Washington street: a brown man, he had never found comfort in the black and white world of the South. Now a black woman was possibly going to change that.(FICTION)(Novella)

THE PREVIOUS EVENING, George drank too much moonshine whiskey. He woke up with a lingering drunkenness and blinding headache. He washed but did not feel clean, and off the Mississippi came a nauseating smell, a mixture of salt and mud and decay, a smell that sometimes reminded him of the sea but not this morning. He drank his watery coffee and wondered why he'd opened a tailoring shop instead of a dry goods shop. The town had enough dry goods shops, but he could have opened one to serve the Blacks, one where they would not have to wait for the whites to finish before entering the store. The Blacks needed dry goods as much as whites, but they didn't need tailoring. Their ...