half past four
`` Been up too long ; feelin ' right sick . '' `` Oh . '' * * * * * The street was hot at three and hotter still at four , the April dust seeming to enmesh the sun and give it forth again as a world-old joke forever played on an eternity of afternoons . But at half past four a first layer of quiet fell and the shades lengthened under the awnings and heavy foliaged trees . In this heat nothing mattered . All life was weather , a waiting through the hot where events had no significance for the cool that was soft and caressing like a woman 's hand on a tired forehead . Down in Georgia there is a feeling -- perhaps inarticulate -- that this is the greatest wisdom of the South -- so after a while the Jelly-bean turned into a poolhall on Jackson Street where he was sure to find a congenial crowd who would make all the old jokes -- the ones he knew .