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FIVE O'CLOCK SHADOWS Late afternoon, the pace quickens. Children ride their bicycles in looping swags, their voices pitched higher, feverish. At street corners and in front of Cal's Quik Carry with its garish NO LOITERING sign, men, grinning broadly, sip from brown paper bags. In the pool hall, old men rise stiffly from their games of Moon, hitch their pants, and stroll out into the evening, Elderly women emerge from their houses to sit on front porches, some with aprons tied at generous waists, one lifting a corner to blot her face. Promises of dinner tease the air, the smell of red beans and corn bread piacular. The cop at the end of the street wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, the memory of a full belly in his grandmother's kitchen flashing through his mind. Then they begin to arrive. The whish of buses stopping at every corner, leaving passengers in clusters. In hospital scrubs, uniform whites, McDonald's hues, in low-heel, rubber- sole shoes worn down at the backs, the women of South Peabody Street slowly walk home. |
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