Little enough remained of its paving—bleached, cracked islands of blacktop that stood inches above the dirt level of the street. The Jaguar rocked and rumbled. Weeds edged the street, seedy, sun-dried. There were a few fences, chainlink, picket, grapestake. The houses, on narrow lots, were smaller here, the stucco sometimes broken away, showing chicken wire and tarpaper. Under untrimmed, drooping pepper trees, the composition roofs were losing their green and silver coatings. Rooflines sagged. Small black children, in paper diapers, rompers, jeans, or nothing at all, tottered and squatted, hopped and hollered in dusty yards of pecking chickens, sunflowers, hollyhocks. Auto bodies rusted in a few yards. A rope holding a tire swung from a tree branch. Scruffy dogs lay in patches of shade, tongues hanging. On stoops, on sunny roofs, cats washed themselves or dozed. Other than the children, he saw only occasional women, young and pregnant in cheap bright cotton prints and hair straighteners, or old and bony, or old and fat.
