Along the water course, bushy palms shading it, frogs gasped for air, their white breasts like fowls, soft and palpitating. The water in the drains sopped up, they sprang at flies, mosquitoes ... wrangled over a mite. It was a dizzy spectacle and the black peons were praying to God to send rain. Coggins drew back.... Asking God to send rain ... why? Where was the rain? Barreled up there in the clouds? Odd! Invariably, when the ponds and drains and rivers dried up they sank on their knees asking God to pour the water out of the sky.... Odd ... water in the sky.... The sun! It wrung toll of the earth. It had its effect on Coggins. It made the black stone cutter's face blacker. Strong tropic suns make black skins blacker.... At the quarry it became whiter and the color of dark things generally grew darker. Similarly, with white ones—it gave them a whiter[Pg 20] hue. Coggins and the quarry. Coggins and the marl. Coggins and the marl road. [Pg 20] Beryl in the marl road. Six years old; possessing a one-piece frock, no hat, no shoes. Brown Beryl ... the only one of the Rum children who wasn't black as sin. Strange.... Yellow Beryl. It happens that way sometimes. Both Coggins and Sissie were unrelievably black. Still Beryl came a shade lighter. "Dat am nuttin'," Sissie had replied to Coggins' intimately naïve query, "is yo' drunk dat yo' can't fomembah me sistah-in-law what had a white picknee fo' 'ar naygeh man? Yo' don't fomembah, no?" Light-skinned Beryl.... It happens that way sometimes. Victim of the sun—a bright spot under its singeing mask—Beryl hesitated at Coggins' approach. Her little brown hands flew behind her back. "Eatin' marl again," Coggins admonished, "eatin' marl again, you little vagabon'!" Only the day before he had had to chastise her for sifting the stone dust and eating it. "You're too hard ears," Coggins shouted, slapping her hands, "you're too hard ears." [Pg 21] [Pg 21]