2

Alabama 2

Doc Waldrep is always telling things that are not fit to print. He
is careless in his use of biological terms. He speaks freely of deliveries,
purgatives, and emetics. You can learn about girls that have gone wrong,
about women that are worrying about their husbands, about women who just
naturally have to be sick in order to have something to talk about. And
all the time there is that soft, gentle, and deep contemplative attitude.

He seems so set, so firmly lodged in his life, so firmly convicted that
things don't worry him, that all is a passing show. He is a man with a pipe
sitting in a rocking chair. There is smothered joy in his eyes, a comfor-
table posture to his dumpy body.

Dr. Waldrep always wears a dark suit, not pressed, but a suit, and he
wears a tie, suspenders, and when he sits the short legs of his pants slip
up and you can see his white calf and the supporters to his socks. In the
summer time he often forgets to button all the buttons of his stoggy little
belly, and the white of his skin and sometimes his navel peeps out.

You can see him coming across the street to R. V. Waldrep's Store or
to J. P. Epps' store, going at a snail's pace, one short step before the
other; slowly, thoughtfully he comes. One elbow is outthrust as he holds
the stem of his pipe a few inches from his moist lips. On his face there
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