“I’m tired of seeing your face. Really tired.”

“I knew it. Soon’s I get two dimes back to back, here you come. More regular than the reaper. Do Hoover know about you?”

They kidded him, abused him, told their children to tell him they were out or sick or gone to Pittsburgh. But they held on to those little yellow cards as though they meant something—laid them gently in the shoe box along with the rent receipts, marriage licenses, and expired factory identification badges. Mr. Smith smiled through it all, managing to keep his eyes focused almost the whole time on his customers’ feet. He wore a business suit for his work, but his house was no better than theirs. He never had a woman that any of them knew about and said nothing in church but an occasional “Amen.” He never beat anybody up and he wasn’t seen after dark, so they thought he was probably a nice man. But he was heavily associated with illness and death, neither of which was distinguishable from the brown picture of the North Carolina Mutual Life Building on the back of their yellow cards. Jumping from the roof of Mercy was the most interesting thing he had done. None of them had suspected he had it in him. Just goes to show, they murmured to each other, you never really do know about people.

The singing woman quieted down and, humming the tune, walked through the crowd toward the rose-petal lady, who was still cradling her stomach.

“You should make yourself warm,” she whispered to her, touching her lightly on the elbow. “A little bird’ll be here with the morning.”

“Oh?” said the rose-petal lady. “Tomorrow morning?”

“That’s the only morning coming.”

“It can’t be,” the rose-petal lady said. “It’s too soon.”

“No it ain’t. Right on time.”

The women were looking deep into each other’s eyes when a loud roar went up from the crowd—a kind of wavy oo sound. Mr. Smith had lost his balance for a second, and was trying gallantly to hold on to a triangle of wood that jutted from the cupola. Immediately the singing woman began again:

O Sugarman done fly