Then let the Gold Dust Twins do the work!
Ask Ben — he knows!”
“O my God!” laughed Ben thinly, “listen to that, won’t you?”
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.