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40 ABBOTT'S MONTHLY

Her huge black arms were crossed over her breast, meat-heavy.
  "Hey'o," she answered, and went on watching the houses up the road.  When all the children screamed at her and ducked in the grass, Vigil did not look at them. 

THREE doors up Clissy Segars came out.  She was a little pinched-face yellow woman with bleary eyes set in red rims of skin.  She balanced herself precariously on the edge of her worn sill and gazed across the river.  In her own good time she said to Vigil, by way of greeting: 
  "Has she come yit?"
  Vigil pretended igonorance.  She hated Clissy for being yellow and for some other unknown reason.  She shifted her great weight from one foot to the other and eyed Clissy angrily.
  "Whocomeyit?"
  "Peacie," Clissy answered in a sibilant half-whisper.  She leaned far out, lost her footing, laughed nervously, and started toward Vigil.
  "Walks like a bantam hen," Vigil thought.  Aloud she said: "Ain't see'd her."
Clissy smiled archly, roguishly, catering to Vigil's hatred of Peacie, as she catered to everyone's whims. 
  "Ain't it time she was come?"
  Vigil looked at her and their eyes met.  Then she turned her head the other way, only to turn it back again.
  "Her time's up today," she said, smiling a thick smile of hate.  "An' they let 'em out jest after lunch."  Clissy wagged her little head and started back toward the door.  "I wouldn't trust no dopey", she said over her shoulder.  "Oscie's a fool."
  Vigil grunted.
  The five o'clock whistle blew and, observing some rite, more women crowded into their doorways.  The children came up from the shore fighting mosquitoes.  The women passed talk between themselves.  Soon afterward little groups of men came into the road from across the field that stretched behind the houses up into the city.  For the most part they were dressed in khaki breeches stuffed into the tops of yellow stained rubber boots--the garb of the leather worker.  They greeted the women casually. 
  In front of the last house Osceola John stopped with two or three others.  His room was at the top of the stairs that ran up the outside of Vigil's house.
  "What you goin'a do tonight, Oscie?"
  "Nothin".  Too hot."  He tilted back his oily cap and scratched the front of his head.  His nostrils dilated, spreading above his heavy lips like liquid flesh.  "Wish it'd rain."  His crossed eyes, set in the shining smoothness of his black face like mismated beads on a cushion, swept the river melting away into gray up by The Point.
  "Cronin bites goin'a ape tonight," someone said. 
  "Yeh," Oscie said.  He saw Vigil out of the corner of his eye.  His face hardened.
  "Yeh! Vigil, where's Shef?" someone asked her.
  "Don't see him much no more since he got took off'n the day shif'."
  "Sleep." 
  The men moved off up the road and Osceola, avoiding looking at Vigil, climbed the stairs.  

HIS room was hot under the low ceiling.  The pine board floor, warped from the heat, cracked under his heavy tread.  Comic sheets nailed to the walls relieved the white tedium kalsomine, iron bed and coverlet.  A cook-stove and a table crowded one side of the room.  Hanging on the closet door, its arms and bodice stuffed with paper, was a woman's faded purple dress. 
  "Wonder what time she'll git here?"  Oscie said to himself.  Sinking into a chair by the window, he pulled off his stained shirt and boots.
  "Wish it'd rain," he mumbled.
  Stripped to the waist and barefooted, he got a three gallon can from the closet and went down the steps to
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In front of the last house Osceola John stopped with two or three others.  "What you goin'a do tonight, Oscie?"  "Nothin".  Too hot."  He tilted back his oily cap and scratched the front of his hed.  

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