"throwing the rain-washed roots of the sycamore trees up high like a sick steer's ribs"
"odors of frying fish, onions and hush puppies"
"kerosene lamp on a goods box"
page 38 and 39 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD:
He stumbled now and then. The liquor and something else was boiling inside him and throwing off powerful big bubbles that wanted to come out in long yells. He felt good and loose-ankled and full of the devil and he needed to undo his collar.
It was shoving him when he reached Baptist Bottom.
Baptist Bottom lay between him and Mabe's Place. It crouched at night under a sullen fog, a few clapboard shacks, shrinking in the sun and swelling in the rain. Mist rose from stagnant water that drained off the higher ground of the white folks and ponded in the bottom. The fog held too long the odors of frying fish, onions and hush puppies. It rose and dulled sights and sounds.
Even the sudden high-pitched yells from the Puddin' House were muted and sounded farther away than they really were. They always yelled in the Puddin' House. It was the only place for colored folks alone. A scuffle and a giggling laugh in the bushes near the narrow street came to Buck like an echo that had no beginning. And the preaching. There was always preaching in the Bottom and now a voice rode low through the mist, hardly mumbling beyond the crowd.
Buck was passing the preaching, just outside the Puddin' House, when the sudden bawl of the preacher caught him.
"An' this is the last word," it came, grumbling low but strong. Buck stepped closer and saw the huge figure gather itself as if to lunge at the crowd, and in the light of a kerosene lamp on a goods box he saw the muscles in the thick black throat strain for volume.
The preacher thrust his big head straight forward and glared at the crowd, holding his voice. Then he blasted out the last word.
"You got to walk the muddy streets of Aven 'fore you kin walk the golden streets of Heaven.""Here, Big Time, preach me some hell-fire and alligator teeth"
"Ain't you kinda lit up, Boss?"
"Like a country church." (from the October 3, 1942 DAILY OKLAHOMAN [Oklahoma City] )
"Boss, whore ladies like a little something on the side. Now I got a pair o' fine billy goats, Boss, which'd make mighty pretty pets down yonder."
Page 40-42 The description of Mabe's Place "I figgered even a goat'd ruther live in a house full of ready women that lay in the road."
from the January 2, 1914 PITTSBURGH DAILY POST
"corn-shuck mat"
"Hey, Mabe! Company."
"a newel post to put it by"
I
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