Village books

It was a grimy, smelly place, with its
own odor spiked by a phosphate-reducing plant two blocks distant. The
paper on the wall of the room Peter slept in looked scrofulous. There
was no window, and Peter's four-years regime of open windows and fresh-
air sleep was broken. He arranged his clothing for the night so it would
come in contact with nothing in the room but a chair back. He felt dull
next morning, and could not bring himself either to shave or bathe in
the place, but got out and hunted up a negro barber-shop furnished with
one greasy red-plush barber-chair.
A few hours later the two negroes journeyed on down to Perryville,
Tennessee, a village on the Tennessee River where they took a gasolene
launch up to Hooker's Bend. The launch was about fifty feet long and had
two cabins, a colored cabin in front of, and a white cabin behind, the
engine-room.
This unremitting insistence on his color, this continual shunting him
into obscure and filthy ways, gradually gave Peter a loathly sensation.
It increased the unwashed feeling that followed his lack of a morning
bath.


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