Read "The Walls of Jericho" by Rudolph Fisher online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Overnight Fred Merritt's Court Avenue house had become a ghastly ruin. Every pane had been bashed in with flood, every window frame charred with fire, each of the gray stone window margins frayed and blackened with smoke. Yesterday these windows had surveyed the world serenely, bright and alive. Today they looked like the deep, dark-circled orbits of sunken blind eyes.
The place had been gutted, heart and bowels. Its vitals, whatever things had given it substance, circulation, and life, all had been hopelessly battered and crushed till they'd shrunk out of sight: One could stand on the sidewalk and see the sunset through and beyond the rear wall -- a hard broad grin of a sunset, which transilluminated the flame sacked dwelling, mocking its emptiness without pity, deriding its devastation. When eventually the sun's grin faded out, it was as if a contemptuous amused observer had at last turned aside and gone off on more important business.