“Oh, Lord,” Flournoy mourned, “I’ve lost the best cook in the whole world! Tom, I was going to invite you out for a meal to show her off----”
He was interrupted by the voice of a man sobbing. The cry seemed to rack and tear the throat as if Pain had picked up the heart in red hot pincers holding the quivering flesh until it dropped the thick, black blood of agony.
They turned and saw Skeeter Butts slip out of the door of the little theater.
He had followed Lalla Cordona down the street, had entered the little theater unobserved, and had heard enough to know that all the blossoms of love in his heart had fruited into Dead Sea apples filled with ash and soot.
“Gawd!” he sighed pitifully, as he dragged his leaden feet toward the Hen-Scratch saloon, “I wish I wus a white man ’stead of a coon!”
“It cain’t be did, niggers,” Skeeter Butts announced in a tone of finality, as he lighted a new cigarette on the stub of the old one. “Dis here chu’ch is a busted onfinancial institootion.”
He leaned his hide-bottomed chair against the trunk of the chinaberry tree in the churchyard, tipped his derby hat forward until the brim was level with his eyes, and surveyed with disgust that dilapidated structure known as the Shoofly church.
“’Twon’t cost much,” the Rev. Vinegar Atts protested earnestly. “Dis chu’ch is been needin’ dem improvements fer a long time.”
“’Tain’t so,” Hitch Diamond growled. “You don’t need no ’lectric readin’ lamp to sot on yo’ pulpit. You kin read by de light over yo’ head.”
“You ain’t needin’ no fancy pulpit chair to sot on, either,” Skeeter Butts remarked.
“De springs is all busted outen de bottom of de one I’m got,” Vinegar complained. “When I sot down I feels like I’m settin’ in a bushel basket. My stomick is over on my knees an’ my foots is mighty nigh up to my chin. De price ain’t so powerful high--twenty dollars fer de settee an’ five fer de readin’ lamp. Dat don’t seem much to me.”
“Us’ll git you dem fancy decoorshuns fer Christmus, Brudder Atts,” Skeeter smiled. “Dis here is August----”
He stopped suddenly and peered down the road with great interest. A slim, black negro, dressy and citified, was picking his way along the dusty road toward the Shoofly church.
The three men adjusted their chairs so they could watch him as he came up the little hill. They noticed that he gazed down at the deep sand through gold-rimmed spectacles, that he picked places in the road which would not bury his shiny patent-leather shoes, that he exercised great care to protect his linen suit from flying particles of dust, and he carried a near-gold wrist-watch which he consulted frequently, as if he were bound to get up that hill on schedule time.