“By God, if you ever cut me open, McGuire,” said Ben, “I’m going to be damned sure you can walk straight before you do.”
“Come on, Hugh,” said Coker, prodding McGuire under his shoulder. “Stop chasing those beans around the plate. Crawl off or fall off that damned stool—I don’t care which.”
McGuire, drunkenly lost in revery, stared witlessly down at his bean plate and sighed.
“Come on, you damned fool,” said Coker, getting up, “you’ve got to operate in forty-five minutes.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Ben, lifting his face from the stained mug, “who’s the victim? I’ll send flowers.”
“… all of us sooner or later,” McGuire mumbled puffily through his puff-lips. “Rich and poor alike. Here today and gone tomorrow. Doesn’t matter … doesn’t matter at all.”
“In heaven’s name,” Ben burst out irritably to Coker. “Are you going to let him operate like that? Why don’t you shoot them instead?”
Coker plucked the cigar from his long malarial grinning face:
“Why, he’s just getting hot, son,” said he.
Nacreous pearl light swam faintly about the hem of the lilac darkness; the edges of light and darkness were stitched upon the hills. Morning moved like a pearl-gray tide across the fields and up the hill-flanks, flowing rapidly down into the soluble dark.
At the curb now, young Dr. Jefferson Spaugh brought his Buick roadster to a halt, and got out, foppishly drawing off his gloves and flicking the silk lapels of his dinner jacket. His face, whisky-red, was high-boned and handsome; his mouth was straightlipped, cruel, and sensual. An inherited aura of mountain-cornfield sweat hung scentlessly but telepathically about him; he was a smartened-up mountaineer with country-club and University of Pennsylvania glossings. Four years in Philly change a man.
Thrusting his gloves carelessly into his coat, he entered. McGuire slid bearishly off his stool and gazed him into focus. Then he made beckoning round-arm gestures with his fat hands.
“Look at it, will you,” he said. “Does anyone know what it is?”
“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.
“Say, 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
