" ... Hey, yo' miss, answer yo' pappy!"

"Hard-ears girl! She been eatin' any mo' marl, Sissie?"

"She, Ada?"

"Sho', gal eatin' marl all de haftah-noon...."

Pet, sugar—no more terms of endearment for Beryl. Impatient, Coggins, his big toe stuck up cautiously in the air,—inciting Rattah to indolent curiosity—moved past Sissie, past Ada, past Rufus, to the rear of the cabin.

II

Yesterday, at noon ... a roasting sun smote Coggins. Liquid ... fluid ... drought. Solder. Heat and juice of fruit ... juice of roasting cashews.

It whelmed Coggins. The dry season was at its height. Praying to the Lord to send rain, black peons gathered on the rumps of breadfruit or cherry trees in abject supplication.

Crawling along the road to the gap, Coggins gasped at the consequences of the sun's wretched fury. There, where canes spread[Pg 18] over with their dark rich foliage into the dust-laden road, the village dogs, hunting for eggs to suck, fowls to kill, paused amidst the yellow stalks of cork-dry canes to pant, or drop, exhausted, sun-smitten.

[Pg 18]

The sun had robbed the land of its juice, squeezed it dry. Star apples, sugar apples, husks, transparent on the dry sleepy trees. Savagely prowling through the orchards blackbirds stopped at nothing.... Turtle doves rifled the pods of green peas and purple beans and even the indigestible Brazilian bonavis. Potato vines, yellow as the leaves of autumn, severed from their roots by the pressure of the sun, stood on the ground, the wind's eager prey. Undug, stemless—peanuts, carrots—seeking balm, relief, the caress of a passing wind, shot dead unlustered eyes up through sun-etched cracks in the hard, brittle soil. The sugar corn went to the birds. Ripening prematurely, breadfruits fell swiftly on the hard naked earth, half ripe, good only for fritters.... Fell in spatters ... and the hungry dogs, elbowing the children, lapped up the yellow-mellow fruit.

[Pg 19]

[Pg 19]

His sight impaired by the livid sun, Coggins turned hungry eyes to the soil. Empty corn stalks ... blackbirds at work....

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