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Last of the Lint-Heads (Part Two)

Lucius Coleman was not the sort of man who spent life troubled unnecessarily. Even in the Black Days, when the Communists had come to Gastonia, he had not felt as troubled then as he had, just now, seeing the boy out there in the failing light. Worse still He couldn't get his mind to tell him why, exactly, he felt this way.

He shook his head and reached for the front pocket of his tee-shirt where he always kept a pack of Piedmonts. His eyes stayed on the corner where the boy had disappeared while the cigarette sort of found its way to his lips and his Zippo clicked mechanically to set it alight. Squinting, to keep the smoke from burning his eyes, Lucius exhaled a blue cloud and tried hard to tell himself that the stirring in his stomach and the jittery, unsettled feeling was just him being silly.

A breeze stuttered down the street, swaying the Hickory and Oak and Sweet Gums; the leaves only just beginning to turn color; their tips dying in the gold-grey light. A screen door creaked open next door and Lucius, without looking, knew that Myrtle had just come to her front porch-fifteen feet away-to take some air. With her, the smells of her cooking wafted over close enough that Lucius could tell what she had been busy with in the back of her little house: Beans and Collards, both saturated with salt-pork, which Lucius knew from experience would have long ago simmered down until all fat had been rendered and bleached into the roughage. All that pot-liquor would soak up into Myrtle's cornbread (what she called Hoe-cake, because that's what her momma had called it). As if on cue, the smell of the bread also came over the air to make Lucius smile as his mouth watered in reflex. He pushed his door open.

"Evenin, Lucius," Myrtle said casually. She wore one of the couple dozen sack-dresses that she owned. Each one a horrid explosion of flowery color, Lucius could not recall ever seeing Myrtle in anything else since back before the Korean War when Arby, her late husband, had still been alive. Lucius nodded and smiled.

"Evenin', Myrtle, how you doin'?"

"Oh," Myrtle sighed the same way she always did at the start of their conversations: as if the weight of the world had spent the day on her drooping shoulders. "I seen better days. And worse I spec."

Lucius' mouth opened on one side and he let a snick of empathy escape. He nodded without looking at her and drew the last puff of his smoke before he flicked the nub off the porch; it streaked through

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