coarse heat of her brothers’lust. They were crude, kindly, ignorant, and murderous people. Nan was scrupulously respectable and well-mannered: she had thick negroid lips that turned outward, and hearty tropical laughter. She replaced the disreputable furniture of the house by new shiny Grand Rapids chairs and tables. There was a varnished bookcase, forever locked, stored with stiff sets of unread books—The Harvard Classics, and a cheap encyclopædia.
When Mrs. Selborne first came to Dixieland from the hot South she was only twenty-three but she looked older. Ripeness with
