cocoanut. An old straw hat, black, and its rim saggy by virtue of the moisture of sweating sun-fingers, served as a calabash for a ball of "cookoo"—corn meal, okras and butter stewed—roundly poised in its crown. By the buckra's side, a black girl stood, her lips pursed in an indifferent frown, paralyzed in the intense heat.

Passing by them Coggins' bare feet kicked up a cloud of the white marl dust and the girl shouted, "Mistah Rum, you gwine play de guitah tee nite, no?" Visions of Coggins—the sky a vivid crimson or blackly star-gemmed—[Pg 13]on the stone step picking the guitar, picking it "with all his hand...."

[Pg 13]

Promptly Coggins answered, "Come down and dance de fango fo' Coggins Rum and he are play for you."

 Bajan gal don't wash 'ar skin Till de rain come down.... 

Bajan gal don't wash 'ar skin

Till de rain come down....

Grumblings. Pitch-black, to the "washed-out" buckra she was more than a bringer of victuals. The buckra's girl. It wasn't Sepia, Georgia, but a backwoods village in Barbadoes. "Didn't you bring me no molasses to pour in the rainwater?" the buckra asked, and the girl, sucking in her mouth, brought an ungovernable eye back to him.

Upon which Coggins, swallowing a hint, kept on his journey—noon-day pilgrimage—through the hot creeping marl.

Scorching—yet Coggins gayly sang:

 O! you come with yo' cakes Wit' yo' cakes an' yo' drinks Ev'y collection boy ovah deah!— 

O! you come with yo' cakes

Wit' yo' cakes an' yo' drinks

Ev'y collection boy ovah deah!—

[Pg 14]

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