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
