“It’s a cross-eyed female woman,” Skeeter declared, looking at Coco hopefully. But Coco’s eyes were round as a buckshot and straight, perfectly straight.
With a groan Skeeter placed his face in his two hands and mourned:
“We’s gwine lose all our dollars, Coco—dar ain’t no hope!”
“Whut did Vinegar Atts specify de niggers wus gwine do to you?” Coco asked.
“He ain’t say,” Skeeter told her, speaking from a heart filled with misery and dreadful foreboding. “I ’speck dey’s gwine hang me.”
A wild yell from the Sawtown rooters caused him to glance up listlessly. The slaughter had begun again. With another groan he dropped his head and gave himself up to deep thought.
A sharp crack of hickory against horsehide—Skeeter looked up and saw the Tickfall center-fielder fumbling with the ball, picking it up and dropping it three times, while four hilarious Sawtown men came in and scored.
Skeeter rose to his feet, dusted the seat of his duck trousers, and said to Coco:
“Little gal, you set right here till I gits back. Dar ain’t no cross-eyed gals in dis whole town, but I’m gotter bust dat hoodoo sign onless I hankers to die, which ain’t so. Is you willin’ to he’p me?”
“Suttinly,” Coco assured him.