“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.