The fitful breezes off the Gulf moistly warm as dogbreath. Hordes of mosquitoes. Regular evening rainstorms that flared whitely at the windows and rattled the glassware with their thunder and sometimes became downpours that lasted for days. All such was familiar to him. But winter’s occasional blue northers were an alien brutality that made his teeth ache and burned his face raw and made him think his feet would never again be warm. He’d arrived on a boat from New Orleans, where he’d steamed to out of Tampa. His father had sent word ahead to his sister July of John’s troubles with the Florida laws and asked her to take him in for a time. When he showed up one early afternoon at the front door of her pink two-story clapboard on Post Office Street in a part of town long known as Fat Alley, Aunt July welcomed him warmly. She was a lean darkhaired woman who looked younger than her forty-four years except in the eyes which looked to him to have seen everything. While they took lunch on the back porch off the kitchen she said she had friends who could get him work on the Galveston docks if he was interested.
