"An' you mean to tell me yo' gwine sit down an' not do nutton fuh dah han' yo' got dey. Hey, man, yo' know wuh is good fo' yo'self?"
"Oh, Oi put a leech on it teeday. Dah ort to draw out all de bad blood."
As the nights advanced, the heat became more and more severe. It was useless to try to sleep. Body smells, body vapors, the room's need of oxygen—grew tense, exacting.
"Yo' know, Sarah, dis t'ing is really hurtin' me; why um is worse dan Oi taught um wuz. Um is stickin' me jess like a needle."
"H'm, tell yo' so—tell yo' yo' won't men' yo' ways."
"O Christ," he roared, "why yo' don't say yo' glad an' done?"
At Sixth and Hudson Alley there was a branch of the Plymouth Brethren, and Sarah suddenly went about the business of securing "acceptance" there. Now, so far as running it went, the shop was out of Bright's hands. He was ill, and had to stay at home. One of the men, Baldy, a mulatto Antiguan, took hold of things.
By way of the Sixth Street Mission, his mother rooted religion into his soul. Every night he was marched off to meeting. There, he'd meet the dredge-digging, Zone-building, Lord-loving peasants of the West Indies on sore knees of atonement asking the Lord to bring salvation to their perfidious souls. In the isles of their origin they were the tillers of the soil—the ones to nurture cane, and water sorrel, stew cocoanuts and mix Maube—now theirs was a less elemental, more ephemeral set of chores. Hill and vale, valley and stream gave way to wharf and drydock, dredge and machine shop. Among the women the transfiguration was less brilliant. Dull. The "drops" and cakes and foods and pops vended to the serfs and squatters on insular estates found a husky-throated market at the ends of the pay car lines.
Thursday night was prayer meeting. Religiously Sarah and Gerald went. All the brothers and the sisters took a deep and vital interest in him. They'd bring him sweets, and coppers, and stare long at him, their eyes wet, and soft. They came, a drove of them, to the house, all dressed in black, which set the neighbors talking.
He was not a child of the Lord, he did not believe in the Scriptures, but it did not serve to rob them of their sense of charity. So they came to see, and give words of courage to the family of the sick man. They'd read passages of the Bible to him, and marvel at the priceless wonders of Christ Jesus. And then one day he said to her, "Sarah, I think I ort to go to the horspitral—I can't see—my eyes is painin' me so bad. Oi wondah wha' is de mattah wit' dem."