hal bennett seventh heaven

_HEAVEN

_{A
NOVEL BY}

_HAL
BENNETT

SEVENT HEAVE

A NOVEL BY

^HAL
BENNET

In his fifth novel, Hal Bennet lates a bold theory certain to troversial: That, once in bonda come to enjoy servitude. Indee the means to rid themselves chains, they return to bondag

To carry forth this them Bennett takes us into an urban project—sardonically called " Heaven" by its inmates. We m blacks, Italians, and Puerto who live there, and share the ences that shape their entrapm

Focusing upon the tragi-co
two men named Bill Kelsey an
Bryant, Seventh Heaven sho
desperate people cast hope
experience, freedom against
ment. As the novel opens, the
out for the $1,000,000 prize rep
awaiting the first man who c
birth to a baby

(continued on back flop)

^v -

(continued from front flap)

Before their story ends, the whole sweep of modern history—from the civil rights movement to the resignation of Richard Nixon—touches the lives of "Seventh Heaven's" trapped inhabitants. Superstition and "juju," a form of magic, play important parts as the characters move through Seventh Heaven.

"Hal Bennett writes with grace, humor, feeling and intelligence," Jonathan Yardley said in his review of Bennett's fourth novel, Wait Until the Evening. As Bennett serves up generous portions of satire and sexuality, he has been likened to Jean Genet and Jonathan Swift by critics.

Born in Virginia, Hal Bennett sold his first short story when he was fifteen. His first novel, A Wildnerness of Vines, won him a fiction fellowship for the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 1966. His latest, Seventh Heaven, boldly places him at the forefront of American novelists, and effectively eclipses both Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin in the area of imaginative literature by blacks.

JACKET ILLUSTRATION BY WILLIAM MAUGHAN

BACK JACKET PHOTO BY ALEX GOTFRYD

JACKET TYPOGRAPHY BY JUDITH TURNER

isbn: 0-385-06659-7

Printed in the U.S.A.

SEVENTH HEAVEN

Seventh Heaven

_HAL
BENNETT

DOUBLED AY & COMPANY, INC. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK 1976

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA BENNETT, HAL, 1930-SEVENTH HEAVEN. I. TITLE.

pz4.b4696se [ps3552.e546] 813'.5'4 isbn 0-385-06659-7

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 75-36579

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FIRST EDITION

to Arnold I, Kopeloff, M.D.,

prince of physicians,

this book is dedicated with profound respect

and affection.

sev'enth heav'en, 1. (esp. in Islam and the cabala) the highest heaven, where God and the most exalted angels dwell. 2. a state of intense happiness; bliss: She was in seventh heaven in her new home.

—THE RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

THE UNABRIDGED EDITION

_Prologue

_{The
New Home}

he housing projects known as Anthony Homes in Cousinsville, New Jersey, are predominantly black and Porto Rican; but there is a small enclave of Italians and other whites who give the project an aspect of interraciality, lest the responsible government agencies come under fire for subsidizing restrictive housing with public funds.

The projects are bounded on one side by an artery of Route 280 and on the other by a street called Seventh Avenue, although there are no adjacent avenues numbered one through six, and none from seven onward. After a careful study by Cousinsville's housing director, it was concluded that the number seven is inoffensively neutral and also important in some mystical sense to each of the three ethnic groups. So Seventh Avenue came into being.

The projects themselves are known as Anthony Homes for the same reasons of diplomacy—Anthony being a name thrice blessed with ambiguity in that it can be either black, brown, or Italian. It is, in fact, the first name of Cousinsville's housing director, one Anthony

Behes, a Czechoslovakian emigrant who came to America when it was still worthwhile coming to, and who got himself named director of housing and planning in Cousinsville when no one else was found foolish enough to take the job.

Anthony Beiies is a dedicated and intelligent city planner, although he speaks English in beautiful Czechoslovakian. After the unhappy riots of the Sixties, when it finally became apparent to those in power that poor people were malcontent with where and how they lived, Mr. Benes went to work with a staff of government consultants who agreed with everything he said because of the length and breadth and depth of his Bohemian accent.

The specialists were Republicans; history has shown that they are frequently impressed too largely by too little. They were enormously impressed with Mr. Benes and his array of exotic gesticulations. In his turn, fortified with such unassailable advice from the highest levels of government, Mr. Benes proceeded to shift the population of Cousinsville in such a way that it remained substantially as it was before. Whites with a little money still perch precariously on the outer circle of suburbia, afraid to go too far toward the inner ring lest they meet niggers, spies, and poor wops coming at them from the other direction.

Through the enlightened vision of Mr. Benes, these three groups have been gathered up and stacked one upon the other in Anthony Homes like so many layers of eggs packed in separate compartments in brick crates. The only change, then, has been from the horizontal to the vertical in the case of poor people—from the shape and smell of poverty that spread in every direction like a desperate malignancy, to its containment in the tall, massive, red citadels known, in the light sarcasm of its inhabitants, as Seventh Heaven.

There are twelve of these vertical monstrosities with twelve stories each, as though the city, state, and federal fathers had some deep, perhaps Druidic tendencies about their erection which are unknowable to less than politicians. The projects are situated on a hill where Cousinsville peaks, dips, and then climbs with a kind of ordered insolence to meet the refined gracefulness of West Orange, Livingston, and the Caldwells. In days of the old religion, the hill where the projects stand might have been a place where naked men bayed at the moon, or came together to practice their magic and fortify their myths.

But civilization has come to Cousinsville and brought with it a series of probable certainties: that Anthony Homes, like any enforced

isolation, is a negative condition surrounded by a positive reality; that welfare checks will probably come on or about the first of each month; that if the elevators in Anthony Homes are running, the doors probably won't open to let people in—or if the doors do open to let them in, they probably won't open to let them out again.

It is also certain that on one famous occasion, an old lady was met on a half-lighted stairway by someone—their identity or number has never been known—who carried a heavy-duty mattress and a can of kerosene; that the person or persons unknown drenched one with the other, set it afire, and threw the mattress on the old lady, who burned to death under its flaming weight. The authorities found a few cans of food, a pattern of charred springs, and a few pieces of her. No one was ever apprehended for this crime; nothing was ever done, as though the act was as sacred, as inevitable, as if Moses in his dotage had accidentally immolated himself in the burning bush. Even now, that part of the stairway smells of roasted old lady garnished with one part kerosene, one part flaming mattress; and there is a stain on the gray cement floor which looks surprisingly like a grease spot from something that was not intended by God to be roasted at all.

This is not to say that the people of Anthony Homes do not have their hearts in the same location, that these organs do not perform the same functions, as the hearts of other human beings. Still, there is little inclination on the part of anyone to interfere with the hunt, the hate, the havoc wrought by one's neighbors. Any feeble cry for help that might squeeze from the hallways through the metal doors is the best warning to turn up the volume of one's TV, or perhaps to prop another chair against one's door.

There are of course friendships; the usual amount of bickering and backbiting and borrowing goes on; feelings are hurt and repaired. Yet, each apartment unit constitutes a cave where blacks, Porto Ricans, and Italians live together in surprising harmony, as though poverty, rather than death and taxes, is the greatest equalizer.

In a very sinister way, the residents of Anthony Homes are like children who have had the will to work taken away from them, and are encouraged to play until they drop dead of being bored and overtired simultaneously. Some of their games include toying with numbers, shooting drugs, killing each other, and blaming every good or evil act on a kind of colorful magic known as the mojo, the juju, the evil eye, la brujeria, or the United States government, depending on who does the evaluation. Juju plays an especially important part in the mad race of some blacks toward death, since the other games

offer only the specter of hope, while juju raises the appetizing feast of power as well.

The highest and most sacred occasion happens each first of the month, called Mother's Day, when welfare checks arrive indeed as though by magic. And while the dozen buildings do not exactly face east, the careful observer cannot escape the uncomfortable feeling that they are mystically aligned to the red light of Betelgeuse near one shoulder of the constellation Orion. What this signifies is still unknown to those who have found it out.

On clear days, some people climb to the rooftops and look over into New York City, perhaps as an act of devotion to one or another of their witch gods. Thus engaged, they may console themselves with the thought that even if they don't live in the nicest project or the largest city in the world, at least they live in the worst project in New Jersey, superlatives sometimes being as soothing in the negative as they are in the positive.

_Book
One

Million-Dollar Baby

here was little consolation, this freezing morning in February, to warm the livers of Bill Kelsey and Bobby Bryant as they sat on the roof of the building known as A-l and shared a quart of Thunderbird wine which they had just bought with their last $1.60.

For one thing, there had been an ice storm last night, and the rooftop was decidedly cold and uncomfortable. Bill Kelsey, who, at thirty-four, was five years older than his high-yaller buddy Bobby, was the blacker, the unhappier, and the more pensive of the two. His day had begun at six o'clock when Dicey, his common-law wife, turned on the "Today" show, a sure sign that she was upset about something. Dicey had seven children, none of whom belonged to Bill, and she received a welfare check of over six hundred dollars a month for their support. But the money never seemed to last beyond the first ten days of any month; and once it disappeared, what with one thing and another, Dicey forgot all the good times they'd had on her money and tried to browbeat Bill into going out and working. Dicey turned

on the "Today" show because she knew Barbara Walters irritated Bill almost as much as she did when she woke him up at the Godforsaken hour of six o'clock to yammer about getting a job.

He listened to her arguments as patiently as any man could: no money, no food; no heat or hot water, although that was the project's fault for cutting back during the energy crunch. But worst of all, no cigarettes, not even a stick of gum, for Dicey to wake up on. "What kind of man are you?" Dicey fumed, biting the nail of her right thumb as she always did when she was out of cigarettes and gum. "A young healthy man like you, living off what the welfare give me and my kids."

Bill listened peacefully; but between Dicey and Barbara Walters— her articulate, smug, self-assuredness at the unholy hour of six o'clock—the sleep fell away from him like the leave-taking of a prolonged and delightful high. Still, he said nothing. Although he had never told Dicey so, he thought he was doing her a grand favor by living with her and her seven children. Few men would do that, ex-pecially if you considered the fact that Dicey was nearly forty, regardless of how long and loudly she claimed to be twenty-nine. At that rate, her oldest boy would have been born when she was six or seven. But Bill Kelsey was a kind-hearted soul; he let Dicey rave on, and the argument probably would have ended as all their arguments did, with Bill balling Dicey almost into unconsciousness, until she settled her nerves and went out and found some food and money whatever way she usually did once her own needs were satisfied.

But this morning, Dicey irritated him more than usual. She was prancing about the bedroom with both blankets from the bed wrapped around herself, leaving Bill naked and uncovered on the dirty sheet. He lay there trying not to shiver, hoping she'd turn off Barbara Walters and crawl back into bed so he could turn her on. My God! Couldn't she see the favor he was doing her, a good-looking black man like he was, built like he was, patient and willing to listen to her side of an argument without even presenting his own? But Dicey seemed to be blind with rage this morning. Bill inspected her closely. She had taken off her wig at bedtime and draped it over a styrofoam holder. With her wig on, she might have passed for a woman in her late twenties or early thirties. But with her hair braided in little plaits that clung to her head with the tenacity of leeches, her face screwed up in anger, parading between him and the television set with both goddamned blankets around her. ... It was too much for any man to stand. Bill hopped up and busted her lip. She screeched,

and came at him with claws curled like a cat, ready to scratch his eyes out. He side-stepped and gave her a well-placed knee to the general area of her baby-maker, that's what she called that thing down there.

Bill felt like hell doing it, because he was a nice guy. But, after all, a man has to draw the line somewhere. Dicey was doubled up on the bed, sobbing. He turned off the television—man, sometimes he felt like kicking Barbara Walters in her baby-maker—and reached for his jeans. In a few minutes he was dressed in his usual costume—boots, faded jeans, a matching denim jacket, a plaid shirt. It was all he wore winter or summer. Digging in his pockets, he found sixty cents. That was enough to buy Dicey some cigarettes or a whole lot of gum, which was really all that was wrong with her—she just needed something in her mouth. She had her baby-maker; and under Bill's inspired humping, she could turn it into her money-maker as well. But he didn't feel so good right now, not good enough to give anything to anybody, especially not what Dicey really wanted. What he needed was a drink of T-Bird; but he lacked twenty cents for even a pint. Which meant he'd have to wake up his drinking buddy, Bobby Bryant.

Dicey was still sobbing under the blankets when Bill left the bedroom and tiptoed down the long hall so as not to awaken Dicey's children. Goddamn, he knew he was a kind man, a considerate man.

It was nearly seven o'clock, and outdoors was still dark as he left Building A-l and walked across the quadrangle to Building A-3, where Bobby Bryant lived on the third floor. Bill whistled at Bobby's door and knocked softly. Bobby was living with a woman named Janie Mae, who wasn't his wife either. She had six children, and was probably getting ready to put Bobby through the same tenth-of-the-month blues that Bill had just busted Dicey's lip for. Bill whistled again—it was a special whistle that he and Bobby used to signal each other. And then he heard innumerable latches drawn, a chair scraped back that was propped against the door, before Bobby Bryant stuck his head out into the hallway. He was wearing a pair of red long drawers, which Bill noticed with a feeling of sadness. This younger generation just wasn't as strong as it ought to be.

"What's wrong, man?" Bobby said.

Bill went in. "Me and Dicey just had some shit. You got twenty cents, man? I want to get high, I want me some T-Bird."

Bobby nodded. "I got a whole dollar," he whispered, winking toward the bedroom. "But I'd better get my ass out of here before Janie Mae wakes up and tries to give me some shit."

Bill waited in the living room while Bobby went to dress. Bill had met Bobby Bryant in jail when Bobby was just about to turn seventeen. His eyes were gray-green, like a cat's; and he'd been very light-skinned then. In recent months, Bill had noticed that a pale brown stain, or something closer to weak orange, was growing under Bobby's outer, lighter layer of skin.

That wasn't the only change Bill had seen in his friend over the last dozen years. In the beginning, Bobby was a man, a buddy to be proud of, a hustler in the truest sense of the word. Shit. Bobby had turned him on to hustling. They'd helped build these projects; but once they moved into Anthony Homes, Bobby seemed to have lost his strength, his courage, his sense of high adventure.

The projects had surely changed Bobby, Bill thought. They'd changed him, too. Not as much as they changed most people, because Bill was stronger than most people. Man, when he was seventeen, he'd been a sonofabitch! Thinking about his young days, he found it hard to separate fact from what may or may not have been a series of incredible fantasies.

But he'd definitely changed. Sometimes he felt he was hooked to a machine that was sucking every drop of life from him. Or being moved inch by inch, machine and all—by someone, some thing—to an end that could only result in tragedy and tears. It had to be the projects. They changed everybody.

When Bobby came back, he was wearing a pair of boots similar to Bill's. But he had on a Russian-style hat with earflaps, a long overcoat that swept the floor, black leather gloves, and a muffler that seemed ten feet long piled in coils around his neck. Bill shook his head, although not so that it could be noticed. Here he was with just his pants and shirt and a denim jacket on, not even any drawers. And in a few more years, he'd be forty. Bobby Bryant was just twenty-nine, and he was wrapped up in wool and leather like some old lady. Bill really liked Bobby, and he knew that Bobby liked him. But sometimes he felt that a friend of his—his best friend—ought to be a stronger, tougher man, more like he himself was. Although he had from time to time considered the possibility that he liked Bobby Bryant precisely because Bobby was weaker than he was, like a mother sometimes loves a deformed child more than she loves one that is strong, firm of limb, ready for anything. . . .

They went out into the dark streets. The bells at the Catholic church were already chiming, announcing the seven o'clock mass. Bobby and Bill walked a little faster, for Joe's Tavern also opened at

seven o'clock. Bobby slipped several times on the ice—he walked uncertainly at all times, as though his small legs belonged to another person who was walking away from him in the other direction—but Bill held him with a firm hand, like a Victorian gentleman supporting his lady. And in a little while they arrived at the tavern. With Bobby's dollar, and sixty cents of Bill's money, they bought a quart of T-Bird, which is the champagne of desperate people, a light white wine that tastes like Seven-Up laced with formaldehyde.

Bill and Bobby hastened back to Anthony Homes, Bill carrying the T-Bird for safety's sake, as well as supporting Bobby over the rough spots in the ice and accumulated snow. There were other people stirring now, friends or casual acquaintances of theirs; but neither of them was in a mood to share their T-Bird with anyone else. It was Bill's idea that they climb to the roof of A-l. Bobby protested; but, like everything else about him, it was mild and easily overcome.

The stairs between floors in Anthony Homes have two levels for every one floor; so that by the time they were halfway up, Bill and Bobby had already taken twelve flights. With twelve more still to go, Bobby was puffing and panting; but Bill was breathing normally, although his own pulse had quickened. He rejoiced at the surge of blood through his veins, a steady, harmonious flowing as dependable as the works of a fine watch. "I've got to rest," Bobby said; and he flopped on the steps. Bill looked at him with a certain fond pity. "Take a drink," he said. It was a concession he would have made for no one else, changing plans in midstride, as it were. He liked to drink his T-Bird on the roof—the whole ritual of getting there, like adventurers climbing to the peak of Everest; then the clearing of a space; the squatting on his haunches until they tired and ached with a lovely pain, since to sit flat on the hard cement would surely aggravate his piles. And then, to open the bottle, to take the first drink with the practiced palate of a connoisseur, rolling the cold liquid around on his tongue before he swallowed it slowly as it warmed, like a snake drawing a particularly pleasant morsel into his body. . . . But now, he was breaking the ritual. Bobby seemed so goddamned tired. Sometimes Bill worried about his buddy's health, a man so young, yet so fragile, easy to get drunk, easy to tire. Still, he did live with Janie Mae, and she seemed satisfied with whatever Bobby was doing to her. Janie Mae was a large woman, almost double the size of Bobby Bryant. Sometimes she beat him up—that was an open secret in Anthony Homes. But sometimes, when she felt it was important to her man's ego and reputation, she allowed him to beat her up in public.

Bill liked Janie Mae, letting a little pipsqueak like Bobby Bryant beat her up just so Bobby could maintain his standing in the projects.

Now Bill skinned back the brown paper bag and opened the T-Bird. "Take a drink," he told Bobby. That was another break from tradition: Bill always took the first drink from any bottle he opened; if there was any poison there, he wanted it, as any man welcomes the passion of women, the poison of wine, the possibility of disaster leaping at you from bushes that seem deceptively benign.

Bobby took a reasonable drink, and gave the bottle back. Bill drank without wiping the mouth of the bottle; that was something friends never did. He felt like taking another drink, but then Bobby would want one, too; and Bill wanted to save the rest of the T-Bird for the rooftop. His body felt warm, as though he had drunk gasoline and chased it with a burning match.

A certain amount of color had returned to Bobby's cheeks; the T-Bird had apparently ignited him too. Huddled inside his overcoat, almost blinded by his Russian hat; and the scarf piled round his neck, then dropping to the floor like a multicolored sock, he seemed more lost and vulnerable than Bill had ever seen him. "Let's go on to the roof," Bill said. But Bobby asked for another minute to catch his breath. He inhaled deeply. Then all the color left his cheeks again. "Ain't this the place that woman was burned up in? The one they threw the mattress on?"

Bill nodded. Even in the half-light, the stain left by the old woman's final moments was plainly visible.

Bobby stood up. "We shouldn't have stopped here. Let's go on."

He looked so alarmed, his face so full of fear and loathing, that Bill held him back. He didn't believe in running away from reality, no matter how horrible. And he wanted Bobby to be the same way. "Let's have another drink," he said, unscrewing the cap. "Then we can go."

Bobby drank, aiming his eyes carefully at the dirty gray ceiling, where somebody with an extremely long arm had scrawled in black crayon: O WHERE CAN THE HEART OF MAN BE COMFORTED? Bobby finished drinking and handed the bottle to Bill with a little gasp, because the immediate effect of T-Bird is to take away one's breath more effectively than anything the Russians have perfected. When he was able to talk, Bobby said bitterly, "The things people do."

Bill drank. The T-Bird had the usual effect on him, but he was determined not to show it. "If people get desperate enough, they do

anything," he commented. He said it almost sadly, as though it was a lesson Bobby should have learned a long time ago.

Bobby pointed at the large stain. "Would you do something like that?"

Bill stared at him for several seconds. Bobby's eyes, with green flecks in them, reminded Bill of grass when it first sprouts in spring. "I might," he said. "If I had to." He screwed the cap back on the bottle and took the remaining stairs two at a time.

Sometimes, Bobby Bryant bothered him very much. He had a man's age, but a child's innocence, as though he had been shortchanged when it came to the giving out of real eyes to see real situations. Bobby was perfectly willing to talk about things that other people did, without being able to understand that he himself was one of those same people; that given the right circumstances—the crushing need that recycles men back into being animals—Bobby Bryant would be more than capable of setting an old lady on fire. Didn't he beat Janie Mae unmercifully when she let him? Wasn't he living off her and her welfare check, not working, taking food from her children's mouths? Lord knows, he couldn't be humping Janie Mae in the same inspired way that Bill was humping Dicey. So what was she getting from Bobby in return, except another son, another mouth to feed, another child to care for without the benefit of a man to hump her to death until it all seemed worthwhile, even when not one single part of it meant anything, including the humping . . . ?

Bill was thinking like that when he came to the roof door. Bobby was still several flights behind him, for Bill could hear him clumping upwards like some fragile Frankenstein in boots that were too heavy and stiff. He stood at the door for a moment before going out on the cold roof, where the wind sliced to his bones, dissipated, and left him glowing with warmth at his triumph over nature at her worst. It was even better than that final moment when he was humping, before the milk boiled over and spilled out of his perfect muscularity, and he felt as one and at peace with all things, great and good and glorious, a man among lesser men, even if he was poor and black and sometimes despised himself.

The sun was coming up behind the New York skyline, and the whole east was red and pink and purple. He saw a jet, winking and blinking, coming in for a landing at one of the area's airports. The wind whistled around him with icy lips, but he did not feel the cold. In fact, he felt warm and inspired, and on the verge of discovering some great truth about himself—if nothing more than taking a run-

ning jump and leaping over the low barricades down into the quadrangle twelve stories below. He had seen enough death to know that it is horrible, and bloody and mangling. But it is also truth. And this morning, Bill was concerned with that—with truth and honesty. If Bobby Bryant was Janie Mae's child—he thought this as he took out a jackknife from his back pocket and began hacking away at the ice so that he and Bobby could sit with their backs to the door while they killed the Thunderbird-if Bobby was Janie Mae's child, was he any less Dicey's? The thought comforted him; Dicey was a good mother when she wasn't being a bad bitch. Now he was sorry that he had left her with nothing to smoke or to chew, without even the comfort of his own massive tube that she wrapped herself around like a wrench, that transformed her baby-maker into her money-maker when he had fucked her deeply, deftly, and sufficiently. . . .

Bill had cleaned off enough of the ice for him and Bobby to sit down when Bobby pushed through the door, panting, holding one hand over his heart like Bette Davis about to make a speech and die. But what he said was, "Why'd you leave me, man?" And Bill forgot about Dicey, and truth, and pulled Bobby halfway to him and guided him to the spot he had cleared of ice. "Sometimes," he said, "the best way to take those steps is to run up them." He was something of an athlete, so that was somewhat true. He helped Bobby sit down; then he squatted beside him on his haunches, resting his back against the door, careful not to let his butt touch the cement that did such terrible things to his piles. After a while, Bobby stopped holding his heart. Bill gave him the bottle. They drank in silence, passing the wine back and forth, like two men sharing oxygen in a vacuum where no air exists.

The sun over New York had gathered all the surrounding colors unto itself, and hung like a pagan red ball in the sky. "Isn't that pretty?" Bobby said.

"It's beautiful," Bill said. The T-Bird was consuming him like a firestorm. He felt like a part of the sun, as though, craving independence, he had broken away from the steady fixation of millions and millions of centuries and had come to the roof of Anthony Homes for Bobby Bryant to fall into orbit around him. He felt sad, pensive, exhilarated, all at the same time. And he was certainly part of the sun; his very loins were roasting, although the wind was zapping around them with the frenzy of demented witches. He glanced at Bobby and saw that he was morose, drawn down into his scarf like a disgruntled turtle. Bill slapped him on his padded knee. "Cheer up,,

buddy. You still thinking about that woman on the stairs? Don't think about it. Think about . . . think about a beautiful beach, like the ones you see advertised on television by Eastern airlines. How'd you like to spend the rest of your life in a place like that, with all the T-Bird you want, beautiful bitches to hump, some grass to smoke . . . ?"

Bobby nodded without much enthusiasm. His eyes rolled in their sockets like a weary cow's. "That costs money, man. A lot of money. Where can people like us get that kind of money from?"

"There're ways," Bill said quietly. He hated the way Bobby always looked on the dark side of things. "There's always a way, buddy." Impulsively, he wrapped his arm around Bobby's shoulders. Was there any way he could pour some of his strength into Bobby's pitiful bag of bones? His mind felt as sharp, as lethal, as a poisoned dart. "Bobby . . . buddy ... I want to tell you something. It's something bad, buddy. I hope you don't stop liking me if I tell you." He could see a certain interest stirring the alcoholic haze that filmed Bobby's eyes. "What'd you do, man?" Bobby said. "Did you hump my old lady?"

"Naw," Bill said. He sounded more disgusted than he felt. Because he'd wanted to hump Janie Mae for a long time. But that was also something you didn't do to a good friend—you didn't wipe the mouth of the bottle when you drank after him, you didn't try to hump his old lady, regardless of how much she turned you on. "Nothing like that, man. This has to do with Dicey's little daughter, her youngest one."

"You mean Shirona, the baby girl?" Now his eyes shone with absolute delight. "She's a pretty thing. Did you hump her?"

"Naw, man! You think I'm like that? You really think I'm like that?" He took a larger drink than protocol permitted, but he wanted to show his absolute innocence on that score. Humping a little girl! Bobby must have thought he was some kind of pervert or something. He swilled the T-Bird to still his indignation, and also to give him courage for the thing he was going to tell Bobby. Because it was the absolute truth, what he was going to say.

The wine gushed down his throat like a hot Niagara, until Bobby, emboldened by whatever force, took the bottle from him. "You drinking more than your share," Bobby complained. "Remember, I put up the dollar." His gray eyes narrowed as he calculated. "That means two-thirds is mine, one-third is yours. You drank damn near all of it."

"Now you getting technical," Bill said. "Go ahead and kill it." He had cheated, but he felt full of fire. And he was prepared to be honest about Dicey's baby girl, Shirona.

"You know," he said, "Shirona was about four or five months old when I came to live with Dicey. Well, I'd never been in a situation like that before. All those children, but especially that baby girl. She cried all the time. I think there was something wrong with her, she cried so much." He took his arm from Bobby's shoulders and slammed his fists together. He wanted to be honest, but it was hard in the telling. He didn't want to sound like a pervert, a madman. He was trying to make a very important point so that Bobby Bryant, knowing the frailties of men, might become a man himself; so that Bobby would never again shy away from the horrible stain on the stairs, but that he would see it as being yet another reason why the world is not a safe place for infants, or wide-eyed boys, or helpless old ladies. The world, torn from the womb of the universe, is a cradle for men and all the good and evil that is in them. People like Bobby Bryant were always in danger from people like Bill Kelsey. Because Bobby, through accident or by design, pretended to be innocent. Bill had lost his innocence long ago.

"Go on, man. Tell me about Shirona."

Bill blinked. The sun was in his eyes, and his legs ached from squatting. "Like I said, she cried all the time. Dicey would leave the house to go shopping, or to play bingo, and Shirona would just lay in her crib and cry. One day, when all the other children were in school, I was alone with Shirona. And she was crying her eyes out. I took a pillow and put it over her face. I was going to smother her to death."

He waited for Bobby's reaction—shock, horror, dismay. Anything. But Bobby turned the T-Bird up and killed it, his Adam's apple bobbing as he drank. After a while, he said, "I can't stand kids that cry all the time either. I never actually thought about killing one. But I can understand how you felt."

"Man, you understanding the wrong thing," Bill said. He was very drunk; he wondered if he was making any sense at all. But if he himself was tore up—it was an expression they used to describe the next highest condition to being drunk, as though Thunderbird mangled their senses like the claws and beak of a marauding bird—then Bobby had to be even more tore up. Because Bill's capacity for everything, and everything about Bill, was larger than anything about Bobby. That's the way Bill felt, and he hated feeling that way about his friend. He put his arm back around Bobby's shoulders. "I was

jealous of that baby," he said. "You see, I felt like I was one of Dicey's children—I guess I still do. And there was Shirona crying all the time, getting all the attention, all the concern, all the sympathy. You dig what I mean, man?"

Bobby nodded too quickly. He doesn't dig a damn thing I'm saying, Bill thought. But he felt a compulsion to keep on, to try and show Bobby that the two of them, and all the other men in Anthony Homes who were living off women and their children's welfare checks, that they were children themselves, and would remain so unless they realized that they were paid humpers, really, prized and not-so-prized studs living off women who couldn't afford the luxury of anything better, women who wanted someone to mother the same way that those who were being mothered wanted to be somebody's children. A man had to understand that if he wanted to escape the prison of innocence and childhood.

"I dig, man," Bobby said. He was nodding with his eyes almost closed, as though he had taken a dose of horse.

It wasn't important to Bill now whether Bobby understood or not. He was talking to the cold wind, to the sun, perhaps, where it rested on his lap like the hot ass of a fat woman, the T-Bird circulating through his thighs and the hard muscles of his legs like water in a radiator. "One night," he said, "Dicey went to bingo. I think she went with Janie Mae and some of the other girls. Shirona was crying when she left. Give her her bottle, Dicey told me. So I gave her the bottle, but she sucked it awhile and then she started crying again. So I sent the other children to bed. Then I dressed Shirona in her warm suit. I put on her shoes, and made sure she was warm. Then I got a cardboard box from the kitchen and I put Shirona in it. I think that's the first time she stopped crying since I'd been there. She looked at me like she knew what was happening, although she wasn't even a year old then. I put her in the box and wrote a note. Please take care of this child, I said. Her name is Jackie Kennedy Jones and she is one year old. Then I sneaked out of the projects and went down the street to the Catholic church. I went inside the church. Nobody was there. So I left her on the altar. And she didn't make a sound. She just looked at me. Once or twice she laughed, making that gurgling sound that babies make, like she was glad I was getting rid of her."

He felt exhausted, drunker than he'd been for a long time. His fingers were digging into the thick wool of Bobby's overcoat; but he kept on talking to the sun, the wind. "I went back home and watched television. I felt very good. When Dicey came home, I didn't know

what I'd tell her. But I had time to think of something. I watched 'Mod Squad' on television, and then something else. Then, about a half an hour before Dicey was due home, I got scared. I ran down to the church. The baby was still there on the altar, as quiet as death. I picked her up in that box and ran home. She cried all the way. It was like she was happy to be out of the projects, and sad to be coming back again. I took off her clothes and changed her diaper. I gave her a bottle of milk and put a little bit of whiskey in it to knock her out. You see, I had the idea she'd tell Dicey what I'd done. That was crazy, I know—the whole thing was crazy. But she went to sleep, and she didn't cry any more after that, except sometimes, like other babies do." He squeezed Bobby's shoulder. "You dig what I'm saying, man?"

"I dig," Bobby said. "You were desperate. A desperate man'U do anything."

Bill looked at him with renewed respect. He understood after all. Bill got up and walked around. Now he didn't feel so lonely any more, he had been right in telling Bobby the truth. It had helped him, because it was something he had never told anybody before. Maybe it helped Bobby, too. Bill hoped so, because he really liked Bobby. Right now, Bobby was sitting in a delicious stupor against the roof door, dreaming inside his T-Bird high.

Although the sun was cold and bright—it had changed now to the color of pale egg yolk as it rose higher in the sky—Bill felt it singing down into his very toes. And the Thunderbird sizzled in his guts, throwing up a barrier against the icy wind, as though he was riding the crest of a molten wave. He knew that Bobby felt the same; it was one of the predictable effects of Thunderbird, how it boiled and bubbled in the bloodstream, singeing the consciousness, squeezing the brain in a hot band, boiling the milk in a man's balls, lifting him to the dizzying heights of glorious intoxication.

It was around eight-thirty. For some time now, Bill had been aware of the noises of Anthony Homes waking up around him. He could hear the whine of traffic straining along Seventh Avenue, the voices of children on their way to school, other voices arguing as Dicey had argued with him. If he looked down to the street, he knew that he would see a few men and women bent against the cold, like hungry animals creeping from their holes after a night of hibernation to search for another day's survival. Money. For food, liquor, wine, beer, drugs, sex. Money for the sheer sake of having money. Bill had spent his last sixty cents on the wine, which meant that he'd have to

go down soon and take his place in the foraging pack. Bobby was broke, too, but Bobby wasn't much good in the way of hustling now. People hustled for Bobby, he seemed so incapable of hustling for himself. "The whole goddamn problem has to do with money," Bill said bitterly, coming back to where Bobby sat like a frozen statue against the door.

"You all right, buddy?" Bill said. He slapped Bobby gently.

"Money is the root of all evil," Bobby Bryant said.

"And of all good," Bill said. "If you ain't got money, you ain't got shit."

Bill took up his position again next to Bobby on his haunches. He felt as though there were bars and concrete all around him, stifling his freedom, negating his manhood. He thought about going downstairs and sending Dicey out to make money. But how many times before had he done that? And how long did money ever last? What a man needed was millions of dollars, enough to last him several lifetimes, before he could dry up this continuous need for money. He wrapped his arms around his knees and stared straight into the sun. Where would somebody like him get that kind of money?

Suddenly, Bobby Bryant laughed. It surprised Bill, because it was the most energetic thing Bobby had done for nearly an hour.

"Why you laughing?" Bill said. "What the hell is there to laugh about?"

Bobby rolled his eyes, and then closed them, as if in deep contemplation. "I was just thinking," he said.

"About what?" The T-Bird was ripping at Bill's guts, and he felt very mean now.

"About something I read," Bobby said. "You know that paper, the National Enquirer? Well, Janie Mae reads it all the time. There was an article the other day about men having babies. That's what I was thinking about."

Bill spat in disgust. "You know damn well a man can't have a baby."

"I know. I know that. But the paper wasn't talking about that. It said that the United States government will pay a million dollars to the first man who does have a baby. Not only the U.S. government, but two or three others, too. Canada, Britain, Australia ... I don't remember all of them."

Bill sat very quietly. He'd heard that story before. A lot of times. And now Bobby said he'd read it in the paper. Bill Kelsey was a man with a healthy respect for the printed word. He'd read about all the

marvels of science and sex and the space age, every story widening the frontiers of his mind until he'd been practically the only person in Anthony Homes who believed that the United States would land a man on the moon even before it was done.

So why shouldn't a man be able to have a baby? A man like himself—he doubted if he could have a baby. But somebody like Bobby Bryant . . . ? He looked at his friend like a fox who has just uncovered a lucrative chicken coop. For all those millions—hell, for just one million—he'd be willing to try. What could he lose?

He examined Bobby carefully, to make sure that the Thunderbird was in full force and effect. "A million dollars is a lot of money," Bill said. "You sure you read right, buddy?"

"I can read," Bobby said. "I know what I read. One million dollars to the first man who has a baby."

Bill whistled between his teeth. "That's a lot of Thunderbird, man. A lot of bitches. A lot of grass. A lot of everything."

"I'd buy me a house," Bobby said. "Some place where it's always warm, like those ads for Eastern airlines you were talking about. I'd give Janie Mae a thousand or so, to pay her back for all she's done for me. And then I'd split."

Bill grabbed his arm. "Without me, man? You'd leave without me?"

"Not without you, man. You my main nigger. We'd rent us an airplane. We'd go down to the islands together."

"A million dollars," Bill said. And then he sat deliberately quiet. Now it was up to Bobby Bryant; and he knew how to play Bobby, like rubbing a bowstring across an eager violin. He rested his head against the door and closed his eyes. Acapulco, Mexico. That's where he wanted to go. Fishing, golfing, swimming. Rubbing elbows with the international set. Sleek, sultry bitches in bathing suits. And all that grass—Acapulco Gold, they called it. He'd wanted to go to Mexico ever since he'd had some of that amazing grass. ... He thought, but he was listening, too, like a man waiting for the person upstairs to drop the other shoe.

And right on schedule, Bobby dropped it. "Probably the reason no man's ever had a baby," he said, slowly and methodically, as though it was something he had thought about deeply before, "is because no two men ever tried it. I mean, most guys who go with other guys are fags, right?"

"Right," Bill said. "The paper said the first man, right?"

"Right," Bobby said.

"Shit, I know I'm a man," Bill said.

"Me too," Bobby said. "All you got to do is ask Janie Mae."

Bill nodded like sly old Socrates sanctioning the logic of his star student. "A million dollars is a lot of money. Split two ways, that's five hundred thousand each."

"Now that's a lot of money," Bobby said. It was typical that his brain could see the size of half a million clearer than it could see the size of a million.

Bill crooked his head and inspected Bobby's eyes. Yes, the T-Bird was still working; it was good for at least another hour or so.

"Let's try it," Bill said.

Bobby jumped nearly a foot, like he had a spring in his narrow ass, and landed on his butt again. "Do what, man? I don't want to fuck you! You crazy or something?"

Bill stood up slowly. There was menace in every muscle. "You think I'm a fag," he said through his teeth. "I knew you thought I was a fag."

Now Bobby stood, like a tired old man dragging himself to his feet. Bill could almost hear the creaking as his bones meshed, protested, straightened out. "Hey, lighten up, man. You know I don't think you're a fag. You're my buddy, my friend . . . my best friend."

But Bill would not be satisfied. He flung himself to the rooftop somewhat dramatically, landing lightly on his side, ever careful to protect his behind from the havoc that cement wrought to his hemorrhoids. "I just don't believe you," he said. He sounded hurt, desolate, betrayed by a man who claimed to be his friend. "Look . . . all I did was make a perfectly reasonable suggestion. You don't have a dime to your name. I don't either. You read in the paper about all that money the government would pay to the first man who had a baby. / said let's try it. Does that make me a fag?"

"I didn't call you a fag, man! Besides, they want a man to have a baby, not a fag."

Bill saw his opening, and pounced. "So, if we're both men, then what's wrong with trying it? Unless you think I'm queer. You know I don't think you're queer. I've talked to Janie Mae. She tells me you're a motherfucker in the sack, man. A thoroughbred motherfucker."

Bobby preened for a few seconds before he sat down. "I've heard you're pretty good too, man. Besides, I've seen you in action, remember? And Dicey talks about you like you some kind of god. I never got a woman to go out and sell tail for me!³

"But you still think I'm a fag," Bill said, returning to the old at-

tack. There was no advantage to be gained from a mutual admiration society that was mutually bankrupt. "You think I'm a goddamn fag, and I'm your best friend."

"Naw I don't, man."

"You do."

"I don't."

Bill actually pouted. "Then you must think that I think that you're a fag."

"Naw man!"

"You do."

"I don't. You my main nigger. How could I think you thought something like that?"

Bill was quiet again. Now that their manhood had been established, the next step was again up to Bobby. Bill had been in enough bars to figure out that a bartender did all that wiping with a damp cloth to make a slow drinker either leave or order another drink. Because when a man buys a drink, he takes possession of it, holds the glass in his hand protectively, plays with the bottle like a kid with a toy. You pick up the drink and wipe under it, you destroy the customer's sense of ownership. Somebody else has touched something that belongs to him. He either drinks up and orders another one, or he walks out.

It was easy for Bill Kelsey to see himself as a tall cool glass of Thunderbird and Bobby Bryant as a customer dawdling over him. Some kind of way, he needed to use the bartender's psychology. He got up and walked around the roof, deliberately putting the structure housing the elevator shaft between himself and Bobby Bryant. It was an awkward kind of psychology that might pay off and might not. Would Bobby see him as a drink—as a million dollars worth of drinks —or as some kind of nut with a fantastic idea? Would he drink up, or would he walk out? Bill went back to the door. Bobby was standing there with a look of alarm on his face. "Where'd you go, man? I thought you'd run out on me."

Bill smiled. It was the first time he had smiled today.

He remembered when he was younger, when he thought he was being guided and protected by the sweet voices of his dead mother's spirit in his ear. Shit. He hadn't thought about those days for a long time.

He had done some reading; and right now, he felt like a Greek, not only because of what he was going to do to Bobby—he definitely was going to do it to Bobby—but because men are manipulated at the

whim of mad gods and goddesses who reach down and shriek with pleasure as they poke us from one position to another on the chessboard of life.

Did he really want to fuck Bobby Bryant? In a way, yes. In another way, no. But it was as though an alabaster goddess had awakened this morning, looked down from the heights of whatever mountain, and decided that he, Bill Kelsey, would be the nigger she'd fuck with today.

So the thing with Bobby had to happen today. And whatever happened afterwards. Because to gods and goddesses, a day is forever. And suffering is the measure of a man's maturity, as well as of his puniness, his nothingness. On the one hand, the gods castrate; on the other, they say, Be a man.

Bill Kelsey had been born and bred in Burnside, Virginia, a place replete with talk of the juju. Now, as he was approaching forty, most of his time was spent trying to make money against the days when others were shuffled off to old-age homes or state hospitals. In his worst moments, he liked to blame things on the juju.

But most of the time, he disbelieved in everything except that he was well-built, handsome, and fast growing old. He was neither religious nor irreligious. But he was moved by greed, and definitely prodded by some deity's mad finger. In his youth, he had heard voices. Sometimes even now. So it was not improbable that he had heard the command this morning, Go thou and fuck Bobby Bryant. He studied Bobby closely.

"I went to take a leak," he said. "Let's go downstairs. I've got to try to hustle me and Dicey up some dough."

"What about what we were talking about?" Bobby said. He looked truly bewildered.

"What about it?" Bill said. "What were we talking about?"

"About having a baby. You forget that soon, man?"

"I thought you weren't interested," Bill said casually.

"Who said I wasn't interested?" Bobby seemed to have a hard time standing up. Gently, Bill helped him back to his seat. "You just don't understand me, man," Bobby went on.

"I guess I don't," Bill said. "Sometimes, I figure I'm not too bright."

"I've thought about that," Bobby said. Now he was in complete control of the situation. "Also, I'm younger than you, which means I've got a stronger mind."

"I can dig that," Bill said.

"Now, to return to the conversation we were having," Bobby said, "I think we ought to try it."

"Try what?"

"To have a baby."

Bill let his mouth sag open. "Who? You and me?"

"Yes, you and I," Bobby said. "We've already established that the reason it's never been done is because no two men ever tried it. There are some other problems, of course. But we've overcome the main one. And that is, we've established that both of us are men. Right?"

"Right."

"So who's going to be the woman? I mean, who's going to be the father, and who's going to be the mother?"

Bill wrinkled his brow in very deep thought. Bobby seemed to be concentrating, too. On other occasions, when they wanted to democratically solve an issue—like who'd go to buy the wine, who'd have sloppy seconds when they balled a chick together—they had played odds or evens, using their fingers to see if one of them could outsmart the other by anticipating how many fingers he'd stick out. Whether Bill took odds or evens, he could beat Bobby every time. Although he let Bobby win sometimes, for the same reasons that Janie Mae let him beat her ass sometimes. It was a perfect way to decide who'd be the Mama; but he wanted the idea to come from Bobby. He threw up his hands. "It's too hard for me, man. You got any ideas?"

Bobby curled his thin lip as though he was a virtual think tank. "Let's use odds and evens."

"Man, that's a good idea!" Bill slapped his forehead viciously, as though punishing himself for being too stupid to think of something that was so obvious and so simple.

"I take odds," Bobby said.

"I take evens," Bill said.

"You've got to take evens if I take odds," Bobby said. "I mean, what else is left?"

"I didn't think about that," Bill said. "I'm glad you've got brains, man." He'd never used the word "man" so much in his life, especially with a man he was planning to use as a woman.

"There's something else to think about," Bobby said. "Whoever wins—I mean, whoever is going to be the Papa—he ought to make it perfectly clear right from the beginning that this is going to be something just between the two of us." It was obvious that he expected to be the Papa, he sounded so intelligent. Bill followed his precise little lecture with a series of stupid nods, like a man who moves his lips

when he reads, he seemed that stupid. "What I mean," Bobby went on, "is that // one of us gets pregnant, that'll be the sensation of the century. Don't you agree?"

"I agree," Bill said.

"I mean, there'll be television cameras, newspaper reporters, things like that. Whoever's going to be the Papa should promise right now that he's going to protect the other guy from all that publicity. You dig? I mean, in case you have the baby, I'd take you away somewhere the minute I knew you were pregnant, the minute I even suspected you were pregnant. I'd take you where there are no people. I'd take care of you. And when the baby's born, I'd give it to the government, we'd collect our money, and split. You dig?"

"I dig," Bill said. They shook hands solemnly. Then they stood and faced each other like two boxers about to spar.

"Odds," Bobby said.

"Evens," Bill said. He's going to stick out two fingers, Bill thought.

Bobby stuck out two fingers at the same time as Bill stuck out his two.

Bobby turned very pale. "Let's do two out of three," he said.

"Right on, man," Bill said. And he thought, Now he's going to stick out one.

Bobby stuck out one finger to Bill's one. "I'm the Papa," Bill said.

But he said it sadly, with the greatest reluctance tinged with awe, as though the mantle that had been thrust upon him was too heavy for his shoulders. He turned away from Bobby, almost in tears. "I can't do it."

"A bargain is a bargain," Bobby said consolingly. He sounded sad, too.

"I can't," Bill said. He was actually crying now. "Man, you my friend, my main nigger."

Bobby touched him tenderly. "Just think about all that money, man. Five hundred thousand dollars apiece. You going to chicken out and let me lose out on a chance like that? Think of that money, man."

Bill had never stopped thinking about it. "You right, man. You always right," he said. He turned around, already unzipping his jeans. "Take down your pants."

Bobby stepped back. "You promise . . . you promise you won't tell anybody?"

"I promise."

"And you promise you'll keep me away from TV, out of the newspapers?"

Now Bill curled his lip. "Didn't we shake on that, man? Don't you trust me? Now, let's get this thing over with." He looked mean and disdainful, but inside of him, the T-Bird was flying with slowly flapping wings. And Bill was laughing silently. He didn't have a thing to lose and a whole lot to gain. Bobby? Well . . . he'd be sore for a while. And he'd be miserable for nine months, if the thing worked—it shouldn't take longer for a man to have a baby than it did for a woman. Yeah, Bobby would be sore. And miserable. But if the thing worked, Bobby—both of them—would be very, very rich.

"How we going to do this?" Bobby said petulantly. He was still dressed to the gills in all that wool, although he had taken off his gloves as though he thought—or hoped—that the act could be done through the medium of his hands. But Bill slapped him smartly on the behind. "You got to take off some of those clothes," he said. Bobby blanched; he looked like he might break out crying any minute. With Bill's help, he took off the ten-foot scarf and opened his overcoat.

"Lay down," Bill said. "Put your head against the door so it won't open in case somebody comes up."

Bobby got on his hands and knees, using his head to block the door. But Bill wanted him from the front; he wanted to see his face. "Not that way. Lay down on your back." When Bobby hesitated, Bill turned him roughly around.

"Hey, take it easy, man," Bobby said. His lips were trembling. "You treat me like that, I won't do it at all."

"I'm sorry," Bill said. Gently he picked Bobby up and lay him flat on his back, jamming his head against the door. He opened the skirt of Bobby's overcoat and spread it on both sides of him.

"Hurry up, man. It's cold down here," Bobby said. He opened his own belt, and raised his behind so that Bill could lower his pants. The long red underwear sprang into sight like a vivid desert flower.

Bill had forgotten about those long drawers. Calmly, he took out his jackknife; and before Bobby could say a word, he cut them horizontally away from each side of the buttons. "I'll buy you another pair," he told Bobby. He peeled the bottom half of the drawers down Bobby's legs, carrying Bobby's pants with them down to his ankles.

"Hurry. . . it's cold," Bobby said.

"Raise your legs," Bill said. Bobby raised them some; Bill lifted them the rest of the way. They felt like the legs of a corpse. For a

second, Bill thought about giving up. This was the craziest thing he'd ever done.

"Hurry," Bobby said. "And don't hurt me, please."

"I won't hurt you, buddy." He couldn't give up now; it would be like an insult to Bobby. His jeans w_;ere already open; he buckled partly in the knees as he went in to dig out his Johnson. It jumped ready even as he pulled it out. Bobby took a quick look and groaned. "Man . . . don't hurt me, man. . . "

Bill spat into his hand. "I wouldn't hurt you, man. . . ." He dropped to both knees and lifted Bobby into position. He dug the toes of his boots against the cement, and lunged. Bobby screamed. Bill shut his eyes and thought of Acapulco, of warm waves lapping a sandy beach.

In a few minutes, the deed was done. Bill opened his eyes and looked down into Bobby's face. Bobby's eyes were glazed, like an untidy rat's transfixed by the stare of a snake.

Bill twisted his neck and kissed Bobby on the lips. "Hey man, why you do that?" Bobby said. "You think I'm a fag or something?" He stammered, like a man receiving intense pain, or pleasure.

Bill was confused. He didn't know why he'd kissed Bobby. It seemed the natural thing to do when you were balling somebody. "I don't think you're a fag," Bill said quietly. He got up and helped Bobby up.

"It hurt," Bobby said. "It still hurts. And it feels . . . funny. . . ."

"You'll get over that," Bill said. He had zipped himself up; now he hastened to help Bobby back into his clothes. He didn't want to take a chance of anything going wrong. "You all right?" he said.

Bobby shook himself, as though he'd been in an accident, inspecting for broken bones. "I'm all right. You just remember our promise."

"I remember," Bill said. "You want something?" He was wrapping the scarf around Bobby's neck. "Can I get you anything?"

Bobby's eyes narrowed, and his face smoothed out with a look of unmistakable triumph. "I want some Thunderbird," he said. "And a pack of cigarettes. That's all I can think of for now."

Bill nodded. Bobby's eyes seemed very green, perhaps because of the angle of the sun. But Bill had seen that look a thousand times before, had heard that same demanding arrogance in the voices of a thousand women after he'd balled them. / did you a favor, now you

owe me something. It seemed natural in women, but he was surprised to find it in Bobby.

Still, he thought, as he helped Bobby down the stairs—holding him gently by the elbow, yet ready to catch him if he should fall, for Bobby was now a precious vehicle carrying a fragile, precious cargo-still, it was a good sign, seeing Bobby come on like that. The more woman he acted, the better their chances for success.

Between stops to let Bobby rest, Bill finally got him home. Janie Mae was all ready to give Bobby some shit. "He don't feel too well," Bill said. "I think he's catching the grippe." Janie Mae calmed down at once. She couldn't stand to see any of her children sick; and Bobby was her oldest, her largest, her most pleasurable child. She went to make some tea while Bill helped Bobby into his pajamas and covered him up on the bed. "You'll be all right," Bill said.

"Don't forget the Thunderbird and the cigarettes," Bobby said.

Bill touched him briefly on the outline of his leg. "I won't. I'll be back in a couple of hours." As he left, Janie Mae was coming down the hall with a steaming cup of tea, all concern now that she had somebody to nurse.

Women are sure strange, Bill thought. He went outdoors. The quadrangle was a solid sheet of ice, and he walked carefully across it to A-l. Now he had to work on Dicey, because he'd promised Bobby that wine and those cigarettes.

How long, he wondered, would it be before Bobby showed? He'd have to work on Dicey a lot to make sure there was enough money to take Bobby away somewhere, if he did show.

He'd show. The contact had been too perfect. They'd fitted together like a large hand in a tight glove.

Dicey jumped on him as soon as he walked in the house. Bill didn't say a word as she scolded and goddamned him all the way to the bedroom. But once they were in the bedroom, he closed and locked the door. Bobby, he thought, I'm depending on you, baby. He didn't know how much longer he'd be able to put up with this kind of shit.

Dicey was still scolding him when he slapped her. She flew to the left and he slapped her back to the right. Then he slammed her on the bed. She was out of her clothes before he could get out of his. He went to work. A couple of hours later, Dicey put on makeup and a miniskirt and a warm overcoat, and she went to work.

When she came back around three o'clock, Bill went to Bobby's

with a quart of T-Bird and a pack of cigarettes. Bobby was still in bed. "How you feeling, buddy?" Bill said.

"I feel like hell," Bobby said. "And you're late. What took you so long?" He opened the T-Bird and drank. Bill opened the cigarettes and lit one for Bobby. Bobby didn't even say thanks. He didn't even offer Bill any wine, until Bill got up and took the bottle from him. After all, a man can stand just so much.

Three months later, Bill, Bobby, Janie Mae, and Dicey were playing bid whist in Dicey's kitchen. Dicey had fed her children on hamburgers, French fries, and malteds from McDonald's, for the tenth of the month was approaching; and Dicey was one of those welfare mothers who seems to believe that if she stuffs her children on or about the tenth of one month, they can survive with little or no food until the first of the next. For the adults, she had bought Chinese food—shrimp with lobster sauce, egg foo yung, plus several gallons of Thunderbird, a quart of vodka, and a quart of orange juice. With the children safely tucked away, Dicey sat down to host this month's last big bash with the last of her welfare check.

Bobby Bryant was Bill's partner; and it was soon apparent that the whist game was not only a battle between the sexes, but an expression of Janie Mae's and Dicey's sense of superiority over the men they were keeping. First of all, the women won consistently, because Bobby—never really a good player—had become dull after eating. He drank vodka and Thunderbird mixed, which seemed to Bill to be an almost suicidal concoction. Bobby was wearing a loose, free-flowing shirt with a Polynesian design; and it was impossible for Bill to see whether he was yet pregnant. As the liquor flowed, the women became louder and more aggressive; Bobby grew drunk and petulant; and Bill watched the whole scene as a sort of disinterested observer, saying little but seeing all.

He realized that Janie Mae and Dicey were both broke, and they had begun their tenth-of-the-month blues earlier than usual. But it was Bobby's drinking that concerned Bill—should somebody pregnant drink that much? And was Bobby pregnant? Bill had had little chance to find out over the last three months, because Bobby's sour new attitude had made it unwise for Bill to bring up the subject. So he played whist as Bobby's partner; the women got drunker and nastier, talking about what they'd do if they had "real" men.

Bill had gone through this kind of shit many times before; and he had learned to close his mind to the worst of it. But he knew that

Bobby had a short fuse; and while he seemed to be comfortable and uninterested, he was ever alert to Janie Mae's put-down remarks and Bobby's reaction to them. In a little while, they were sure to come to blows. Bill had seen it happen before. Under ordinary circumstances, he'd let Janie Mae beat Bobby's ass and not care. But larger matters were at stake now. Suppose Bobby was pregnant? And suppose Janie Mae hurt him, did something to damage the baby, when she beat Bobby's ass? Bill drank moderately, following every move the women made, every shift in Bobby's mood, with the lidded eyes of a snake.

In the meantime, he was thinking of his own interest in the origin of things. Not only in how they begin, but in how they end. As Dicey, Janie Mae, and Bobby squabbled, drank, and swapped insults, Bill played automatically. He was thinking of the origin of Anthony Homes and how it happened that he came to work for Anthony Befies, the man who planned and supervised their construction. His mind slid like a naked ass on a muddy bank down into the creek of time. . . .

Bill was twenty-one when he came to Cousinsville. Because he liked to work out of doors with growing things, he had been lucky to find his first legitimate job with an Italian landscape gardener who cared for the white homes in the hills that surrounded Cousinsville like elegant sentinels against the encroachment of the poor. Bill loved working for Mr. Salvatore. The old Italian had the strength of a young man; and he and Bill drank wine and sang songs and worked together with all the exuberance of two virile men in a never-ending orgy with the land, the flowers, the sultry grass.

Mr. Salvatore was surprisingly free of prejudice against blacks; but he disliked all Jews and people who appeared to be Jews. Such was the case with the home of Anthony Befies, who was Czechoslovakian. Mr. Befies had a wife and daughter; and while the daughter, who was around twenty-five, spoke "good American," Mrs. Befies' accent came through to Mr. Salvatore as being decidedly Yiddish. He called them "Christ-killers" while he and Bill lunched on sour red wine, hard salami, and provolone cheese. The daughter was always hanging around outdoors whenever Bill and Mr. Salvatore were working on the lawn. It was obvious to Bill that the woman wanted him. Her name was Maria Befies. It was even more obvious to Mr. Salvatore; and he encouraged Bill to make her pay for what her people had done to Christ. But Bill was afraid; he didn't want to get in trouble with any white woman while he still could get any black woman in Cousinsville that he wanted.

When the summer and fall ended, Bill was out of a job. It was Maria Benes who came to him with the news that her father was looking for a houseman. "Have you ever done that sort of work?" she asked Bill. "No ma'am," he said. He was working in the last days of October without his shirt on; sweat ran down his chest into his dungarees and plastered them to his body. She streaked one long silver nail down his chest, down to the nappy hair that indicated the beginning of his Johnson. "Well, say you have," Maria told him. "I've already talked to my father about you. Just tell him you've had experience. I'll show you how."

"I'll think about it, ma'am," Bill said. But he went looking for another kind of job, something outdoors where he could use his muscles, and breathe fresh air, and feel the magnificence of sun and wind, and even the cold, sing praises to the strength and youth of his body.

In a few more months, Cousinsville was torn apart by riots. What jobs there were went to men with more education than Bill had. The black community was drunk with the rhetoric of rebellion, flexing its muscles and threatening to break out of the confines of the slums. Bill was naturally a peaceable man; he steered clear of the fighting and destruction. One day he went to the home of Anthony Benes. The daughter Maria opened the door. "I've come for that job," he said. She nodded. "I figured you would." He was interviewed by Mr. Benes, who was talking some kind of foreign language, although Maria insisted that it was English. Finally, she stepped in to translate. Whatever answers she gave Mr. Benes to the questions he asked Bill seemed to satisfy the man. Maria gave him a uniform to wear; and he began cooking, cleaning, driving the mother and daughter in their sleek black Cadillac, and servicing Maria Benes whenever she came to his room with a fever in her eyes, her long fingernails digging into his flesh like hot, sharp silver.

It was about this time that the plans for tearing down the central portion of Cousinsville and erecting a project there fell on the back of Mr. Benes. Serving drinks to a variety of architects, city planners, and government officials who met at the Beiies home, Bill clearly saw their strategy. If the protests were allowed to spread, blacks would eventually spill over into the sanctum sanctorum of suburbia. So they were going to tear down the slum and erect a new one. It was like using dynamite to stem a raging fire. What better way to disperse an army of malcontents than by destroying their camp and driving them into the terrain of middle-class blacks, who would scoff at their slogans and then very effectively absorb them? The remnants of any

army is too poor to do more than bluster and beg, especially if they were given welfare to weaken them even further, to make them totally dependent on the very Establishment which they despised. The projects would rise from the ashes of dissent like a bright and shining phoenix; once its doors closed on the poor, they would be nicely contained within a public prison, unable to do harm to any but themselves.

Those were the plans that Bill overheard at the home of Anthony Befies. From the ramparts of suburbia, dressed in his lackey's uniform, Bill oversaw the destruction of the black heart of Cousinsville. First they brought the tall wreckers with the lethal balls that struck and struck at the buildings until they were reduced to rubble. Then the bulldozers moved in, nudging the debris into neat piles for the hungry jaws of the steam shovels to snatch up and load on trucks that took it away to the Jersey meadows to burn. The earth-movers were next, going back and forth until the land was flat enough for planting, as though some special crop might be planted there. Instead, the cement trucks came with their big bloated bellies and spewed concrete over the land. Then the pile-drivers began hammering in foundations, screaming like deranged banshees. Builders, bricklayers, electricians, laborers, plumbers worked like ants crawling over everything as Bill watched from the back lawn of Mr. Behes' home and wondered what he was doing here in his servant's uniform when his muscles ached to be down there where they were building a prison and calling it the city of hope.

He went inside, where Mrs. Befies was on the telephone trying to get an exterminator. She was certain that the rats and roaches from the blighted area had moved out to suburbia once their homes had been torn down over their heads. Bill went to his room and took off his uniform. He was standing naked when Maria Befies crept in. "Go away, little girl," Bill said. He spoke gently, but there was menace in his voice, as though he blamed her for the prisons that he was going to help build. He dug out his jeans, his denim jacket, a plaid shirt, and desert boots. Maria Befies watched him while he dressed. "You're leaving?" she said. He nodded. "I'll miss you," she said. He pointed in the direction of Cousinsville. "I'll be down there," he said. "If you want to see me, you can come down there." She looked so alarmed that he wondered why he hadn't seen before that his being here was a big mistake. He left through the back door carrying his suitcase. The Beneses owed him a week's salary, but he didn't feel like asking for it. They could use it to pay the exterminator with.

For three years, Bill worked on the projects. He roomed and took his meals at a boarding house run by Dicey Johnson, who had a gang of children but served a fair meal and rented rooms at exorbitant prices. She was waiting, she said, for the projects to be finished; with all her children, no husband, and no visible means of support, she'd certainly qualify. Bobby Bryant lived at Dicey's, and he was also working on the project. At night he and Bill would walk through the towering foundations, skirting girders and beams and guy wires, savoring the smell of machines and cement, and drink their Thunder-bird in what seemed to be the ghostly trappings of a cemetery rather than the resurrection of a city. "Do you think what we're doing is right?" Bill asked Bobby one night. But even then, Bobby was not a clear thinker; like everyone else in Cousinsville, what was left of it, he was caught up in the boom of spending, drinking, whoring. It never occurred to him that the buildings they were helping to put up were prisons—too tall to leap from, too wide to go around, too much foundation to burrow under. "It ain't the best," Bobby answered. "But it's better than what we had." Bill drank his Thunderbird, and wondered.

In the riots of the Sixties, Cousinsville's blacks burned down the houses they lived in and the white-owned stores that exploited them. They looted and sacked and delivered a dreadful ultimatum to the Establishment: Give us equality or we'll fuck you up. And the Establishment's answer was equally dreadful: Anthony Homes. We're building you a pretty new city called Anthony Homes.

In three years it was finished. Bill was present at the dedication, when all the fine new buildings were opened to the public. Ribbons were cut, speeches were made. Anthony Homes, isolated on a solitary hilltop, two new highways running east and west farther below and on each side of it to complete the isolation, Seventh Avenue paved with stores to cater to the needs of thousands of poor people in twelve buildings. . . .

Bill helped Dicey move into her new apartment once she had been approved. Bobby had already found Janie Mae and moved in with her. But now that he had helped build Anthony Homes, Bill felt a sense of unrelieved guilt. The old way was bad, but was this any better? The people had been asking for freedom, equality; and that meant space. But the space they had had been taken away from them and converted into highways and taverns and supermarkets and liquor stores and twelve tall buildings.

In a short while, the people too saw that they had been deceived.

They began systematically destroying the projects by marking the walls, peeing in the elevators, tearing up the shrubbery, breaking out windowpanes, and, in acts of final desperation, killing and maiming and robbing one another. They would have burned the buildings down, except that Mr. Benes in his wisdom had constructed the buildings so that they could not be burned.

Bill wandered for two years, living in first one city and then another. Everywhere he went, he saw that the strategy of the Establishment had been the same—stack them on top of each other, take away what little land they have, like we did with the Indians, put them on reservations. Bill felt an immense sense of guilt. Finally, he went back to Anthony Homes and moved in with Dicey. He felt that he belonged here. He had helped create this monster. It was only fair that he should become one of its victims, that he should know its ending as intimately as he had known its beginnings. . . .

Bill was brought from his reverie by the sound of Bobby and Janie Mae fighting. Janie Mae had caught Bobby reneging and wanted to take three books; Bobby was determined that she wouldn't. All three of them were drunk, and Dicey wasn't helping matters any by taking Janie Mae's side. "Stay out of it, Dicey," Bill told his old lady. But Dicey was too drunk to pay attention to Bill. She kept on goading Janie Mae to beat Bobby's ass. Bill didn't feel like getting in a hassle, so he sat quietly and listened to the women screeching at Bobby.

All of a sudden, Bobby hauled off and slapped Janie Mae across the mouth. She looked surprised, and it took her a few seconds to react, as though she was wondering whether she should go through the ritual of letting Bobby beat her ass in public when she could so easily beat his. Bill watched her with more than casual interest as she screwed her face up, trying to make a decision between crying and fighting. Then she decided to consult Dicey. "You think I ought to beat his ass, Dicey?"

Dicey shrugged, but it was clear that she wanted to see some kind of action. "I wouldn't let no nigger man slap me and get away with it." Bill felt like slapping her, like beating the living shit out of her. But he just sat there, watching Bobby and Janie Mae.

Janie Mae got up very nicely. She smoothed her dress, inspected her fingernails, and then slapped Bobby Bryant out of his chair. She weighed twice as much as Bobby did, and she caught him before he hit the floor and hugged him. "Honey, Fm sorry," she told Bobby. But this obviously was one time she was going to beat his ass; and she was polite enough to apologize beforehand.

She held Bobby by the scruff of his neck and shook him like a wet dog. He just hung in her hand, mouth open, tongue hanging out, eyes rolling like marbles. Bill wanted to help him, but he also wanted to see what Bobby was going to do.

Janie Mae spoiled all that. "Dicey, honey, can we borrow your living room for a few?" So she wanted to give Bobby a semi-private ass-kicking. Dicey laughed and slapped the table. "Go ahead, child." Janie Mae dragged Bobby by his neck and heels into the living room. Bill heard one terrific wallop, like a building collapsing on itself, and then there was deadly silence.

He got up to go see if Bobby was all right. But Dicey caught him by the arm. "Now who's the one ought to mind his own business?" she said. He knew she was right—a man ought never to interfere in a fight between a man and his woman. But he had a stake in Bobby's welfare. "Let go my fucking arm," he said. He used a tone of voice that Dicey always responded to. She patted her wig, and swallowed a water glass of vodka in one gulp.

When Bill went into the living room, all he saw was Bobby's legs squirming on the floor. Janie Mae had knocked him down and was sitting on his head. She looked like she might be taking a crap, the way her skirt was spread all around Bobby's head. He beat his little arms and legs helplessly, like a moth trying to get away from the entrapment of light. But Janie Mae was very unconcerned. She had picked up a copy of the National Enquirer and was reading it while she sat on Bobby's head.

Bill felt like laughing, until he saw that Bobby's shirt had come up and he could see Bobby's stomach. There was a definite swelling there that he'd never seen before. The motherfucker's pregnant! Bill thought. He was so surprised and happy that he couldn't move for a full minute. He's been pregnant all this time and he never told me. He felt like beating Bobby's ass himself, letting some woman sit on his head like that.

Then he felt very paternal. Man, this was almost too good to be true! Visions of dollar bills danced in his head. Bobby had a belly on him like a ball of pizza dough. That's why he'd been wearing those loose-fitting shirts for the past two months. Bill went over and pulled Bobby's shirt down. Then he touched Janie Mae gently on the shoulder. "Janie Mae, let Bobby up," he said.

She looked at him like he was a total stranger; her eyes were blurred with alcohol, staring at him like headlights through a thick fog. "What you got to do with it?" she said. "This Dicey's house,

this my nigger I'm sitting on, and this paper . . ." She obviously didn't know what to say about the paper, so she flung it aside and settled more comfortably on Bobby's head.

Bill went behind her and wrapped his arms around her. It was the first time he had ever touched her breasts, and it astonished him that they could be so huge and solid at the same time. She was tough and strong; with breasts like that, she'd be good to nurse his and Bobby's baby ... if he could get the bitch off Bobby's head before Bobby suffocated.

"Janie Mae . . . come on . . . get up. . . ." He lifted her easily, a solid mass of dead, indignant weight. His arms were around her breasts, and she pressed them harder to her. Suddenly, she started crying. "Bill, you the only real man I know," she said. He helped her to the sofa; she threw her head back and passed out.

With the weight off him, Bobby lay perfectly still. Bill thought at first that he might be dead. But Bobby's bright eyes were watching him intently. "You saw?" Bobby said. His voice was full of accusation.

"I saw," Bill said. He helped Bobby to his feet. Bobby wiped viciously at his mouth. "That bitch," he said; and he kicked the bottom of Janie Mae's shoe. "She didn't even wash herself, sitting on me like that."

But Bill didn't want to change the subject. "How long you been like that, man? Why didn't you tell me?"

Before Bobby could answer, Dicey came stumbling into the living room. "My party is all messed up," she said. She was drunk too. She kept on down the hallway to the bedroom. In a little while, she'd be calling Bill. But he had to talk to Bobby. "Let's go take a walk," Bill said. "We've got some plans to talk about."

Bobby kept on wiping his mouth. He kicked the sole of Janie Mae's other shoe. "She didn't even wash," he said. Bill caught him around the shoulders, and they went out into the streets.

"How long you been like that?" Bill said. He was so happy he felt like singing, like dancing a jig up and down Seventh Avenue where people were walking in shirtsleeves and cotton dresses in the welcome warmth of May.

"About two months," Bobby said.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Bill said.

Bobby shrugged. "I guess I was ashamed. I don't know. I guess I was ashamed."

"You got nothing to be ashamed of," Bill said. "Buddy . . . re-

member me ... ? Remember the promises we made? I've got to get you away from here. You don't want everybody to know, do you?"

"I don't want anybody to know," Bobby said.

"Then you should have told me before," Bill said. They were walking toward the park. Bill stopped and bought a small bottle of Thun-derbird; he had to take special care of Bobby now that he was pregnant. And Thunderbird is no good for somebody who's pregnant.

"You're about three months gone," Bill said. "That leaves six months. Where the fuck can we go for six months?"

Bobby drank and wiped his lips. "That's your problem," he said. "Remember, you promised."

"I know," Bill said. There was only one place to go. Burnside. Bill had been born there. His mother and father were both dead, and whatever other relatives he had had moved away. There was an old conjure woman named Aunt Keziah who owned a cabin isolated in the woods. It would be a perfect place. He could plant a small garden, make some money working on farms. By October, if Bobby was on schedule, the baby would be born.

He grabbed Bobby's elbow urgently. "Pack a few clothes," he said. "Meet me at the Greyhound bus terminal tomorrow morning before seven o'clock. Don't say a word to anybody, you hear?"

"What about Janie Mae?" Bobby said.

"Fuck Janie Mae," Bill said hotly. He patted Bobby's belly. The swelling was there, the thing was real "That's a million dollars you're carrying around, man. Have you forgot that?"

"I ain't forgot nothing," Bobby said. They were in the park now. It was close to midnight. All around them, the trees, the grass, the flowers were responding to the dark hand of nature. It seemed very appropriate to Bill that Bobby should be pregnant when the land and all its inhabitants were coming to life again.

"A million dollars," Bill said. "You be at that station tomorrow morning, you hear? If you're not there, I'm coming to get you."

Bobby looked alarmed. He knew that Bill meant it. "I'll be there," he said. He took the wine and drank it all. Bill didn't even notice. He needed two or three hundred dollars. Now where the hell was he going to get that kind of money in less than eight hours?

And then he thought of Maria Benes. It had been a long time since he'd seen her. But she was the only person he knew who might help him now. He went to a phone booth. Maybe she was married now, maybe she wouldn't even remember him.

He found the number of Anthony Benes in the telephone book.

When he called, a woman answered who was obviously black and sleepy. A maid, Bill thought. "I'd like to speak to Maria Benes," he said. His heart was pounding. "Just a minute," the woman said. "May I say who's calling, please?" Bill hesitated. "Just tell her a friend."

In a few minutes, Maria Behes was on the telephone. "Hello?"

"This is Bill Kelsey. Do you remember me?"

There was a long pause. "I remember you."

He decided to lay it right on the line. "Listen, I'm in trouble. I need three hundred dollars."

Another pause. He thought his head would split wide open. Then she said, "I need you."

His whole body relaxed. He told her where to meet him. "I'll be there in an hour," she said.

"And bring the money," Bill said.

"I'll bring the money. It's good hearing from you again, Bill. I wondered what happened to you all these years." She hung up.

When he came out of the telephone booth, he was smiling. "Who'd you call?" Bobby said. Man, he really was coming on like a jealous bitch.

"Don't you worry about that," Bill said. "Just take your ass home and pack. And be at that station at seven o'clock, you hear?"

"I'll be there," Bobby said. He went trudging down the hill toward Anthony Homes.

Bill went to a tavern and bought a pint of vodka. He sat in the park drinking until Maria Befies picked him up. After all, she was going to give him three hundred dollars, he wanted to give her her money's worth. Vodka made him as hard as a hammer, long-winded like a motherfucker.

When Maria showed up, it was around one o'clock in the morning. She was driving a small sports car. Bill got in, and she turned the overhead light on so that they could inspect each other. She was of course older, but she had taken care of herself, and she was still pretty. Bill knew that he was a beautiful stud; didn't everybody always tell him so? "I thought you'd be married by now," Bill said.

"I am," she said. "What difference does that make?" She handed him three one hundred dollar bills.

"Drive down to McCarter Highway," Bill said. "There's a motel there we can go to."

He settled back in the seat, stretching his legs in front of him to show her that nothing had changed with him in the dick department.

She turned the overhead light off and drove with one hand. When they left the motel four hours later, he had to help her into the car.

"I'd stay longer, baby," Bill said. "But I've got important things to do."

"Will I see you again?" Maria said.

Shit. He had what he wanted. "Maybe you will," he said. He kissed her real heavy, and went home to pack. Her father had helped him and Bobby into Anthony Homes; it was only fair that she should help to get them out.

Bobby had apparently come back and taken Janie Mae home. And Dicey was dead asleep, snoring loudly. She was completely knocked out and would stay like that for the rest of the morning. Bill threw a few clothes into a bag and left the apartment. Then he thought it wouldn't be fair to just walk off from Dicey without telling her something. He went back into the apartment and wrote a note: Me and Bobby went fishing. See you in six months. He pinned it to her wig where she'd draped it over the holder.

Then he went outdoors and took a cab to Penn Station in Newark. It was nearly six o'clock. The bus left at seven. Bill dozed off and on until Bobby got there at ten minutes to seven. "You have any trouble?" Bill said. "Naw," Bobby said. "Janie Mae was still drunk. Where we going?"

"To Burnside," Bill said. "Don't worry about it. You're with me, remember?"

"I want some wine," Bobby said.

"Wine's no good for you, not in your condition. You should drink milk, get plenty of exercise and fresh air."

"I want some wine!" Bobby said. He stomped his foot like he was going to have a tantrum right there in the waiting room.

Mother/wcA:. Bill ran across the street and bought a pint of Thun-derbird just as the tavern was opening up. He thrust it into Bobby's hands, and they got on the bus. "Listen, buddy," Bill said quietly, "I don't want no more shit out of you, understand?"

Bobby was already drinking. "I understand." From the subdued tone of his voice, it was clear that he did.

Most of the black people in Anthony Homes had come from Burn-side or some place like it in the South. So for Bill Kelsey, the return to Burnside was like taking a further step back into time toward the area of his own origins. He had a feeling that he would find the seed of Anthony Homes planted there as well.

Bill had left Burnside from the home of Aunt Keziah, who had taken him in after first his father, then his mother died. Aunt Keziah had put him through some weird changes the years he'd stayed with her. But she seemed not to remember, and Bill was not inclined to remind her, that they'd parted enemies. In fact, she even gave him a dry kiss on the cheek. The conjure bag around her neck overwhelmed him with garlic.

He backed away. "Whatever happened to the Judge? Is he dead yet?" The Judge had been the one who put him in jail.

Aunt Keziah cackled. "Child, he been dead. People say he died of the colic. Mr. Willis dead too. One of his sons took over and sold the land to white folks." She cocked a quizzical eye at Bill, which made him think she was going to say something about when he lived with her. "Don't you know yet, honey, that things change? Even old Aunt Keziah done changed. Can't you see that?"

He felt more relaxed, although his guts were still tight. "I can see that," he said. "I've changed, too."

He wanted her to disagree with him; but she ignored what he'd said. "We got to find a place for you all to stay," she said. She still owned another little cabin; she said they could stay with her until the other place was livable. She treated Bill very pleasantly, as though the years had mellowed her disposition and dimmed her memory. She was probably eighty years old now, maybe even older; but she was still spry and looked considerably younger. Her own little hut was filled with roots and herbs and other paraphernalia of her trade.

As for Bobby Bryant, he didn't like Burnside at all. And while he didn't complain, his distaste for Aunt Keziah, her grimy little house, the whole country scene, was patently apparent. Bill tried to cheer him up by being cheerful himself. But Bobby was bearable only when he was drinking. There was no Thunderbird available in Virginia; but there was a sweet red wine called Indian Head that Bobby liked. All he wanted to do was drink, despite Bill's repeated warnings that it was no good for him. Finally, Bill decided to let the sonofabitch stay drunk. Maybe the baby would be born drunk, too. But Bill didn't care about that, as long as the little bastard was born.

The house Aunt Keziah rented him for five dollars a month was still standing, after a fashion. Bill went to work with hammer and nails, fixing, patching, making the place livable. He got a bed and some blankets from Aunt Keziah. It was still early enough to plant a few things, so he got slips from Dillwyn and set out some tomato plants and a few other vegetables to help out when their money got

low. Because he had no transportation, he walked from the house to the highway and hitched a ride with people going where he wanted to go. Aside from putting up with Bobby, and worrying about trying to keep him reasonably comfortable and happy until the baby was born, Bill was almost overwhelmed by the changes that had taken place in Burnside.

He certainly hadn't expected everything to be the same. But the changes were so dramatic, so completely out of line with what he had thought the community would become, that he set about trying to find out what it was that had turned the land to weeds, set the people to working in factories in Dillwyn and Charlottesville, and had sent them to buy their food in the supermarket in Dillwyn.

So he talked to Aunt Keziah and to others. The first thing he found out—although it had been obvious to him from the minute he stepped off the bus at Alcanthia Court House—was that the old patterns of segregation had been broken down so effectively that niggers were everywhere, doing everything that white people did, working with them in factories, going to school with them, rubbing elbows with them in every public place. Although white homes were still closed to them as tight as clams, except if they worked there—which was the way things had always been.

Even more obvious was that the federal government had brought about integration at a tremendous cost to black people. When you give a man integration, you have to give him something—enough—to integrate with; not just a few more pennies that he must spend at the same, and newer, sources of supply—the white man who proliferates as the black man integrates—so that the black man finds himself worse off than he was before, because he has a larger appetite and fewer ways of feeding it.

Now Bill thought he knew the true origins of Anthony Homes. Was it any wonder that those blacks who had been able to escape from Burnside, and other places like it, flowed naturally toward the accustomed servitude, the misery and exploitation, the familiar segregation of a Cousinsville? For the first time in his life, Bill found himself thinking of the need for a new social order: If the black man couldn't get up off his knees, then he'd have to bring the white man down with him.

Everywhere he went in Burnside, he saw examples to justify his • reasoning. Whereas before a black farmer raised his own crops and livestock, a steady rise in prices had made it impossible for him to buy seed, fertilizer, and machinery necessary to expand his operation and

make a profit. So the small black-owned farms had folded, or had been absorbed by white farmers who got large subsidies from the government which enabled them to produce on an enormous scale, and to hire black farmers at dirt-cheap wages to do the work for them that blacks could no longer afford to do for themselves.

Simultaneously, factories were built in the cities around Burnside to take advantage of the large, cheap labor force. There was a shoe factory in Dillwyn, a frozen-foods factory in Charlottesville. The blacks needed cars to get to their jobs, so automobile salesrooms opened up to sell the cars, and garages to fix them, and gas stations to keep them fueled.

Already the government had brought electricity, which meant that television became a possibility and a necessity, along with refrigerators, freezers, washing machines. Black people in the country had gone "city." Those who clung to their own farms found it necessary to sell a part of them to the white man in order to meet rising taxes. In some cases, blacks sold out altogether.

But there was another alternative waiting for them. They were sold back part of the very land they had sold to the white man—but at exorbitant prices, and only enough to build a house on—sickly white clapboard structures with the luxury of indoor plumbing and niches for store-bought toilet paper, and basements called "dens"—that came with thirty-year mortgages, high monthly payments, and, in most cases, stood only a scant twenty or so feet away from the neighbor's house next door.

That had happened to the parcel of land Bill was raised on, as well as to the Willis farm adjacent. With old man Willis dead, one of the sons had sold the land and gone north. It was the same thing Bill wanted to do with the Willis land a long time ago; but things didn't work out the way he planned. Now both places, his old homestead and Mr. Willis', were dotted with "modern" white houses already in a state of disrepair.

Many people were on welfare, or got "free" food from the Department of Agriculture. The roadsides were littered with beer and soda cans, wine bottles, cornflake boxes, all the garbage spewed forth by the myth of equality. Bill listened and learned a vital lesson: Anthony Homes and Burnside were both the products of a new and shrewd and insidious concept, wherein the white man gave in to "integration" and bestowed "freedom" with one hand while he took it away twice with the other.

Twenty years ago, Bill's father had raised his own pigs and chickens; now pork was selling in the Dillwyn supermarket for $1.89 a pound; fatback was $.79 a pound; chickens were $.39 a pound. In some cases, the price for beans, coffee, sugar, and other staples, was higher than in New Jersey.

Bill listened to old black people complaining. "The young people don't want to farm any more," the old people said. And the young people who stayed said, "Why should we farm? If you could afford to buy all you need, then you bust your balls and break your back, and maybe—just maybe—you'd get a decent crop. But if I farm twenty-five acres and the white man farms a thousand, what can I make off my crops? He has the biggest supply, he'll get the largest price. All I can do is combine mine with his, if he'll let me. And if I do that, he'll give me what he wants to, once he has sold his and mine. Mine got a good price because they were combined with his. He charges me for that. So why should I farm?"

So no blacks farmed. And the land went to weeds. It was easy to see that the whole balance of nature had been seriously interfered with, once farming became obsolete among the blacks. Snakes proliferated; birds and bees were scarce; where the woods and fields had once been full of flowers, they were now filled with weeds and bushes and scrawny pines covered with red dust kicked up by the fleeting automobiles. The air was poisoned with gas fumes. There was talk that drugs—the really hard stuff—had come to Burnside. Blacks worked in the factories or on the white farms all week, and fought and fucked and drank all weekend. Aunt Keziah was openly pessimistic. "It's the end of the world," she said, stirring in the leaves at the bottom of her tea cup. "Don't you make no mistake about that, honey. The world's going to end real soon."

All this time, Bobby Bryant stayed hidden in the house. Sometimes he went out to take the sun, but only rarely, for he was afraid of snakes as well as being seen. When their money ran out, Bill got a job at the shoe factory in Dillwyn. He rode to work with five other niggers. It was like being in a car with five corpses, Bill thought. The man who took them charged each rider five dollars a week. "I got expenses," he said. "You know, money don't grow on trees." As far as Bill could see, nothing grew anywhere, except on the farms of white people, and weeds, and the ravaged woods struggling to produce more timber to replace what had been cut down, greedily and without thought for the future, when there had been a market for cord wood and pulp.

Bill was very depressed, but he tried not to show it. He worked at the shoe factory and hated it. In the evening, when he was dropped off at the road to his house, he walked the two miles home cheerfully, as though he was going home to his woman. Because Bobby was getting larger in the belly every week. Bill always took him a quart of wine, and Bobby always finished it by the next evening.

But he bitched and complained nearly all the time, Bobby did. He wanted to go back to Cousinsville. He wanted some pussy. He needed some clothes. He wanted to see some people. He wanted some more wine. Finally, Bill tied him carefully to the bed, face down with a pillow under his belly so as not to hurt the baby, and beat Bobby's yellow ass. "Now will you stop complaining?" Bill yelled. Bobby seemed almost grateful. "I won't complain any more," he said. "And you look like hell," Bill said. "You got this shitty yellow color. Why don't you go out in the sun sometime?" Bobby mashed his belly. "And let somebody see me like this?" Bill's anger left him all at once. "I know it's hard, buddy. But we only got a few more months to go. Do it for me, buddy ... for us."

"I want some wine," Bobby said. But he was easier to handle after that. He even cooked occasionally, and had supper on the table when Bill got home.

That was in July, at the peak of summer. Bill went swimming with Bobby down in the murky creek that was polluted almost beyond belief. But even so, the water was refreshing. While they were lying in the sun drying off, Bill looked at Bobby's stomach with open satisfaction. "You're not the only one here that's bored," Bill said. "Everybody here is bored. There's not a fucking thing to do. They get their kicks by gossiping about each other."

"Do they talk about me?" Bobby said. He seemed to shrink considerably.

"Naw, man. They ask about you, I tell them you're sick." He rolled over on his belly. "Listen. You ever been to a titty fight?"

"A what?"

"A titty fight. I don't know what it is, either. But they're having one tonight out near Aunt Keziah's. You want to go?"

Bobby looked at his belly. "They'll laugh at me."

"Naw, man. Put on one of my shirts. Leave it out of your pants. Nobody'll know the difference. Besides, it'll be dark."

So Bill and Bobby went to the titty fight. Two large black women, completely naked, built like Amazons, flailed each other with their enormous breasts until one of them gave in. Somebody was selling

fried chicken and pork chop dinners. People were betting on the contestants, who fought near an open fire, hands tied behind their backs, their titties their only weapons. There was beer, and dandelion wine the color of pale gold in the light from the fire.

Bobby looked at the battling women in amazement. "You'd think they'd get cancer from that," Bobby said. He seemed relaxed and happy for the first time in months. Bill decided to try to talk up on some pussy for him.

He went through the crowd, looking for likely prospects. You had to be careful down here about messing around with somebody else's woman. But Bill was lucky after a while; he found a woman standing by herself and struck up a conversation with her. Yes, she was alone, she said. She was like most of the other women here in Burnside— gloriously stupid, fat, broken teeth, and ready to fuck if she just smelled a drink or a dollar bill.

So Bill invited her home with him. "I live with a buddy," he said. "We don't live too far away. You want to come?" She giggled and pinched his arm. "Wait for me yonder in the woods," she said, pointing to a clump of sycamore trees. "You ain't fooling me, is you?" Bill pulled out some money. "That look like I'm fooling?" She pinched him again. "Wait for me out yonder," she said, "you and your friend."

She was fat, but pleasant, Bill thought. Besides, Bobby deserved some pussy. Bill had made it with two or three women at the factory, over behind some crates, but it was something he'd rather not think about, it'd been that bad. Whatever it was that was happening to black people—whether integration, disintegration, or just slow, mass murder—it was happening here in Burnside on a scale far larger than he'd ever imagined. He'd never thought he'd meet black women who'd forgotten how to fuck. But that had been the case with the two or three women he'd had. They worked on machines, they fucked like machines. He wondered if this fat chick would be any different.

When the titty fight was over, Bill and Bobby met the woman—her name was Landonia, she told them, giggling in such a way that she hid her broken teeth. Bill could tell that Bobby wasn't all that turned on by her. But beggars can't be choosy, Bill thought.

Bobby walked sort of one-sided to keep the woman from seeing his belly in the bright moonlight. She had quite a belly herself, but most of the women down here were large, with big bellies, big butts, and big breasts.

When they got home, Bill left the lights off while the three of them undressed. "You go first," he told Bobby.

But Bobby was clearly afraid. "Naw, you go first. Suppose she finds out about me?" He slapped his belly softly and sadly.

Bill laughed. They were talking in half-whispers. Landonia was lying on the bed with the moonlight falling full on her. She had her legs gapped open like the Grand Canyon. "What you all whispering about over there?" she said, coy-like.

"We ain't whispering about nothing," Bill said. He gave Bobby a quart of the dandelion he had bought at the titty fight. Bobby downed half of it; Bill slapped him on the ass, and Bobby moved over toward the woman.

He climbed on top of her, and Bill saw right away that they had a big problem. He went over to the bed. "Landonia . . . honey . . . you pregnant?" Bill said.

"Course I'm pregnant," she said. "What that got to do with it? The way things are, a woman has to pick up money any way she can. As soon as my baby's born, they going to increase my welfare check."

Her belly and Bobby's were too big for them to make contact the usual way. And although Bill tried to get Landonia to turn over, or lay on her side, or get on her hands and knees—anything, so that Bobby—with his big belly and his not so big prick—could get into her. But Landonia was a dumb country bitch; she knew one way to do it, and any other way was "funny," meaning perverted.

Bobby moaned in sheer frustration. He had gotten excited, he was ready to fuck a billy goat. Bill did everything he could to keep from laughing. He'd never thought about something like this. He made another suggestion, and Landonia nearly leaped from the bed. "Do what? Put that thing in my mouth? Mister, you sick, that's what you is!"

So Bill suggested that she use her hand. No way. "You sick/' she said. She made as if to get up—Bobby was still on her, the twin bellies separating them as effectively as a stone wall. "It ain't my fault," Landonia said self-righteously, "if your friend here got more belly than he got ding-a-ling."

Bobby rolled off her and went and stood in a corner.

She lay there like a big stupid cow, like a stranded whale, like the very symbol of what Burnside, and possibly the whole South, possibly niggers everywhere, had become in the era of integration and disintegration rolled into one. Bill felt like falling on her and fucking her

until the centuries rolled away, until she became pliant in his hands, a slave to his dick, a woman interested in pleasuring a man rather than a stupid, stinking commodity, schooled by TV and the federal government, dropping babies like animals to get an increase in her welfare check, unwilling even to jack a man off, that's how depraved and lost and sick she was.

"Get your clothes on and get out of here," Bill said. He threw five dollars in the cavern of her pussy.

She got up and pulled her dress over her head. "Both you motherfuckers sick," she said. He heard her lumbering down the path to the road. He hoped she'd bump into a bear, a gorilla, anything that'd fuck her to death.

"Bobby. . ."Bill pulled on his jeans. "You all right, buddy?"

Bobby had slumped down in the corner with his legs drawn up. He had vomited a big pile of yellow mess on the floor. "I'm sick," he said. "I'm sick as a dog."

Bill helped him up. "Can you stand?" He was really scared. Suppose Bobby was going to abort? Suppose that woman rejecting him had done something bad to the baby? "Can you walk, man?" Aunt Keziah lived about fifteen minutes away. Bill wanted to get him there fast.

He helped Bobby into his clothes. And all the time his mind was racing. This was Bobby's fifth month of pregnancy. Maybe he'd have a preemy. "You feel any pain?" Bill said.

"I just feel sick. I feel like I'm going to throw my guts out." Bill wrapped Bobby's arm around his shoulder and hurried through the bright woods with him to Aunt Keziah's.

The old woman was up, sorting roots on a wooden table. "My friend's sick, Aunt Keziah," Bill said. He dragged Bobby into the room and stretched him out on a cot.

Aunt Keziah hobbled over. She tilted the lamp shade so that she could see better. Bobby seemed unconscious, although his eyes were open and staring. But he was breathing very hard.

"How come he so yellow?" Aunt Keziah said.

"He's just naturally light-skinned," Bill said. "And he don't get much sun. Plus, he's been drinking dandelion wine tonight."

The old woman nodded. "You all went to that titty fight. I heard they was selling dandelion there. Lawd, I don't know what this generation's coming to. They just don't know what to do with themselves. A titty fight. Who ever heard of such a thing?"

"Yas'm," Bill said. "Aunt Keziah ... my friend's real sick. Can you do anything to help him?"

Aunt Keziah inspected Bobby's eyes. "This child's done evil things," she said.

Bill took a deep breath. "He's pregnant, Aunt Keziah. He's five months pregnant."

She looked at Bill as though he was mad. Cautiously, she pulled up Bobby's shirt and stared at his mountainous belly. Then she staggered, as though she'd been walloped by an invisible hand. "Honey, you better get this child to a doctor as quick as you can!" She grabbed a handful of roots and ran on her wizened old legs to another room and slammed the door and latched it.

Bobby groaned, and threw up another mess of yellow. Bill swabbed him off with a towel and left it laying on the cot.

The nearest hospital was in Farmville, twenty-five miles away. First he'd have to get Bobby to the highway—that was two miles—and try to hitch a ride. Bobby couldn't walk, that was for sure. So he'd have to carry him. He picked Bobby up in his arms, ever careful of the precious belly, and went out into the woods down the long, long road.

Bobby puked several more times before he seemed to come to his senses. "Am I dying?" he asked Bill. His voice was like a dry whisper in the night. "You ain't going to die, man," Bill said. He'd already gone a mile, resting twice. Now he rested again, propping his back against an oak tree, holding Bobby across his lap.

"Suppose I am dying?" Bobby said.

"You ain't dying, man. I think you getting ready to have your baby."

Bobby groaned, and squirmed in Bill's arms. "I want some wine."

"There ain't no wine here. I'm trying to get your ass to the hospital."

"Suppose I die there?"

"Man, you ain't going to die. Now will you stop talking that shit?"

Bobby wet his lips. In the moonlight, he seemed very yellow indeed. "I want to tell you something, Bill. I may be dying, you don't know. But I'm not scared, you dig? I just want to tell you something."

Bill thought that he was talking out of his head. "Go ahead and talk, if it'll make you feel better." He needed the rest any way; Bobby was a lot heavier than he'd ever thought.

"You know that woman that got burned up on the steps in An-

thony Homes?" Bobby said. He raised up and put his head against Bill's chest, as though he was listening for the reaction of Bill's heart. ^XXI did ft,* Bobby said. "She was an old black woman. I think she was going to visit somebody there in your building. Anyway, I'd never seen her before. She had a shopping bag full of groceries, so I figured she had money. Man, I was desperate. I wanted a drink. I was broke. I had just spent all the money we had on a gallon of kerosene. Janie Mae was using a kerosene stove then to heat the apartment. On my way back, something told me to go into your building. So I went in there and started climbing the stairs. I didn't know what it was that told me, what it was that guided me. But then I saw this old black woman with those groceries and her pocketbook looking like she had some money in it."

He heaved a long sigh. Bill sat perfectly still. The woods around them seemed to be listening.

"Like I said," Bobby went on, "I was desperate. I've never been that desperate before in my life. So I tried to take that woman's pocketbook. It was a shame, doing something like that. She was so old. But she fought like the devil, she hung onto that pocketbook like it had gold in it. The bag of groceries split open, and food rolled everywhere. She was screaming her head off, but you know how people are in Anthony Homes. Nobody even opened their door. She kept on fighting and screaming, so I knew I had to kill her. I didn't want Janie Mae to know I could be like that. And I was terrified that old woman would report me to the police and that they'd send me to jail. All those guys there, big guys, they would've used me like a woman in jail. Then I saw that mattress in the hallway. I already had the kerosene. I threw it on the mattress and pushed the old woman down the stairs. She fell head over heels backwards, I remember she had on pink bloomers and I could see them when she fell. I struck a match and threw it on the mattress. Then I dragged the mattress to the steps and pushed it on top of that woman. I remember her eyes. They seemed . . . strange . . . like she couldn't believe somebody black would do something like that to her. The mattress pinned her to the wall. She cooked ... I mean ... she sounded like barbecue cooking. ... I snatched up some of the groceries and went into her pocketbook. She had a measly two dollars and some change, about thirty or forty cents. That's all."

For some reason, Bill held him tighter. He didn't know what else to do. "Does Janie Mae know?" he said after a while.

"I never told her, but I think she knows. We had money that day,

what I took off the woman. And some of her canned food. Janie probably does know. I came home with the kerosene can empty, but I had all that other shit."

Bill got up and started walking. He had to do something. Listening to shit like that, it seemed more real than ever that he and Bobby had gambled on getting a million dollars and getting the hell away from misery.

"Bill?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you love me, Bill? I've had the feeling for a long time that you love me. You know, nothing queer. Like a brother. Do you?"

"Yeah."

Bobby went limp in his arms. Bill listened to see if he was still breathing. He was. Bill ran the rest of the way to the highway.

A car was coming just as he came from the woods. Boldly, Bill stepped to the middle of the highway. The sonofabitch had to stop or run over him. The driver stopped, a black man in overalls. "My buddy's bad off sick," Bill said. "I'll give you twenty dollars to take us to Farmville."

The black man had beer on his breath. "Make it thirty and you got a deal."

"Deal." Bill got in, but the man sat there. Bill transferred Bobby from his lap to his seat and counted out thirty dollars. The man took off. "These cars don't run on air, you know." That's what he said. Bill said nothing. He was too close to murdering somebody himself.

The emergency room at the hospital in Farmville was empty. Bill laid Bobby on the hard bench and answered all the white nurse's questions, telling the truth sometimes, making up lies sometimes. He said nothing about Bobby's being pregnant. Let the doctors find that out for themselves. The nurse told Bill to put Bobby on a table in the treatment room.

After about fifteen minutes, a white doctor came in chewing. He looked like he'd just come from having supper. "What's wrong with your friend?" he asked Bill, after reading the report the nurse had written up.

"I don't know," Bill said.

Still chewing, the doctor lifted Bobby's shirt. He poked in Bobby's belly. Then he put his hand on the mound there and shook it with his ear listening near the navel. Bobby's eyes were closed; the doctor inspected each of them. After a while, he raised up. "It's his liver. He's been drinking too much."

"Is he going to die?" Bill said. He'd forgotten about the baby now; he didn't give a fuck about the baby.

The doctor seemed to smile. "We're all going to die," he said.

Bill grabbed him. "Goddamn it, is he going to die?"

The doctor's eyes turned cold as ice. "Nigger, get your hands off me."

Bill dropped his hand helplessly. "I'm . . . I'm sorry," he said. "It's just that I'm worried about my friend." He looked up contritely. "Is he going to die?"

The doctor said nothing. His cold eyes seemed amused. "I'd tell you to leave him here," the doctor said, "but we happen to be all filled up." He left the room hurriedly, as though his supper was still waiting for him and he didn't want it to get any colder.

The nurse charged Bill fifteen dollars. She said she could arrange for an ambulance to take Bobby back to Burnside for another fifteen dollars. Bill said O.K.

While they were waiting for the ambulance, Bobby suddenly revived and stood up, as though surprised to find that he was still alive. "Was it a boy?" Bobby said. "Did it happen yet?" Then he saw his own stomach, and he seemed to stagger a little.

Bill steadied Bobby by his shoulders. "Buddy, can you hang on? You're not pregnant . . . you never have been. . . . The doctor says there's something wrong with your liver." Bobby seemed to be looking through him. His face was a yellow mask.

"You understand what I'm saying, Bobby? You're sick. But don't you worry about it. I'm taking you back to Cousinsvilie. Tonight. Back to Janie Mae. You hear me?"

Bobby must have heard. He started crying. He stumbled once and fell into Bill's arms, and cried and cried. Bill felt like crying, too. But whether for himself, for the baby that wasn't and the lost million, or because of Bobby's diseased liver, Bill didn't know.

They got back to Burnside in an ambulance that held its siren open all the way. Two hours later, Bill had their things packed and they were waiting on the highway for the Greyhound.

Eight hours later, Bobby was checked in to Martland Medical Center in Newark. Bill waited the rest of the day, talking to doctors, nurses, anybody. The doctors were wise-looking and sympathetic. Would Bobby live? Well . . . One of the nurses, a black woman from the West Indies, said that it could go either way. They had Bobby in intensive care, pumping something into him, draining something out. Bill waited around for hours. Then, he couldn't help it, he

started crying. That poor little yellow sonofabitch . . . ! He left the hospital, thinking that after he'd told Bobby he loved him, Bobby hadn't said a goddamned word.

It was close to midnight when Bill got to Janie Mae's. He told her about Bobby, and she stopped frowning and was all concern. She got dressed and went at once to see Bobby.

Then Bill went to Dicey's. He thought she looked older. She was definitely thinner. When she opened the door to his knock, she stood so he couldn't come in.

But he was broke, and tired, he needed some place to go. "You got yourself another nigger?" he said.

"I hate niggers," Dicey said. "I hope you caught a lot of fish."

Bill was too tired to play around. He took out his Johnson and put Dicey's hand on it. She let her hand linger awhile, feeling, exploring. "You ain't nothing but a rotten motherfucker," Dicey said. She stepped aside, already unbuttoning her blouse as she went down the hallway. "The only reason I'm doing this is because the children are in bed," she said.

Bill was taking off his clothes. It seemed a strange thing for her to say. But he figured she had to say something. That's the way some people were in Anthony Homes, always saying something when silence sometimes said more. He lay on the bed and waited. He decided not to tell her about Bobby until in the morning.

He'd never tell anybody about Bobby burning up the old black lady. If Bobby lived, he wouldn't even tell Bobby that he knew. Man, you were delirious, you didn't know what you were doing. He'd say something like that, and that would make it all right. If Bobby lived.

Dicey put her wig on the holder and turned out the light. Then, in a room so black that Bill thought of death—God, why^yd you have to give niggers livers any way?—Dicey enfolded him in centuries of funk and frustration and the soul's moaning and crying insistently for peace peace, when there is no motherfucking peace.

_Book
Two

The Woman Who Loved Cockroaches

fter Bill settled back down with Dicey in Anthony k» Homes, he began noticing an old white woman whom he saw for the first time when she was struggling across the courtyard with some bundles and packages that were obviously too heavy for her. It was growing toward September, but the summer was still on them like a plague, hot and sweaty, an almost tropical heat. Bill loved it, except that Bobby was still in the hospital, fighting for his life. But Dicey was agreeable to Bill, and happier that he was back than she cared to admit. All of Anthony Homes seemed to have moved outdoors, drinking, eating, arguing, fighting, as though in celebration of a never-ending festival. But as Bill moved about on one edge of the crowd, he spotted the old white woman with her bundles and other things, moving, it seemed, always on the side away from him. One day he saw her carrying a chair; another day, a tall floor lamp. But she was taking them away from Anthony Homes. Bundled up in a

heavy overcoat and an old woolen hat, she reminded him of Bobby Bryant. He decided to follow her.

She went to a used furniture store, and when she came out, she was counting money. Bill realized that she was selling off her things piece by piece. Now, Bill felt a certain proprietary interest in the affairs of Anthony Homes; he helped build them, he escaped from them momentarily, and now he seemed consigned to them for life. So he went up to speak to the old white woman; but she took one look at him and began screaming. Bill ran away. He figured the old woman must be crazy.

Still, he could not leave her alone. He found out that she lived on the sixth floor of the same building where he lived, on the same floor where the woman got burned up with the mattress. Was there some connection between the white woman and that other event? Bobby's liver trouble had a sobering effect on Bill for a while; but by now, he was drinking as regularly as before. Always with a pint of T-Bird to accompany him in his vigil, he went to the old woman's floor and waited to encounter her.

He did not know why it seemed important to know her, to speak to her. After all, she was old and white, and obviously frightened to death of him. He began to wonder if something may have happened to his own mind because of the thing that had happened to Bobby. Still, he waited, squatting on his haunches in the hall just down the door from the old woman's apartment.

One day she opened her door. She was on her way out with more items to sell. But she saw Bill and she closed the door rapidly. He was satisfied; inmates of Anthony Homes were forbidden the luxury of telephones. So she couldn't call the police. Eventually she'd have to come out, if for no other reason than to buy food. He waited with greater determination, sipping wine, taking the stairs two at a time to the street to replenish his supply when it ran out.

And one day, the old woman opened the door again. But this time she had a butcher knife in her hand. She asked Bill why he was waiting outside her door. He told her that he was not exactly outside her door, that he was slightly down the hall from it. He didn't move; she eyed him with deep suspicion. Finally, she hid the butcher knife behind her back. "What do you want?" she said. He was confused. "I don't know. I guess I want to know you." She asked him why; he couldn't answer. "I think you're a dirty black nigger," the woman said. Bill shook his head. "That ain't so, ma'am. I'm not dirty. I take

a bath every day. Sometimes, in weather like this, two or three times a day."

"You're still a nigger," she said.

"I can't deny that," Bill said. She was old, but she had the biggest ass he'd ever seen on a white woman. It seemed to practically fill the doorway. But he had already figured out that she was an Italian; all that spaghetti must have gone to her ass. They stared at each other; then she closed the door.

But after a while, she opened it again. She had combed her stringy gray hair and put rouge on her cheeks. She opened the door wide and stood aside. Bill felt unaccountably excited—man, that woman had to be sixty years old, maybe more! And yet, he was excited like she was some fine young thing inviting him into her apartment. He got up from his haunches. He capped the wine bottle and put it in his back pocket. Then he went into the apartment.

It was drab, like every other apartment in Anthony Homes, except that it was smaller; and his first impression was that it was better kept than most that Bill had seen. He looked around for a dog or a cat-old people like this usually had some kind of pet. But all he saw were cockroaches. They were everywhere, crawling up the walls, on the furniture, swarming across the floor. "Be careful," the woman said. "Don't step on them."

Now he knew she was crazy. Everybody he knew stepped on cockroaches, and here she was telling him not to. He stood perfectly still. Aside from the cockroaches, there were bits of bread and sprinklings of sugar and damp rags—all the things that cockroaches thrive on—all over the apartment. The woman was breeding them! Bill looked at her closely to see if there were any in her hair or on her clothes. But she seemed clean enough, a large woman with an even larger ass, strong-looking though old, sane-looking, although she had to be completely insane.

She went to the sofa and waved her hand like a wand; the roaches there scattered in all directions, leaving a place for the two of them. Bill sat beside her. He felt his whole body crawl; but the woman seemed to be very content. He offered her some wine; but she surprised him again. "I prefer pot," she said. And she introduced herself. "I am Mrs. Greco." Her husband, she said, had been dead for twenty years; he was the one who turned her on to pot. Bill sipped his wine while she talked of the old days, before Anthony Homes, before the creation of suburbia, when the city w*s like a large sleeping animal that sometimes yawned and stretched its muscles, and a house

or two was built in the free space around it. But they, too, those homes, were a part of the life of the city, of its commerce, and its people, and its politics. "That," she said, "was before you people came." She had lit a joint, and she took a long drag from it. Bill thought that she was a remarkable old woman, smoking pot at her age. And he liked her, except for those damned cockroaches.

After her husband died, Mrs. Greco went on, she realized that a new life form was moving into the neighborhood to replace the old. "It was not just black people," she said. "It was new people, mostly young, who brought new ideas with them. And gradually, they shoved those of us who belonged here, who had lived here all our lives, over into one corner. Like you sweep up a pile of garbage and leave it for the wind to deal with." That was when those who could afford to moved out of the city, she said. The animal had stopped flexing its muscles, and suburbia became a separate string of communities around the city-beast, that blacks, and later Porto Ricans, clung to like fleas, stifling him, making it uneasy and then impossible for him to move under their combined weight.

After she finished talking, they sat in silence awhile, she smoking, he drinking wine. The roaches were having a regular holiday. Whenever they got too close, Mrs. Greco waved her hand, and they receded from her in a brownish-black tide.

"Why do you have them?" Bill said. He did not know if the question would offend her, but he had to know. Although he had already figured out one reason that she was selling off her furniture piece by piece. She was using the money to feed the roaches.

"At first," Mrs. Greco said, "I couldn't stand roaches. But, you see, I've only had two very dear friends in my lifetime. One was a Jewish woman named Mary. She had a store on the corner of Decatur and Hickory streets before they tore them down to make way for the highways. She hated roaches, too. I used to buy a spray from her —I think it was called Black Flag. But that was a long time ago. She was killed by a black man, you might have heard about the case. They sent him to the electric chair for it." She sounded pleased as she said that, as though the state had, on at least one occasion, done justice to her satisfaction.

"My other friend," she said, "was a black woman, a very dear friend. I think I met her in the laundromat. She used to come and see me. She also hated roaches, although now I can't see why. They're pleasant enough. They don't take too much money to keep alive. And

each day, there are more and more. Sometimes I think that the apartment will soon be strangled with them. I don't know what I'll do then. Perhaps I'll strangle with them."

Bill had never seen an old woman high on pot before, and he was intrigued by her. "Tell me about your black friend," he said. "What happened to her?"

"Well," Mrs. Greco went on, "like I say, she used to come and visit me. She worked for some white people up in Livingston, and she'd come to visit me on her day off. You know, it's terribly lonely if one is alone in the world, and old, and a woman. So Mrs. Royster used to come and visit me. That was her name, Nellie Royster. She'd help me clean the apartment—now she was one who hated roaches. And the place was a pleasure to live in when she came to visit me." She waved one hand languidly, almost helplessly. "I'm afraid it's not quite so pretty any more."

But Bill was sitting on the edge of the sofa. His wine was long since gone and his mouth was dry. Mrs. Nellie Royster. "What happened to Mrs. Royster?" he said.

Mrs. Greco shrugged. "I don't know. One day, she just stopped coming. I waited and waited. Finally, it got dark, and still I waited. But she never showed up. It serves you right, I told myself. You should never have liked a nigger in the first place. I hope you don't mind my using the word nigger. It's something I grew up hearing, and those habits are hard to break. Sometimes I even used it with Mrs. Royster. But she understood, she didn't mind. At least, I don't think she minded. Do you mind?"

"No ma'am," Bill said. He thought of the grease spot on the stairs, Bobby's story about how he killed the old black woman. Mrs. Nellie Royster, with a sleep-in job in Livingston. No wonder she hadn't been missed.

Should he tell the old white woman that her black friend was dead, that it had been all right to have a black friend? He watched her weave to the kitchen and sprinkle sugar on the floor, the exact same way he'd seen old ladies feed pigeons in the park. And it was getting dark in the apartment; he was terrified that once it was dark, the roaches would rise up and overwhelm him. "Why do you keep them?" Bill cried. His voice was loud and scared.

But Mrs. Greco was perfectly calm when she answered him; her fingers were white with sugar. "Because I have nobody to love," she said. "Since Nellie stopped coming, I have nobody to love."

Even in the dim light, he could see that her eyes were filled with

tears. He wanted to go to her and take her in his arms as he might do his mother or his grandmother; but a sea of roaches separated them. "1*11 love you," Bill said.

Her eyes turned mistrustful. "You? Why should you love me?"

He didn't know. He'd do anything to get rid of those roaches. "Because I want to," he said. "Because I need to." But there was a deeper reason which he could not tell her; perhaps he did not know himself.

He waited for what seemed an eternity before Mrs. Greco gave her answer. "All right," she said. "You may love me. But don't expect anything in return. Is that clear?"

He felt cheated. He thought that by loving her, she would love him too.

"Is that clear?" she repeated.

"Yes ma'am," Bill said.

She held out her hand, the one stained with sugar, for him to kiss. He stepped carefully across the roaches and kissed it.

"You don't have to walk so carefully now," Mrs. Greco said. She wandered around the apartment, turning on all the lights. "You come back tomorrow, early in the morning, and we'll spend all day killing roaches. You hear? Early, I said."

"Yes ma'am," Bill said. She opened the door for him, and he left, stepping on roaches that popped under his boots like miniature balloons.

On his way downstairs, he saw the stain where Mrs. Nellie Royster had died. Overhead, the same inscription was scrawled there: O WHERE CAN THE HEART OF MAN BE COMFORTED? But on the wall, someone else had written what may have been an answer to the scrawled question:

Motherfucking two-timing Bitch Everytime I look at you My Dick starts to twitch.

Bill went down to Dicey and the children. He was supposed to go to the hospital tonight to see Bobby, but he didn't feel like it now.

Bill found the relationship with Mrs. Greco very comforting. As she had said, they spent the first day killing cockroaches. She gave him money to buy spray, and he bought gallons of it. The fumes almost choked him to death, but he stuck it out. Mrs. Greco worked right with him. He didn't see how she could stand it. Sometimes, right

in the middle of their slaughter, she'd light a joint and smoke it. Bill kept his own lungs unclogged with wine.

It took them all day, but as evening came around, the place was free of cockroaches. Mrs. Greco seemed very pleased. She said it reminded her of the old days, before the black people came. "Why even Nellie Royster never got it this clean," she said. She clapped her hands like a little girl. Even her big ass shook with pleasure. Bill looked, and decided to stop thinking like that. He owed this woman something. It was Bobby's debt, but Bobby was in the hospital and couldn't pay for depriving Mrs. Greco of her black friend. So Bill had to pay it. He wasn't here for ass. She was too old anyway.

She fed him ravioli and a sour Italian wine that reminded him of the summer when he and Mr. Salvatore did landscape work. Then she put on some old records by Enrico Caruso, and tapped out time to the scratchy, screechy tenor with a stick of pot on the sofa arm. Bill lighted it for her; she sucked in the acrid smoke expertly. He supposed that it was pot that kept her strong, if not young. Although every time he looked at her, she looked better and better. She gave him the joint and he smoked some, not afraid now that no roaches were around that one might have crawled up in it. "How old are you?" Bill blurted out, at the same time that he released the pot smoke from his lungs.

"That's a terrible question to ask a lady!" Mrs. Greco cried. She jumped up and turned off the record player and turned on all the lights. "I thought you said you'd love me," she said. She seemed ready to cry. But when Bill tried to apologize, she opened the door and shoved him into the hall. "Don't ever come back here again!" she said.

He went downstairs. He didn't feel too bad, maybe because the pot and the wine mixed made him feel very mellow. Maybe it had been a stupid question to ask a woman. He knew how sensitive Dicey was about her age.

Speaking of Dicey, tomorrow was Mother's Day. Well, he felt like being nice tonight. Especially since he was going to ask Dicey for at least a hundred dollars tomorrow. First of all, he wanted to take Bobby some flowers. And he wanted to buy back that lamp and those other things that Mrs. Greco had sold to feed her roaches. That would impress the hell out of her; she'd get over being mad with him quick enough after that. He'd pocketed a couple of dollars from the money Mrs. Greco had given him for the spray. He bought some cigarettes and wine; then he went home to Dicey.

She was in a halfway bad mood. "You got some other bitch on the side?" she said. "And what's that you smell like? You smell like you been fumigated."

Bill took a leisurely shower. Then he went to the bedroom and called Dicey. He felt extremely mellow. "You beautiful black bitch," he said, and he pulled her, mellow-like to him, before she had a chance to take off her Afro wig. It tickled his thighs, and he lay back and drank wine and thought about Bobby, and Mrs. Greco, and the whole incredible history of Anthony Homes, and even before. He didn't believe very much in God, but he did know the story of atonement, how Christ came to take away the sins of the world. Man, that was bullshit. Who was he, Bill Kelsey, to take away anybody's sins? He didn't even know any sins that had been committed, except maybe what Bobby did to that old woman in the hall. And even then, it depended on how you looked at it. Maybe in Africa, or Alaska, or some place like that, it wouldn't be a sin at all.

So Christ came to take away the sins of the world. Well, Bill Kelsey came, with the Afro wig tickling his thighs. He wondered what sins his coming had taken away. "Hey, bitch," he said, very lovingly. "Take off that fucking wig. Then sit on me. I feel like fucking all night. How about you?"

"You just want my welfare check," Dicey said. She had taken off her wig and was already sliding up and down on him.

He reached up, still mellow, and massaged the hard nipples of her breasts. "That's right, baby. I want me a hundred dollars. Can I get it?"

But Dicey was in another world, reigned over by spasms. Shit, he could've got all of her check, and he felt stupid for not asking. But then he thought of the children. One always had to think of the children, of all children everywehere, even the old young ones like Mrs. Greco. That big fat ass. He wondered how it would feel on his Johnson?

Suddenly, he whipped Dicey around and fell into the saddle. Mellow. Nothing in the whole world like pussy. Unless it was love. Bill Kelsey drew a very broad line between the two.

Next day, he got the money from Dicey, and went to the used-furniture store where he bought back the things Mrs. Greco had sold. There were two old chairs, the floor lamp, some crystal pieces. Bill picked up a chair on each arm. "I'll be back for the rest later," he told the proprietor, who was not happy about the fact that Bill had

threatened to break both his arms unless he gave back the things at a reasonable price.

Bill went to Mrs. Greco's. The chairs were heavy, with thick cushions covered with needlepoint. He knocked on Mrs. Greco's door a long time before she opened it, although he could see her eye staring out like a raw oyster through the glass peephole. He moved back, so that she could see it was him, and that he had brought the chairs.

She opened the door in a rush of excitement. "My chairs!" she cried. She practically dragged him into the apartment; and she seemed to have forgotten that she'd put him out just yesterday because he'd asked her age. She showed him where to place the chairs. He saw that she had sprinkled sugar and left wet rags and bread crumbs around the apartment, inviting the roaches back.

While she sat in one of the chairs and watched him—she held herself regally, like an empress smiling—he swept up the sugar and crumbs and threw the rags into the garbage. "You ain't never going to need those roaches any more," Bill said. He took out a joint and gave it to her; he held a match for her to light it. He got high with her, and when she seemed relaxed enough, he apologized because he'd asked her age. But she seemed mellow now, as mellow as Dicey had been all through the night.

"I'll be sixty-three next month," Mrs. Greco said. She asked him his age, and he told her. Then she sat silently, as though thinking of something to say. Her big ass filled all of the chair. But Bill was the one to break the silence. "I got your other things, too. The lamp, the crystal."

"You're a very nice man," Mrs. Greco said, as though she really meant it. Bill felt flushed all over. He wanted to fall on his knees and kiss her hands. It was very important to him that she thought he was nice; he didn't feel particularly nice, for he was filled with more than one dark secret. But the Bible, somewhere, talked about doing atonement for bad deeds. Maybe he really could make up for the not-so-nice things in him, and for what Bobby had done, by being nice to Mrs. Greco. Furthermore, he wanted to show her that black people could be trusted, that they were worthwhile.

He fumbled with his denim jacket, doing anything with his hands to keep from touching her. Thinking of Bobby, he realized that visiting hours were about to begin; and he did want to take Bobby some flowers. So he told Mrs. Greco that he had to go to the hospital to see his friend, and that he'd be back in a couple of hours with her other things.

She seemed stoned out of her mind; she nodded, and then told him to come closer. When he did, she closed her eyes and puckered her lips, throwing her head back. Bill looked at her very closely. She wasn't a bad-looking woman, considering her age. He cupped her chin in his hand and kissed her like he might kiss his mother. Her lips felt as soft as rose petals. He thought about intensifying the kiss-even that amount of contact with her sent excitement shooting through him like electric needles—and he could feel her lips growing warm under the weight of his.

Was he turning queer for old women? Almost without meaning to, he slid his tongue into her mouth. She sucked it greedily. Goddamn! Bill felt his old dick getting hard. He pulled away from her as though she'd stung him. "I'll be back in a couple of hours," he said. Mrs. Greco smiled, and looked at his crotch. "You come back in a couple of hours," she said. Bill felt very confused; that wasn't the kind of relationship he wanted with this woman. Screwing her would be like doing it to his mother. Still, he couldn't deny that he wanted to; and when Mrs. Greco touched the outline of his Johnson, he almost buckled in the knees. He stood still awhile and let her enjoy him, enjoying it himself. Then he stepped away from her. "I've got to go," he said. He went to the door.

"But you'll be back?" Mrs. Greco said. He couldn't describe what she looked like sitting in that chair. The only word he could think of was sexy. A sixty-three-year-old sexy white bitch. To keep from answering her, he just smiled, topped it with a wink, and stepped out into the hall. His Johnson was hard as hell. He thought very seriously about going back in there with Mrs. Greco.

But as suddenly as it came, the raging storm in Bill subsided. He went to the flower shop and bought a bouquet of chrysanthemums with baby's breath for Bobby. But he felt strange walking along the streets on Mother's Day—it was October 1st—with a bunch of flowers. People were looking at him like he was going to visit his best girl, when all he was doing was going to see Bobby Bryant.

He couldn't help it; he felt embarrassed. So when he saw a fat old black woman nodding on her porch like a lizard in the melting sun, he put his foot on the bottom step and jarred her awake. She had her hands folded over her belly as though she was digesting a batch of the very best food. "Would you like some flowers, ma'am?" Bill said. It sounded to him like the old woman belched. "What you giving me flowers for?" she said. "I ain't dead yet."

"O shit!" Bill said. He whirled, walking faster than before. He had

to get away from that woman. When he came to a garbage can, he threw the flowers in it. After a while, he came to the hospital; and as he pushed through the door, he thought that all death doesn't necessarily mean that you're dead.

Bobby was still in intensive care. He looked thinner, paler, as though they had drained all the blood out of him. But that nasty yellow color was gone; and Bill thought that was a good sign. "How you doing, buddy?" Bill said.

Bobby squirmed until both his legs were straightened out under the sheet. "I feel lousy," Bobby said. But his voice had some strength in it. There was a bottle of glucose on a stand, dripping into Bobby's right arm through a plastic tube. In the left arm, he was taking blood. There was another tube sticking from under the sheet like a thin, transparent snake. It drained into a bottle, and whatever it was in the bottle looked like orange juice. "You look good . . . you look better," Bill said. He saw that Bobby's stomach was flat under the sheet, nearly flat.

And Bill wondered whether they might not try to make another baby, when Bobby got well. He didn't bring it up now, because that just would have upset Bobby. But he buried the idea at the back of his mind with a handle sticking up so that he could pull it out when the time and opportunity came again.

Bobby didn't act like he wanted to talk much, and Bill left. The hospital depressed him. It was noisy and dirty, although some people swore that it was the best hospital in Jersey.

Janie Mae was coming in as Bill was leaving. She had a little cluster of straw flowers for Bobby. Bill chatted with Janie Mae for a few minutes. She said that Bobby was coming along fine, she had talked to his doctor. "He says there's nothing to worry about unless complications set in. But I've been praying, I know everything's going to work out for him."

"I hope so," Bill said. Janie Mae looked very good to him. There're some people like that, Bill thought as he walked out into the fresh air—people who look healthier and happier when somebody they love gets sick. He was glad that the doctor thought Bobby would be all right. If things worked out—say, two or three more weeks in the hospital, another month for Bobby to get back on his feet—they could try to make another baby around Thanksgiving. If Bobby was willing. But why wouldn't he be? Bobby was a fair man, Bill thought; and a fair man would have to admit that, with Bobby's getting sick and all, they hadn't given the idea a really fair chance.

Bill walked back to the furniture shop and picked up Mrs. Greco's lamp and crystal. Then he went around the corner to Seventh Avenue. Some of the Italians in the neighborhood, mostly ex-jocks who were over the hill, hung out in a storefront on a corner, in a place they called the Calabrian Club. Today, there was a hand-lettered sign in the window of the club that read: HELP ELECT ROCCO VITALE AND WIN $500. COME IN FOR DETAILS.

Now Bill was always interested in money, even though he wasn't interested in Rocco Vitale. A candidate for the City Council from the Third Ward, of which Anthony Homes was the most imposing feature, Rocco Vitale's picture was plastered all over the neighborhood. Vitale was a former football star at the state university who'd come very close to making Ail-American. With a record like that, and being a smart Italian, he had decided to go into politics. This was his first race; his opponent was a mild-mannered Baptist minister who was black, running for his third term on the City Council. Apparently, Vitale and his buddies had hit on some idea to siphon off black and Porto Rican votes from the opposition. Bill had heard this talked about in Anthony Homes. He wasn't interested in voting for anybody. Still, the five hundred dollars seemed very tempting. He went into the Calabrian Club.

There was a sallow-faced Italian sitting behind a streaked mahogany desk that had seen better days. There were photographs on the wall of the Pope and Rocco Vitale; also the Italian flag, and a map of Italy. "What you want, feller?" the sallow-faced man said. But he sounded pleasant enough, like a white man should who is fishing for black votes. Bill could feel the man fishing; he set down the lamp and the brown sack with the crystal. "I want to find out about that five hundred dollars," Bill said.

The Italian nodded. He invited Bill to have a chair and offered him a stogie. Bill took one—he didn't think they could be any worse than pot, although he had never smoked one. After he and the Italian were smoking like chimneys, the man leaned back in his swivel chair. He was wearing a striped blue and white shirt and red suspenders. Puffing like a locomotive, he hooked his thumbs in his suspenders. "This has to do with behind," he said. "By the way, my name is Joe."

Bill introduced himself. He was rather enjoying the stogie, although it was stronger than he had thought. "Behind what?" Bill said.

"You don't know what behind is?" Joe seemed truly surprised. "A

good-looking feller like you, we might have a spot for you in our campaign. Rocco Vitale, he's for all the people. You think he'd be campaigning here in this neighborhood, have his office set up here, if he wasn't for all the people?"

The room had nearly filled with smoke from the stogies, so that it was hard for Bill to see the pictures on the wall. And his eyes watered. "I want to know about the behind," Bill said. He knew a stall when he heard one.

Joe raised his little body up and patted his ass. "This kind of behind," he said. "A good-looking feller like you, you don't know what ass is?"

"That's different," Bill said. It tickled him now that Joe had used a word that most people never even thought about any more. In Anthony Homes, you told a person to kiss your ass, never your behind. You told somebody to kiss your "behind," and they'd laugh at you. That was country, the kind of talk they did in Burnside. So the fact that the Italian hadn't called an ass by its proper name made Bill suspicious of his motives. "I know what ass is," Bill said. "But what's that got to do with five hundred dollars?"

So the Italian told him. The Calabrian Club being composed of ex-athletes—Joe himself played basketball in high school, but that had been a long time ago, he admitted, when you didn't have to be seven feet tall, and a score of 14-16 meant that you'd been at a hairy game—but with the Calabrian Club being a body of ex-jocks, and with Rocco Vitale also being an ex-jock, although more recently, the boys in the club had got together and decided to help raise .some money for their boy by having a competition here in the neighborhood.

"It's not the kind of thing you can advertise openly," Joe said, with a glorious shrug. Their stogies had burned out, and the smoke had cleared some. "I mean, some of these people are sensitive. And then there's Father Anselmo down at the church. We couldn't very easily put up a sign saying BIG-ASS CONTEST, now could we?"

"I don't guess so," Bill said. He wanted the man to come to the point. "What's a big-ass contest?"

Again Joe seemed surprised. "You look like a bright boy. What does it sound like? It's a contest to find out what woman in the neighborhood has the biggest ass. The boys and me, we got together and put up the money. The woman with the biggest ass—it don't matter whether she's colored or white or Porto Rican—we pay her five hundred dollars and take her out for a spaghetti dinner at Mario's. Like I

say, Rocco Vitale's a man for all the people. It don't matter who wins, she gets the five hundred dollars and the best spaghetti dinner money can buy."

Bill thought awhile. He wondered if the Italian was putting him on. But Joe seemed dead serious. And there was that sign in the window. "How does that make money for Rocco Vitale?" Bill said. "I mean, you're spending money. I thought what you wanted to do was make money."

So Joe went into the drawer and came out with a stack of chance books. "When you ever seen a woman that wasn't proud of her ass? When you seen a man who wasn't proud of his girl's ass? That's all that's down here in this neighborhood is big asses. Me and the boys, we sit here all the time and look at nothing but big asses going by. I bet if somebody like Gallup made a survey, he'd find there're more big asses here per square yard than in any other part of the country."

Bill considered that. There were certainly a lot of women with big asses, maybe because they sat on them so much. And hadn't he himself been looking at Mrs. Greco's, that large, soft cushion that followed her around like a private eye looking for evidence? Dicey wasn't so heavy in that department; but Janie Mae had an absolutely enormous behind. Bill couldn't think of a better word for Janie Mae's crowning glory—she had a "behind," as though it was a separate and independent creation of what went on in front of her. The more he thought about it, the more Bill thought the Italians had a good idea. It was new, fresh, exciting; he'd never heard of a big-ass contest before. And he told Joe so.

"You see?" The little Italian seemed very pleased. He tapped his temple. "Me and the boys, it didn't take us hardly no time to think about it. Like I say, we all played some sports at one time or another. People usually think jocks are dumb. But does that sound like we're dumb? Eh? Eh?" He punched Bill's arm with heavy pride.

But there was the question of the chance books. And when Bill mentioned them, Joe explained how the competition would work. "You sell these chances to people that want to enter the contest. Maybe you'll sell them to the woman direct, but most likely you'll sell them to the husband or the boy friend, you see what I mean? They cost a dollar apiece. We'll give you two cents for every one you sell. There're two thousand here. That means you'll make forty bucks. You could buy yourself a couple of pieces of ass with that kind of money." He took a deep breath and lit a stogie. "You interested?"

The sheer madness of the idea excited Bill. He'd have to work his own ass off to get rid of that many chances. But he knew people who'd help him; he could do it. Also, he wanted to buy a chance for Mrs. Greco. The way she'd played with his Johnson today, he knew he could get her to enter the competition. Who knew? Maybe she'd win. And wouldn't that be something? That'd do her more good than anything else in the world—to have the recognition of the whole community because God had given her a big ass even though He'd taken away Nellie Royster, her pet nigger, and Bill had chased away the cockroaches she'd got to replace her dead friend.

"I'll do it," Bill said. Joe was elated. He jumped up and took the sign out of the window. "That's only been there about an hour," he said. He told Bill that the eliminations would be held right here at the Calabrian Club a week before elections in November; that gave Bill about four weeks to get rid of the chances.

Joe seemed eager for Bill to start, and he ushered him to the door. Bill picked up the lamp and the brown paper bag on the way. He told Joe where he lived—the man hadn't even asked, he was so happy about putting his plan into effect. "Don't forget the political angle of this," he told Bill. "In fact, that's the main element, if you get what I mean. What's a better way to get votes than by honoring the women in the community? Every chance you sell, that's a vote for Rocco Vitale."

Bill didn't exactly think so, but that was none of his business. With only one woman getting the five hundred dollars, that meant that there'd be 1,999 pissed-off women, and maybe the same number of husbands and boy friends, who would tell Rocco Vitale to go straight to hell. In fact—he walked toward Anthony Homes thinking about the contest—this wild scheme might have been something planned by the opposition and dropped in the enemy's camp. As far as he could see, Rocco Vitale might be able to count on one vote from the woman who won. But, the idea excited him, and there was money to be made, which certainly would come in handy around the end of the month. A big-ass contest. Leave it to a bunch of punch-drunk guineas to come up with something like that, Bill mused, as he climbed the stairs to Mrs. Greco's.

He knocked on the door. She opened it almost at once. She thanked him for bringing back the lamp and the crystal. He looked at her ass on the sly; she had about the biggest one he'd seen on any woman, black or otherwise. He'd fill out her chance and pay the dollar himself. As death didn't always have to do with being dead-look-

ing at Mrs. Greco as she placed the crystalware back on the shelf, Bill thought that sometimes it could be likened to just a lack of the will to live, without necessarily having to keel over—it was possible that growing old and lonely had less to do with succumbing to the absence of youth and companionship than it did with finding some way to fill the vacancy left by the absence of being young.

Bill felt dazzled by such a complex thought. He didn't even want to make it with Mrs. Greco any more. At least, not now. She didn't seem interested, either. In fact, the earlier incident might not even have happened. "I'll see you tomorrow," Bill said. Mrs. Greco nodded and smiled; she was busy arranging more crystal in a small china closet. Bill left.

For the next several weeks, he divided his time among Dicey, Mrs. Greco, and marshalling an army of his friends to sell chances for the Big-Ass Contest.

With Mrs. Greco, he became a virtual servant to her, although, when he thought of it, he likened himself to a dutiful son. He shopped for her, cleaned her apartment, and listened to her stories about the old days, before Anthony Homes, before suburbia, even. They smoked pot together; occasionally she fed him ravioli, which seemed to be the only thing she ate. He encouraged her to eat, and watched with pleasure as she put away the starchy mess. Like a farmer fattening up a sow before the slaughter, Bill was hoping that all of Mrs. Greco's ravioli would go to her ass so that she could walk away with first prize in the contest. He never kissed her again, she never touched his Johnson since that first time when they had been intimate for several heartbeats, and then withdrew from each other in such a way that they had become closer rather than more distant.

Bill told Dicey about the Big-Ass Contest, and she enlisted the aid of her friends. She seemed pleased that her ass did not fall in the big category, as though there was something exceedingly vulgar about a woman being so constructed. Her measurements, she said, were closer to the ideal of a beauty queen. But she helped Bill sell chances; and she persuaded Janie Mae to enter the competition by telling her that it would take her mind off Bobby.

As for Janie Mae, she went to the hospital every day and came back with optimistic reports about Bobby's condition. And, indeed, when Bill did go to see Bobby again, and explained to him about the Big-Ass Contest, Bobby laughed with more life than he'd seen in Bobby recently. "You going to be all right, buddy," Bill said. He saw that they'd taken some of those tubes out of Bobby's arm. And the

liquid draining into the bottle was clearer, more like piss now than orange juice.

Bill left the hospital whistling. It was the middle of October, and the days were as golden as pumpkins, the nights clear, cool, studded with stars like diamonds against a cloth of black velvet.

The news of the Big-Ass Contest waved over Anthony Homes like a flag that had been hoisted by the sheer need of having something novel to do. There was less work involved for Bill than he had imagined; most of it was done for him. And although the tenth of October came and went, contestants and their sponsors managed to come up with a dollar for a chance to compete.

Some people wanted to buy more than one chance; but Bill explained patiently that such a practice would be highly unseemly, since no one contestant had more than one ass. His judgment was received with the same good-natured response that the whole contest seemed to generate.

Bill kept a careful account of the money, which he carried daily to Joe at the Calabrian Club. In a short while, he and Joe had become fast friends. "You're doing a good job," Joe told him. He introduced Bill to the Calabrian Club assembled; and to Rocco Vitale, the almost All-American for whose benefit the contest was being held.

The membership of the Calabrian Club was a motley assortment of former boxers, runners, basketball and baseball players. They were older than Bill had expected. At the same time, Rocco Vitale was younger. He seemed a decent enough person, clean-cut in a flashy sort of way. They sat around drinking dago red until early in the morning, and nobody once made a mention of the fact that Bill was black. He liked that; he almost hoped that Rocco Vitale would win the Council position. It never hurt to have a friend in City Hall.

By the third week in October, Bill had delivered two thousand dollars to the Italian named Joe. Bill got his forty dollar commission and gave it to Dicey, although he held back three dollars for a pint of wine and a handful of straw flowers for Mrs. Greco. During the whole campaign of selling chances, Bill had drunk very little. Now that the eliminations were about to begin, he was thirsty again. So he bought a pint of wine and went to Mrs. Greco's with the straw flowers.

As usual, she greeted him cordially. She said she liked the flowers, and she put them into a slender vase. He smoked some pot with her and drank his wine; she preferred dago red, which lately gave Bill in-

digestion. He hadn't told her about the Big-Ass Contest, but soon he would have to, because the eliminations began tomorrow.

Bill stayed with Mrs. Greco only a short while. She sent him to put garbage in the incinerator. And he made her bed, which was part of his nightly duties. She left her bed unmade all day so that he could put it together for her at night. Bill didn't mind; he felt stronger than ever that by being a friend to Mrs. Greco, he was making up for the fact that Bobby, in a moment of extreme desperation, had robbed her of her black friend.

The elimination of contestants in the Big-Ass Contest was simply done. A motherly-looking campaign worker from Rocco Vitale's main headquarters was assigned to the Calabrian Club with a tape measure. And couriers went up and down Anthony Homes with the vital news: "They're measuring asses at the club today."

The first contestants showed up shortly after ten o'clock in the morning. Then the trickle increased until women were standing in line—blacks, whites, Porto Ricans—to be weighed in the balance, so to speak, and to see whether or not they would be found wanting. At the same time, a sound truck lumbered up and down Seventh Avenue repeating the message: "Vote for Rocco Vitale, the Candidate of All the People." Then recordings were played, at ear-splitting volume, that appealed to all the people: Aretha Franklin and James Brown for the blacks, "Cielito Lindo" for the Porto Ricans (although the song is Mexican, of whom there was not a single one in Anthony Homes), and "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the Italians, followed by "Ritorno a Sorrento," notwithstanding the fact that most of the Italians, or their ancestors, had come from such places as Naples, Genoa, or, occasionally, Rome, those from the Eternal City all claiming to be personal friends of the Pope.

The woman who measured asses was also Italian. Her name was Mrs. Lupo; and by noon, she was somewhat cross-eyed, whether from seeing such an assortment of asses, or from squinting at the tape measure, Bill was unable to say. He had volunteered to record names, addresses, measurements. The women submitted to the measuring procedure with the same pride that Jewish mothers of the orthodox persuasion carry their bellies in full sail before them, like bastions of the old religion, as each one is hopeful that the baby she is carrying might be the real Messiah. The women offered their butts with the same sense of pride, wriggling a little, some of them sucking in their breath as though by doing so they could at the same time inflate their asses.

By five o'clock, when the Calabrian Club closed down its activities for the day, Mrs. Lupo was hauled away in the sound truck looking bleary-eyed and distinctly confused. There were still women outside waiting to be measured. Some of them were accompanied by their men, as though they wanted to be present and take credit for the marvel that their women offered to the tape measure. At five o'clock, Joe went outside and announced that the measuring would resume tomorrow at ten. Still good-natured, the women went away; that gave some of them another nineteen hours to try to increase the sizes of their asses, a procedure that some of them attempted by prayer, and some by soaking in epsom salts, and some of the more sensible ones by simply getting fucked all night in the behind, as though the proposition that matter expands in direct proportion to the object inserted applies to the matter of asses as well.

So for four more days, the measuring continued. On the third day, Janie Mae showed up and weighed in at a resounding fifty-six inches. Mrs. Lupo was amazed. "That's the biggest one so far," she said. Before Janie Mae left the Calabrian Club—she lingered for a while to be admired by some of the Italian ex-jocks, and to share a bottle of sour wine with them—word had spread through Anthony Homes that she was the probable winner of the five hundred dollars and the spaghetti dinner at Mario's.

Bill was pleased because Janie Mae was Bobby's girl friend; but at the same time, he was rooting for Mrs. Greco, because she needed an honor, like having the biggest ass in Anthony Homes, more than Janie Mae did. Janie Mae finished her wine, turning this way and that to show off her treasure; then she went home, followed by a crowd that numbered among it some men, some distraught women, and a few dogs, all of them looking for one reason or another at Janie Mae's prized possession, which she carried with the true splendor of a champion.

Bill went straight from the Calabrian Club to Mrs. Greco's. He hadn't seen her for three days, because he was exhausted when he got home. He'd never imagined that looking at asses could be so fatiguing. When Mrs. Greco finally opened the door to his persistent knocking, she looked a mess. And the apartment looked a mess. Once again, she'd put down sugar and damp rags, inviting back the roaches. Angrily, Bill kicked at the rags. "Will you stop putting this goddamn stuff down?" He was tired and his nerves were on edge. Was that all he was to her, a substitute for a plague of roaches?

Her eyes were red from crying. "You didn't come," she said. "I needed someone. Everybody needs someone."

"Roaches aren't people," Bill said. He was already sweeping up the sugar. He threw the rags in the garbage and made Mrs. Greco's bed. Then he lit a stick of pot and gave it to her. In a little while, she looked better. "Why didn't you come?" she said. "Where have you been?"

He was too tired to beat around the bush. "How big is your ass?" he said.

"What?"

"I said, how big is your ass?"

She twisted her neck, as though to see. Finally she gave up. "I've never seen my ... ass . . ." she said. "You can see it. How big do you think it is?"

He looked carefully. It seemed as large as Janie Mae's to him, if not larger. He outlined to her the details of the Big-Ass Contest. She seemed especially upset when he told her about the five hundred dollar prize.

"And you never told me," she said accusingly.

He pulled out the chance he had bought. "I paid for it myself," he said. "It was the first one. Look . . . it's got your name and address." She looked, and was convinced.

"You did that for me?"

He nodded.

"Why?"

Now he shrugged. "You'd do the same thing for me," he said. That sounded silly; he had practically no ass at all, not compared to hers and Janie Mae's. So he said, "Because I like you."

"I like you too," Mrs. Greco said.

After that, it was easy for Bill to talk her into getting measured. "I'll come for you tomorrow. O.K.?"

She was smiling now; she seemed very high and very pleased. "I'll be ready."

Bill waved uncertainly from the door. It seemed such a formal way to leave her. But she waved, and smiled; and he left. He was tired, but he felt very good.

The next morning, he collected Mrs. Greco at eleven o'clock. He had overslept, and Dicey had gone somewhere. He hurried into his clothes and got Mrs. Greco. They went together to the Calabrian Club, where only a few women were in line. Apparently the news of

Janie Mae's measurements had discouraged a lot of contestants with less than Janie Mae's momentous amount.

Bill apologized for being late. Joe had been keeping the records. "We got a Spanish woman," Joe said. "Her behind was fifty-six inches, exactly like that colored woman's yesterday."

Bill didn't like to hear that, the possibility of a tie. But he was sure that Mrs. Greco would outdo both Janie Mae and the unknown Spanish woman.

He introduced Mrs. Greco to Joe, who seemed very glum. Mrs. Greco was quite gracious, but she had about her the studied air of a contender who is about to unseat the champ. Mrs. Lupo spread the tape around Mrs. Greco. She did it twice, and then a third time. "Fifty-six inches," she announced.

Joe rapped his forehead so hard that he staggered. "Mamma mia!" he cried. "Three of them! Whose fucking idea was this anyway?"

Because God moves in mysterious ways, Father Giacomo Anselmo at the Catholic church was called in to interpret the significance of a black, a Porto Rican, and an Italian woman all having the same-sized asses. Election day was a week off, and Father Anselmo, ever the good priest, severely lectured Joe and his cohorts at the Calabrian Club for what he called the peddling of flesh for political gain. Now, Father Anselmo was something of a politician himself; and the fact that he knew four foreign languages, plus English, had taught him to be devious in all of them. Being a paesano, he would have felt that God's will were better done if the Italian woman had stood astride the Big-Ass Contest like a colossus, which was Cassius' bitter description of Julius Caesar, and also would have spared Father Anselmo the necessity of having to make a decision that might come back to haunt him in the form of leaner donations from Rocco Vitale and the Calabrian Club.

As for the Porto Ricans—may the Good Lord bless them, even if they were turning more and more heathen by the day—they rarely made use of the church, except to urinate in its vestibule when one of them got too drunk to stagger home and urinate decently where and when a man should, because Holy Mother Church herself had taught Porto Ricans that good Christians and good Americans do not piss in the street. So they pissed in the church instead, as though they were bringing their sins for inspection to the very place that had taught them the nature of sin, like innocent children who bring the potty's sweet turds in their small hands for Mother to inspect, usually when

there was somebody important present. For example, the Bishop himself had come sneaking around for a surprise visit with that concubine that he tried to pass off throughout the parish as his personal secretary. Hah! Expecting possibly to catch Father Anselmo drunk, screwing an altar boy, or saying the black mass, which was strictly forbidden by canon law, the Bishop and that woman had surprised instead a drunken Porto Rican pissing in the vestibule.

Father Anselmo had been in the confessional getting drunk; his Jesuitical mind made a sharp distinction between being drunk and getting drunk, in the same way that the Church judged the merits of mortal and venial sin by sometimes putting her infallible thumb on the scale if the fish she was after had the special merit of being both powerful and excessively superstitious, like Italian politicians. ... At any rate, Father Anselmo had retired to the confessional with a quart of Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine, which he thought was rather good, even if it was Jewish—didn't the Church have her beginnings in the womb of Judaism? The confessional was the only place he could safely get drunk; once he got to that state of grace, he either stayed in the confessional until the Spirits left him, or he said mass so beautifully that whoever participated in the sacrifice with him was invariably moved and inspired, so much so that they thought little at all of the fact that Father's breath smelled of hebe wine laced with Clorets when he bent to place the Body of Christ in the general area of their tongues.

At any rate (Father Anselmo was thinking this as he inspected the hindquarters of the three finalists in the Big-Ass Contest and tried to come to a fair decision as to who should be the winner)—at any rate, Praise be God, the Bishop had raised such a ruckus, and rightly so, too, when he sneaked up on that Porto Rican peeing in the vestibule, that Father Anselmo had had time to hide his wine and pop a Clorets into his mouth before he rushed out to meet His Excellency. The little concubine had raised her eyes to heaven, literally, and was inspecting the stained-glass windows there, lest she see the Porto Rican smiling beautifully as he shook his big prick—all those spies were hung like rhinos from eating rice and beans—shook it carefully, to keep from staining his nice polyester pants, while the Bishop berated him in schoolboy Spanish that the Porto Rican obviously didn't understand.

Father Anselmo had looked sternly at the Porto Rican and shooed him away before he, Father Anselmo, knelt and kissed the Bishop's ring. The whole vestibule smelled like a urinal; Father Anselmo had

seriously thought of hanging some of those deodorizers there, although not in plain view, those deodorizers you find clamped on the insides of commodes in toilets in the best places. Any way, he'd kissed the Bishop's ring, and bid that concubine the best of the day— now she'd had a pair of knockers on her, whether from the Bishop's laying on of hands or as a natural consequence of God's bounty, which He sometimes bestows abundantly, yea, sometimes even unto a size 42-D cup bra—and they'd gone into the rectory where the Bishop was finally persuaded to take a drink or two to settle his nerves, and that woman sat there with a pen poised over a shorthand pad, which Father Anselmo supposed was part of her camouflage, as though she really expected the Bishop to break out and dictate letters while he and Father Anselmo killed a fifth of Kentucky mash and tossed Latin back and forth at each other like boys playing with a basketball in a gymnasium, but primarily to impress the concubine with their knowledge and also because it is more difficult to detect a drunken slur in Latin, Praise be God in His Infinite Wisdom. Sometimes Father Anselmo suspected that the Holy Father had authorized the saying of mass in English in the United States because it was much easier to tell which priest was drunk and which priest wasn't when he was put to the test in English. But Latin was a language of another color, Deo gratias; and Damnant quod non intelligunt, which means that people always condemn what they don't understand. . . .

"Father Anselmo?" That was the Italian woman tugging at his cassock. "Have you made a decision yet? I've really some important things to do." She was there with a handsome colored man; Father wondered whether Mrs. Greco, yes, that was her name, whether she might not be sinning with that colored man. He knew that she smoked pot—he'd smelled it on her breath any number of times when she'd come to the confessional with a pitiful list of sins that hardly seemed worth either the telling or the trip.

He remembered the colored man perfectly as being the one who abandoned a baby in the church yea these many years ago. There was little that Father Anselmo really forgot—he simply let it ferment in his mind until it either died of old age or made him drunk. That night, he'd been in the confessional with his wine bottle when the colored man sneaked in carrying a cardboard box.

At first, he'd thought it might be one of those black militants planting a bomb, for it had happened during those days of turmoil when bombs were being left everywhere. Father Anselmo felt a little proud that the blacks had singled his church out for destruction.

He'd been drunk that night—it sometimes happened that he did got drunk and become wedged in the confessional, the small exit door darting like a poltergeist from one position to another as he stooped to leave. So he waited until his head cleared and the door stood still. Then he staggered to the altar and peered into the box.

He almost screamed. The shock of looking into the serene face of a black child when one is expecting something as dramatic as a bomb on the altar of God . . . well, that can unsettle even a drunken Jesuit.

What on earth was he to do with a little black baby? He staggered back to the confessional, saying appropriate prayers—"Father," and he was talking to the Big Boy then, "Father, I commend this to Your hands." He sat and drank. And waited. And when the colored man came back for the child, Father Anselmo firmly believed that his faith in the Almighty had been vindicated. . . .

"I am about to make a decision," Father Anselmo said. As an Italian, he was proud that Italy was fully represented along with the Porto Ricans and the colored people. Mrs. Lupo, that fine example of a Catholic woman, waited with her tape measure as though Father might ask her to reverify her calculations, as scientists do hundreds and hundreds of times when they've made a discovery and want to be dead certain before they say that such and such a thing is true, lest they be laughed out of the community.

The colored woman had a creditable ass; but Father knew perfectly well that she and all her people were lost to the colored Baptist minister on the City Council. It would be sweet indeed if a nice Catholic boy like Rocco Vitale could take over that Council seat. As for the Porto Ricans, they hardly voted at all; aside from pissing in the vestibule, their forte was racing up and down Seventh Avenue in shiny cars, making babies, playing loud music, and shouting Spanish at each other as though all of them were deaf. So Father Anselmo barely looked at the Porto Rican ass, although it, too, was marvel-ously indented (the woman wore slacks, of which Father did not disapprove unless one was in church), like a freestone peach gone mad, certainly a fine testament to the greater glory of God.

"I have made my decision," Father Anselmo said. "If all the women are equal in size, then they should all be rewarded equally."

He'd decided that a half an hour ago, but no decision hastily delivered is ever respected, no matter how hastily conceived. Holy Mother Church had set a fine example of teaching her priests to be all things to all people, even to heathens like the colored woman, who

jumped up and down, jiggling like that movie star with the big knockers who committed suicide (Father Anselmo made a mental sign of the cross) and kissed him on his cheek as though he was an ordinary man.

Once the Porto Rican woman understood that she was five hundred dollars richer—not to mention a spaghetti dinner at Mario's, which Father Anselmo considered a very fine Catholic restaurant; they had deodorizers in their toilet—she went to her knees and kissed Father's hand, which he felt was far more appropriate.

Mrs. Greco, being of the blood and wise in the ways of the Church, simply nodded at him as though he had done exactly what she'd known he'd do. Father Anselmo wondered if Mrs. Greco, a fine Italian woman like her, was actually screwing that black man. He'd certainly ask her, in a delicate way, of course—you could say the most outrageous things delicately in Italian, which is why the Church had flourished in Rome, whereas they would have stoned it out of London—and this was his last thought before the Calabrians descended on him in a wave of jabbering and garlic and asked him, begged him —which he rather liked—to reconsider his decision.

"Father, we'd lose money on the deal. We pay these broads fifteen hundred dollars, we buy them spaghetti at Mario's, we got nothing left over for Rocco Vitale."

"But you have the good will of all the people," Father Anselmo said. He'd considered that right from the beginning. And a politician, a Catholic politician, backed by all the people, is apt to be generous when generosity is needed, and to recognize that while all things come from God, one of the Church's responsibilities is to dole them out at a pace favorable to herself. So Father Anselmo turned a deaf ear to the Calabrian Club; they were not dangerous to offend, most of them being old, and all of them wacky. Furthermore, the fact that they'd called him in to mediate meant that he had them in his hip pocket without their even knowing it. "The decision is just," Father Anselmo said. "The Holy Father would tell you the same thing if he were here."

And with that, he left them, walking at a fairly rapid pace down Seventh Avenue, cassock flying behind him like a witch's evening gown, although it was barely noon but dangerously close to the end of October. Father Anselmo was in a hurry because he needed a drink, and he couldn't bear that sour red ink that most dagos drink. He smiled as he thought of himself referring to other Italians as dagos. Actually, however, the word came from Diego, and that

means St. James, which kept the word strictly inside a religious context.

Walking behind Father Anselmo, Bill Kelsey escorted Mrs. Greco and Janie Mae home with their winnings. Janie Mae said she was going to put hers in the bank to help Bobby Bryant got back on his feet once he came home from the hospital. Mrs. Greco said that she might fly to Rome, she had a sister there who knew the Pope. Bill escorted them grandly, a big-ass winner on each arm; and everybody saw him. He felt pretty damned good that things had worked out for everybody concerned. Except, of course, for the Calabrians. But even they'd had a lot of fun; Bill had seen how they'd eyed those asses.

The upshot of all this was that in the election held on the second Tuesday of November, the black minister was overwhelmingly reelected to his seat on the City Council. Rocco Vitale's picture can still be seen plastered all over Anthony Homes and up and down Seventh Avenue; but as for the man himself, it is said that he went to the Bronx and opened up a pizza parlor in a black and Spanish neighborhood, since niggers and spies eat far more pizza than Italians do, presumably because their own food is so foul.

Bill continued to see Mrs. Greco, and Bobby in the hospital, who was said to be doing fine. The weather turned nippy in November, which gave Bill a good reason for hitting the Thunderbird rather heavily again. He and Dicey were mellow together, better than ever before. Now that she had met Mrs. Greco, Dicey thought it was nice of Bill to take an interest in an old white woman who had nobody to do for her.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, Bill decided to tell Mrs. Greco that her black friend, Mrs. Nellie Royster, was dead. Not how she died— that would be too horrible to tell anybody—but simply that she was dead. He wanted Mrs. Greco to take that plane trip to Rome to see her sister who knew the Pope. Not that he was trying to get rid of her, but because it would mean that he had moved into her life, and altered it for the better, and given her something finer than she'd had even with the dead Nellie Royster.

He went to Mrs. Greco's and cleaned her apartment as usual. Then they smoked some pot and drank some wine. Bill felt very excited about what he was going to tell Mrs. Greco. Some of those religious pamphlets he'd seen, they had a light on them with rays going out in all directions. And the words, Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Why shouldn't Mrs. Greco be free, a nice woman like she was? For a moment there—the day she'd felt his prick

—like the hand of eternity brushing against a star, hadn't she been young, lovable, desirable?

"Mrs. Greco," Bill said. "I have something to tell you. Your friend, Mrs. Nellie Royster, is dead."

Mrs. Greco had been smiling—she smiled an awful lot these days; but when Bill said that, her face turned to sour wrinkles, as though she had swallowed vinegar. "Dead? Nellie dead? How do you know?"

"I just know," Bill said. "I thought you ought to know. Now maybe you can take that plane trip to Italy." Suddenly he felt afraid; he hadn't expected her to react like this.

"Get out," she said quietly. "I knew all the time you were nothing but a dirty black nigger that couldn't be trusted. Get out of here, and don't you ever come back."

"Mrs. Greco, why you want to do a thing like that?" He felt like crying. "I thought you said you loved me."

"Get out of here!" She scared the shit out of him, screaming like that. He got up in a hurry. But she had gone to the kitchen and came back with a wet rag. He thought she was going to whip him with it, that she'd get rid of her shock and anger that way. But what she did was, she put that rag on the floor, for those fucking cockroaches. She didn't pay any more attention to Bill, as though he wasn't even there.

He watched her with a heavy heart as she came back with her hand full of sugar and sprinkled it around the room. Then, licking her fingers, she sat down to wait for the cockroaches to come back, the only certainty in her uncertain world. Bill left quietly. There were tears in his goddamned eyes.

So winter came, mild but still cold. Bobby was still in the hospital; Bill went to see him regularly now. Sometimes Bobby seemed very improved, sometimes worse than ever. The thing between Dicey and Bill was like that, too—sometimes good, sometimes bad. But he was rarely mellow with her now; he was almost always violent, and she seemed to like it. She couldn't get enough of his Johnson. He tried to fuck her to death, brutally. She begged him for more.

From time to time, he saw Mrs. Greco coming and going. She was selling some of her things again, so Bill knew that the roaches were back in full force. Bill was so damned angry that he went home and practically raped Dicey. She loved it, she loved him. She especially loved his Johnson. "It's like magic," she said. She kissed part of it, then all of it.

Something clicked then in Bill's mind. Hadn't Mrs. Greco become a different person after she touched his prick? And what about all the other women he'd ever fooled around with? What about Maria Beiies —hadn't she given him three hundred dollars for spending a few hours spinning on his prick? And what about Bobby Bryant? What had his prick done to Bobby? Was Bobby really sick because of wine, or had Bill's sperm affected his liver in such a way that he'd been flat on his back for four months in Martland Hospital?

Lying perfectly still while Dicey pleasured him—she was hungry; he could feel her getting fed—Bill Kelsey came to an important conclusion.

What would happen if he could get his Johnson to all the women in Anthony Homes? When he was in school, one of the things he'd read had been a Greek play called The Revolt of Women. What if ... ? The idea scared him. But what if he turned on every woman in Anthony Homes with his Johnson, and then they revolted? Tore the damned place down, demanded decent housing, enough money from the government for them and their families to truly integrate?

It was a beautiful idea. But of course he couldn't get to every woman in Anthony Homes. There were thousands of them, and that would take years. What he'd do, then, would be to assemble a small group of generals. He'd touch them with his magic wand—O Dicey baby it is magic isn't it?—and send them out to recruit the troops.

Dicey. Baby. He grabbed her head and her wig came off in his hands.

Now he felt fine. He'd get a few women—he could handle maybe a dozen at one time, if he had some vodka in him—and turn them on. He'd have an orgy. He'd get even with Anthony Homes yet, when those women went screaming out into the streets. Who said he wasn't better than a bunch of goddamned cockroaches? Old lady Greco, that's who. And as far as Bill was concerned, she was the personification of Anthony Homes and all the evil that had helped create them.

But that was all part of a fantasy that exploded at the same time he did. Dicey. Baby. In a little while, the two of them were fast asleep.

^{oajqX
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Young Bill

hen Bill Kelsey was seventeen, and in his third year at Dillwyn High School, a young practice teacher named Miss Page was sent out from Richmond to work with the Dillwyn students. Miss Page was twenty years old. She held a teaching certificate, which meant that she had completed two years of study under the state's accelerated program to train black teachers. Bill was fascinated by Miss Page's high-yaller complexion—sort of a baby-shit yellow—and her long blow hair, the kind that stirs ever so slightly in a heavy wind.

Except for her hair and complexion, Miss Page didn't excite Bill too much. Body-wise, she was slack in the titty and tail department. Her skinny legs were slightly bowed. But she drove a shiny Buick that was all-white; and Bill was excited by that.

Miss Page worked with Bill's regular teacher in English literature. She spoke with the slightest suspicion of a lisp. Her lips were real large nigger lips. Bill sat in her class and thought about those lips locked around his prick, which stayed hot as a firecracker in those

days. Miss Page looked him steadily in the eye one afternoon while she was precariously reciting from memory some silly sonnet by Shakespeare. Bill had a hard on. He slouched in his seat in the front row. Miss Page kept on with her sonnet; but she slid her eyes to Bill's crotch without dropping one iamb.

After school, Bill waited at her car. He usually rode the bus home. Today, he was going to make that Page bitch drive him almost home. He wasn't too proud of where he lived. When Miss Page came out, she carried an armful of books. Her hair bounced as she walked; and she wore a thin yellow sweater draped around her shoulders. It was sometime close to the end of May, and the fragrance of honeysuckle was everywhere.

"Miss Page," Bill said. He felt drunk on honeysuckle. He was sitting on the fender of her car; and she flashed a look at first that seemed to say she didn't like his black ass sitting on her white car. Instead, she fished in her pocketbook for keys; and Bill took her books to make it easier. That sonofabitch in his jeans throbbed like a toothache and stuck out a mile. Miss Page sort of looked at it slantwise as she stuck the key into the car door. "I missed the bus," Bill said. "You want to drive me home?" She consulted a tiny watch on her wrist. "Where do you live? I mean, I know you live in Burnside. How far is that? I've got to be home by six o'clock or I don't get supper."

Bill told her how far Burnside was. But he knew she wasn't actually interested in that, nor in coming back to Dillwyn, where she boarded with a dry Baptist minister and his wife. Bill felt like a piece of good lean meat himself. He wanted Miss Page to have him for supper. He didn't come out and tell her so, but she had two years of college, she couldn't be that dumb.

After she leaned across the seat and unlocked the door, Bill got in, putting her books on the back seat. Man. No time to bullshit around. While she was trying to turn on the ignition, he took her hand and curled it around his dick. Her fingers trembled, like she was about to have a fit. But she didn't move her hand. She turned the ignition on and drove with her left hand; her right held him like an excited vise.

There were woods and hidden fields all the way to Bill's house. But he had somewhere special to take Miss Page. "Let's go to the Willis place," he said. He didn't tell her, but it was next to where he lived.

"What's so special about the Willis place?" Miss Page said.

Bill took a deep breath. "When I was fifteen, I saw a bull de-nutted there." He looked steadily at Miss Page, how her large lips had curled into a dreamy smile. "You know what that means?" Bill said. "To de-nut a bull?"

Miss Page's smile broadened. "I know what it means." But Bill wanted to be sure. His own nuts were aching. "What does it mean?" Her hand tightened around him. "It means to castrate a male animal." She sounded very precise. "To render him useless, to take away his maleness." Now she glanced at him. "I even know how it's done. I saw it once."

Bill felt very disappointed. He jammed his feet against the floorboard and stared straight ahead. "How? How do they do it?"

"You tell me," Miss Page said.

The speed limit was forty-five, and she kept the thin black needle exactly there. The windows were down; Bill could smell a faint perfume that must have come from her. Mixed with the honeysuckle, it made him feel drunk almost to the point of madness. "If you already know," he said sullenly, "why do you want me to tell you again?"

The highway was full of dips and curves and rises, winding westward like a snake on hot coals. "I want you to tell me," she said. "I want to hear it from a man's point of view." She squeezed him hard. "I want to hear it from a bull."

Man. He almost shot off right then, but he held it. When he shot off, it wouldn't be in his jeans. "The place we're going," he said, "is near a large farm owned by a colored man named Mr. Willis. He breeds bulls. Sometimes you can see forty or fifty of them grazing from the barbed-wire fence all the way up to his house. Those bulls are black, the same color as me." He dropped his arm across hers on his thigh. His arm was smooth and muscular and very black, while hers seemed almost diseased, it was that light.

"Anyway, Mr. Willis has three or four sons. I used to hang out with one of them. A couple of years ago when it was time to castrate the bulls, the Willis boy asked me if I wanted to come over and see. So I went."

He had been at the Willis place many times before. They were black people with money, but they weren't stuck-up, nothing like that. The Willis boy had a couple of sisters; but they were too young to interest Bill. In his own mind, the day he went to see the bulls castrated had also been the day he stopped being a child and became a man.

"It's very pretty at the Willis place," Bill went on. "They have a

big white house with a lot of chickens, ducks, and geese pecking around the yard. Behind the house, there's an orchard with all kinds of trees. Beyond that, Mr. Willis has a couple hundred acres where he grows crops for his family and feed for the bulls. It was about this time of year when I went there. Mrs. Willis gave me and her boy some iced tea. She's a real nice woman. She told us they were going to start working on the bulls right away, that we'd better hurry up if we wanted to see."

He had closed his eyes and was resting his head on the car seat. The pressure of Miss Page's hand seemed to come to him from eons away. His mind took a giant step backwards; and now he smelled honeysuckle mixed with the aroma of Mrs. Willis' spring flowers and the tantalizing spices of pies that were baking in the kitchen. And he was fifteen again, sitting on an oak bench at a table made of gray oak slabs under an oak tree.

Miss Page's hand, the whining car, kept him attached to the present. But his mind was excited by the taste and tinkle of iced tea, the murmuring of all the life around him on a warm May morning . . . when the momentum of the morning's perfect current was shattered by the ugliest scream Bill had ever heard.

"What the devil was that?" he stammered. He'd almost dropped his iced tea.

The Willis boy sucked hungrily on his straw until the pale brown tea disappeared and the ice cubes collapsed on a thin layer of sugar in the bottom of the glass. "They're working on the bulls," he said. A grin was slashed across his black face like a slice of white moon.

There was another scream. No. More of a bellow, full of pain, outrage, dreadful frustration. The Willis boy hitched up his jeans, then slapped Bill mannishly on the shoulder. "Let's go see," he said. "We've already missed one." He sounded very disappointed, and he took off in a run. Bill stumbled after him. The Willis boy ran to a group of men and women where they were crowded around the ramp of a wooden scaffold. Bill stood at the corner of the house and watched.

The scaffold was long, large, and curved like a low bridge. At its center point, it stood five feet or more from the ground. One end, where most of the men were gathered with prods, was connected to a narrow cattle run attached to a small corral. The other end opened onto the pasture. About a dozen bulls milled about in the corral. Mr. Willis and his men must have herded them into the pen a day or two ago. Now they were being separated and channeled into the run by

men with long, sharp sticks. One bull was being prodded up the ramp, to the hoots, hat-waving, and catcalls of the assembled men and women.

All this, Bill saw in an instant. The Willis boy had disappeared into the crowd, like a child swallowed up by a carnival. But Bill was interested in a black bull that was going down from the scaffold back into the pasture. The sides of the ramp held him snugly, so that he could move no more than an inch or two on either side. He was a magnificent beast—broad of shoulder, thick of neck; lean, yet muscular, like an elongated athlete—even though he slipped and slid down the ramp like an old lady tottering on curved ice. There was something wrong with his hind legs; he held them stiffly, as though to stifle a great hurt.

Bill knew this was the bull he had heard scream. Obviously, he'd already been castrated. But where was the blood? The bull slid from the ramp and moved painfully out to pasture. He had a patch of white hair at the joint of his right foreleg. Bill stored that in his mind; it seemed important to remember.

Now the other bull had been driven to the highest part of the ramp. Then, Mr. Willis himself appeared over the head of the crowd, like a grinning jack-in-the-box. He was holding an instrument about four feet long that resembled a giant pair of scissors with ends shaped like saucers with shallow indentations. The apparatus was made of ugly black metal, probably iron. It was certainly the thing that had made the white-scarred bull scream twice; but Bill was not sure how it worked.

The bull on the ramp was unruly. Immediately, four men clambered to the scaffold like large crawfish. Two of them looped ropes around the bull's neck and and steadied him from each side. The other two roped the bull's hind legs, jerking at the ankles to keep his legs apart. Sandwiched in the run, the bull was silent, helpless. "He act like a man now!" Mr. Willis shouted. "But he ain't a man. He just don't have what it takes." There was laughter, shouts of agreement.

Mr. Willis was sweating; he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely as he gripped the large handles of that evil-looking black thing. Some of the ladies screeched that they would absolutely faint if Mr. Willis didn't quit. But they fanned joyfully with small handkerchiefs, watching every move Mr. Willis made. He stooped, and poked the black thing into the run, between the bull's hind legs, where the animal's balls swung like hairy balloons.

Grinning, winking at a lady or two, Mr. Willis then paid careful attention as he positioned the iron saucers around the bull's nuts. The muscles flexed in his thick, naked arms. And he crushed the bull's nuts. The air vibrated with the beast's unholy scream; and all the men and women fell silent, as though they were in the presence of a miracle.

Bill closed his eyes. He felt like his head would burst. The bull screamed again; apparently, Mr. Willis had crushed a second time, probably for the benefit of the ladies. Bill turned, and ran all the way home. He could hear the people at the bull run cheering and stomping their feet. Wind whined past his ears like distressed demons. He was crying. From that day on, he felt a terrible rage against the Willises. He never went to their house again.

But their pasture was separated by barbed wire and a row of pines from the shack where Bill lived. A few days after the castration, Bill looked through the pines and saw the bull with the white patch of hair grazing close to the fence. There was a terrible swelling between the animal's hind legs. Bill couldn't think of it as a bull any more. That swelling between its legs told a dreadful story.

Bill whistled several times until the animal looked up. "Hi, old fellow," Bill said, feeling stupid even as he said it. He thought he saw hurt and what seemed to be a great sense of loss in the animal's large, thick eyes.

Bill went home. That was when he began seriously thinking about leaving Burnside. But if he did stay here, and if he was lucky enough to ever get a place like Mr. Willis had, he swore that he would never tamper with the maleness of any male thing. At least, not in that cruel, crushing way.

That had been two years ago. . . . As he had been talking, Miss Page was following every zig and zag of the highway with a deft hand. But as her excitement mounted, she had increased the pressure on Bill's crotch. She had been judiciously following the speed limit. Now the needle was quivering between fifty-five and sixty. But Miss Page was an excellent driver; and Bill felt confident in her hands. Obviously, this was not the first time she'd gone flying down the highway, holding a hard prick with one hand, driving with the other.

"Slow down," Bill said. They were nearing the Willis place. As Bill directed, Miss Page pulled off the highway close to the barbed-wire fence running along the Willis farm. "This is where it happened?" Miss Page said. At least half a hundred bulls grazed in the field.

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"Right over there." He pointed to a white house on a low hill beyond the bulls. "I live further down the highway."

Miss Page laughed uneasily. Her hand squeezed urgent messages on his dick. "I didn't exactly expect to go to your house," she said.

"You wouldn't want to," Bill said. "I don't live in a house. I live in a shack. Mr. Willis' white house there, his land, that's the way I'd like to live. So I brought you here to fuck you, close to something else that I want very much." He tightened the muscles in his butt, making his dick dance in her hand. "Is that all right with you, Miss Page?"

She flicked her tongue out to wet her large lips. "You're a very forward young man to be just seventeen."

He almost laughed at that. Here she was holding nine pounds of his dick and calling him forward. He eased up and unbuttoned his shirt. She watched him as though he was a snake. He took off his shirt, kicked off his loafers; unbuttoned his jeans, and pulled them down until her hand stopped them. He waited. She moved her hand. He pushed the jeans down, kicked them off. And waited. He knew what his naked body looked like, his dick. They looked damned beautiful, that's how.

Miss Page lifted her arms and pulled her blouse over her head. The armpit facing Bill was deep and hairy, like a small, dark cavern. Her breasts were shaped like a fat boy's, little wads of pasty flesh that barely filled the cups of her bra. Bill didn't want to look at her any more, so he closed his eyes. Still, he could tell what she was doing from the way the seat bounced. And when the seat stopped bouncing, he stretched back and shivered with pleasure as her eager lips locked around him.

They were parked just off the highway, but Bill didn't give a damn. In fact, he didn't care if people did stop and watch. After all, she was the teacher, and lived with a Baptist minister, and all that other phony bullshit. He even wanted to get out of the car and fuck in the buttercups; but he figured Miss Page would balk at that.

When he got tired of her mouth, he used her like he was a black bull on the rampage, and she a scrawny, yellow cow. The car rocked and cried on its springs as Bill gored relentlessly. Miss Page seemed to love it. She slashed him with her nails; and she kept up a running patter, punctuated by farts, grunts, and groans.

"Even though ... I teach Shakespeare ... I really . . . don't like him. ... I never have. ... I don't understand him, . . . Bill dear . . . sweetheart... am I moaning enough for you . . . ? Am I . . . moving the right way . . . ? Do you . . . like my legs up this

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high . . . ? Are they . . . high enough for you . . . ?" Bill raised his ass an even foot, and plunged. "Oh Billllllll!" He was sweating, grinning. Man. Come drained from him like thick piss. Miss Page was coming for what seemed the hundredth time. Her nails dug into his shoulders, his biceps, his back. But Bill didn't care; they'd heal in cold water, those scratches.

When they were both dressed, Bill sent cigarette smoke curling from his lips in white ribbons. "Did you like it?"

"I loved it."

"Would you like to do it again? Some other time?"

"Oh yes! By all means. You see, I've even missed my supper. The Reverend and his wife will be very upset. But I don't mind. I don't mind at all."

Bill nodded. "Will you marry me? And don't tell me I'm too young, or I'll break your goddamn neck."

The idea apparently fascinated Miss Page. Her eyes seemed to glaze over with a heavy sickness. "I'm really not that much older than you, Bill. Actually, only two years and a few months. I looked it up on your record."

She seemed to be thinking too far ahead of him; and that frightened Bill. Because she had something and he had nothing. It was that simple. All that talk about wanting a place like Mr. Willis', that was partly bullshit. What he really wanted to do was to get out of Burn-side. He'd marry the Devil himself just to get out of Burnside. How would he ever get the money Mr. Willis had? Certainly not here. He took Miss Page's hand and put it back on his crotch.

"Do you love me?" Miss Page said.

"I love you very much." He thought she was silly, and certainly a little bit ugly, especially after he'd inspected her naked in all kinds of positions. "I love you," he said, almost like a prayer. "And I want to get away from here. Everybody's going North. There's more opportunity up there."

Miss Page moved her hand. "Not everybody's going," she said quietly. The lump in her throat rose and fell as she swallowed. "I'm staying. There's work to be done." She talked shit about helping blacks survive in Burnside. On their own soil, without running North. "We're subjugated wherever we go in America," Miss Page said. "Especially up North. Our best opportunity lies in the South, and in the soil. A man who owns land, like your Mr. Willis, is always rich."

Now she was talking like a goddamned schoolteacher. Bill stuck his tongue into her ear, hoping the curled tip would puncture some

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part of her brain and make her help him. "I love you," Bill said. He was almost begging; and he wondered if she knew it. Shit. He was desperate. "We could have a beautiful life together. A beautiful life." He tried to put her hand back on his dick; but she resisted with a strength that surprised him.

"How would we live here? You have nothing. I have a few dollars and I'm still paying for this car. How would we live? Whether you know it or not, teachers make next to nothing."

He was aware that she wasn't rejecting his proposal. She was trying to make him change his plans, that was all. If things were as bad as she said, the logical solution would be to go North. But she was trying to get him to commit himself to stay in the South with her.

He felt a kind of dull excitement. This was the farthest he'd ever gotten with anybody, and he'd been proposing to bitches since last year—he could've married then, with his mother's consent—when he found out that he hated Burnside and everybody in it. Except maybe his mother. But everybody else, everything else, he hated.

He knew about the 1955 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in public schools. Well, the school he went to still was segregated. So was every other colored school he knew about. And he'd been itching to go to school with white girls. Maybe he'd even luck up on some white pussy. But the schools over in Prince Edward County had closed down rather than integrate.

When Bill heard that, he'd started hating the whole United States. Then he narrowed it down to Virginia, just because it seemed stupid to hate something as big as the United States of America. After a while, he found it took more energy than he had just to hate the whole state. So he started hating Burnside with a vengeance.

After that, every time he saw some bitch who looked like she might help get him out of Burnside, he fucked her and then he proposed to her. But Miss Page was the first one who hadn't come out and said no. That surprised Bill. He thought she was really dumb. He didn't even feel any respect for her. "I've got to get home," he said. "There're things to do around the house before sundown."

Miss Page agreed. "Just one more thing. Why do you think Mr. Willis was castrating full-grown bulls?"

She was dumb. "After he castrates them, he kills them," Bill said. But he knew right away that he was wrong. Hadn't he seen the white-marked bull grazing down near his house? And if you were going to kill a bull, why castrate him first?

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Miss Page was watching him with the beady eyes of a large spider. 'They do it just for fun," she said. "It's sport, entertainment. Usually, bulls are castrated when they're yearlings. They grow up as steers for beef. Sometimes, they're used as oxen to pull plows or carts, things like that. But that usually happens in other countries. Your Mr. Willis was having fun castrating those full-grown bulls. I've seen it done before. It's what you might call a ritual of degradation, part of a cultural lag."

He felt numb with a new sense of horror. And he knew that she was right. The crowd at Mr. Willis' might have been people enjoying themselves at a carnival. Doing something like that to a bull just because everybody in Burnside was bored. Cultural lag. He knew what Miss Page meant, even if she did use those big words. So, being grown was part of a great conspiracy of silence against young people. Castrating, maiming full-grown bulls, just to have something to do in the stagnation of Burnside. "They castrate hogs," he said, "to keep the meat from tasting strong."

She looked very wise. "Hogs, yes. Bulls, no. It's just for sport, like I said." There was a thin line of sweat on her upper lip. Just talking about the bulls excited her. She struck him as being obscenely ugly.

"Now, as for your proposal of marriage," she said, "I'm flattered. I really am. But it's not wise to make hasty decisions. Although I think you'd be a wonderful husband. A wonderful husband. But I would like to educate you to the fact that your duty is here, in Burnside, with your own people. Why do you think I came out here all the way from Richmond? I want to help my people."

Man. He thought she was the dumbest bitch he'd ever met. But she did have that new white car, and she sucked and fucked a lot better than average. He decided to play it real chilly. "I think you're right. Let's not be hasty. I'll see you tomorrow, O.K.?"

She kissed him, ramming her tongue down his throat. He nearly puked. Across her shoulder, he watched the black bulls grazing. When Miss Page finished slobbering over him, she turned and looked at the Willis place, wiping her mouth at the same time. "If you owned something like that," she said. "If we could get a place like that . . ."

Bill felt very good about her again. He'd wanted the Willis place for as long as he could remember. Why bullshit? He wanted it, even if he knew he could never get it. That's what made him bitter. Imagine a snaggle-toothed nigger like old man Willis having all that

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money! "Isn't it beautiful?" He felt warm all over with excitement. "I mean, isn't it really beautiful?" He was very sincere. Who cared why they crushed the bulls' nuts?

Miss Page was suddenly very businesslike. "It's getting late. I'd better be going. But I will take you home."

So. She was getting shitty. Trying to motivate him. Trying to excite him into wanting something here in Burnside that he'd spend the rest of his life working for. No thanks, sister. If he did get the Willis place, he'd sell it. And if she did say she'd marry him, he'd tell her to take a flying fuck. Imagine, a teacher going down on one of her pupils, doing those other things. He could report her for that. And not even saying no when somebody seventeen proposed marriage. If she was that dumb, it wouldn't be worthwhile marrying her, not even for that white car. Still, he thought it best to stay chilly.

"I'll walk home from here," Bill said. "It's not far." He gave her a silly peck on the cheek, and got out. "I'll see you tomorrow?" Miss Page said. Bill assured her she would. Where the fuck was he going tomorrow? To Mars? Miss Page backed up and turned around. Smiling fiercely, she headed toward Dillwyn.

Bill felt edgy as he walked home. Was it really true that they castrated grown bulls here just for the pleasure of inflicting pain? His father, Zachary—well into a kind of twilight between living and dying-was rocking on the porch, nursing brandy from a baby bottle, which had been his habit for years. Bill nearly asked his father about the bulls. But it had been a long time since he and his father had spoken to each other. There was no bad blood between them. Bill just decided one morning he'd never say another word to his father as long as he nursed that bottle. Apparently, the old man had pledged himself to the same kind of silence on the same day. Besides, what would he know about castration? Somebody, something, had cut his nuts out a long time ago. All he could do now was bawl for brandy when his bottle was empty—a toothless, wrinkled skeleton of a man whose mind had been stampeded into its own private limbo. He rocked peacefully, gumming the nipple like a monstrous child with drowsy old eyes, ignoring Bill.

A few chickens pecked in the red dirt. There was a sow rooting in a pen down near the outdoor toilet. Bill could see the Willis land through the row of pines. In a short while, the sun would set. Bill wondered if Miss Page was seriously considering marrying him. He certainly hoped she was, that she'd help him get away from here. God, how he hated it! He went inside where Serena Kelsey was sew-

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ing a dress for herself. "The bus passed a long time ago," his mother said. "When you didn't get off, honey, I worried about you."

"I got off down the road. I wanted to walk." He regarded his mother with love and distaste. Serena Kelsey was a rather large woman in a colorful dress reminiscent of Africa. She wore a charm around her neck in a greasy leather pouch, a sign of the juju. The room was clean and orderly; but there were indications of poverty everywhere.

Serena might have been any age, for people had said that she looked old even when she was young. Once she was no longer young, they told her how young she really looked. So she wore the ageless mask of a somewhat pointed, happy black face that could turn unbelievably stern, or stubborn, or sad, as though she had sorted out her feelings on a turntable and pressed different buttons as occasions demanded. She poured every ounce of love she had into Bill; for before she turned forty, her husband, Zachary, had retired to his rocking chair on the porch and to that baby bottle of blackberry brandy, which Serena made and fed to him in copious quantities.

Serena provided for Zachary and Bill by practicing juju. Those blacks who believed in juju—and the number was steadily decreasing —came to Serena to be cured of warts, boils, aches, pains, and a variety of other ills. Blacks of the younger generation went to the white hospital in Charlottesville, where they were either killed, or cured of their ailments. But Serena had a faithful if small following of older advocates. Sometimes she undid a juju that was placed on them by a conjurer less powerful than herself.

Bill had never seen his mother do any of the really frightening things talked about in juju, such as people vomiting up snakes and lizards when another juju's spell was broken. Conjuring like that—if it happened at all—was done in the strictest secrecy, as though the highest manifestations of the art were hidden from the eyes of the uninitiated, even in this period of its decline. In payment for her services, Serena received chickens from her clients, sometimes a piece of side meat, perhaps a few dollars. But it was enough for her to support her family with.

"It's a nice day for walking," she said to Bill. "Did you come with anybody?"

Questions like that irritated Bill. His mother claimed to have so much power—some people said she was the most powerful juju in Burnside—yet, she didn't know he'd been right up the highway, fucking for nearly two hours. "I come by myself," he said.

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Serena kept on sewing. "What's troubling you, child? I been noticing you for a long time now. Something's troubling you mightily."

If she knew so damned much, why couldn't she tell what was troubling him? A blind man could see: He wanted to get away from here. "Ain't nothing troubling me, Ma. I'm a little bit tired, that's all."

His mother bit off a piece of thread. "Just a few more stitches and I'll be done. Lord knows, I do need a new dress. This one I'm wearing is about to fall off me." She put her sewing away, and stood up. She was nearly as tall as Bill, and she seemed to generate a solid kind of strength. "Let's go on the porch, honey. It's too hot to be in the house on a day like this." They went outside, where Zachary wagged his empty bottle at Serena. She picked up an earthen jug from a bench and filled the bottle for him. He went back to rocking and sucking as Serena sat on the steps with Bill.

"Honey, I know what's troubling you," Serena said. "You been thinking about the fact that you're black. And you been thinking about the white man, how he's got you in a real bind. You feel empty inside, like you was still some kind of slave, with no power, no hope for the future, no nothing. But that's not true, honey. We got juju to help us along."

Even though he was tired, Bill settled down to listen to a familiar story. In another time and place, Serena Kelsey would have been called a witch, perhaps even burned at the stake for meddling with the so-called powers of darkness. But to Bill's way of thinking, the word witch sounded "white"; and in the context of white America, it seemed to refer to men and women accused of signing a pact with the Devil in return for supernatural powers. But Bill's mother had taught him that to black slaves and their descendants, the white man was the Devil; and no pact with him was possible except one that left him decidedly in the driver's seat. Thus, Bill's mother told him for perhaps the hundredth time how juju was brought to America. The art was as old as Africa itself; and this art, along with the people who practiced it, was known as juju. All the muscle of its magic, all its violent strength, was aimed at casting spells on the white devil so that his black slaves could survive in captivity.

Even though she was only around forty, and slavery had been abolished for nearly a century, Bill's mother talked as though she might have been a passenger on the first vessels from Africa over three hundred years ago. She told how the sordid ships rocked and creaked like dromedaries on the gray Atlantic; how the naked slaves crowded around the most powerful juju and listened to urgent lessons

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on how to keep the white man in his place even as he swaggered about inside his own ignorance, mistakenly thinking he was keeping the black people in theirs.

"The white man was conjured," Serena said, "from the minute he stole us and put us on his ships. Our ancestors didn't have time to bring with them the things usually needed to make a juju. But they had their minds and the power of our gods. And they taught these things to all of us who came after them."

The slaves were heavily disappointed, once they got to Virginia, to find that roots and herbs, animals and insects—all that went into juju —were inferior to what had been available in the motherland. "In Africa," Serena said, "there were jujus so powerful that they could spit and bust your heels wide open, their conjure was that powerful. Because the stuff they used was pure and strong."

But here in America, everything seemed inferior, even the white man's anger, which, at its worst, resulted in the killing of some slave. In the beginning, that happened so frequently that the black people laughed in their cabins at night with a kind of thigh-slapping glee. Because the white man's values were so distorted that he looked upon death as a horrible punishment. But for some slaves, it was tender liberation from the sickly smell of white men, and white women in crinoline who were forever complaining about one thing or another.

"Certainly those slaves who provoked the white master into 'killing' them could have kept him at his distance," Bill's mother went on. "All of us knew juju by that time. Still, even with the weak stuff we had to use, any one of us could have stood the white man on his head. But some people just couldn't tolerate not being free. So they gave up, and let the white man kill them. The rest of us did the best we could with what we had. There was just one thought in our minds day and night. He will set us free. It was a silent cry that hung over his head like a gathering storm. He will set us free"

"So we conjured him," Serena said. "For over two hundred years, we befuddled his mind and increased his greed so that he had to bring more of us here in order to prosper more. We were like locusts over his land after a while, millions of us. But we blinded him, and he couldn't see that he was sliding down into destruction.

"We worked for him, that's true. But he had to feed and clothe us at a big expense to himself. When he wasn't looking, we beat his animals and trampled his crops. We made him think we loved him, that

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we were simple, foolish, fun-loving children. And all the time we were working the juju on him. We will be free.

"So that when the war for freedom did come, he went out and fought his own kind in order to keep us with him. But we were steadily working our juju. If we'd had the right stuff from Africa, honey, our masters would've lost the war in a day. But as it was, it took four years for him to come dragging home again, defeated by his brother. He said he was glad to see that at least some of his niggers had been loyal to him. And we said, as we tried to hide a smile, Master, we couldn't leave you, we love you and Missy, we have nowhere to go. But he was glad to get rid of us. He could barely feed himself. And that's how slavery ended. Juju had worked its effect."

"What happened after that?" Bill said. Old man Kelsey had gone to sleep, the bottle resting on his lap. Bill looked at his father and hated him. "We got our freedom. Then why we still so bad off?" He had never asked his mother those questions before. Perhaps it was the encounter with Miss Page that had sharpened his curiosity.

Serena shifted on the step. "What happened? Niggers went wild and ran to the cities. Working for practically nothing. Getting drunk. Joining churches that worshiped a white man. You see, they thought freedom was everything, but it was only a crack in the opening of a door. And juju had forced that door open. The next step was to fight for equality. But niggers flocked to the cities and forgot about juju. Down here, the ones who stayed, they took over the white man's land. They stopped practicing juju, stopped teaching it to their children. It was like a veil lifted off the white man's eyes. He looked around and said, We've got to put the nigger back in his place. And this time, he really did it. The Klan rode. They beat us and burned us and hung us . . . until we were worse off than before. We didn't have juju to protect us any more. And the few of us who still practice it, well, we had to turn to our own people to make a living, like I do now."

Many times, Bill had wondered whether the stories his mother told him were true. He didn't know whether he believed in that conjure stuff or not. Did Serena really have the power she talked about? Certainly she was sniggered at behind her back by some people. Nonetheless, Serena Kelsey was altogether calm and convincing as she spun out her tales of blacks using juju to sabotage the white man—adding to his greed while eating away his prosperity, restricting his ability to function, keeping him weak and ineffectual while blacks be-

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came sturdier and multiplied. And finally, sending white men out to fight each other over the question of slavery.

It seemed a long, drawn-out process to Bill. The wonder was not that it had failed, but that it had worked at all. Bill was thinking clearly enough now to ask his mother a basic question: If blacks with juju were so powerful, and white men were such devils, why not destroy them at once instead of going to all the trouble of trying to wear them down?

His mother had a ready answer. "Honey, I told you. What we needed to do that wasn't here. It's in Africa."

"Well, why not send somebody to Africa to get it?" He didn't know what it was; but she made it sound so huge and mysterious that, given the right instructions, surely somebody could find it and bring it back.

"They won't let us get it into the country," his mother said. "Don't you know they search everybody that comes here from Africa?"

Still he was not satisfied. "Why don't the Africans do it then? I mean, if they're where the stuff is, all those black people over there, why don't they do the juju for us?" It seemed a fair question; he would help the oppressed people of Africa if he could.

His mother sighed, shaking her head. "It don't work like that, honey. You're just too young to understand."

But he would not be put off. "I bet if I knew juju, I'd change everything." He knew he'd be the most powerful juju in the world; he'd find a way to get the stuff back from Africa. "Teach it to me. And tell me what the stuff is. Why don't you teach it to me?"

"There's no need for that now," his mother said. "Don't you see things getting better every day? We're not slaves any more. You and me, we live a reasonably happy life. You're going to school, getting an education. The white man don't bother us nearly so much as he used to."

Bill studied her as she selected a walnut from a basket and cracked it between powerful fingers, then digging the meat out of the shell's narrow convolutions with her nails. Was she lying? Or just plain crazy? Not only her, but all the other people in Burnside who believed in juju. And if it was true, why didn't Serena teach it to him? He'd make walnuts crack themselves. He'd make a fine house and have good clothes and white men for slaves. He'd make white girls smile at him . . . he'd make them suck his dick and drink all his sweet milk. . . . He'd destroy everybody that tried to fuck with him.

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"America is our home now," Serena said. She chewed a piece of nut with the utmost satisfaction. "You don't destroy where you live."

"I'd destroy it and go back to Africa," Bill said.

Serena cracked another walnut. "They don't want us in Africa now. Besides, we wouldn't be happy there any more. We're too civilized."

Bill looked at his father, snoring, slobbering down on his soiled shirt. He heard the hog grunt in the pen. Already the chickens had gone to roost, waiting on their perches for him to close the door against weasels and the fox. The land, the shack where he and his mother sat in the dwindling daylight, were so small and ugly that sometimes he felt like screaming. The shack itself leaned drunkenly to one side like a gray old man bent against a strong but invisible storm. This was civilized?

Bill felt too confused to laugh. He went and latched the chicken coop where all those stupid birds dozed in temporary safety, too dumb to know they were being protected and fattened for the frying pan and the pot. They reminded Bill of niggers, spurning one form of death for another—don't let anybody tell him that getting killed was liberation—as though life itself was the process of waiting until somebody decided it was time for you to die. Serena had been saying for years that there'd been change. Well, Bill couldn't see that much change at all. White people still had everything and niggers had nothing but misery. Except an occasional nigger like Mr. Willis. Or perhaps, as his mother said, he was too young to see.

On his way back to the house, Bill squinted through the scrub pines where he could see the Willis land drenched red from the dying sun. Right then, he decided to ask his mother to get him three or four acres of that land. Mr. Willis couldn't possibly miss it, Bill thought, because the land seemed to go on forever. Asking his mother to get him a small piece of it—just enough to sell and get away from here with—seemed a reasonable request to make of her with her vaunted powers. At the same time, it would put all her talk of juju to a crucial test. He ran the rest of the way to the house.

"Ma?" His father had awakened and was sucking the bottle again.

"Yeah?"

"Can you get me a piece of that Willis land?"

Her eyes darted away from him like minnows in a clear creek.

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"How can I get you that man's land, honey? He's a mighty powerful nigger." Her voice was heavy with evasion.

Bill lifted the greasy juju pouch from between the pile of her breasts. "With this."

Serena wrapped her hand around his; and he could feel her heart pounding like a steady hammer in her chest. Her hand was rough, but surprisingly cool. "Why you want that man's land?"

"Because it's pretty." He dared not tell her the real reason. Seen through the pines in the setting sun, the pasture looked like a ruby shattered over the earth. "Besides, I don't want all of it. Only two or three acres. Maybe four. You can do it, can't you?"

She released his hand and held the conjure bag herself. "It ain't the same as curing boils, taking spells off niggers, things like that."

"Why not?" Hadn't she claimed that she and others like her had kept the white man conjured for over three hundred years? With a record like that—if it was true—getting him three or four acres of the Willis land seemed paltry indeed. "You can do it, can't you?" he persisted.

She spoke without hesitation. "I can do it. I don't know whether I ought to do it. But I can do it."

His face felt hot, and he turned away to hide his sense of triumph. "Tomorrow," he said. "Can you do it tomorrow?"

"It'll take time," Serena said. "It'll take at least a year, maybe more."

Bill's first impulse was to accuse her of stalling, of bullshitting him so he'd finish high school. But he intended to graduate anyway. Being dumb and a nigger at the same time wasn't worth a damn. And it was true that what he'd asked was a formidable feat. To own the Willis land, even a part of it! He could certainly wait a year. Suddenly, the sun disappeared; and Bill wondered why he hadn't thought to ask his mother to make it stand still as a more immediate and impressive display of her powers.

After that, he went to school with a new sense of hope. He had never been a good student; but he honestly applied himself in the final month until that year's class graduated. Bill watched them march up for their diplomas, knowing there was little for them to do except go North, or return to little dirt farms or shanties like his own. And the diploma—it meant they had survived the crushing boredom of a system that pretended to educate black children while in reality it was designed to render them servile, pliant, and complacent.

Bill himself had been promoted by the skin of his teeth to be a sen-

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ior. He had long-dicked Miss Page seven or eight more times before school closed and she packed up and went back to Richmond. Bill promised to write her, although he had no intention of doing so. He had a future cut out for himself, and it had nothing to do with staying in the South. Once his mother got him the Willis land, he was going to sell it and head North. But he promised Miss Page that he would stay in Burnside, that he would keep on loving her until she came back as a permanent teacher in September, and that he would visit her in Richmond at least twice a month.

"You really promise?" They were sitting in her car. She was perfumed and powdered, dressed like a real city woman, now that she was going back to Richmond.

"I promise." He had learned to lie expertly, even with his body. Whenever she touched his dick, it jumped hard, although he had lost all interest in her.

"I'll see you in a couple of weeks then?"

"I'll be there."

"You love me?"

"I do."

She smiled with pure pleasure. "Oh, I'm so glad they sent me to Dillwyn!" she cried. "If not, I never would have met you. I wouldn't have had these absolutely perfect two months. Oh, I do love you!" Then her voice fell a full octave, and she seemed almost cunning. "You will get a job for the summer, won't you?" He said he would; but that didn't seem to satisfy her. "I mean, if we're going to get married, we might as well start off right now trying to save something. Don't you agree?"

Bill nodded. Miss Page touched his dick; dutifully, it swelled against his thigh. When she went to kiss him for the umpteenth time, he leaned back and guided her head to the swelling. "Not with my good clothes on," she murmured. "Please." But he pressed harder on her head and unzipped his jeans with one stroke, he didn't give a damn about her good clothes.

And so she left—yaller, dumb, glassy-eyed; belching to keep down Bill's good come and the sweat of his balls; clothes slightly wrinkled; waving backwards from the car window as she headed for Richmond. Bill didn't even bother to wave. He hated to see that white Buick leave, but he'd have him a dozen like that once his mother laid her heavy shit on old man Willis.

As far as Bill could tell, Serena was putting together some really superb shit as she muttered over ointments and herbs. She made a

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waxen image of old man Willis and arranged with friends who sometimes helped out at the Willis house to bring her parings from his nails, strands of hair, and bits of his clothing that they snipped in secret. Once she gave Bill a gray powder to sprinkle across the entrance to the Willis place. As Serena instructed, he did it at the stroke of midnight when the moon was full. The lazy acres stretched ahead of him like a silver dream as he spread the powder across the road and then raced home to his mother where she groaned in her bed, rolling her eyes and muttering things Bill couldn't understand. She's really putting something bad on old man Willis, Bill thought. He felt damned good.

Summer passed with Bill working all over Alcanthia County as a field hand and whatever other jobs were available for a strapping black boy with a broad back and a pleasing way of speaking to white people. He worked cheerfully, and spent all he earned. Why save? His mind was always on the Willis farm.

He came home one day and found his father dead in the rocking chair on the porch. The old man had flung the baby bottle of brandy halfway across the yard, as though he didn't mind meeting death sitting on his ass, but he objected going to hell sucking like a baby. His mother didn't know until Bill told her. She wiped at both eyes with her apron, but there was no trace of a tear. "Well, that's life," she said. She sighed like a bellows collapsing. They buried the old man, and things went on as before.

Bill never did go to Richmond to see Miss Page. For most of the summer, she wrote him a string of pleading letters that smelled of violet. Tell me if something's wrong? Do you still love me? Have you found somebody new? Why don't you come to see me? I miss you. Bill read them and tore them up. Once or twice, he wiped his ass with them, instead of using pages from the Sears Roebuck catalogue. After a while, he got no more letters from her. And when school opened in the fall, Bill went confidently, fully expecting Miss Page not to be on the staff. She wasn't. That was the last he expected to hear of her, dumb bitch.

The school year seemed to pass without his noticing it. Thanksgiving, New Year's; and then the subtle smell of honeysuckle that meant spring had come again. He turned eighteen in April. For his birthday, he stood at the wire fence running along the Willis land. Vd plant my crops over yonder, he thought. And Vd build my house over there near the creek. And put the cattle and horses and pigs beyond.

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That was in case he changed his mind about selling the land. But he wasn't about to change his mind.

Some of his classmates were already preparing for graduation and beyond. But Bill was waiting for the Willis land, as his mother had promised him. Because neither of them had mentioned it again since that day on the porch, he came to believe that the covenant between them was true. If not, wouldn't she have told him so? And why did she send him to sprinkle that gray powder? It didn't bother him that every time he saw Mr. Willis, the old man looked hale and hearty. His mother had only promised him a part of the Willis land, not to kill Mr. Willis. Bill believed very strongly in what his mother was doing; and he expected it to come true, as his mother had promised it would.

But two weeks after he graduated from high school, his mother died on a hot July night. She scarcely weighed a hundred pounds; and it surprised him that she had wasted away almost imperceptibly.

She called him to her bed and said to him in a mere whisper, "I'm dying, son. I've just a few dollars to leave you, there in the Bible in the Book of Revelations." He had to bend to hear her, and her thin voice sliced through him like a knife.

"You dying, Ma?" He felt nothing but tremendous anger. "What about your promise? What about the Willis place? It's been longer than a year, like you said. I been waiting patiently, Ma. Will I get it?"

Her eyes filled with pity he had never seen before. "I couldn't do it," she said, and now he knelt to hear her. Her breath smelled rotten. A strand of hair lay across her forehead like a slender snake. He wanted to brush it into place, but he hated her too much to touch her.

A whole year! More than a year. Waiting, working, hoping in this goddamn hole. And she had the nerve to die!

"What you mean you couldn't do it? You lied to me, that's what you did! You lied!"

"Son, I'm dying. Speak to me gently. I tried everything I knew how. It just didn't work. Can't you see I'm dying? All these months, trying to get that land for you, it's been killing me."

She reached for his hand, but he pulled away and stormed to the porch where he sat and cried. All those goddamn lies. She was no more a juju than . . . than that oak tree was. He believed in her, and

she'd let him down. And the Willis land still remained the Willis land. He held his head in his hands and wept bitterly.

Once he thought he heard Serena call him, but he sat where he was. A full moon had risen, and the night was almost hazy with light. Through the limbs of a tall oak tree, he saw stars hanging like Christmas decorations from the branches.

When he did go inside, his mother was dead. Her shriveled hand was holding the leather pouch around her neck with the charm inside. Bill stared at her a long while. Then he opened the Bible to the Book of Revelations and found two hundred dollars there in ten dollar bills.

He packed a few clothes in a cardboard suitcase. Then he went to the woods with a shovel and dug a long, shallow hole. He returned to the house and picked up his mother's body. She was so light that he wondered what it was that killed her, as though something had eaten the substance out of her and left a hollow shell.

He carried her into the woods and dumped her into the hole. Then he threw dirt in her face with the shovel, and kicked some in, and finally got her covered up. She had taught him the Bible, primarily to demonstrate that it was a white man's lie. So he didn't know how to pray with any honesty. He spat on her grave, a hole so narrow that he'd had to stuff her into it doubled over, like an embryo returning to the womb of earth. He kicked a stone away so there'd be nothing, after a while, to show where she'd been buried. "Lying black bitch," he said.

He went back to the house and poured kerosene oil on the beds, his few books, the roots and charms his mother kept in a special cupboard. Then he smashed a lighted lamp on the floor and walked out with his suitcase. It was a long walk down the lonesome highway to the Greyhound stop, so he rested in the yard a minute to catch his breath.

The shack was burning like a large bonfire out of control. Only then did Bill think that maybe the woods would catch fire as well. Maybe the Willis place, too. The way he felt now, he hoped the whole goddamned county would go up in flames. Beyond the red blaze, the stars glittered like a field of diamonds; the moon floated like an egg yolk. Bill was still too angry to feel sad about the destruction of his last contact with Burnside. He was going to catch the bus for New Jersey, where everybody from down here went. He didn't feel one bit sorry for his mother. In fact, he hated her. He was sorry he'd buried

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her in the woods; he should have left her in the house and burned it down on top of her.

Then he heard a footstep behind him, and he turned.

An old woman was standing there. In the bright red light, he recognized her at once as Aunt Keziah. She was bent and hooked like a witch. Her clothes seemed to be in tatters. She supported herself on a thin stick, like a long cane, as though she was too old and weak to hold herself up. Aunt Keziah was also a juju. Some people said that she was the most powerful juju in all Virginia. Bill certainly didn't believe in that shit now. Still, the way Aunt Keziah had sneaked up on him—where the hell had she come from?—gave him an eerie feeling. "Evening, Aunt Keziah," he said, as respectfully as he could. The old woman frightened him.

"Evening, son." He thought he smelled her foul breath even above the stench of rags and pine from the burning house. And she seemed to be chewing her gums. "I see you all packed," she said. "You coming home with me."

She said it with such authority that Bill took several steps away from her. "No, ma'am." He shouted so she could hear him over the noisy flames. "I'm going to catch the Greyhound. I'm going to New Jersey."

The old woman shook her head slowly, like it was held on stiff springs. Her face, everything, was red from the fire; she seemed to swim in front of him like rose-colored rain washing down a window-pane. "You wrong there, son. Just like your Mammy was wrong. You coming home with me. I could use me a strong young man around the house."

His mouth felt bone dry. "What you mean about my Mama being wrong?"

Aunt Keziah seemed to shrug underneath all her rags. "She tried to conjure the wrong person, that's what. Mr. Willis, he pays me every year just to keep people from conjuring him. When your Mammy thought she was so smart and tried to work the juju on him, I threw it back at her. Why you think she died?"

"You killed my Mama?" He only whispered; but again her head swiveled on a rusty spring, as though she had heard him with built-in ear phones. "Your Mammy killed herself. She was messing with things she didn't know nothing about. That's what's always been wrong with the younger generations. They think they can play with fire without getting burnt." Her lips turned downward contemptuously, like thick rubber. "Now, you coming home with me? Or you

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want me to call the Sheriff and tell him you killed your Mammy? That you buried her in the woods for that two hundred dollars you got in your suitcase?"

How did she know that? The fire from the shack was hot on his back, crackling and sputtering like fat in a frying pan. She scared the shit out of him. Man, she had him right by the balls. He might as well go and spend the night with her. He could catch the bus in the morning. Once he told her what really happened, she would let him go. But what did she want with him around her house? He certainly wasn't going to fuck her, because he'd heard all his life that young men got worms from fucking old women.

She seemed to anticipate his decision, for she turned with the help of her long stick and tottered away from him. Hefting his suitcase, he followed her.

But it was more than two years before Bill Kelsey got away from Aunt Keziah. Looking back, he barely remembered going home with her. She lived a good five miles from his own house—where his house had been—but he had no recollection of how he got there. They must have walked; but the way Aunt Keziah moved, like a decrepit puppet with unoiled joints, the trip would have taken all of that night and the following day. He only remembered that the stars were painfully bright in diseased clusters, like white measles. The full moon was lumped like clabber milk, streaked with a kind of celestial snot. He did remember that, beginning that night, and with much bragging, Aunt Keziah rode his ass until he sweat.

If she was a witch, his peter was a broomstick. When she ate, his peter was her menu. And while he continued to reject the possibility that the juju was something real, a frightened part of him seemed to stand at a safe distance and howl that he was lying. How else could he account for the fact that Aunt Keziah seemed to become young and beautiful after sunset? Her organs stretched and snapped back like chewing gum as she rode him. Or his young flesh encountered exuberant youth in her arms, legs, and thighs, as they twined around him like anacondas and he ground his saucered ass. Her lips made him drunk; and the spit in her sweet mouth, a delectable liqueur of love, poured into him, over him; and he felt stronger as she first feasted between his legs, and then he fucked between hers until he feared that he would faint from inexpressible joy, ignoring the distant voice warning that such pleasure was mere illusion.

Every morning he woke up in a daze. Aunt Keziah bathed and

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fondled him in a blue porcelain tub in a blue bathroom. That alone seemed strange—an indoor bathroom with hot and cold running water in a shack that might have been a duplicate of the one he had burned. But the pleasure was too great. He had no will of his own. Aunt Keziah always wore rags and some kind of turban around her hair, even as she bathed him. Sometimes he suspected that she was two people: one that bathed and bossed and rebuked him while he worked like a slave in her fields, slopping hogs, chasing chickens, milking cows, churning the milk into butter that he helped her carry to market.

Then there was another side of her, which he suspected that she wore those rags to hide, as though she was really a lithe young woman rather than an old harridan. By day, she was toothless and scolding; yet, at night, when she came to him with her supple young body full of ripples and lovely muscularity, her small teeth nibbled his dick until his asshole turned inside out and she drank his ejaculations with a kind of glorious appetite, lifting him off the bed with an incredibly strong hand, so that he was arched into her mouth and supported on the bed by only his heels and the back of his head.

Then she would talk. "Am I not lovely? Is not my pussy pretty? When I was your age, I used to fuck out of both drawers legs. I love my pretty pussy. I love it so much, I come when I walk, just thinking about it."

He had never been so excited in his life. Except for the mornings when she bathed him, the days were mean, evil, and vicious. By day, as she goaded him to work hard, her tongue was as sharp as a long tack. But by night, it was as sweet and spiced as sugared slime.

Although he had no will of his own, Bill's mind was often alert. She's putting something in your food. She has a doll of you made somewhere. And then he would stop listening to whatever voice whispering to him, for he had never known such unending pleasure. Furthermore, his own body seemed to glow with an unearthly beauty: slender, yet strong, muscles up and down his belly like thin ridges. He was taller, stronger, healthier. And happier.

People in Burnside said how nice it was that Aunt Keziah had taken him in after his father had died, and his mother, poor creature, had burned up in the house that way. He knew what they were talking about, and yet he felt only the faint movement of some distant and unpleasant memory. All he remembered was beauty, even when she scolded him, either at home or in front of people when he went shopping with her or to church. He felt beautiful. She dressed him

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beautifully in suits and shirts, in socks and shoes that caressed his body as though they had been spun from the silk of spiders.

All the women looked at him with hungry eyes. But when they spoke to him, he could only smile, showing creamy white teeth; but his tongue was riveted to the roof of his mouth. For three years, the only words he spoke to anyone except to Aunt Keziah were the barest social amenities. Good day. Goodbye. Thank you. Yassir. No ma'am. And yet he was happy, like a song sung by the wind. When Aunt Keziah told him, as she was riding his dick, that he had been with her nearly three years, he felt that not even three hours had passed from the time she had brought him from his house to hers.

Even though his mind was stunned, as though it had been felled by a sledge-hammer blow, he noticed that Aunt Keziah had begun acting strangely. For one thing, she went to church more often, which hardly seemed proper for a woman who was supposed to be a juju. Also, she had accepted a bull from Mr. Willis; but she did not breed the beast with any of her cows. She kept him in the best part of her pasture and seemed to be pleased as the bull grew large and strong.

On more than one occasion, she asked Bill to pray for her. The very first time, something snapped in his mind. She was lying in her own bed, propped up on pillows, with a hot-water bottle working somewhere under the covers. Bill wondered if she might not be dying.

It was the first really clear thought he'd had in years, as though she had freed a small portion of him so that he could do her an important Christian favor. He looked at her carefully. She was the oldest, ugliest woman he had ever known. And she seemed to be afraid not only of death, but of something else which he could not name.

"What shall I pray?" he said.

She frowned. "Pray anything. A good-looking young man like you, the Lord will surely answer your prayer quicker than he would mine."

She was supposed to be a juju, yet she was talking about the Lord. Bill saw the clear contradiction in that; and a part of his mind that had been hiding slid like a snake from hibernation into the warm sunlight. "What should I pray?"

"Anything." She sounded grumpy, impatient. Afraid. "Just pray for me. Ask the Lord to save my soul."

Whatever had been holding him dropped away like struts supporting a new ship before it slides into the purifying water. Now he knew who he was. Bill Kelsey. He remembered every detail of that fire.

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And his suitcase was on the top shelf of Aunt Keziah's closet, unopened, just as he'd packed it. The two hundred dollars was still there that his mother had left him in the Bible.

Bill Kelsey. He felt sad, jubilant, freed from the old woman's influence, but impelled at the same time by another power that was even more demanding. He looked at Aunt Keziah, how old and horrible she was. And for some reason, he thought of Miss Page, her yellow thighs and flat belly slapping in a frenzy against his.

"Pray," Aunt Keziah grumbled. "Please."

Please. If she was a juju, the spell was completely broken. Bill knelt by her bed and folded his arms. He said the only prayer he knew:

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Aunt Keziah was furious. She raised her arm as though to strike him; but it remained there as though held by an invisible hand. She looked bewildered. "Help me," she whispered. Bill tugged at her arm with all his strength. It stood hard as a steel bar. He nearly broke it before he forced it down to the bed. Aunt Keziah was whimpering. "You hurt my arm/' she said. She sounded like an injured child.

"I'm sorry," Bill said. "It just wouldn't come down. What happened?"

But she ignored his question "You didn't pray for me," she said. "That's a child's prayer As old as I am, do you think God is going to bless me for a child's prayer?"

"I'm sorry," he said. He could see fear in the hollows and wrinkles of her face.

"Don't you know grown-up prayers?" Aunt Keziah whined.

"No ma'am."

"None?" She sounded desperate, more feeble than before "What kind of mother did you have, not teaching you grown-up prayers?"

"She was a juju. At least, I think she was. She didn't believe in God."

The old woman grunted as though she was coming back to life "I'm a juju, too. And I don't believe in God But I want to be on the safe side. If there is a God, I don't want Him to forget me."

"Yes ma'am." He could think of nothing else to say.

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She turned painfully in the bed. He'd never seen her like this before. "You sick, Aunt Keziah? Is there something I can do for you?"

There were white bubbles of spit at the corners of her lips. Bill thought she was losing her mind, or dying. "Pray." Now she was tossing as though she was in the hands of a large, evil wringer. Her eyes seemed ready to pop from her head. But they were full of surprise, too, as though she had never expected anything like this to happen to her. "Pray . . . please pray. . . ."

Bill was trembling. He stood up, waving his hands, trying to grab a prayer from the air. What the fuck could he say? "Jesus, protect me from the powers of darkness and guide me with the powers of light." It was something he had heard in church, and it had stuck in his mind like a burr.

But was it a prayer? Aunt Keziah lay perfectly still. Bill thought she might be dead. Her cheeks were shining with sweat. "You all right, Aunt Keziah?"

She cleared her throat. "I better be. I ask you to pray for me, and you pray for yourself. You ignorant, that's what. Now go to bed." She seemed calmer, better.

Bill undressed. She was staring straight at the ceiling. "Go to your own bed," she said. A long time ago, she had shown him a dirty little cot in a dingy back room; but he had slept with her every night since he'd been here. He picked up his clothes, blew out the lamp, and went to what she called his room.

The place was moist and disagreeable. He hated being here by himself. What he really wanted was some pussy. And he wondered what had happened to Aunt Keziah. For a delicious moment, he thought that some juju somewhere was turning her shit back on her, as she had claimed to turn his mother's shit back on her so strong that Serena Kelsey had died. He flopped face down on the cot. The blanket smelled old and musty; but he was aware that for the first time since his mother died, he was almost in his right mind. Almost . . . because a young woman's voice sang lullabies to him until he fell asleep.

Also, he knew that he was still tied to Aunt Keziah by a single cord that had not broken when the rest were cut. Before he fell asleep, he wondered where the young woman was that had come to him every night. If she had been Aunt Keziah in another form, then she was not only a juju, but the best damned one that ever lived.

His dick got hard and started to hurt from the weight of his body. Both ears were filled with the voice of some woman somewhere sing-

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ing songs of delicious sex. He fell asleep wondering whether the voice was Aunt Keziah's—"I love my pretty pussy. Do you love my pussy, pretty?" Or was it the beautiful young woman locked away somewhere, perhaps in a bottle, waiting for someone to liberate her, and, in doing so, to liberate him at the same time?

The next day was Baptismal Sunday. This year, there was more than the usual excitement, because it had been discovered that Mae Cobb, the preacher's light-skinned wife, who was supposedly a semi-invalid, was also unbaptized. This interesting news ran around Burn-side from house to house like a rabid dog. "The preacher's wife? She ain't been baptized?" Emboldened by the general dismay, a bunch of church sisters had taken it upon themselves to visit Mae Cobb and call her attention to what they gently referred to as her "little oversight."

Aunt Keziah told Bill about the encounter as she was putting herself together for the baptismal. She was as happy as a pig in shit. Bill was already dressed, and he noticed that Aunt Keziah's ugly old body was bent like a taut bow. He'd never paid attention to that before.

"You know Reverend Cobb's wife. She's been laying on that sofa in their front room practically ever since they got here. We all thought she was real bad-off sick. But she told those women there wasn't too much wrong with her. Her main complaint was that she was born and bred in the city, and she didn't like it here in the country. So she just laid down on that sofa and didn't get up, not even to go to the toilet."

Aunt Keziah chuckled as she wrestled a purple dress over her head. She seemed spry and lively, as though last night had never happened. "She did her business in a slop jar," Aunt Keziah said, "and made the preacher dump it for her. All these years, he's been waiting on her hand and foot. And all that was wrong was that she wanted to go back to the city."

"Does Reverend Cobb know that?" Bill said. He'd known about the preacher's sick wife. In fact, his own mother had sent him from time to time to take a jar of pickles or preserves to Mae Cobb. "Does Reverend Cobb know?"

"His wife told the women he did. So much for your powers of light. I'll stay just as I am, thank you. Anyway, Mrs. Cobb told the women what her problem really is. She believes in God, but she doesn't believe in her husband as a minister of God. She told the women—and this was in complete confidence, so don't you go spreading it around—that Mr. Cobb's worse than any animal once he leaves

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that pulpit. His own wife said that, according to what I hear. The women there, they said she talked very frankly. They said she told them that thing between the preacher's legs would be a whole lot better on a bull.^,,

Aunt Keziah showed all her gums and dabbed a mask of powder on her face. Bill hated her, and all those other women, spreading Mr. Cobb's business all over Burnside. Bill felt like pulling down his suitcase and walking away from Aunt Keziah. Indeed, last night's young woman's voice urged him to do so. But Aunt Keziah still held him, if not by the whole nuts, if not even by one nut, then by a strand of dick hair that she would not let go of and he could not pull from her grasp. "Is that why the preacher's wife pretends she's sick? Because Mr. Cobb's got a big dick and she don't want to fuck?"

"Honey, hush! Everybody ain't like me. Besides, today is Sunday. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying things like that. Anyway, that is the impression she gave the ladies. That Mr. Cobb's hung like a bull and she took to the sofa to keep from being his country cow. As for her never being baptized, when the women brought that up, she told them that was true. She said nobody ever asked her."

"Nobody?" Aunt Keziah had pinned a brooch to her bosom and a black hat to her hair with a long pin. Bill helped her to the door. "Not even Mr. Cobb? Did he know?"

"Not even Mr. Cobb. And he knew. It took those ladies to get her word that she'd be baptized today." Bill picked her up and nearly threw her into the buggy. But Aunt Keziah was in a jovial mood, and seemed not to notice. "So what does that do to your powers of light?"

"Not a goddamned thing." Bill climbed into the buggy, under the canopy with her, and flicked the sorrel mare with a switch. "It makes me sick, somebody pretending like that."

"Like your Mammy pretended?" Aunt Keziah said, cackling. She fell back in her seat and held her hat as the buggy pulled off.

"Like my Mammy," Bill said. He knew he had changed, that he was marching toward freedom, even if Aunt Keziah did still hold him. Now he was twenty-one years old and he was mad. Mae Cobb. That lying bitch. Pretending to be sick just so she wouldn't have to fuck.

Bill, honey, you're going to be free. He looked around, astonished. Aunt Keziah had her eyes closed and was holding a yellow handkerchief to her mouth and nose to keep out the dust. You're going to be free. Now "he recognized the voice. From last night ... of a sweet

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young woman who seemed to live inside his ear. Or was she so sweet and young? Was it his mother protecting him, sending him promises from wherever it is that jujus go when they die?

He settled back and drove the mare comfortably. But he could not put Mae Cobb from his mind. A lying bitch. And today, she was doing Burnside the honor of finally getting baptized. Well, he hoped she'd drown in the creek. He drove on. Aunt Keziah was dozing now. And Bill drove on, with a certain faith that somewhere ahead of him, not too far away, lay the road to liberation. All that kept him from freedom was the thickness of a dick hair.

The choir was already singing down at the baptismal site. "We Shall Gather at the River." September had never seemed more beautiful. Bill poked Aunt Keziah awake and guided the mare into the space where other buggies, pickups, and cars were parked. Bill helped Aunt Keziah down from the buggy; and he walked impatiently with her, supporting the sharp point of her elbow, as they went down a slight incline to the creek.

There was a certain amount of muttering among the people crowded on both sides of the creek when Aunt Keziah appeared. It was the first time in recent memory that she had come to a baptismal; and her name was whispered with a certain awe, as though the Empress of India herself had come all this way just to see how niggers baptized themselves.

Aunt Keziah waved her walking stick and the whispering stopped. A younger woman gave up her stump to Aunt Keziah. When she was settled, Aunt Keziah waved her stick at Reverend Cobb, who was wrapped in a sheet in the middle of the creek. "Get along with your conjuring, Reverend," she called. "It ain't nobody but me." On both sides of the creek, the crowd tittered that she should be audacious enough to ridicule the sacrament of baptism by calling it conjuring.

Bill didn't think Aunt Keziah was funny at all. He wondered what she would do, what the people would do, if they knew how she'd begged him to pray to God for her last night. He took a step away, but she stopped him with an almost inaudible hiss. "Where you going, boy?" He didn't really know; but it irritated him that she'd asked, especially in front of so many people. "Nowhere," he said.

But he was going somewhere—about twenty feet down the creek, near where Mr. Cobb was standing, a piece of land jutted out into the creek like a large green breast. He was going there, being pulled there, actually. His head and feet felt light; and it was only Aunt

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Keziah's hand tugging at his trouser leg that seemed to keep him from floating off into the air.

"You stay here with me," she said. The two of them might have been invisible. The choir was humming that stupid song like a large hive of bumblebees. Even the people closest to him and Aunt Keziah seemed not to see or hear them. "You ain't got no right to tell me what to do," he said. But why did he say it? His heart seeemed to stop and start again. "Just stay here with me," she said. The white mask of powder on her face was streaked with sweat, as though she was melting away.

Then, her fingers released the cloth of his trousers, slowly, painfully, as though they were being pried loose by a larger, more powerful hand. Her gummy old eyes narrowed with fear and surprise. Now Bill was free of her hand, but her arm seemed paralyzed in the same position as she'd held him. She closed her eyes and breathed hard; the arm flew to her lap, and she rubbed it with the other hand as though it was sore. "Just go ahead then," she said. "I'll deal with you when we get home."

But Bill was already going to the green breast. He felt like feathers, like leaves propelled by a warm wind. What the hell's going on? Then a door seemed to close in his mind; and he blinked two or three times and found himself on the green mound, close enough to Mr. Cobb to reach out and touch him.

Mr. Cobb was baptizing the men with a certain amount of impatience. He held each man firmly around the waist, while his other hand supported them under the chin as he tilted them back three times into the water and said the cleansing words: "I baptize you in the name of the Father (tilt) and the Son (tilt) and the Holy Ghost (tilt) Amen."

Although it was hot September, the water was usually cold and unpleasant at this spot, because it was sheltered from the sun by a bower of sycamore trees that formed a pious arch overhead. What sun did get through shone on the creek like gold pieces. Mr. Cobb himself was plainly shivering in his white sheet. On the other bank, six women lined up in their sheets, waiting to be baptized. Mae Cobb was the last among them. She was a very pretty woman with a high-yaller complexion; and she held her sheet loosely, so that it was impossible to tell about her body. But it was obvious that she was last in line so that the other women would not be offended because of her light color and the fact that she was married to the preacher.

Come back. Bill swiveled and looked at Aunt Keziah. She was try-

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ing to command him with her eyes, he knew that. But another force held him where he was. He felt Aunt Keziah pulling him with the weak strength of a worn old woman. He stood where he was and watched Mr. Cobb baptize the last man. He felt safe and protected now. Mr. Cobb represented the powers of light, that's why Aunt Keziah couldn't call him, his mind, back into the servitude of her darkness.

Now the women came down in their billowing sheets to be baptized. They were supposed to be getting their souls cleansed, but Bill saw their hard, wet bodies squirm against Mr. Cobb as he baptized them in the three names of God. When it was Mae Cobb's turn, she walked toward her husband with such sinuous grace that Bill's dick got hard. Mr. Cobb had a hard on, too, despite the cold water. Mae Cobb's thighs especially excited Bill, where the wet sheet stuck to them in a kind of transparency. He could even see the dark patch of hairs at the juncture of her legs. Bill's dick got harder, like a man starved for the taste and touch of light-colored pussy.

Come back, Bill. Aunt Keziah was steadily calling him. Fuck you, he thought. He wondered if she'd picked that up. Come back. I'll make myself young and pretty for you again. But wild horses couldn't have pulled him away from Mae Cobb now. He examined her taffy-colored shoulders, her small, delicate features, like a white woman's. Mr. Cobb's dick was still hard; his was, too. He pictured Mae Cobb fully naked, sobbing and gasping under the preacher, and under him, as they combined dicks and drove into her cruelly and blindly.

We shall gather at the river. . . .The choir was singing loud and strong for the purification of this important sinner; and she swung her hips as she waded through the cold, clear water to her husband. Mr. Cobb half-stepped, and reached, and drew his wife to him, tilting her head backwards at the same time. Come back here, boy.

But then it was as if Bill and Mr. Cobb became one, and Aunt Keziah's commands receded into a bowel of darkness . . . and Bill luxuriated inside the body of Mr. Cobb, in the pure cold water swirling around his legs and butt. ... He rammed his dick like a sturdy other arm against Mae's thigh as he began intoning the formula of purification: "I baptize you in the name of the Father . . ."

She certainly could feel his dick against her, and her eyes opened in mild surprise, replaced almost at once by doubt and the beginnings of frightened desire as he carried her back, farther back, curving her hips toward him at the same time as though to open her pussy and then split it wide open with dick there in the baptismal creek with the

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church members and the choir and nearly every other nigger in Burn-side looking on. And then he immersed her head under the sanctifying water while at the same time he admired her breasts, white-sheeted and perfectly visible to his eye, where they floated on top of the water as though they belonged to the body of the creek. "... and of the Son," he said, and he brought her up. But he got no farther than that, because he looked and thought he saw a snake—had Aunt Keziah thrown it into the creek?—a water moccasin, standing still in the water above them, watching them. . . .

Mae wiped the water from her eyes, and Mr. Cobb touched her, nodding up the creek. "There's a snake up there," he said. "You see it, honey?" She squinted, nodded. But the choir kept on humming, and the people stood around as though nothing exciting at all was happening. Mr. Cobb figured that they couldn't see the snake because of the sun and sycamore shadows on the water. But he could see it waiting there, as though biding its time before it attacked.

Mr. Cobb still had his arm around Mae. Common sense should have told her that it was dangerous to stay in the water with a snake. But he saw that she wanted to test something in him—probably his love for God, or his respect for himself—and she slid her eye along the magnificent length of his dick poking the sheet out under the shimmering water. "Stay here with me," she whispered, because he had started to lead her to the creek bank. "Stay here with me, dear love. And I'll get up off that sofa. We'll make love just like before. I've missed you so much all these years." She moved closer to him and squeezed the pole under his sheet.

He ran. He left her in the creek and ran to shore. And stood there like a huffing, puffing black bear, feeling a little ridiculous. Because he could see then that it wasn't a snake at all that had frightened him. It was a long, narrow stick—exactly the kind of stick Aunt Keziah carried—caught on a piece of weed just about where Aunt Keziah sat on the stump.

As he watched, Mae lifted her eyes and prayed, and the stick dislodged then and floated harmlessly past her. Standing like that in the dappled water, she reminded him of an old-fashioned saint, lips moving silently, hands clasped, a clear light radiating from her pure, upturned face. Then she cupped her hand, dipped water, and poured it over her head three times. "I baptize me in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

Mr. Cobb's dick was still hard, and he didn't even try to hide it. In fact, he pulled the sopping sheet tighter around his behind. The peo-

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pie in the choir hummed on; but they and the congregation on both sides of the creek looked at him like they thought he was a wild man. Fuck them, he thought. He strutted down the path to the church, his dick harder than it had ever been before in his life. He could hear the people whispering and talking among themselves, but he didn't care. He went on to the church.

He had dried himself and was almost finished dressing when Mae came into the room, dripping water. "Why did you run?" she said. Her eyes were bright with scorn.

He was ashamed to tell her that what frightened him had only been a stick. Somehow, he knew that Aunt Keziah was involved. "I'm afraid of snakes," he said.

She had taken off the rubber cap and was scrubbing her long good hair with the towel he had used. He wondered if he'd left any dirt on it that she might see.

"Oh, pooh," she said. He knew then that she was nothing special at all, just another nigger bitch. Despite her fine hair and light skin, which had made him marry her in the first place. Just another nigger, because a real white woman would have run with him from the creek. At least, he thought so.

Mae dropped the sheet then and started drying her whole naked body with the towel. He saw where her elbows and knees were darker than the rest of her, a sure sign of the black blood in her trying to express itself.

He turned his back and walked out of the church, because he valued free will, even the freedom not to love Mae any more. He did not think it was good to love either God or man as much as he had loved Mae. It was another kind of bondage, more burdensome even than religion; and he knew that if he had stayed there in the creek, or even in the church with her naked like that, she would have become his laughing, light-skinned goddess, while he would have had to become her subject and her most worshipful slave.

Because what had frightened him more than thinking that the stick was a snake, had been the love and desire he'd felt for Mae in all that cold water. That much love is very evil, he told himself. Also, his love for Mae's color had kept him from being a pure black man with some kind of black man's mission on this earth. Which meant that most of the time, he had tried his best, black as he was, to act like a white man around her. At that moment, he started to hate her. Just another vain, light-skinned nigger bitch with dark elbows and knees. And he knew that one day, he was going to kill her. . . .

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/ bet you're ready to come back now. Aunt Keziah's voice sounded amused. Bill looked around. Everyone had gone, as though a director had ordered the stage cleared. Only Aunt Keziah waited for him on the stump. Bill felt haunted, afraid. For a while there, he and Mr. Cobb had been one. What the fuck was going on anyway? But he did know one thing: Mr. Cobb couldn't do him a bit of good. He needed help himself. The powers of light. Shit.

He collected Aunt Keziah and tossed her into the buggy. She was sprightly and amused, as though she knew what had happened to him, that the slender thread holding him hadn't been broken either by the church or by the sweet voice he supposed was his mother's. "You're a very naughty boy," Aunt Keziah said. She slapped his wrist with her yellow handkerchief; he didn't say a word.

Aunt Keziah laughed until she coughed on her own spit. "The preacher sure did run, didn't he?"

"He thought it was a snake," Bill said. He'd already noticed that Aunt Keziah didn't have her stick with her. "Did you have something to do with that?"

"What do you think?" Aunt Keziah said, looking wise. "But you enjoyed yourself, didn't you?"

Bill didn't answer. He steered the mare to the porch, and waited. Aunt Keziah stepped down, and he went to the stable with the mare. "You hurry on back," she called. "I got a surprise for you."

She could keep her surprises. He took his time with the mare. Then he went to the house and changed clothes. He could hear Aunt Keziah muttering in her room as he put on a plaid shirt and jeans. Something weird was happening to him, but he didn't know what.

He went out to the pasture fence and watched the bull that Mr. Willis had given to Aunt Keziah. But his mind was elsewhere, full of unease. It would be plain stupid for him not to admit that Aunt Keziah did have some kind of power over him. It had been weakened for whatever reason, but nonetheless, it was still intact.

But he was unwilling to call it juju, even if she made him stand on his head and piss in his pants. As he could not believe in God, neither could he believe in the Devil or one of his so-called disciples. If Aunt Keziah was telling the truth—hadn't she promised to make herself young and pretty for him again?—then now was the time for her to do so.

He felt like fucking. He'd been fucking some young woman for the past two years. But common sense told him that it wasn't Aunt Keziah. If she had the power to change herself from one thing to the

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, then that would make her as powerful as God. And there was /od.

/hen his mother was living, she sometimes gave him things to lk that settled his stomach and made his dreams seem so real that

:e he awakened, he'd had to lie still and think hard in order to sep-

ate the real from the unreal. Maybe Aunt Keziah was putting some-iing like that in his food. He looked at the bull grazing peacefully; nd he decided not to eat or drink anything else Aunt Keziah gave rim.

"Bill, honey." He stood still, wondering if the voice was the one that sometimes spoke to him in his head. "Darling, I'm waiting." No, it was the other voice, behind him, the young woman's voice that had excited him by praising her pretty pussy even as it folded around him like a tight tube. His dick got hard. He turned. The sun was in his eyes, and he shaded them to see.

Aunt Keziah was standing stark naked on the porch, calling to him in that young woman's voice, weaving her arms and hands upward and out, then caressing her body as she called Bill to come to her pretty, pretty pussy.

Bill didn't move, he was so surprised. The voice belonged to the pretty young woman; but all the rest was strictly Aunt Keziah. She looked horrible. Her breasts were dry, wrinkled sacs. Her hair was loose, stringy, pitifully streaked with gray. All her body had gone to flab. To Bill, she resembled a decrepit nanny goat. Smeared with wrinkles and age, like an accumulation of shit. Her pussy looked dry, caved in, like a wrinkled old woman's mouth without teeth. "Com' play with my pussy, pretty." She came across the yard to him, ar and fingers weaving and writhing in ecstasy. And yet the pretty y poured from her grinning gums as pure and sweet as he ha' heard it.

"Pretty, pretty, come play with my pretty pussy." Bi'^Tback and hopped the fence into the pasture. He'd rather ^Tbull. But the bull kept on grazing as though nothing was h

"Come, Bill. Come to me." Bill shaded his eyes. F <

such an awful sight. "Aunt Keziah! Aunt Keziah!' 4

loudly, harshly, for she seemed to be in some kin
ought to be ashamed of yourself, outdoors naked ^f ^

Why don't you go in the house and put some clot* ^ %

"Pretty pretty pussy pussy . . ." She w? & ^StP

silken sweetness of a young woman; but ' /$ «V

voice and her body sickened him. He lor * f

bull had stopped grazing and was coming toward him like in a dream. On the other side of the fence, Aunt Keziah wore the h sun like a nimbus around her nakedness.

Bill spun sideways so that he could keep his eye on the bull Aunt Keziah at the same time. The bull had lowered his head; sharp tips of his horns seemed plated with gold. He was snorting, d ging up the ground with an angry forefoot, ready to charge. "Au Keziah! You look terrible! Go in the house and put some clotht on!" The bull was coming toward him now like a mountain on thi move; but Bill braced himself. He wasn't going over that fence until Aunt Keziah went back into the house. He'd die if she touched him, naked like that. The whole ground seemed to tremble and accelerate under the bull's angry feet. "Aunt Keziah!"

She stopped. She looked down at her self. "Good Lord!" She seemed appalled by her own nakedness. Her eyes settled on Bill, begging for something he was too confused to define. "Get in the house!" he screamed. She turned and ran. And Bill leapt the fence with a feeling of unrelieved joy.

Heat burnt his ass where the bull missed him. And when he landed with a jar in the safety of the yard, he heard a whispering in his head like the conversation of merry, miniature mice. It was one voice divided into many, like twine separated into individual strands. She didn't know. She thought all of her was young and beautiful, not just her voice.

Bill took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his face. He thought he was going crazy. He had to be. Yet, the voice—and its own echo, vibrating in his head like the plucked string of a guitar—made good sense. For that was the realization he'd seen in Aunt Keziah's eyes when she called on the Lord and fled: that, without her knowing it, the spell she'd cast had been incomplete, like a woman who prances from the shithouse with the back of her dress caught in her drawers.

The bull ranged back and forth near the fence. Bill laughed nervously. "Not today, old boy," he said. "Not yet." And the voice in his sad echoed the words down a thousand crystal caverns. Not yet.

He was feeling good—as though an irrevocable promise had been

de that complete freedom was soon to be his—until Aunt Keziah

e on the porch. "Boy, you come here this minute!" His heart did

an dive into a pool of utter desperation. She was dressed in her

rags, and her ancient mouth was puckered in anger. "You hear

"ome here this minute, I said." Bill jammed his hands into his

pockets. Not yet. And he went on the porch and followed Aunt
Keziah into the house. . ,

She looked mean. But she was afraid, too. Certainly not of him al though he felt like killing her. But the voices had promised him freedom without the necessity of that crime. So why was Aunt.Keziah afraid? Through the west window, the setting sun seemed to fire both her anger and her surprise. "Sit down, honey," she said. Her voice quavered midway between being nice and nasty. Bill sat. Aunt Keziah smoothed her rags around her behind, and sat m her rocking

chair.

"Honey, I want you to tell me the truth. I'm an old lady, and 1 can't stand nobody lying to me. So I want you to tell me the truth. You understand?"

"Yas'm." He sure was glad she had her clothes on. Seeing her naked like that had scared him out of a year's growth. At least, he thought so. "What you want to know, Aunt Keziah?"

Her top lip turned up and covered her nostrils as though she smelled something bad. "You know I'm the most powerful juju in Burnside, don't you?"

"Yas'm." He didn't want to tell her that he didn't believe in that juju shit. Something was going on, something powerful enough to make her afraid, to make her treat him like a human being for a change. He had found out a long time ago, probably the day his father started sucking a baby bottle, that when people say God, they mean all the questions not yet answered. Bill felt the same way about juju. Aunt Keziah could turn him into a stone right now, and he still wouldn't believe in it. For his own mother's failure could never be undone, not even by Aunt Keziah's greatest success.

She was rocking in the creaky chair like any other old woman faced by the unknown, but finding strength in reviewing her own qualifications. "I'm probably the most powerful juju in all Virginia."

"Yas'm." He almost felt sorry for her.

"You remember what I did to your Mammy?"

"Yas'm." He remembered quite clearly what she had claimed to have done to his mother. But what was she leading up to?

She might have read his mind. "You know any jujus more powerful than me?"

"I don't know any jujus at all," he said pointedly.

She stopped rocking, and froze him with her gaze. "You know me, nigger. Let's not be getting smart now. There're plenty more out there, but they all know who Aunt Keziah is." She started rocking

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again, noisily. "You been talking to any of them about you and

He made his voice bone dry. "I haven't talked much to a single
soul in nearly three years." ^s

She nodded almost mindlessly. Now he knew what was troubling her If he heard that voice telling him Not yet, then Aunt Keziah was teelmg its powers aimed against her. Not yet strong enough to actually destroy her, but capable of sticking her dress in her bloomers, so to speak. Strong enough to put a block in the road for her to stumble over, to bewilder her, to make her sit down and recount her accomplishments.

Right now, she jerked her head from side to side, as though a mischievous spirit was tossing furniture about in the shanty of her mind. "You thought you were so smart down at the creek. And out there in the yard. Now I've got something for you to do. Get on your knees and reach under the bed there."

He started to balk, but curiosity moved him. He did as she ordered, curving his back and pushing his arm through what seemed to be centuries of cobwebs and dust until his fingers touched a hard metal object. "Bring it out," Aunt Keziah said. "I'm going to show you who's the boss once and for all."

Bill ran his fingers along the outline of the object, examining it. "Bring it out," Aunt Keziah said. But he couldn't move . . . because the thing in his hand was one of those black instruments that Mr. Willis had used to crush the bulls' nuts.

"Come out!" Aunt Keziah's voice held the cold ring of authority that he'd never heard before. He backed out from under the bed and gave her the scissors-shaped thing with shallow saucers at each end. "Now take off your clothes." Her pointed finger seemed to penetrate his very soul. She looked like a fairy-tale witch gone mad. He knew she was going to de-nut him. But her finger held him steady between powerful pillars of air; her eyes blazed and his hands moved up and down his shirt, his pants, until he stood naked with his clothes in a pile around his feet. "I'm going to let you get your pleasure for the last time," she said. He could feel her breath moving over his groin. "Then I'm going to fix you so that nothing comes out of this thing but pee."

He prayed for help, from the voices, from God, from any goddamned where. Lord, he didn't want this old woman to touch him. His brain screamed for him to flee. But something held him as firmly as a vise. Aunt Keziah was fumbling, murmuring, licking in his groin.

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And he felt his dick rising like a heavy pole, as though it was a hundred feet long, being lifted by the hot hands of a hundred imps. And then they guided their burden into the furnace of Aunt Keziah's mouth. He was rooted to the floor with pleasure, yet paralyzed with terror at the prospect of impending pain.

She worked on him with remarkable suction and a youthful kind of joy. He felt like a gondola of long flesh sliding between the surfaces of slick lakes. He quivered at the scalding contours of her mouth; the hard, yet yielding ridges of her gums; the tongue that licked and lapped him nearly senseless. This was part of the pleasure he had known almost every night since he'd been here. And although a part of his mind told him that she was going to de-nut him as soon as he came, another part turned in every direction with a kind of frenzied, excited joy; and he felt the milk in his balls churning upwards, outwards, like water in a thick whirlpool . . . and the incredibly hot, tight tunnel that Aunt Keziah moved back and forth on him seemed filled with millions of squirming suckers, all murmuring for his milk. . . . Lord God ... he couldn't hold it much longer . . . Mama . . . Mama ... he couldn't hold it at all. . . . The Devil stood behind him with bulging muscles, swinging a sledge hammer made of steel . . . and smashed the back of his head off . . . and white blood flew the whole hundred feet of his dick . . . like the pure angry pleasure of thick water shooting all the way from Burnside to Charlottesville. ... He heard himself moaning like a woman . . . his arms unlocked and his hand caught the old woman's head and yanked her to him until his dick seemed to push through down her throat, her belly, the inside muscles of her asshole, making way for the sea-surge of milk that ran like a tidal wave into basins that broadened and narrowed and begged for more . . . more . . . more. . . .

He thought he had died; but actually, he was lying flat on his back on the floor. Aunt Keziah was kneeling over him with that black thing, to de-nut him. "You ain't going to do nothing from now on but pee from that thing, you hear me? I'm the boss, you understand?" He might have answered, he wasn't sure. It was too perfect for even his brain to complain. She had taken every drop of milk he'd ever hoped to manufacture. So let her take his balls. He didn't care. He'd still be able to fuck. Even the pain—he remembered clearly how the bulls had screamed—even the pain seemed a small price to pay for the exquisite pleasure she'd given him. "You hear me?" He actually opened his

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legs and bent them so she could get to the pile of his balls. After the pleasure she'd given him, he was glad to give her his balls.

Smiling, she squatted between his feet. Her face, her rags, were red. He had a feeling that the sun should have set a long time ago. But he could feel its warmth on his shoulders, chest, and belly. On his dick. As though it had suspended itself in the west window, like a burning ball hanging from a Halloween tree. Aunt Keziah opened the saucers, and Bill raised his ass and squirmed to meet them. The handles seemed too large for her small hands. He almost wanted to do it for her, to de-nut himself. . . . She was smiling one-sidedly, the left corner of her lip pulled down in a droop, like an old woman who has had a stroke. And she moved between his legs with the ugly black thing as Bill flexed the muscles in his ass and squirmed to meet her. . . . The cold metal saucers caught and cupped his balls lovingly.

Now! He heard the multiple voice as clearly as a gong struck inside his head; the sound vibrated throughout his whole body. That ugly black thing in her hands—that devil—rose up writhing, carrying Aunt Keziah away from him. It seemed to have a life of its own, rising and dipping like a divining rod indicating water everywhere. Aunt Keziah stumbled and fell; she ran into a wall, the fireplace. . . . Why didn't she let go?

Bill rolled away and grabbed his balls. Thank God he still had them. But what the hell had happened to him? And what was happening to Aunt Keziah now? Her eyes bulged as she jerked, stumbled, and jiggled around the room, an old crone screaming silently.

Suddenly, the door opened with a crash. The black iron forced Aunt Keziah's hands high over her head. She drew back as far as possible, for it seemed that the iron would strike her. Instead, the saucers lowered slightly, and carried Aunt Keziah trotting through the door and out into the endless daylight. Bill was afraid to go outside. And he was afraid to stay in the house. He threw on his clothes and followed Aunt Keziah.

The whole sky seemed red—surely the sun had stood still. He felt he was walking inside an endless dream, a horrible fairy tale filled with blood where sticks and brooms beat old women. But the iron had not yet harmed Aunt Keziah. It was carrying her to the pasture, where the bull stood like a statue with his ass to the fence.

Bill knew what was about to happen, but he couldn't believe it. He heard Aunt Keziah grunt and groan as the iron lowered and forced her to her knees. She was right at the fence. The bull waited silently,

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hind legs spread, balls hanging like double clappers in a bell. Aunt Keziah's shoulders heaved; she struggled to rise from her knees. But whatever had put her there, held her. The black iron slid through the barbed wire. Aunt Keziah seemea to be resisting with all her strength. "God help me!" she cried. Her voice was full of pure panic. But the saucers closed. And crushed. The bull screamed, rearing up. The saucers held him for perhaps a minute as his forefeet fought the air and he bellowed in agony and outrage. Then he took off into the pasture, loping painfully. Aunt Keziah doubled over and covered her face. The iron had freed her at last.

Bill went into the house and took down his suitcase from the closet. After what Aunt Keziah had done to the bull—had been forced to do—he couldn't stay here any longer. His own balls had been in jeopardy, and he'd been dumb enough to offer them to Aunt Keziah after she'd sucked him off so sweetly. But the bull was another story, bringing back memories from over five years ago. He remembered Miss Page's comment about full-grown bulls being castrated just for the hell of it. It didn't matter to him that Aunt Keziah had fought the iron with all her puny strength. Still, she'd castrated the bull. He felt a keen sense of anger. And of freedom. He walked out of the house with his suitcase.

"Where you going, boy?" Aunt Keziah met him on the steps. She looked a mess, her face ashen-colored underneath the black.

"I'm leaving," Bill said.

"You can't leave until I let you leave." But she sounded very doubtful. Bill could feel separate currents blowing through her mind as she tried to figure out what had happened to her, and, at the same time, struggled to reassert her control over him. He was free, but not completely; she was too weak now to do too much to him. "I'm leaving," Bill said.

She drew herself up like a proud old duck. "You won't get far. Soon as I rest, I'll make sure you don't get far."

"You do that," he said. But he could hear the fear in his own voice. He'd better shag ass out of here. "See you in the funny papers," he said; but he didn't feel quite so cocky. Aunt Keziah lived a good two miles from the highway, and he didn't want to be caught in her woods after the sun went down. He left the yard, running awkwardly with the suitcase. "You'll be back," Aunt Keziah called after him. He didn't have time to bandy words with her. The sun seemed wedged in the heavens, as though it would not set until all the weight and strength of this day conspired to drag it down.

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Between running and resting, it took Bill nearly an hour to get to the highway. He couldn't believe that he was really free of Aunt Keziah; but the idea that she still held him was too horrible to contemplate. Still, he could hear the bull's scream. He could see himself naked on her floor—drugged, maybe drunk somehow . . . yes, maybe even under the spell of the juju—squirming up to the ugly iron as she bent for his balls. Man, doing something like that, it was enough to make him believe anything. . . .

An old pickup truck stopped. It was driven by a white man. "I'm going as far as Sprouse's Corners," the man said. That was one of the Greyhound stops; it was good enough for Bill. "I sure would appreciate that, sir." He wanted to make sure that nothing more happened to keep him here. He got in and the dinky old truck chugged off. Riding, Sprouse's Corners was about thirty minutes away. Bill was cautiously excited. If everything went well, he'd be on the Greyhound north in another hour or so.

The white man was dressed in Sunday-go-to-meeting suit, shiny boots, and a broad-brimmed Stetson. "You that boy that lives out yonder with Aunt Keziah," he said. His eyes were the color of faded blue denim, his face and hands grizzled, more a stubborn pink than white. "Ain't you?"

"Yassir." His mouth got dry. He almost expected the pink man to turn around and carry him back to Aunt Keziah.

"Where you on your way to?"

"My Mama's sick. I'm going to see her."

"I thought your Mama got burned up in that fire two, three years ago."

There was nothing to do but bluff it out. He'd forgotten how white people in Alcanthia County knew every time a nigger shit in Burn-side. "Nawsir. Maybe you got me mixed up with somebody else."

"You live with Aunt Keziah, don't you?"

"I used to," Bill said. Now he felt on safer ground. And he could see the motel signs and gasoline pumps at Sprouse's straight ahead. Behind him, the sun held its steady position. "Sure is taking the sun a long time to go down tonight," Bill said.

The pink man checked his watch. "I hadn't noticed," he said. He slowed down for the intersection where Route 60 hit Route 15 in a series of semi-cloverleaves. "Anyway, that Aunt Keziah is sure a fine woman, to be colored. When I had arthritis, I went to every doctor in Charlottesville. But they couldn't do a thing. I thought I'd die from the pain, especially in bad weather. Then I went to Aunt Keziah. The

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white people here didn't think I ought to go. Some of them told me so. But I went anyway." He snapped his fingers. "She cured me just like that. Some kind of concoction. I ain't had a minute's trouble ¹ since." He pulled off the highway in front of the restaurant, and Bill got out. The pink man leaned across the'seat. "You tell Aunt Keziah I said hello, you hear?"

"Yassir." He wanted the pink man to go away. "I'll do that, sir. And I sure do appreciate the ride."

The pink man nodded. "Anytime. I ain't got a thing in the world against colored people." He pulled off; and, after crossing 15, he made a left turn and went into the office of one of the motels.

Bill sat down on his suitcase. Then he remembered that all the money he had was in the suitcase. Two hundred dollars. He took it out, counted it, and stuck it in the pocket of his jeans. There was a bus schedule posted on the door and a lock on the wall inside the restaurant. The Greyhound was due in fifteen minutes, if it was on schedule.

Bill sat down to wait. Fifteen minutes. Lord, don't fail me now. Please. But actually, he was talking to the voices that had been strangely silent since they trebled Now! at Aunt Keziah's, and the castrating iron had leapt to life. He stared anxiously up and down the highway. The Greyhound would come from the west. Aunt Keziah, east, if she came at all. He'd been a fool to think he was completely free of her. Even now, he felt her presence, some part of her, growing, gaining strength, crawling up and down his backbone like a drunken flea.

Ten minutes. The restaurant door opened, and old man Willis came out picking his teeth. He was with one of his sons, the one that had invited Bill to see the bulls castrated. "Hey, Bill," the son said. "Ain't seen you in a coon's age. How's Aunt Keziah?"

Now! He fought the voices. What they were telling him was wrong. . . . But was it the voices, the real voices he'd thought were echoes from his mother, always protecting him? He fought them, the multiple sounds, like chords played on a piano. But they were stronger than he. Slowly, he got up from the suitcase. Five minutes. Tears almost blinded him. The sun seemed to spin in his head. He felt his arm pulled out, upward, back . . . and then it shot out like a striking snake, full-fisted, and hit Mr. Willis square in the mouth.

The voices—Aunt Keziah's, his mother's—were still now. But it didn't matter. Hands seemed to grab him from everywhere, wrestling him to the ground. He heard the sudden sharp wail of a siren, as

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though the Sheriff had been alerted beforehand and was waiting just down 15. The Greyhound passed without stopping. Bill went limp. He'd never get away now. Never.

"I don't know what come over the boy. I was picking my teeth, my son here spoke to him, politely enough, and he jumps up and hits me." Mr. Willis was holding a handkerchief to his mouth. The broken toothpick was clamped between his fingers like the leg pulled from a wheat-colored grasshopper. The Sheriff had a double armlock on Bill; it was the only thing holding him up. "Maybe he's been smoking loco weed," the Sheriff said. Marijuana. He'd rot in jail for something like that.

He could feel the Sheriff's dick growing fat and warm along the crack of his ass. He'd heard all his life that they fucked niggers in jail down here. Was he in for a fucking? The Willis boy took the Sheriff's handcuffs and shackled Bill. "Why'd you do it, Bill? Why'd you hit my Daddy?" He sounded sad, not angry. "I honestly don't know," Bill said. "I was waiting here for the Greyhound, going to see some of Aunt Keziah's sick relatives in Washington. . . ." Now why did he tell that lie? Why anything? Was he in for a fucking? Yes. One way or another, if he couldn't even tell the Willis boy the truth. Aunt Keziah, that broken-down old bitch, she'd got her strength back, she'd got to him again.

Alcanthia Court House was two miles back down the road, toward Aunt Keziah's. Mr. Willis and his son followed the Sheriff there in a black Buick. "You in a heap of trouble, boy," the Sheriff said over his shoulder. Bill stretched out on the back seat. He didn't have the strength to answer, not even the energy to cry. It was Baptismal Sunday, and the goddamn sun still hadn't gone down. Would it be day forever? But it didn't matter. Now Bill knew about the power of darkness. It was strong, evil, everywhere. Lord, if they do fuck me, please don't let it hurt.

He listened for the voices—M^ratf, is it you? Help me. I believe you now. What else could it be but Aunt Keziah's juju that had raised him from the suitcase and made him hit Mr. Willis in the mouth? Mr. Willis. Even white folks kissed his black ass. Man, if he had to hit somebody, why couldn't it have been somebody less important? He listened for the voices that vibrated like bells; but there was only a dull, scared void in his head.

For judicial matters of the utmost importance, the Judge could be summoned from his house next door to Alcanthia Court House, even

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on Sunday. He was a round, jolly man who looked several months' pregnant under his black robe. "Well, Sheriff, what do we have here? I've got thirty minutes before my wife calls me to supper."

The Sheriff explained in his taciturn drawl the circumstances behind Bill's arrest. Mr. Willis and his son told substantially the same story. Bill watched and listened as though he was part of an audience in a movie theater, as though the person they were talking about was someone other than himself.

Except for the five of them, the courtroom was empty, and their voices bounced off the whitewashed walls. An old relic of a clock ticked noisily; but the hands pointed to eleven-thirty, which couldn't possibly be true, since the baptism—Lord, was it still only Sunday?— had been scheduled for ten-thirty, but had probably taken place around noon, niggers being who they are.

The Judge sat behind his highly polished bench, looking down on them all. From time to time, he consulted a gold watch that yawned like an oyster to his right. On the wall behind him, the State seal was flanked by the American and the Confederate flags. Only when the Sheriff's sharp elbow stabbed him in the ribs did Bill realize that the Judge had asked him a question. "Sir?" He bit his bottom lip to keep from crying. But the roly-poly Judge was very gentle with him. "You that boy that lives out yonder with Aunt Keziah?"

"Yassir."

"Aunt Keziah is a mighty fine colored woman," the Judge said. He had a pink bald spot rung in by snow-white hair, as though he was Santa Claus pretending to be a judge. "How come you got yourself in a jam like this? You been drinking? You been smoking loco weed?"

"Nawsir. I don't know why I did it."

"It's customary," the Judge said, "for defendants to address me as Your Honor." He was still very jolly. "Do you have any objection to that?"

"Nawsir, Your Honor."

The Judge's eyes slid to his watch. They looked lime green. "Fine. Fine. Now, how do you plead?"

"Sir, Your Honor?"

The Judge smiled like Santa Claus filling a stocking. "How do you plead to the charges brought against you? Guilty or not guilty? It is my duty to advise that you have the right to counsel, which the State will pay for if you have no money of your own. But I'd advise you against such a step, since the State has no money for lawyers, and

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you'll be sitting in jail for a long time waiting for the State to get you a lawyer. So how do you plead? Guilty or not guilty? And I would appreciate it if you would hurry up. My supper is going to be on the table in a little while."

"I guess I plead guilty, Your Honor."

The Judge brought a gavel from somewhere and banged it against a round wooden block on the bench. "Now that's what I call getting down to the nitty gritty. It is the judgment of this Court that you be sentenced to three years at hard labor in the State Penitentiary. Cleo Willis there, why he's the finest colored man in the whole county. He's got property and even the respect of white folks. We certainly can't let somebody like you attack him openly and in flagrant violation of the law. Who knows? The next time, you might be hauled in here for killing a white man. Sentence to begin immediately." The gavel came down on the round wooden block. "Court dismissed!" He snapped the gold watch shut. Apparently, he had managed to serve justice without having to postpone his supper.

Bill was too stunned to move, to speak. Three years! He was going to get fucked both ways, that was for sure. The Judge was already out of his chair, holding his robe up like a skirt. He had on black and white shoes, pink pants, and red and blue argyle socks.

But Mr. Willis himself jumped to his feet. "Your Honor! Your Honor! I beg the Court's indulgence!"

The Judge, caught in a half-gyration, seemed mildly impatient. "What is it, Cleo? You think we ought to give him more time? Why, that would be treating him like he'd hit a white man. I think three years is fair."

Mr. Willis had been trying to talk from behind his handkerchief; but it muffled his words, and he jammed it in the pocket of his jacket. He had a busted lip, like a gang of hornets had stung him there. When he spoke, his voice was trembling. "Your Honor, I wouldn't be forward enough to question the fairness of the sentence you gave out. Why the whole colored community knows that there isn't a fairer Judge in the State of Virginia. And, I do appreciate the fine remarks you made about me, Your Honor. Which is the main reason that I stand here now and beg the Court's mercy. I've known that boy all his life. He and my son are the best of friends. Begging your pardon, Your Honor, it seems to me that three years is a mighty long time to give a young man for hitting a worthless old nigger like me. He could of had his reasons, Your Honor."

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Both the Judge and the Sheriff smiled indulgently, as white men usually do when a nigger refers to himself as a nigger. "Well, tell me, Cleo. What might his reasons be?"

But before Mr. Willis could answer, they all heard the strident voice of a woman calling. "Hooooor-aceeeee! Yoo-hoo! Supper's done!"

But Mr. Willis pushed on. "I talked to Aunt Keziah from time to time. The boy's been very upset ever since his mother died. He seems to think I had something to do with it."

"Hoooooraceeeee!"

The Judge was clearly hungry; but his nostrils widened like a bloodhound's. "Well, did you, Cleo?" he said softly.

Mr. Willis shook his head vigorously. "No sir, Your Honor! I fall on my knees and swear before God I did not!"

"There's no need for such gymnastics," the Judge said. He had not sat down; he had his fingers folded over his belly as though to quiet the growling there. "Then, what do you suggest we do with this boy? Making accusations like that against a fine colored taxpayer like you, maybe we ought to send him to the State Mental Hospital."

Mr. Willis, in truth, seemed ready to go down on his knees. Even the son looked scared. "Your Honor, the boy was waiting for the bus before he hit me. I have no malice against him. Maybe I did do him harm at one time without even realizing it, as I have heard Your Honor say on more than one occasion."

"Horace!"

"Hurry up and get to the point, Cleo." The Judge was gruff now, a white man talking to a nigger.

"The point is, Your Honor, I am asking you to let the boy go. I understand that one of Aunt Keziah's relatives is sick up around Washington. Aunt Keziah told me so herself. She said she was sending the boy up there to see how they were making out."

"He does have a suitcase," the Judge said, as if noticing it for the first time. "Is Cleo telling the truth, boy?"

"Ho-raaaaaaaace!"

The Judge thumped on the desk with stubby fingers. "Is he telling the truth, boy?"

Bill's throat felt pinched. He had to force himself to speak. "Yas-sir, Your Honor." He was afraid to look at the Willises, so he looked at the floor.

"The next bus to Washington leaves tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. You taking that bus?"

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Bill kept his eyes glued to the floor. "Yassir, Your Honor, sir. If you let me go. The last one already left for today."

The Judge seemed to be gnawing the insides of his jaws. And Mr. Willis took that opportunity to speak. "Your Honor, if you let the boy go, it would be one more example of your fairness to the colored community. And you may be sure, Your Honor, that I will personally see to it that the colored community knows."

In place of the gavel, the Judge slapped his hand on the bench. "It is the judgment of this Court that you be taken from this place and held in jail in the back room there until tomorrow morning at nine forty-five, at which time you will be taken by the Sheriff, or one of his duly appointed deputies, to the Greyhound stop across the road, and that at ten o'clock you will take the bus to Washington, with full knowledge that you are never to return to this county for so long as I may live. Sheriff, take the prisoner away." Slam! The hand went down again. "Court is dismissed, thank the Lord. My stomach is killing me." He picked up his robes and disappeared through a rear door.

Before the Sheriff led Bill away, he got up the courage to squeak out a loud thanks to Mr. Willis and his son. "I'm sorry I hit you, Mr. Willis. I still don't know why I did it."

"Maybe you were thinking about your mother," Mr. Willis said kindly. "I've been sorry about that ever since it happened. I wouldn't have harmed your mother for anything in the world."

Bill was too full to speak. The Willis boy grinned, winked confidentially, and followed his father out.

"You were lucky, boy." The Sheriff went down a long hallway and opened a cell door with a key from a large ring. "If the Judge hadn't been hungry, you wouldn't be spending just one night here in jail."

Well, I thank the Lord for hungry white judges, Bill thought. He had too much sense to say anything. He had been to the edge of the precipice, and, miraculously, he had been snatched back from destruction.

There was another colored man in the cell. Bill went in and sat down on one of the cots. The door locked behind him with a hollow click.

"That's my cot," the man said. It was dim in the cell—had the sun, finally, set?—and Bill could not make out the man's features. Or was he a man? He sounded more like a frightened boy trying to be tough.

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"I don't care which cot I get," Bill said. He went to the other cot and slid his suitcase under it. "I'm getting out tomorrow morning, me." He felt a keen sense of exhilaration, as though he had truly been smoking loco weed.

"Me, too," the other man said. "This place sucks. I been here three days."

"What you in for?"

"They caught me fucking a goat."

Bill laughed. "You kidding me?"

"Not really. Why would I kid you?"

A generator started somewhere in back of the courthouse, and a small light bulb came on very slowly in the ceiling. The man was hunkered down against the far wall. He was very light-skinned, almost white. He had a young boy's face, but he talked like a man. "I never fucked me nothing but women," Bill said. "How does it feel to fuck a goat?"

"Before we start talking personal," the man said, "I think we ought to be introduced properly. My name is Bobby Bryant. I'm sixteen, but that don't mean I'm not a man. I'll try anything once. If I like it, I'll try it again. I was hitchhiking North when those mothers caught me and locked me up."

"My name is Bill Kelsey. I'm twenty-one. And I come from right here in Burnside."

Bobby Bryant laughed and got up, extending his hand. "Put it here, man." He was about six inches shorter than Bill, and skinny; but he talked and acted like a man. They shook hands. "All we need now is a drink," Bobby said. "You wouldn't happen to have something in that suitcase, would you?"

Bill slapped his forehead. "As a matter of fact, I do. If it ain't turned to vinegar." When he packed the night his mother died, he'd wrapped the last half gallon of his mother's blackberry brandy in two dirty tea towels and stowed it in his suitcase. Bobby hung around while Bill brought the jar out and tasted the brandy. It was still good. He gave some to Bobby. "Hot damnr Bobby said. "Now let's sit down and talk shit."

Bill liked this cocky little guy. And as for talking shit, man, he was starved for conversation. "Tell me about the goat," he said.

They passed the Mason jar back and forth. "There's not much to tell, really. I've fucked about everything else except a goat. Once, I fucked a chicken. It died. My mother cooked it for supper, but I

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wouldn't eat any. About the goat, I was hitchhiking, like I said. Then I saw this old billy goat tied out in a field, and I decided to try him."

"How was it?" Bill said. He felt good and pure, as though he was sitting high above the world on the top of a snow-covered mountain.

"You never fucked a goat?"

"Me? Naw, man. I had me plenty women, that's all. I don't ever intend to fuck me nothing but women."

"Goat pussy is just as good. Even if I did wind up in jail. I was pouring it to that old billy goat when the Sheriff came out of the woods just as nice as you please, and arrested me."

"Down here," Bill said, "some people say the goat is the Devil."

"You believe that stuff? He still got some good pussy. You just got to be careful of his hind legs. A friend of mine back in Alabama, he told me to put rubber boots on the goat's hind legs, so he can't kick you. But where was I going to get rubber boots?"

"Well, I'm strictly a woman's man, me," Bill said. Bobby Bryant shifted on the cot and threw his head back to drink. Bill noticed for the first time that he had green eyes, almost as green as the Judge's. It made Bill feel strange. "I'm going to stick with the ladies," Bill said.

"That remains to be seen. Man, this is some good shit. I feel high already."

"My Mama made it," Bill said. "Where you going when you get out of here?"

"North. Where else is there to go?"

"You said you were hitchhiking. Does that mean you don't have any money?"

"That's what it means." Bobby dropped to his cot and closed his eyes.

"Well, I've got enough money for both of us," Bill said. "Why don't we take the bus together?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Bobby said. He still had his eyes closed, and Bill didn't know whether to take him seriously. So he decided to drop it. He crossed his legs on the cot and listened to the labored chugging of the generator mixed with the sudden loud snoring of Bobby Bryant. Now, why had he offered to pay Bobby's way North? Because he liked him. Besides, he had more than enough money. He took a long drink. Shit, the main reason he wanted Bobby with him—someone with him—was because he was lonely. O.K. He

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was in the middle of a drink, down near the dregs where the brandy was strongest, when he was hit by the full impact of what had been happening to him. Now he thought carefully, so as not to make mistakes.

All his life, he had known that a part of him was not stupid, although society, the school system, and even his own parents, had tried to convince him that he was worthless, stupid, and simply satisfied. No one ever really came out and told him so; but in the case of his father, and, later, his mother, it was plain that their frequent warnings for him to "stay in his place" and "not cause trouble" were designed to keep him obedient to the white man. In school, the training had been by omission—the only black people he had ever seen in any of his books had been photographs and drawings of slaves. His parents had downed him to keep him out of trouble; white society and the white-controlled schools, to keep him from causing trouble.

At the same time, it was the very part of him that was tampered with the least—his hard, unyielding intellect—that became the most suspicious. So, like most other blacks, he had mastered the art of being clever, cunning, conniving, and dressing it all up to make himself appear ignorant. And the more ignorant he acted, the more the white man seemed to love him. "He's a good nigger," they said.

But witness Mr. Willis in the courtroom, slowly turning the fat Judge from his own announced decision to merciful justice by clowning—"I fall on my knees and swear before God I did not!"—by soft words and flattery. Bill's mother, and probably Aunt Keziah, would have given the name juju to such intentional obsequiousness. Bill and his generation called it "sanding to the man," sanding being a kind of shuffling recognition of one's own pretended inferiority. And the man, naturally, being the white man, who thought of all niggers as silly children. Such obvious play-acting could be successful only in a segregated society that, at the same time, had created a kind of remote intimacy between the two races, like cowardly lovers blowing kisses at each other from opposite sides of a swollen river.

Bill didn't deny that old folks like Aunt Keziah, and perhaps even his mother, had some kind of power that they got from only God knew where. His years of servitude to Aunt Keziah had convinced him of that. But he was still unwilling to call it juju. Like every sensible nigger, he did believe in ghosts—they called them hants in Burn-side. So it was possible that his mother's spirit had reached out to him from her shallow grave and fucked with Aunt Keziah. His mother must have known that he'd wanted the Willis place so he

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could sell it and leave Burnside. All he could say was that his mother, wherever she was, had certainly gone about it in an ass-backwards way.

Bill was getting drunk himself, and he listened for the voices. But he never heard them again. He was sure they'd come from his mother. Then he jerked straight up on the cot, as though he'd been stung by an electric prod. If what he thought was true, the utter brilliance of his mother's strategy stunned him. Who was powerful enough to fight Aunt Keziah on her own ground? So the voices—his mother?—like noisy curs yelping at the heels of a heavy beast, had maneuvered Aunt Keziah into a series of acts that weakened her and strengthened Bill to the point of leaving.

Take that business with Mr. Willis. Suppose he'd hit someone other than Mr. Willis? Suppose he'd hit a white man? Then his ass really would be in a sling. But Mr. Willis was sympathetic precisely because he knew why Bill's mother had died, according to Aunt Keziah's version. Also, Mr. Willis was powerful and respected enough to make a plea with the Judge that stuck. And as long as Bill had to stay in Burnside while Aunt Keziah was at home doing whatever to restore her powers, where was the safest place for him to be? Right here in jail until the Greyhound left.

So . . . all that had happened to him—starting with Aunt Keziah's surprising request for him to pray for her, and ending with the bull's castration—had been designed to get Bill away from Aunt Keziah's power and out of Burnside. Once he thought about it, the pieces fell into place too perfectly to have been mere accidents. The plan to get him away from Aunt Keziah had been designed with the same cunning that niggers use to keep the white man off balance. Ass-backwards, to be sure. But brilliant.

He recalled Aunt Keziah's helpless frustration at the baptism while Bill and Reverend Cobb blended into one throbbing body. Her grotesque nakedness later on. Her bout with the castrating iron. Those were the tactics of someone who dared not meet Aunt Keziah head-on, but had nibbled away at Bill's bonds like meddlesome mice instead of stepping straight out and cutting him free.

"I got to hand it to you, Ma." His own words, punctuated by Bobby's snoring and the laboring generator, echoed in the cell. Nothing else. "Well, I thank you anyway," he said. He drained the half-gallon jar and hid it underneath the cot. There was a commode in one corner of the cell; he pissed joyfully. Tomorrow morning, he was leaving Burnside!

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His mother's voices might be silent now, but he knew they were still protecting him. Bobby Bryant, his new friend, slept fitfully, like a hound dreaming of chasing rabbits. Bill lay on his own cot. Then he went to sleep. Sometime during the night, the generator stopped running, and the small ceiling light went out.

At nine forty-five the next morning, one of the Sheriff's deputies took Bill and Bobby Bryant across the highway to the bus stop in handcuffs. The Judge had sent word that Bobby was free to quit the State with Bill, provided he had the money. Only when it was time for the bus to go did the lean deputy take off their cuffs. "You boys be good, you hear?" He was very cordial. "We'll be good," Bill said. Bobby slouched in a seat and closed his eyes. "Speak for yourself, son," he muttered.

Bill threw his suitcase up on the rack. He started to take a separate seat, but then he thought that might be an insult to Bobby. So he sat next to him. He felt completely free now. And when the Greyhound passed the road leading to Aunt Keziah's, he looked at it dispassionately. Although he did wonder what she was doing. He pictured her hooked to some kind of juju machine, still charging her batteries. And as for juju, if it did exist, then certain other possibilities also existed: that he had left juju behind him; or he was carrying it with him to Jersey; or, he would meet it there in a new and possibly more terrifying form.

It started raining before the Greyhound passed out of Alcanthia County; and Bill felt a sense of marvelous strength and purification. Yesterday had been Baptismal Sunday, but he was being baptized today—to whatever God, spirit, hant, or juju, he did not know. Maybe they were, in fact, one. By the same reasoning, maybe none of them existed at all, except in the minds of stupid, frightened people. Well, he wasn't stupid. And he wasn't frightened. Not any more. Whatever it was—those voices—had got him away from Burnside. That was a sure fact. Away from Burnside and into himself.

Ten hours later, after a layover in Washington, Bill Kelsey and Bobby Bryant got off the bus in Newark and took a cab to Cousinsville. Bill breathed a chestful of air and held it until his head swam. Burnside, Aunt Keziah, the Judge, the jail—all that seemed long ago and far away now.

Bobby Bryant was less optimistic as the cab turned down the narrow, cluttered streets of Cousinsville. "This place sucks, too," he grumbled. "I bet they don't even have goats up here to fuck."

"You just tired," Bill said. This was the North, the lulMmmt ol a

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long dream. He was determined not to let Bobby put the bad-mouth on his dream.

But it was not clear to Bill Kelsey until he had helped build Anthony Homes, and moved in with Dicey and her children; then the trip back to Burnside with Bobby Bryant some thirteen years later; and, finally, that bizarre experience with Mrs. Greco and the cockroaches—it was not clear until then to Bill Kelsey that, in reality, the American dream was an obscene nightmare.

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_Book
Four

_{The
Death of Clair}

lack people have always winked at the sins of priests and politicians. But in the same way that a man in whatever community is known by the company he keeps, Cousinsville's priests and politicians seemed to be fatted vassals to a particularly dirty God and an equally dirty government. So it was not surprising to any black person when the conspiracy known as Watergate broke over the land like a lightning storm.

For thinking black folk, Richard Nixon had always represented the very worst in white politicians. Niggers unable to focus for long on a single thought, when asked why they disliked Mr. Nixon, described him at great length as being grinny-faced, mealy-mouthed, slimy, and just plain sneaky. Aside from that, it was said that he had neither character nor class. In the South, he would have been called a redneck or poor white trash, either or both of which would have placed him far beneath the sorriest, sickest, tick-ridden hound in the estimation of whites and blacks alike. That Nixon had somehow managed to connive his way into the White House was not surprising; what did

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surprise was that white people were so surprised when they discovered that he was a liar, a thief, and a fool, as though they actually believed that American politicians had achieved the infallibility of Roman popes.

Richard Nixon's sins were too dirty to be dismissed with a mere wink. Watergate, the White House tapes, the subverting of so many rights guaranteed to white folk by a white Constitution—these were acts of such insidious magnitude that even the most complacent white American found himself suddenly wide awake inside a nightmare centered in Washington, D.C. What was probably most shocking and pitiful about the sequence of illegalities known as Watergate was that it was cheap and coarse and ineptly wrought. As the tale unfolded, it had all the shoddy aspects of a nigger caught stealing chickens from an ailing woman's henhouse. Even Latin-American presidents lied and stole with a certain eclat that made them near-idols among the electorate. By the summer of 1974, it was impossible to find more than a handful of white Americans who would confess that they had voted for Richard Nixon, although some 50,000,000 of them had swept him into office for the purpose of maintaining law and order, which, in the double-speak of those days, meant he was going to take some niggers off welfare rolls, send some to Vietnam to be killed, and construct citadels such as Anthony Homes to contain the rest.

Like everyone else in Anthony Homes, Bill Kelsey was aware that President Nixon had struck several serious blows against the tranquility of the welfare state. For one thing, Dicey's welfare check had been cut to a mere shadow of its former opulence. The city housing authority had gotten particularly shitty, and was demanding that the tenants in Anthony Homes, and other housing projects, actually pay rent that had been in arrears since the brawling Sixties, when rent strikes were thought to be an essential part of black self-realization. Meanwhile, the housing projects were in such a state of disrepair that television news teams poked in the worst ones as part of the industry's efforts to keep the nation from wallowing in Watergate.

Bill Kelsey made a half-hearted attempt to find a job; but the weather was hot and jobs were at a premium. So he took to hustling a buck any way he could—usually by selling his Johnson. If he made a good score once or twice a week, along with Dicey working her kind of bars, then the cutback in welfare aid had less effect on them than it did on some others in Anthony Homes. Janie Mae was among the hardest hit by the new welfare policy. Bobby was still in the hospital with liver trouble, and Janie Mae went to see him every day. So she

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was spending most of her money in bus and cab fare, and taking flowers and food to Bobby in Martland Hospital. When Bill could afford to, he gave Janie Mae five or ten dollars.

Dutifully, Janie Mae kept him informed about Bobby: no change. "He been asking for you," she said. "You all have a fight or something?" Bill shrugged. "No fight. I just been busy, that's all. You tell him that, will you? Tell him I'll be to see him as soon as I can." But, in truth, he had seen less and less of Bobby after Bobby's confession that he'd burned that black woman to death on the steps. Finally, Bill stopped going to see Bobby at all. "Tell him I'll be over," Bill said. "And what do you think of this Watergate shit?" he said, mostly to change the conversation. Now Janie Mae shrugged. "I'm sick of it. All my favorite shows been rescheduled just so they can put that mess on the air. If anybody bothered to ask me, I could've told them a long time ago that Richard Nixon is lower than a snake's belly."

Bill nodded. "Well, I'll be seeing you," he said. It was the same kind of talk he'd been hearing for months. But at least everybody seemed to agree on one thing—Richard Nixon was a crook. The question that interested Bill most was very simple: Was Nixon the first President who'd been a crook, or was he the first crooked President who'd been caught so sweetly with his ass hanging out? Bill went and made a score with a gray dude who gave him ten dollars. On the way home, he bought some food. Dicey hadn't had a good day, so she was happy to see him. He watched the news on television until she had supper ready. After the children were fed, Bill and Dicey ate together. One thing good had happened about the check being cut-now he and Dicey were working together more as a team. She knew how he was making his money; he knew how she was making hers. When they were in bed together, after they had bathed carefully, they purged themselves in each other's arms of the strangers who helped them earn their daily bread.

Dicey went in to watch the six o'clock news. "I think I'll go out and see if there's any action," Bill said. "I thought I might slide on over to East Orange for a change. There's usually something happening at the bars there."

"You can't go to East Orange looking like that," Dicey said. She set up the ironing board in the living room so she could still watch the news while she pressed Bill a pink shirt and knocked the wrinkles out of his white tie. He took a bath; when he came out, his clothes were hanging on a hook on the back of the bedroom door: the shirt,

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the tie, a stunning white polyester suit after the fashion of Robert Redford playing the Great Gatsby in the Twenties. Bill felt rather foolish as he dressed. He hadn't been to East Orange for years. But he felt a strong compulsion to go there now and try to do some hustling. He dressed, inspected himself in the mirror, and went out to Dicey's critical eye. "You look beautiful, honey." She kissed him almost shyly on the cheek. "Good luck." He went outdoors.

It was just around six-thirty on a sticky August night. Bill didn't have enough money to take a cab to East Orange; he was too sharp to walk or take a bus; so he decided to go by the house of one of his steady customers—a college teacher named Herman Baskerville—and try to borrow his white Cadillac. Herm, as Baskerville liked to be called, was the first dude Bill had made it with in Cousinsville. As he walked toward Herm's house, going slowly to keep from sweating and stinking, he remembered the first encounter he'd had with Herman Baskerville.

In the beginning, after the escape from Burnside, Bill had been seized by a great restlessness in Cousinsville. The sense he'd had of his mother protecting him had dropped off a few weeks after he'd been in Cousinsville; sometimes, in panic, he stumbled over it like a garment tangled about his feet. And he had felt like a displaced person among all the other niggers with their flashy cars, chicks, and clothes—a stranger in an even stranger paradise. Sometimes he found himself actually yearning for the peace and quiet of Burnside. Cousinsville was garbage, like a place where discarded bodies came to prepare for death, like elephants fighting their way to a legendary graveyard in order to die with their own kind. Bill hated the tall buildings, the shapeless houses jammed together, the hollow desperation in the eyes of those who had left the South before him and were now too benumbed to return. So he had hung onto Bobby Bryant for support, despite the fact that Bobby was younger. But Bobby was exceedingly wise in the ways to survive in this northern wasteland.

He was a sharp talker, a quick thinker, and a good teacher. When they got to Cousinsville, Bill had less than a hundred and fifty dollars for the two of them. They moved into Dicey's boarding house; and Bill continued searching for the golden-paved streets that everyone in Burnside had talked about, as though Cousinsville was the ending of a rainbow rather than a pile of rubbish and a pot of piss.

Neither Bill nor Bobby had any training in other than the fabrication of extravagant dreams. At the same time, they both refused to work at the menial jobs that were available to them. When their

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money got low—this was before Maria Benes, before they went to work on the projects—it was Bobby who turned Bill on to the fact that some men in cities, both North and South, buy Johnson.

"You got to be kidding," Bill said. He had just come from the shower, and he was toweling his own Johnson dry. It did not seem reasonable to him that anybody would pay for his.

Bobby took out some bills that didn't seem very much to Bill. "Where you think I got this? Where you think I go every night?"

"Where?" Bill had powdered himself down; first he pulled on his socks, then his jeans.

"I go to Penn Station," Bobby said. "White men hang around there like flies looking for niggers with Johnsons like you and me. And mine's half the size of yours," Bobby admitted; with some reluctance, Bill thought. "If I made this much money, it stands to reason that if you got twice the Johnson I have, you should be able to make twice the money I do. What you got to do first of all is dig the white man. I mean, you got to understand him."

Bill buttoned a short-sleeved plaid shirt. "What's there to understand? He don't like me because I'm a nigger. I don't like him because he's white. That seems simple enough to me."

But Bobby shook his head like a wise old Jew getting ready to gyp. "You got it wrong there, buddy. First of all, you can't talk about all white men, just like you can't talk about all niggers." He squinted at Bill. "Were you lying to me when you said you'd never fucked anything but women?"

"I wasn't lying," Bill said. Even though it was early fall, the room they shared seemed hot and stuffy. Bill had heard about men having sex with other men, he wasn't that dumb. But the idea didn't excite him, in the same way some people like to eat that sweet, pink slime called rhubarb. Bill had nothing against rhubarb; he just preferred to leave it alone. He felt the same way about goats, chickens, and the rest of the menagerie that Bobby Bryant claimed to have fucked. And he felt the same way about men, especially white men. In their own way, they reminded him of pink slime without sugar. "Naw, man. I'm going out to find a job, me."

Bobby laughed. Sometimes, his green eyes looked like the Devil's very own. "Con\e with me, and I'll find us both jobs."

Bill started for the door, then stopped. Bobby was grinning. "Man, come on," he said.

"What kind of job?" Bill said. He felt a heavy excitement in his loins that surprised him.

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"You know what kind of job." He squeezed the lateral muscle in Bill's shoulder. He had extremely strong fingers, and it always annoyed Bill when Bobby did this. Yet, he felt pleasure. Bunched between Bobby's fingers, the muscle sent out signals like the painful pleasure of being pricked by a shower of porcupine quills.

"Where we going to get this job?" His Johnson was already stirring in the hollow of his jeans.

"You know where we going to get it," Bobby said. And that is how Bill Kelsey came to know Herman Baskerville, a fat, brown-skinned, dumpy instructor at Newark Community College, who came to Penn Station looking for an attractive Johnson with an attractive body attached.

Bobby had come and gone several times with white men and had the money to prove it. He charged, as he said, five dollars a throw. "Of course, if they really want to freak out, you charge accordingly." Between his comings and goings, Bobby had explained to Bill the simple psychology of being a hustler: Give as little as you can; get as much as you can; steal anything you can.

There were other hustlers in the station. Bill studied their style when Bobby was gone. He couldn't deny that the prospect of someone paying for his Johnson excited him; he was glad Bobby had turned him on to hustling. It looked nice and easy; it certainly was real, even if he hadn't made a score yet.

So he waited. And he had the feeling that he had done this somewhere before. . . . Not on marble floors, leaning against tall columns from which stone eagles stared down on him. Nor with long-necked white men swishing past even as they inspected his worth and rejected him with the bright, greedy eyes of agitated turkeys on their way to feed.

No . . . somewhere before, he had stood naked outdoors on a wooden platform underneath a vortex of screaming eagles that represented brave men and their thirst for liberty. White men had bought him then, and paid for him in gold, after counting his teeth, squeezing his muscles, testing the solid weight of his Johnson, the swell of his balls . . . and then took him home where he worked a lot, and fucked a lot, and got sucked a lot, and shot jism into red assholes while eagles circled silently, too tired, after centuries of screaming, to scream any more. . . . Yes, Bill had done this before. It excited him then, it excited him now. His Johnson was like a lead pipe in his jeans. No sense in lying ... he was ready to fuck himself

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to death, he was ready to get sucked to death. And he didn't give a damn who or what did it.

"I like you." Bill looked almost with distaste at the dumpy little nigger. It hadn't occurred to him that a nigger might pick him up. Shit. Money was money. "Well, I sure do appreciate that," Bill said. He knew it sounded stupid even as he said it.

The round little man seemed very amused. "Which way did you come, dear? By Trailways or Greyhound? Or did you hitchhike?"

"I come by this, motherfucker." Bill grabbed his groin and gave the man a good look. Then he walked away. He might be new here, but he wasn't too dumb to understand when a motherfucker like that was trying to put him down.

"Listen! Listen]" The fat little man was trotting at his side, trying to hold his elbow. "I didn't mean to be nasty. Sometimes I'm too flip for my own good. Will you go home with me? I mean, I like the way you look. And I have nothing, absolutely nothing, against southern boys. In fact, you all fascinate me . . . you're such delicious freaks. I suppose you could say I'm also a southerner, indirectly. My father is from a fine old family in Sumter, South Carolina."

Bill felt good. The sonofabitch was begging him. His hair had been processed with some kind of mixture to burn out the kink. Then it had been curled into deep grooves with a marcel iron, so that he looked like he had mesmerized waves from a grease-black sea and clapped them all over his head. "As a matter of fact," Bill said, "I had something white in mind."

The fat man sniffed. "Well, I drive a white Cadillac, if that's white enough for you. Plus, I'll give you twenty dollars. That's a lot more than any white man would. But ... I might as well be honest now ... it means you have to make it with a friend of mine, too. Well, he's not exactly a friend. But he sucks penises, too."

Bill laughed. Shit. This was the craziest thing he'd ever heard. But it's crazy that makes the world go round—that was one of Bobby Bryant's favorite expressions. "Let's go," Bill said. But he was thinking, He'd better have a white Cadillac, or I'm going to beat his ass and his friend's too. He wasn't too excited about the twenty dollars, although Bobby was selling himself for five. Bill had a hell of a lot more to sell.

On their way to the front of the station, Herman Baskerville introduced himself in the most cultured tones. It made Bill wonder what kind of work Herman did, so he asked him, "What do you do?"

"I suck penises," Herman Baskerville said. "My friend does, too.

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We're certainly not hiding in the closet any more. After all, this is the Twentieth Century." He stopped, and stared into Bill's eyes. "You're not one of those leather freaks, are you? If so, you can forget we ever met."

"I'm not a leather freak," Bill said, wondering what in hell it was in the first place. "Anyway, I meant, what kind of work do you do? You have a very elegant way of talking."

"I'm a teacher. Actually, I'm a professor, which is certainly three or four steps above being a teacher. And what do you do for a living?"

Bill smiled. He felt like he'd been hustling all his life. "I sell my Johnson." Herman Baskerville clutched him tighter by the elbow, and led him outside.

It would not be dark for several hours; and sunlight shone with almost loving care on Herman's dazzling white El Dorado Cadillac. Bill whistled as Herman—"I do wish you'd call me Herm" he kept saying —took out some keys and opened the door on the driver's side. When Bill crawled in, he felt like he might have gone to heaven without ever having died.

The ceiling and upholstery were done in leopard; the dashboard was shiny mahogany with a thousand buttons; the floor was carpeted in red velvet, as clean as if it had just been installed. "This is a natural beauty," Bill said. He remembered Miss Page's white Buick, how he had been impressed by that. Now he was ashamed, remembering how dumb he'd been. This car was class, man. It seemed almost sacrilegious calling it a car. It was a joy buggy, a leopard skin-lined hearse; and, in the lingo of Cousinsville, it was El Dog, the brightest star in the General Motors constellation.

Herm drove with cautious efficiency up Market Street to a playground in Newark wedged between a Catholic church and a fire station. Bill was curious—was the guy a priest, a fireman?—but he decided to keep his mouth shut. He got out of the Cadillac with elaborate coolness, to make sure he'd be seen. Some niggers just stood still and watched him leave the Cadillac, like schoolchildren used to go to the docks in New York to watch the great ocean liners being bumped and tugged out to sea. Niggers stood up on passing buses and rolled envious white eyes at him through the scratched plastic windows. Man, he could spend the rest of the day just getting in and out of this El Dog; but Herm called him, and they went together into the playground.

Now, Bill really was puzzled. A priest, yes. Maybe even a fireman.

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But he couldn't picture this fat little guy working in a playground. They went across the dusty field past children jumping rope, shooting baskets, gliding down slides, and jerking up and down on seesaws. They went into a door marked boys. And three pre-teen youngsters were standing at the opened door to the toilet stall when they walked in.

Herm clapped his hands like a nun at recess. "You children wait outside awhile." One of the boys zipped his pants; his fat little peter seemed hard as a brown cucumber, Bill saw that. The other two ducked past them and scooted out; the third boy left somewhat slower, almost swaggering. "Now," Herm said, pointing, smiling graciously, "Bill Kelsey, I would like you to meet the person I told you was my friend. But I'm afraid I fibbed. Actually, he's my father."

For a wonderfully frightening moment, Bill considered that he might be back in the hands of Aunt Keziah, or someone like her. The smell of piss was almost sweet. Water ran gently, perpetually, in urinals propped against the near wall, coated with the gold of a million young bladders, like soft music in a series of porcelain coffins.

Bill followed Herm's pointing finger; and he saw a sign on the wall of the boys' room. It was scribbled in white chalk on the gray wall, printed in large grade-school letters so that it might be easily read by little boys:

i suck your wee wee if its big

There was an arrow slashed down the wall from the sign, pointing toward an old black man who sat on the commode. Pants down around his ankles, supporting his head on the knuckles of both hands, long nether lip drooping, he almost seemed asleep, waiting with the patience of the ages.

"That's your father?" Bill whispered. Herm nodded with obvious pride. "Remember," he whispered. "You promised. My father doesn't get around too well any more. He's got sugar, he's got arthritis. But he's certainly going to enjoy you'³ He grabbed Bill's Johnson, and the sonofabitch started to grow as Herm led him to his father. His father! He unzipped Bill's jeans and guided his Johnson out.

The bony black man didn't even look up, like he didn't care whose Johnson it was being fed into his mouth. He wrapped his gray lips around it and sucked, moving his head ever so slightly as though he was too weary to move at all. Herm held Bill's Johnson all the while, sagging against him with almost unbearable weight, feeding Johnson

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into his father's mouth, then taking away when the organ lost its gorge and fell flaccid. The old m a swallowed once hard, then seemed to go back to sleep.

Herm led Bill to the washbasin. H splashed cold water on Bill's Johnson, dabbed it dry with his handkerchief, and put it away for him. "I know Daddy appreciated that," Herm said. "He's too old to go out and get the really good stuff. But I look out for him. I consider it my duty, after all he did foHne. Now let's go to my place." He was washing his hands with large quantities of soap, as though to cleanse himself of the feel of his father's spit where the old man had slobbered.

When Bill and Herm left the boys' room, several youngsters were waiting outside, and went in at once. Bill walked across the playground with Herm to the white Cadillac. The car didn't turn him on so much any more. He was thinking about that poor old black bastard in the shithouse, sucking young boys all day. My father is from a fine old family in Sumter. Herm had said that. Now the old man was sucking penises in a boys' room. Not even a men's room. Good God. In a bizarre way, it reminded Bill of his own father, nursing blackberry brandy from a baby bottle until he died.

Was there really that much difference between the two old men? Bill could hear Herm chattering on as the Cadillac purred down first one street, then another. But he didn't listen. That he'd had his first blow job from a man didn't bother him. In fact, he'd enjoyed it. But he was wondering if all black men turned into obscene little children before they died. And if so, why? Or was it something that happened to all men, regardless of color?

Bill felt a slow distaste for life growing in him. Would he leave this world sucking—dicks, baby bottles, his toothless old gums? Like a large, gruesome child crying for the crib of death even as he sucked nourishment in whatever form? Goddamn. He wished he could always be young. Or never die.

In an almost uncanny way, Herman Baskerville tried to answer Bill's unasked questions the next morning after Bill had earned his twenty dollars. It was Sunday. Herm got up early and put on a bathrobe of green, brown, and white cotton that made him look like a pious turtle. He still wore the stocking cap that he had put on to protect his marcelled hair from the rigors of sex and sleep.

"Do you like pancakes?" he asked Bill. "I love them, although they're certainly no good for my figure. I guess Mama was marked by a pancake when she was carrying me. Do you like them?"

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"They're all right," Bill said. He had showered, and he was lying naked on the bed, which gave him a good view of the kitchen. There was a cabinet, a gas stove, and a table underneath a lampshade made of different pieces of colored glass held together by lead.

Herm took down a five-pound bag of Indian Head meal and a five-pound bag of Pathmark flour from the cabinet. A small radio was tuned to one of those stations that broadcasts the news twenty-four hours a day. Robbery. Rape. Death in every sensational form. Herm turned the radio down, and began to talk as he mixed the pancakes.

"You've been worried since yesterday," he said. "And you're worried now because you're so young and there is so much violence in the world that you're afraid you might not live to see your next birthday. At the same time, you're terrified of growing old and useless, as perhaps you think my Daddy is."

He turned the radio off, and dumped half the meal and half the flour into an orange mixing bowl with blue flowers painted around the rim. "Because there is so much talk about murder and death," he went on, "I'm convinced that the basic condition of life is homicidal. Aside from that, after what we did last night, I must seem the last person in the world to talk about deviations from the true course. Or possibly better qualified than most, since I am persistently concerned by how enormous amounts of energy are devoted to causing the deviation of persons and things from their true courses. That is called perversion. And the main problem of these times is perversion—not only of people and governments, but of our economies and natural resources as well—as the problems of preceding generations had to do with sex and religion."

He broke five eggs into the bowl. That seemed a lot of eggs to Bill. In fact, with that flour and meal, and all those eggs, Herm might have been making pancakes for a whole army. He looked like somebody's fat mother; but he talked with a tone of assurance and authority, as though he was in front of one of his classes at the college.

Herm added baking powder, salt, and sugar to the mixture. "America's black people are the world's most active freaks, since the most important part of our national pastime is dedicated to preventing us from fulfilling ourselves as other Americans do. Now, what is the cause of this most unusual condition?"

"I don't know," Bill said automatically; but he realized that Herm wasn't really expecting an answer from him. He dumped a quart of milk into the bowl and began beating the mixture. "Blind loyalty to

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standard mythologies is the real source of perversions. The white man has built up a whole false structure of what he believes is true, but which certainly has little to do with the truth. He attempts to make benevolent children of us all, primarily through the myth of Christianity, since its rigmarole involves a mysticism that can neither be proven nor disproven. The state equally treats us as though we were idiots, to be bribed with promises and lies, as it suits our governments to do so.

"And so we find ourselves in the Age of Perversion, where the white man's myth-making is at the very roots of the black-white controversy in America. How can you make a man—two hundred million men and women—stop believing a myth? The answer is not a simple one." He had taken down a griddle from the wall and was greasing it with butter on a paper towel. Then he lit two burners on the stove and placed the black iron griddle on them.

"History," he said, "has heated passions beyond the ability of any man to remain on the right track. For black people living in isolation as we do, the result of overheated passions can be nothing less than homicidal. Let me show you how this works, dear. For it must be known about if any of us are ever going back to being 'normal' again."

But first, he tried a small drop of the pancake mixture on the griddle. Bill could hear it sizzling. Herm spooned six pancakes on the griddle. He took two plates down from the cabinet, a butter dish from the refrigerator, and a bottle of Alaga syrup from the cabinet again. He went on talking as he cooked pancakes and heaped them on the two plates, putting a pat of butter on each pancake before he added another one to the pile.

"From its very beginning," Herm went on, "America has been a nation in which myths have masqueraded as law and social custom. One excellent example is the Constitution, with its myth of equal application of the law; the myth of Negro rights was added as an afterthought nearly a hundred years later.

"What this means, then, is that the so-called freed slave went from being property of the individual slave-owner to being property of a collective white government. To put it another way, the white American becomes the harsh overseer who has been ordered to treat his slaves more humanely. From time to time in its civil rights laws, the government asks the white part of its chattel to be gentler with the black part and to give him more of the plantation, which the white man refuses to do.

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"The result is violence and counter-violence, but of such a special and insidious nature that when a white man kills a black, he is secure inside the myth that he is not destroying another human being; he is simply getting rid of property that has come to displease him, in the same way that he would discard an old coat or shoot a crippled mule. And when a black man riots and loots and kills a white man, he is taking 'what is due him,' as though he would make up with booty and violence and the life of a white man what he is not fairly paid in wages and respect. Even Congress has fallen for these deceptions, and legislates for a mythical Negro, as though civil rights laws and various self-help programs will ease his hurt and extricate him from inferiority.

"But it is obvious that these laws are aimed at Negroes who already are functioning inside of white society and who certainly do not need them, rather than at the poor black in the street, who is economically and psychologically unable to take advantage of them. It is this kind of legislation that has given rise to the myth of black power, which validates more than anything else the equally fallacious myth of white superiority, and leads directly to the more dangerous myth of violence as therapy. The sum total of this is the supreme myth of all—that the white man is freer than the black, just because he lives better, looks white, and buys more. Whereas any overseer is as subject to the master as the slave is."

As he talked, Herm had built up a truly astonishing pile of pancakes on both plates. Bill was fascinated by the twin stacks; each was nearly a foot high, and still growing. He felt like L'il Black Sambo about to eat himself to death on pancakes and tiger butter. But Herm seemed lost in making pancakes and the sound of his own voice. Bill got up very quietly and put his clothes on. Ym going to rob this motherfucker, he thought. He felt no malice toward the fat little teacher. Anybody who'd make that many pancakes deserved to be robbed. His pants were draped invitingly over the back of a chair, a slender wallet peeping from the edge of his pocket.

Herm stacked pancakes, and talked. "Now, it is important to note that not all these overseers are white. There is a multitude of Negroes who jealously guard the status quo, because with real equality they stand to lose the foothold that they have. It is certainly time for black America to stop deluding itself into thinking that all black people want to be equal to all other black people.

"We know that black America is divided into factions, each of which is trying to gain supremacy over the other. Historically, lighter-

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skinned Negroes like myself have always considered themselves better than blacks of your color. And while the white man may be ignorant of this fact, and the peola Negro delighted by it, the truly black Negro is offended and resentful. To counteract this discrimination, the black Negro establishes elaborate systems of slang and 'soul' and sultry rhythms that are designed to exclude not only the white man, but the white Negro as well. At the same time, these systems indicate an intraracial superiority that is valid because it is attractive on the one hand, and unavailable to all but the very black on the other. Black power, black humor, black rhythm are just one part of this counter-reaction. Rioting in the streets is another.

"The sad and simple truth is that lighter-skinned Negroes have very little to riot about. It is the black Negro who is at the bottom of the heap. He is being sat on by whites and white Negroes alike. He is being ignored by laws that function, at their very best, for lighter-skinned Negroes with the money and the know-how to take advantage of them. In every sense, the really black American really is invisible, and the only attention he ever gets is when he materializes and mounts a riot, or steals something, or kills somebody. When that happens, he is subject to an extreme overexposure that only serves to solidify the mythical attitudes toward him that I have mentioned, and that causes him to react even more violently, since it is as disastrous to be seen too much as it is not to be seen at all.

"Faced with his black wrath, Congress begins its myth-making. Do-gooders of all persuasions rally to keep the black man in his place under the guise of trying to take him out of it. Whites and white Negroes alike come together in a tighter collusion, and make the standards for social acceptance whiter rather than blacker. In other words, the blacks become blacker and the whites become whiter; and what is happening is that the real Negro minority is becoming smaller and smaller, to the extent that its only mode of expression will be to riot, and, ultimately, to die in the streets and prisons of America. Unless somebody does something realistic to lighten either their color, or the burden of their color."

"What is it somebody should do?" Bill said. He was scared shitless, because he'd sneaked seventy-five dollars out of Herm's wallet, every dollar there. Herm hadn't even noticed. In fact, he was fairly well hidden now by the monstrous mound of pancakes.

"What must someone do?" Herm said. "Well, I'll tell you what Fve done. In order to think as objectively as possible, I have retired temporarily from the Negro group. That way, I can better understand

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the forces that are moving the present generation of blacks to incorporate violence and lawlessness into the natural order of things.

"Now I am no longer hiding behind a paranoiac black mask. Because the Negro who insists that the white man is responsible for all the evil in the world, and that the black man is all victim and purity and innocence, is hiding behind a very black mask indeed." He peered at Bill through mountains of pancakes with syrup dripping down the sides like melting maple snow. "Obviously, then, what is called for in America now is a new mythology—government, law, and religion for these times. A declaration of independence from superstition and ignorance. A Constitution for all the people. A Bible that is likewise not bigoted. And lawmakers and Negroes and whites alike who do not perpetuate the old myths."

He took a deep breath, and clapped his hands with a kind of mild joy. "Now, go wash your hands so we can eat. I'm glad to see you've dressed. After all, this is Sunday." He turned the radio on to a station where a black choir was singing and clapping with marvelous gusto.

Bill had just one question. He'd understood most of what Herm had said, but one thing bothered him. "What about juju?" he said. "You know what that is? Some people say we already in charge, that we got juju on our side, that the white man is our servant and don't even know it."

Herm made a sound that seemed to be part disgust at Bill's question, and part pleasure that he had sense enough to ask it. "I've heard that all my life," Herm said. "It's sheer nonsense. The slave always comes to believe that, in reality, he is the master. There's no such thing as juju. Now go wash your hands. I'm absolutely famished."

Bill washed his hands in the bathroom. When he went to the kitchen, Herm had somehow maneuvered the two plates of pancakes to each end of the table, Bill's came almost to his nose as he stood there, wondering what the hell to do. "I'm going to wash my hands," Herm said. "Don't start eating until I come back. On Sundays, I always ask blessing before each meal."

The minute he was gone, Bill opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the backyard. It was a cool, bright morning in October. He had all Herm's money; Herm was full of his milk. It seemed more than a fair exchange. He ran and hopped the fence lightly, then darted down an alley to the street.

He kept on running until he came to Anthony Homes. He was

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scared, excited, happy. And angry. Herm had done all that talking about why black men go like babies to their graves. At the same time, he'd tried to reduce Bill to the level of a Sambo by making all those fucking pancakes. That's what he was really angry about—that anybody would think he could eat all those pancakes.

He ran on to Anthony Homes. And he decided to tell Bobby Bryant that he hadn't scored at all. He didn't want Bobby to know this part of his business. At the same time, his mind slipped back to what Herm had talked about. What he'd said, really, was that the slavery continued, even though all of Bill's teachers, and his mother before her death, had assured him that Mr. Lincoln had ended slavery in 1861.

Several months later, Bill happened to bump into Herm when he was out hustling in another area. He never hustled again in Penn Station, because he didn't want Bobby Bryant to see him, and he was afraid that he might run into Herm. But he ran into Herm anyway.

Herm looked the same; and he was real cool. "That wasn't nice what you did," he said. "Stealing my money, leaving me there with all those pancakes. I had to invite the neighbors in to help me eat them. But I don't mind. You're nice. Will you come home with me?"

Bill went out to the Cadillac with him. Why not? "As long as you leave your father out of it," he said. "And if you don't talk so much. And don't make so many pancakes. That's what really scared me and pissed me off. Those pancakes."

Hearm laughed, and pulled off. That had been a long time ago. Herm's father was probably dead by now. But Herm had never mentioned him again to Bill. They met two or three times a month and did their thing. They had a very cool relationship. Herm bought a new Cadillac every year. Sometimes he let Bill borrow it, which is why Bill was going to Herm's house now.

Herm had gotten somewhat slimmer. He kissed Bill on the cheek. "My you do look good. Is all this for me?"

Bill laughed, stepping away from Herm's hungry hand. "I'm going to do me some hustling in East Orange. I wanted to see if I could borrow your car. And some money, on account."

Herm laughed. He was watching a swimming meet on TV, getting his kicks looking at the bulges in the young boys' wet trunks when they climbed from the pool. "On account of what? That you're broke?" He gave Bill thirty dollars and the car keys. "Save some for me," he said. But it was a comfortable remark, nothing demanding.

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"I'll see you later," Bill said. He went out to the white Cadillac. Pulling off, he knew he was a beautiful motherfucker. And he had the feeling that beautiful things were going to happen to him this eighth day of August, 1974. Driving slowly, so niggers could dig him—you understand?—he hatted on up to East Orange.

But his mind kept slipping back to the first time he'd met Herm and clipped him for those seventy-five bucks. Now he and Herm were good friends. He thought about his father, Herm's father, himself, and of Herm with all those goddamn pancakes and that church music on the radio. And he thought, We do the things we do because we're niggers. It was as deeply as he could think right then, gliding on to East Orange like a pretty motherfucker.

Bill had been in East Orange several times before. Like Newark and two or three other towns in Jersey, it had a black mayor. Unlike Newark, it had a particularly high opinion of itself; and because bad-looking property and slum dwellings were outlawed by city ordinance, the niggers who lived there were sublimely arrogant about what they drank, how they dressed, and how they banded together to protect the city's claim that it was at the Crossroads of New Jersey, whatever that meant.

There were no more than four or five bars, called "lounges." One of them, the Urban Lounge, was disguised as an old spook of a house. But the favorite watering place of the elite was a place near the cemetery on Central Avenue, called Ludie's Lounge. No one knew who or what Ludie was; and not too much effort was made to find out, lest it be discovered that Ludie was an especially large and offensive black woman, whereas it pleased everyone to suppose that Ludie was serenely, charmingly white.

Most of Ludie's regular clientele was usually black; but there were two or three whites drinking self-consciously, as though they were a coterie hired to give the place a look of integration. It was rumored that the black mayor got drunk from time to time in one of Ludie's exclusive rooms. The walls were plastered with paper that looked like ornate red velvet. There were a dozen or more signs announcing cocktail sips and byob in the lower right-hand corner of each. All of which meant that a cocktail sip is one of those expressions—along with sportsman, playboy, chic, petite, et a/.—that have great currency among so-called upper-class niggers, probably because they cover more than they reveal.

BYOB is generally understood to mean "Bring Your Own Bottle,"

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which meant that cocktail sips usually turned into drunken brawls, where men and women in rented tuxedos and evening gowns wound up fighting like ghetto niggers, proving the dictum that even tuxedos and long gowns cannot make silk purses out of sows' ears. Or, more accurately, that you can take the nigger out of the ghetto but you can't take the ghetto out of the nigger, however sedately the Newark AFRO-American describes a hoedown of nearly riot proportions as "... one of north Jersey's major social events of the season. Among those present were Mesdames and Messrs., etc."

In the same lingo, a sportsman or playboy was in reality a pimp. A woman who was chic or petite might be exactly that, but a whore to boot. She also might weigh in at a quarter of a ton, if, in all fairness, one counted massive wigs that came from either Woolworth's or John's Bargain Stores.

Thus, East Orange had become a ghetto of professionals and semi-professionals—from black college professors to black government clerks. Not a few of them were fags; and they drew hustlers like bears to the honey tree from all over Jersey, bringing honey. Bill Kelsey usually avoided East Orange, as he shied away from most places that were patently phony; but today, he had been drawn to Ludie's Lounge as though by a magnet.

He parked the white Cadillac and went in. He paused as the heavy glass doors whispered shut behind him. This gave his eyes time to become accustomed to the dim light. It also gave the various fags, females, and freaks sufficient time to look him over and decide how to make their play.

There were heavy red drapes at the windows, and the place was dimly illuminated by concealed red neon lights. About a dozen blacks and a few whites sat importantly around a long, oval-shaped red-velvet bar. Bill recognized none of them. They were talking the usual bullshit, some of which came to him in subdued, cultured tones: "I know he'll never resign, the bastard." More talk about Nixon. Everybody was talking about Nixon nowadays, that asshole.

The bartender was also somebody Bill didn't know. He ordered a double Scotch on the rocks. If he'd asked for Thunderbird, they probably would have all risen up and thrown him out. Thunderbird? My Gawd! Sipping slowly, Bill stared at the wet glass patterns on the bar. He could feel eyes like hungry rats on him, sizing him up. By now, everybody knew he'd pulled up in the white El Dog. He knew he looked good; he held his whiskey glass like a proper nigger, not choking it to death, but letting his pinky stick out like white folk.

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Still, he felt uncomfortable, as though he had wandered into some cave where the last people on earth huddled together for comfort. "Five says he will resign." Nixon again. An old Billie Holiday record played on the jukebox; and the melancholy music added to Bill's sense that everybody here was playing a game that he had either forgotten or never known. He felt better when the bartender came over and wiped away the glass stains with a damp rag.

"I've got some lima beans and ham hocks cooking," the bartender said. "You want some when they're done?" He pointed to, a large aluminum pot on a hot plate at the curved end of the bar. "I sure would like some," Bill said. He was surprised that a place like this would be serving food like that.

Then, a large, tall, brown-skinned woman came in. She was such a mass of muscles and breasts and butt that Bill wondered how it would feel to wrestle naked with her coated with oil and sweat, like two gladiators striving for honors before some ancient emperor. But she was beautiful, too. Her hair—he could not tell whether it was a wig-fell to her shoulders in slick black ringlets. She wore a short, very thin white coat of some shiny material that seemed to be wet. A white, frilled blouse barely contained her full breasts. A red miniskirt showed her thighs almost to her cunt hairs. She was large, but in no way fat; muscular, but very feminine; tall, solid, and beautiful. Bill had the strong feeling that he knew her from someplace.

She strode into the bar like a brown Amazon looking for new worlds to conquer. And pouting because she found herself in a nigger "lounge" in East Orange, admired by a few patrons, most of them failures. Her lips reminded Bill of red tropical things that bloomed in the dark humus of her face. He trembled when her eyes lighted on him—was it because he was the stranger here, and probably also the strongest one?—as though he was the midnight hour when her mouth would reveal its hot, wet sweetness. His heart thudded when she came over to him.

"Hi, Bill Kelsey," she said. Her voice had the trace of a lisp and the gentle rumble of female thunder; and he experienced a feeling like tepid rain falling in the pit of his stomach. "I'm Clair Page. You were in my first class, years ago in Dillwyn. Don't you remember?" His eyes must have bugged, for she stepped back and gave him a good look. "When you knew me, I was thin as a rail. My complexion was lighter, too. But things have changed since then." She held open her shiny coat to show the result of the transition.

"It's been a long time," he said. "I wouldn't have recognized you."

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He remembered that she had been three years his senior, but she looked at least ten years younger. "Can I buy you a drink?" he said. She ordered a double Scotch and soda.

"What's happening with you now?" he said. "Are you still teaching?"

"I'm into something else. I guess you could call it teaching. But not in a classroom." She swallowed half her drink. "Why didn't you write me? You promised. I waited all summer."

He'd been waiting with dread for her to ask that. "I'm sorry. I was young, dumb. I didn't know then that a man always keeps his word." He made his voice light. "Especially to a fine woman."

"You think I'm fine?" She drained her glass with obvious satisfaction.

"I think you're beautiful." His voice was hoarse with desire. Goddamn! He remembered all the times she'd done him in. He felt his Johnson raise its hungry head, like a snake sliding through grass. How in the hell did he know she'd grow into this absolutely fine fox?

He ordered another round; and when they came, he drank his quickly, hoping for courage to bring the conversation around to sex. God, how he wanted to wrestle with this giant of a woman! He wanted to make her scream, to even scream himself if the going got that good. But she talked on about the days at Dillwyn High, which he pretended to remember when she asked him direct questions, or ignored when that was possible. He was intrigued by the spread of her thighs on the bar stool, by the peaks of her breasts. Her hair coiled and rebounded as she tossed her head and laughed, showing sparkling white teeth that seemed dangerously strong, as though she lived on bones.

"I really loved you, Bill Kelsey. I thought you were the most beautiful man alive."

He made his mind go back over the years to the crowded corridors of the black high school in Dillwyn, back to her white Buick where she gorged herself like a cannibal. "Like I say, I was young then. I didn't know any better." He toyed with his glass. "Do you still think I'm beautiful?"

She answered without hesitation. "More beautiful than ever."

He kept very quiet. His Johnson made a right triangle with his thigh. He wondered if she saw it.

"What are you thinking of?" Miss Page said.

"Of you."

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"Was it good?"

"Very good."

She seemed pleased at that. "What was it?"

He took a deep breath. "I was thinking," he said, "how nice it would be to make love to you again."

Her dark eyes glittered with a kind of severe pleasure. "I'd like that," she said. "I'd like that very much."

But her next comment surprised him. "I had a job with a federally sponsored program," she said. "I got laid off. You know how the government's cutting back on everything nowadays."

So this was her come-on. Old Miss Page, from down home in Dill-wyn, had made it to the city and become a whore. He should have known what she was from the beginning. No woman would dress like that unless she was out looking for Johnson. In a way, Bill liked that even better. He was used to getting paid for giving pleasure; now she was asking him to pay for some. "How does twenty dollars sound?" he said. "Half now, half later."

Her eyes sparkled like spangles. "You sure do know how to please a lady," she said. He gave her ten dollars, and rose to go. But she held him back. "What's the hurry, honey? Let's have a few more drinks. Besides, Elmer always cooks hocks and beans today, and I want some."

As always, when he thought a woman was stalling him, Bill felt the nigger in him rise like an erection. It was a tremendous surge of anger that erupted like a rocket from the hairy black prison where he kept it surrounded and subdued by the paler flesh of pretending to be white. He wanted to knock her off that goddamn stool. What kind of bullshit was she laying down? He might act white and talk white when he wanted to—Herman Baskerville had taught him that—but he was still a nigger.

Then something touched his brain like cold water thrown on a fire. He didn't want to be a nigger—it was Burnside and Cousinsville and all the awful spaces in between.

"Don't you like hocks and beans?" Miss Page said.

Bill forced a smile. "If you like, we can stay and have sdme. Is Elmer the bartender? Why don't you call him and order some more drinks?" His voice was cool and carefully controlled—a white man's voice—as though he had pulled a jockstrap over the black point of his emotions, bending and dulling the deadly head under strong white elastic.

Elmer brought their drinks—the beans and hocks would be ready

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in a little while, Elmer said—and then Bill shifted on his stool and touched Miss Page tenderly on her arm. "When were you last in Burnside?" he said. "I was there about a year ago."

"About two years ago I went to Richmond. I didn't get to Burn-side. I went down to see my mother."

Calmly, Bill drank. He didn't care about Burnside, or when she had been there. He was being white, making polite conversation to keep the nigger in him from bursting out of confinement.

"What happened to the Willis place?" Miss Page said.

"They sold it." Even now he felt a certain bitterness that a part of the Willis land might have been his. "Are they still doing that juju stuff down there?"

"Some people are," Miss Page said.

"I don't believe in it," Bill said. He felt far enough removed from the early Aunt Keziah to make his voice sound defiantly doubtful. "I just don't believe in it at all."

"Some people don't," Miss Page said; and she ordered another drink. When Elmer brought it, Miss Page downed it quickly and chased it with soda. "Bring us two more, Elmer." She looked at Bill with a mock frown. "You're not drinking, Bill baby. I thought you said you wanted to make love."

He didn't see what one thing had to do with the other. But she was tossing down Scotch like it was going out of style. It was a good thing he'd got that extra money from Herman. Then he supposed that like most whores, Miss Page was using liquor to build herself to the point of making it with him—he sometimes did it himself with a client-while at the same time, she was trying to get him drunk so that he would be easier to manage. Well, with as much Scotch as he had in him, Miss Page—he could think of her as nothing other than that— Miss Page was in for a terrible surprise.

Furthermore, if she still loved him like she said she did, why would she need liquor to build her courage up? He could feel her eyes on him, and his body became warm all over. What did she really want? More money? She already had ten of his dollars, and he'd promised her ten more. Besides, if she really wanted money, why was she encouraging him to spend it on drinks? Already she was tapping on the bar for Elmer. Bill swallowed his drink in a hurry: whatever she had in mind, it seemed important to keep up with her as she led him to whatever rendezvous.

"What are you thinking about now?" Miss Page said; although Bill had the eerie feeling that she already knew.

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"I was wondering what happened to you," Bill said. "I thought you were going to stay in the South and help make it over."

"I was young then, too. Remember? It didn't take me long to find out that what's happening to black people in the South is happening to them all over the country."

Bill nodded. "So what did you do?"

"I changed," Miss Page said. She laughed almost merrily. "I gave up teaching, because there's really nothing to teach, you know what I mean? Black people know exactly what's happening to them. It's the whites who need teaching. Like I said, I'm into something else now."

Yes, whoring, Bill thought. He didn't like the fact that he felt so superior to her, even though they were both on the same level in that respect.

"What are you thinking about now?" Miss Page said.

Bill squirmed. "About making love."

She shrugged impatiently. "Why do you call it making love? That sounds like a white man. Why don't you just call it what it is?"

"I didn't want to offend you."

"It offends me when you talk about making love. Niggers don't do that. Niggers fuck. Didn't we fuck? Or don't you consider yourself a nigger?"

When he didn't answer, she drank and moved her shoulders as though small vibrations coursed through her body. "Anyway, you say you want to make love to me. But everybody's idea of love isn't the same. With some people, it's the physical contact. With others, it's a sharing of experiences, of things. Which is it with you?"

"The sharing," Bill said, because he could tell that was how she wanted him to answer. But he felt that he was not entirely untruthful, because he did want to share his body with hers. Still, he could not shake the uncomfortable feeling that she had something else in mind for him, something even more exciting—or terrifying—than fucking.

Then, an incredible thing happened. He was walking with Miss Page through a heavy fog that covered everything. They came to a cemetery on the other side of a spiked fence where he saw a mound of fresh red dirt no more than a few hours old where somebody had been buried. The fog had thickened now; and Bill felt that he was alone with Miss Page in a world that had never existed before. On the other side of the fence, the grave seemed as inviting as a quilted bed. Holding Miss Page's hand, he felt himself being lifted through

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the air over the fence. Together, they landed on dirt that yielded to their weight like a sponge.

Then they were naked on the grave. There was no headstone, so Bill did not know who slumbered underneath them as he entered Miss Page, easing into the mysterious warmth of a long, dark cave, where a slow fire burned intensely. Excitement pumped through his veils like hot oil. This is how it was in the beginning, Bill thought. And he felt like a god wrapped in the steaming mists of creation, steadily driving Miss Page into the ground.

Now there was a gravestone where there was none before. Sacred to the Memory of Serena Kelsey. He was fucking on his mother's grave, although he had buried her in an unmarked hole behind the shack in the woods next to the Willis place. But there was a strangeness about the whole thing. He knew he was back in Ludie's Lounge, sitting next to Miss Page on a bar stool as Elmer served them ham hocks and lima beans in cheap bowls. But at the same time, he was here making love to Miss Page on his mother's grave where fog covered everything.

Still, he could make out the marker with the inscription to his mother on it—there were no dates of her birth and death, as though she had existed for all time, throughout all history—and Bill could see a clutter of tombstones and markers on a multitude of graves around him when an opening occurred in the mist and it floated and shifted. He saw the trunks of elderly oaks and even the thrust of their branches upwards into the haze. A gooey warm substance dampened his knees and toes, and he wondered if he and Miss Page were wallowing in blood. But it was only red mud from the grave, churned up by their flailing.

Then, as though a long arm had reached through the fog and cleared an exact path for his wandering vision, he looked across the cemetery and saw a single white man looking at him. It was the final ingredient that had been missing to make this the most perfect occasion of his life, even though it was unfolding in some way that he could not understand. Had Aunt Keziah reached out from Burnside and put a fever into his brain?

The white man, a gravedigger, probably, the way he stood with one foot propped on a shovel, wearing faded blue jeans and a windbreaker, watched them with little or no concern, as though what he was seeing was the exact sort of thing a white man could expect from niggers. He's got to be excited, Bill thought. He ground his own naked ass like a black drive shaft; Miss Page met his every stroke

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with amazing congrueney. It excited Bill to think of the white man's excitement. But the gravedigger remained at a distance, resting almost comfortably on his shovel, as though nothing niggers could do deserved more than his passing attention. Then the fog rolled in in large waves, and the avenue between Bill and the white man was closed.

Almost angrily, Bill withdrew from Miss Page. "Let's go," he said. He'd lived so long in the white man's world—all his life, really—that he'd wanted a sign from the white man to reactivate the savage in him. But the white man, hidden there somewhere in the fog, had merely seen two niggers fucking in a graveyard, and had not been moved. "Let's go," Bill said again. He felt drunk, angry, confused.

Miss Page laughed. "You're sure in a hurry. Eat your beans and hocks. Then we'll go."

Bill blinked. He was back in the bar . . . had he ever left? Miss Page was eating lima beans, wiping the corners of her mouth from time to time on a pink napkin. But there was also the dry smell of red mud in Bill's nostrils and a telltale ache in his loins that indicated somehow he had been in the graveyard with Miss Page.

"It's amazing," Bill said. "How did you do it?"

"Do what?" Miss Page said. She smiled slightly, turning up the corners of her large mouth. "Why don't you eat? Then we can go."

Bill tried the food and didn't like it. "I'd rather have another drink," he said. He ordered one and sipped it while Miss Page finished her beans and his, too. He felt weak and bewildered and not a little drunk. Had Miss Page—or the bartender—put something in his drink that cafjsed him to hallucinate? If so, why? He remembered clearly that no one had greeted Miss Page when she came into the bar, a woman as sexy and beautiful as she was. Did they know something about her that he didn't, something that should be avoided?

The scraping of her spoon in the bottom of the bowl irritated him; and he was relieved when she shoved it away and picked up her drink. Even though he had not achieved satisfaction, he felt the tremendous fatigue that comes after a long series of ejaculations. At the same time, he wondered if Miss Page might not be trying to irritate him deliberately. Perhaps she was even laughing at him silently as she threw her head back and tossed down the Scotch. "All right, we can go now," she said. Bill paid and went out to the white Cadillac with her.

But his knees and legs were weak. At one point, he thought he might collapse. He wondered if he had been sitting in the bar too

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long, for it was dark now, and the streets were empty and quiet. "Can you drive?" he asked Miss Page. When she said that she could —she chided him for not remembering that she had driven him up and down Burnside when he was in school—he handed her the keys. Depending on a woman to that extent made him feel even weaker, as though all of his male strength had been drained from him. Did he even want to go with her? But something weird had happened to him in that bar, and he was curious. He slid into the car and rested his head against the back of the seat.

The Cadillac started with a subdued but reassuring roar of power. In the cemetery with Miss Page—he knew with stunning certainty now that it had happened—his own power had failed him. Some part of him had died when he saw that white man watching them through the fog and realized that the white man, that casual sonofabitch, didn't even recognize him, didn't even care. Miss Page was driving smoothly, expertly. To where? Bill closed his eyes. In a little while, he fell asleep.

When he woke up, he was aware of speeding along under a cloudless sky. The full moon was the color of angry tangerines and seemed to be chasing them. Bill looked at Miss Page; but it was dark in the car, and he could only see her outline as she leaned intently over the wheel, now accelerating, now slowing down along a narrow road where weeds grew on both sides. The road was rough and sometimes the car slid to the right or left, as though they were moving in a channel of mud. But each time, Miss Page hit the gas and sent the Cadillac careening back to its proper path. The headlights sliced through the gloom and picked out the figure of some kind of animal running in front of them.

It was a galloping goat. A coal-black goat. Bill sat up straight and stared, not yet sure whether he was awake or in another trance. Yet, everything seemed so real—the angry moon that kept pace with them, the surging power of the Cadillac, and the very real presence of Miss Page beside him as she sent the car hurtling along behind the goat. For, awake or dreaming, it was obvious to Bill that Miss Page was following the goat. Or rather, that the goat was leading them somewhere, for it made no effort to leave the road and escape into the fields. Instead, it followed a true course along the muddy road. And Miss Page kept an equal distance between it and the car. She was following the goat, all right.

Almost fearfully, Bill reached out and touched her. She seemed real enough, especially when she eased down on the brake to widen

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the distance between her and the goat; and Bill felt the marvelous play of muscles in her thigh. "So you're awake," she said. "You were really sleeping it up there for a while."

"Where are we?" Bill said. Now that he knew he wasn't dreaming, he felt nearly helpless in the hands of dismay. "Where are we going? What are we doing out here in the country?" Her thigh moved under his hand as she accelerated again. He dared not mention the goat for fear that it might not exist.

"Tonight's a special night," Miss Page said. "I'm taking you some place special."

For a moment, he thought that they were back in Burnside—the flat fields, the muddy road, the fat round moon, all reminded him of Burnside. But the clock on the dashboard read a quarter to midnight. To midnight! There'd been no time to go to Burnside. He took his hand off Miss Page's thigh as though she had scorched him. "I thought we were going to your place ... to make love," he said.

"You know we've already made love," Miss Page said. "You owe me ten more dollars. But I'll collect later."

Bill looked at her sharply; but she was concentrating on the goat. So she knew what had happened to him in the bar . . . that they had been together in the graveyard making love. But why shouldn't she know? Obviously she had caused it. Just as she had created the white man to debilitate him. Had it been some kind of test, like God placing the subtle serpent—tempter and seducer—in Paradise? He felt betrayed, and at the same time, completely powerless. He thought about grabbing the steering wheel and crashing the car into the steep embankments that had risen now on both sides of them. But even as the thought was forming, he felt it dissolve into weakness. What little strength he had left, he would need it for whatever lay ahead.

The road had turned dry and was covered with leaves as they descended and the land on either side of them rose steadily. The goat had slowed his pace, and Miss Page kept the Cadillac at a careful distance behind him. Bill felt very hot. He pressed the switch that lowered the window on his side, and the night air hit him in the face with the impact of a lukewarm slap. The wind had risen, and leaves rustled around the car like the scattering of dry bones.

Now the car was moving at a snail's pace; the goat had already disappeared around a bend. Bill closed his eyes. The car stopped. They had come to the end of their journey. "Let's go," Miss Page said. He sat very still as she switched off the ignition and the lights. Then he heard her open the door and get out. The door slammed

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with a hollow sound, as though they had stopped in the middle of nowhere. Whatever happens, Bill said to himself—and at the same time, he prayed that there was a God, and that He would hear it—whatever happens, Lord please don't let me cry. He opened his door and got out of the car.

Although he did not look at his watch, he knew that it was exactly midnight. Just as he knew that the black goat was out there somewhere in the darkness watching them. He felt Miss Page beside him, fumbling for his hand. "Don't be afraid," she said. But the fact that she said it only increased his fear. Then, somewhere ahead of him, a fire flared up; and he saw about a dozen people sitting in a circle around it, and the dim figure of the goat between him and them.

Miss Page led him gently but firmly. She might have been his dead mother holding him by the hand. "Why did you bring me here?" he said; and he kept his voice to a whisper.

"I brought you," Miss Page said, "because you've forgotten what it is to be black. I found that out in the graveyard."

"What about the graveyard? How did you do that? Did it really happen?"

"It happened. You were fine until you saw that white man. Then you forgot how to be a man yourself. That's why I brought you here. I want you to know that we don't have to be afraid of the white man any more."

He almost laughed at that. As scared as he was now, it wasn't the white man he was scared of. She was leading him over to the goat. If Bill had had the strength, he would have broken away from her and run back to the Cadillac. She'd left the keys in the ignition, he'd made sure of that. And what he longed for now more than anything else was the cool, calm presence—the undeniable authority—of some white person.

For he could see that all the people in the circle around the fire were black. And Miss Page was black. And the goat was black, and bearded, with eyes that seemed to glow like burning coals, although he was standing at a far remove from the fire, stinking to high heaven, with a short tail and backwardly arching horns. Chewing his cud, he looked at Bill and Miss Page out of what seemed an immense boredom. Then, deliberately, he turned his back on them.

Miss Page leaned against Bill and whispered in his ear. "Before we go to the fire," she said, almost bashfully, "you've got to kiss the goat's ass."

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Now Bill did laugh; he thought it was some kind of joke she was trying to pull on him. "What about you?" he said.

Without hesitation, she knelt and kissed the goat's ass. "Now you do it," she said.

He backed away. "You must be crazy!"

Her face looked gray and ugly in the moonlight. "Kiss it!" she said. He couldn't mistake the lisping threat in her voice, the promise of even more unpleasant things to do if he didn't do this. "Now hurry! We're late as it is!"

He was determined not to kneel. So he bent and kissed the goat's ass, holding his breath against the wild, strong odor of the animal, making his mind go blank as his lips touched the stiff black hair. He was horrified that he had let Miss Page bully him into doing such an obscene thing. But she seemed very pleased. The goat seemed pleased, too, for he turned around and proceeded to chew his cud with what appeared to be the arrogant satisfaction of a monarch.

Bill scrubbed his lips with his handkerchief; but Miss Page was already tugging him toward the fire and the people there. And even as he and Miss Page approached, one of the women stood up and began talking.

"Well, here we are again," she said, standing far back from the fire. "Since our meeting last month, I am pleased to report that our work is progressing very effectively. I will now read you a list of our accomplishments over the past thirty days." She was wearing a shiny black handbag on a strap over her shoulder, and she searched through it until she found a piece of paper.

"Damn!" Miss Page said. She sounded very disappointed. "They've started without us. I told you to hurry. Now we have to wait before we can take our places." She sat on the dew-damp grass, drawing her legs underneath her. Bill squatted beside her and inspected the people around the fire. Except for the unlikely setting— they were in a low valley on a moon-blanched plain, where the fire extended their shadows beyond them like a gathering of giants—they might have been some committee from a black church about to hear a report from the program secretary.

Now that she had found the list, the woman fumbled in her pock-etbook for glasses. "I'm blind as a bat without them," she told the others; and they grinned and nodded as though it was a remark they had heard so many times before that it would be impolite not to treat it as though it was original. Like all the others—counting her, there were six women and five men—she was dressed in Sunday-go-to-

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meeting clothes. All the women wore hats; the men were shaved and shiny-cheeked, all of them in suits and ties. It easily could have been a midweek church meeting. Yet, there was the business of the goat leading them here, the ritual kissing, eleven people in a wide circle around a fire. Bill sat down next to Miss Page. To hell with his white suit. He needed to be close to someone.

The woman who had been talking found her glasses and planted them on her nose. Bill looked over his shoulder to see if the goat was still there. But the goat was gone. "All right, darlings. Here is a list of what we have done. We caused three airplane crashes, five hijackings, three floods, and four tornadoes. But this month, as in months past, we have concentrated most of our energy on that mess in Washington." She smiled at all of them over the tops of her glasses. "I think you'll all agree with me if I say we've done an excellent job. An excellent job."

Everybody applauded. Some of the women squirmed on their haunches, for they were all sitting cross-legged.

Bill felt very strange. He put his lips close to Miss Page's ear and whispered. "What's she talking about? She sounds like she's crazy. Who is she?"

But Miss Page motioned him to be quiet, for the woman in the circle had started reading again. Then, as if in concession to Bill's curiosity, Miss Page whispered to him quickly. "She's our leader, and she's not crazy. She's a brilliant woman. Now keep quiet. I want to listen."

Bill listened, too. His mind was reeling as the woman read off her list. Turmoil in government. The President under fire from Congress, from the public. Impeachment proceedings. Payoffs and cover-ups and the peddling of influence. Even the dullest child knew that Washington had always been scandal-prone; but the current scandals had achieved proportions never reached before. And that woman—that ridiculous black nigger woman in eyeglasses and a white dress with large red flowers, and high-heeled shoes, wearing pantyhose, if Bill's eyes were accurate . . . she and ten other niggers squatting in a ring around a fire, applauding as the list grew longer with corruption and strife and confusion. . . .

"We caused all of that. Isn't it wonderful?"

They applauded and grinned some more, nudging each other with pleasure. Miss Page clapped, too, a solid slapping of her hands together that conveyed unending delight.

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The woman in the circle seemed to notice her and Bill for the first time. "Why, there's Sister Page. With a visitor. Come, Sister Page. Why didn't you tell us you all were sitting out there? Did you hear all the wonderful things we've done?"

"I heard," Miss Page said. She got up and pulled Bill to his feet. He felt as though he was made of stone.

They were jujus. Every single one of them. Even Miss Page. I'm into something else. Now he understood how she'd been able to transport him to that cemetery, even as he'd sat beside her in the bar. And that business with the goat. And the people around the fire—all of them jujus—even as they widened the circle to make room for him and Miss Page, bringing the number to thirteen.

Bill moved like a man in a daze. And his mind slipped like a misstep on the muddy riverside of time, and scrambled back to the days of his mother and her talk about juju. We caused the Civil War. We caused everything. He looked at Miss Page, and she nodded, settling herself into a Buddha-like position beside him.

Airplane crashes. The dollar in trouble. Crises in Washington, Vietnam, the Middle East. Strikes. Plant shutdowns. Inflation. Recession. Unemployment. All this confusion. And Miss Page nodded. Bill almost fell, sitting down beside her. Somehow, they'd gotten the real stuff from Africa. His mother had been right all along.

"Has your friend paid his respects to our Leader?" the woman asked.

"He has," Miss Page said. "And he is truly one of us. His mother, and later, his guardian, were famous jujus in Burnside."

The woman smiled. "Then we can get on with the business at hand. You can instruct him privately, Sister Page. But for now, we have far more important things to do."

She dug in her pocketbook and came out with a small doll. "Look at him," she said, bending low, showing the doll to a few. "Isn't he lovely?" She yielded it to one of the men, and he examined it eagerly, then passed it along. The fire dancing on their faces made them look like savages, Bill thought. Either they were serious about what they were doing—he could verify that everything they claimed credit for had happened—or they were absolutely mad.

Bill waited for the doll to reach him as each person in their turn examined it. Soon it would be his turn. He felt a chill engulf him like a cold wind. Soon now. Then the woman on his left thrust the doll into his hands.

It was made of hard wax, dressed in a black suit, with small black

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shoes, a white shirt, and red tie. Bill almost dropped it. It was a perfect image of the embattled President of the United States.

Bill handed the doll to Miss Page. I've got to go, he thought. I've got to get away from here. But the woman in the red-flowered dress was passing out something else now. When she got to him, she bent at the hips and smiled into his face. "We're so happy to have you here tonight. As you can see, it's a very special night." She handed him a hat pin, a long, deadly-looking needle with a black teardrop head, and moved on around the circle.

Then she was standing by the fire with the doll in her hand, and her own pin glittering from the fire that seemed to burn with the same slow intensity, as though of its own volition. "The time has come," the woman said, "for our supreme effort. What we do tonight, we do in the names of our oppressed brothers and sisters wherever they may be in America, however little they may know of us and of what we are doing." Holding the doll firmly in her left hand, she rammed the pin into its head.

A sigh rose from the people in the circle. The woman handed the doll to another woman. She too stuck her pin into it. "For the intent of our black brothers and sisters," she said. She gave the doll to the next person.

Bill stared at them. But his mind was racing. He remembered the years he had spent with Aunt Keziah. Where are the goddamn white people? he thought. How can they let niggers mold in isolation in a corner until they believe that they cause everything that happens to the white man in America? His mother had told him that once there were many blacks practicing juju with inferior ingredients. Now there were only a few blacks practicing juju, but the ingredients were apparently plentiful and authentic. Where the hell are the white people, Bill thought, to let this kind of madness go on?

His mouth was dry. He wet his lips and leaned to whisper to Miss Page. "That doll. Doesn't it need something from the President on it?"

"It's got them," she said. "We have contacts in the White House. Good contacts. That doll has a piece of the President's clothes, some of his fingernails, and a strand of his hair. It'll work all right."

Now his mouth was dry again. "You mean . . . you mean you all are trying to kill the President?"

She looked at him strangely. "Of course." She sounded as sane and sober as any person he had ever talked to. "Now keep quiet," she said. "There's the doll. It's your turn."

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There were already seven pins in the doll. Bill thought that he might throw up. God forgive me if this is real. No one had stuck a pin through the doll's heart. "For the intent of our black brothers and sisters," Bill said. He rammed the pin through the heart of the doll. It seemed to squirm in his hands. He dropped it into Miss Page's lap and jumped up and ran to the Cadillac.

For a terrifying moment, he thought they would come screaming after him. He turned the ignition key and pressed two switches—one that raised the windows, another that locked all the doors. His hands were trembling, but he got the motor started and swung the Cadillac around and headed up the road that the goat had led them down. He saw that the black people had filled in the space he had vacated in the circle, the doll apparently still making its nefarious rounds.

He drove rapidly but carefully for some five miles. Would the road never end? Then, angrily, he pulled to a stop and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking; and he felt stupid now about the way he had panicked and fled from that pack of crazy niggers.

The moon was red and bloated, as though it were Mars moved closer to Earth to watch all the wretchedness and human misery. How long, he wondered, would the white man keep us imprisoned in the ghettos of our minds? Such forced isolation breeded all kinds of aberrations, such as the holy trinity, the credo of being black—hate white, hate yourself, hate all other black people. Herman Baskerville had taught him that.

Such reasoning was like a snake consuming itself from the tail up until it choked to death. And in his agony, the black man had deluded himself into thinking that he is the oppressor rather than the oppressed, that he is full of power rather than powerless.

The whole neo-African trend—the wearing of dashikis, and Afro hairdos, and the taking on of African names—was evidence of a slow, choking death. But Africa didn't want us, and only a few of us wanted Africa. We had changed. Not things, or the times, or white people, or America. Black people in America had changed. Somewhere along the way, they had stopped being Africans and had become Americans, however isolated and unequal. His mother had taught him that; Herman Baskerville had taught him that—if he could trust the word of a lying mother and a black fag.

So why the need for juju? Again, Herman's classroom voice came to him. We believe in magic because we are so powerless. The same way men believe in angels because they themselves cannot grow wings and fly. But one thing seemed to have escaped his mother, with

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her talk of juju, as it escaped Miss Page and those people tonight: If black people cause everything, then they cause their own misery as well. It was an important part of the Judeo-Christian concept turned around—instead of God making us suffer for our sins, we are making ourselves suffer for the white man's sins.

Bill stubbed out his cigarette and lit another one. He felt better now that his mind had taken over and he could still exercise reason. Would daylight never come? He had always hated the darkness, dark things. Five miles behind him, down the road in the low valley, possibly, just possibly, twelve black people were murdering the President of the United States. Despite himself, the nigger in Bill Kelsey rose up and danced with delirious glee. Wouldn't it be wonderful-marvelous, amazing, emancipating—if it were true? Not so much the killing—he hated killing—but that it could be done that way?

He heard a tapping on the car window, and he jumped, startled from his thoughts. Miss Page was standing there, looking at him through the car window, motioning for him to open the door.

He was too tired, too confused, to wonder how she had got there. But should he let her in? He was terrified of her—all that nonsense, that insanity with the goat, the doll, the pins. Then he thought that if she could travel five miles, by whatever means, in a little more than five minutes, she could get in the car whether he let her in or not. He reached over and unlocked the door.

Miss Page got in and sat for a while without speaking. Then she said, "I'm sorry I frightened you. It's the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I thought you'd understand."

He was trembling. He wished there was some way he could make her disappear. But there was an important, an unanswered, question. "The juju. . .is it true?"

She nodded. "It's true. You know it's true. Haven't you felt it?"

He knew she was talking about those years with Aunt Keziah. Probably the whole evening, ever since she had taken him by whatever magic into the cemetery, he'd known that she was the one who'd freed him from Aunt Keziah. But he wanted to hear it from her own lips.

"After you didn't write," she said, "I went down to Mississippi and Alabama. First I tried to teach. Then the civil rights movement became hot, and I got involved in that. But I noticed that the old folks didn't seem too bothered about whether they voted, or ate with white people, or sent their children and grandchildren to white schools. I started talking to them." She took from her pocket a small

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leather pouch similar to the one Bill's mother had worn. "I lived with an old woman who taught me juju. Then I found out that you were with that old woman . . . Aunt Keziah. I didn't know enough then about how to get you away from her. So I did it the best way I knew how. I infiltrated the area Aunt Keziah had laid claim to. That's why you left Burnside. Didn't you know? Didn't you feel?"

He knew she didn't expect an answer, so he lit a cigarette and said nothing. We cause everything. His mother had said that. But it had been Miss Page who kept Aunt Keziah from castrating him, who joined his consciousness with that of Mr. Cobb's, who made him hit Mr. Willis so that he'd be safe in jail until he could leave Burnside. His head was reeling; but he remembered with a combination of horror and reawakened pride, that he had stuck the pin in the doll's heart at the fire.

If Miss Page had worked the juju to rescue him from Burnside and Aunt Keziah, that was one thing. But—if the President of the United States was dead because of juju, that was something else again. Even now, the news would be flashing around the world. In the faint moonlight, the knobs on the car, radio glistened with dull invitation.

"Is it true?" he whispered. "Is it really true?"

"Technically," Miss Page said, in her schoolteacher's voice, "what you just witnessed wasn't pure juju. Part of it—especially the goat-was plain old witchcraft, more what white people do." She smiled crookedly. "But whitey's where the power is, wouldn't you say so?"

"Amen," Bill said. If he understood her right, she was saying that juju by itself still wasn't strong enough, that blacks had had to borrow certain rituals from the white man. Is there no way to escape the sonofabitch? And Miss Page, is she lying? Is the President really dead?

She saw him gazing at the radio. "Turn it on," she said. "Find out for yourself."

But he hesitated, once again asking himself an angry question. Where are the white people? The answer was obvious. Either they surround and choke us or we surround and choke them. Either they rule openly, or we rule secretly. But his head was filled with high-sounding words from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address. Goddamn it, he was civilized! He didn't want to live anywhere where thirteen people of whatever color

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could stick pins in dolls and kill somebody half a thousand miles away.

He had prayed that he would not cry. Now tears of joy—of fear?— streamed down his cheeks. If the President was dead, it would mean the difference between whether he was a black prince or a crazy nigger locked inside a white Cadillac with another crazy nigger, waiting for daylight.

He set fire to another cigarette and settled back in the seat. "Turn it on," Miss Page said. Her voice was warm, tender, full of love.

Bill's hands were steady now. Fearfully, but hopefully, he turned on the radio. There was the same news of death, violence, larceny. And then: "Richard Nixon announced last night that he is resigning as President of the United States. The resignation becomes effective at noon today. Mr. Nixon gave as his reason for resigning the lack of a constituency in Congress; but it is widely known that Mr. Nixon had been warned by Congressional leaders that he would certainly be impeached if he did not resign. Vice-President Gerald Ford assumes the Presidency today. . . ."

Bill cut the radio off. The President wasn't dead. All he did was resign . . . before they'd stuck the pins in the doll. So juju wasn't that powerful, and certainly not precise. But Miss Page seemed to know what Bill was thinking. "You don't have to take a man's life to kill him," she said.

Bill thought that was just bullshit. They couldn't do it, that's what happened. He looked at Miss Page, and she was smiling. He smiled, too. But at the same time, he felt that her smile was too wide, too wonderfully uncontrolled, too diabolically black. . . .

Well, he had her juju dozing in his white pants. His Johnson moved heavily, like a lidded gator through with his sunning, ready to go back to muddy water. Once he got that rough monster inside her, he'd really make her sorry she'd bulldozed him into kissing that goat's ass. And for what purpose? So Nixon would resign? Shit. Anybody would resign if they had as much shit on them as Nixon did.

Bill took Miss Page's hand and put it on his groin. "I want you to have my milk," he said. "Tonight"

"I shouldn't." Through his pants, he could feel that her hand was slightly sweaty. "Not tonight. Any other time but tonight."

Now, that made sense to him. But he was subject to other compulsions now, as though someone somewhere was sticking pins into a doll that resembled Bill Kelsey. He could screw Miss Page later on this morning. Or even at noon, or suppertime. But something was

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forcing him to make her commit herself to screwing him now. Or, as soon as they got to where she lived.

"Why can't you do it?" he said. "You got the rag on? You got something else going?"

She shook her head vigorously. "No. No. It's just that , . . after what we've done—I mean, out there in the field—we should rest. At least, I should. I feel so tired. Making love ... it could be very dangerous." But she had excited him. And he felt her own excitement rising.

"What could be dangerous?" He started the car.

Miss Page was pulling on his Johnson like some old country woman milking a single, hard tit. "There're some things you don't understand," she said sadly.

He pulled off. There were many things he didn't understand. For example, how many years had it been since she was in the driver's seat? Only the years and the makes of the car had changed. Miss Page was like putty—he still could make her do anything he wanted. And he didn't understand why. Ask her how she knew about your mother and Aunt Keziah. Goddamn. Now he was hearing voices again. No, one voice. One he thought he recognized. "How'd you know about my mother and Aunt Keziah?" he said.

She laughed, and some of the tension seemed to leave her. "I saw it in my crystal ball." He didn't know whether she was bullshitting or not. But the voice—had it been his own mind stumbling into speech? —was still. As he drove up the narrow road, he wasn't sure of anything, except that Herm would be mighty pissed off, his bringing the Cadillac home so late, and muddy in the bargain.

But Herm was slightly drunk off Cherry Heering and grumpy because Bill woke him out of a sound sleep. He had his stocking cap on, although his hair had thinned over the years. "I'm sorry I'm late," Bill said. He put the car keys on the bedside table. "Don't worry," Herm said. "I'll see you soon?" He didn't even try to grab Bill's Johnson, he was that sleepy. "Soon," Bill said. Even though Miss Page was waiting for him outside, he wanted Herm to touch him, perhaps to bring him back to a recognizable reality. And he also wanted to tell Herm about those niggers out there in the field. But Herm already seemed half asleep. "You hear about Nixon?" Bill said. Herm nodded, without opening his eyes. "I heard about Nixon. Listen, honey. I'll see you later, O.K.? Then we'll talk." For the first time in their relationship, Bill touched him with a feeling akin to

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affection. A light hand on Herm's sagging jowl. Herm opened his eyes. "Is something wrong?" he said. "Are you in trouble?"

"No trouble," Bill said. "I'll see you later." He cut out the light and went outside. Touching Herm, he'd felt himself land on some kind of level where things at least seemed real. Now he was going to fuck Miss Page to within an inch of her life. He didn't want to fuck her at all. Fuck her. That goddamn voice again. Or was it his own? He was sure he'd heard it before. It sounded almost white. He stood in the hallway, listening. But he heard only the sounds of the old building, sleeping.

"We've got to take a cab," he told Miss Page.

"I really ... I really don't want to," she said. He put her hand back on his juju, and all her resistance disappeared. Now she seemed urgent, almost running down the street. "Let's find a cab," she said. "Do you know where I live? On Hay Street. I mean, I work in the house on Hay Street. I live there, too. All the girls do. Although most of them have their own apartments in Anthony Homes, so they can collect welfare."

Bill had forgotten that Miss Page was a practicing whore. She already had ten dollars of his. Well, she wasn't going to get any more of his money. He knew all about the house on Hay Street. Everybody in Cousinsville did. Some real fine whores worked there.

Bill hailed a cab. Miss Page was all over him in the back seat. She acted like she'd taken a dose of Spanish fly, something like that. She was so frantic, it frightened him. "Take it easy," he said. "Take it easy."

She paused, very reluctantly, like a marionette waiting for the next tug of the string. "I don't even know why I feel this way," she said. "I really don't." She sounded almost apologetic. Her eyes looked like a mad woman's, burning with a fever.

Then she went back to work on Bill. Shit. He tried to relax and enjoy it. He knew why Miss Page's hands, her mouth, her body, had a fever in them. Because he was so motherfucking fine, that was why.

He could see the nigger driver's envious eyes on him in the mirror, and that made him feel damn good. Because Miss Page was a real fine fox herself. A big fox. But a fine fox nevertheless.

The whorehouse on Hay Street had been a famous landmark in Cousinsville long before the turn of the century. No one knew who had been the first madam to become rich on hard fucking, dancing,

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drinking, and eating in the lavish rooms and spacious halls before she retired; but, as the Pope is said to be the successor to Peter, so had a long line of strong-willed, big-mouthed, penny-pinching women followed one another with singular success to the madam's throne at the house on Hay Street.

For more than a hundred years, through national and international disaster, in fire—the original house had burned down and had been rebuilt in sturdy brick—and feast and famine, the girls on Hay Street had fucked with such expert discipline that their fame had spread far and wide as being worthwhile successors to the Mother Whore who'd had the good sense to raise her church on this particular kind of rock.

It goes without saying that the house on Hay was more popular in Cousinsville than any church of the orthodox persuasions. The Catholics put dresses on their priests, so that their masses had the almost shrill effect of drag queens trying to intercede with God. And there was nothing less than madness in their claims that Manische-witz wine, and biscuits made by Porto Ricans in Hoboken, became, in truth, the blood and body of Christ when altar boys shook a bell three times and those men in dresses raised a rather cheap imitation of the Holy Grail for the faithful to see. Before other languages were permitted in the mass, priests mumbled in Latin to scare sin out of Catholics in the same way that castor oil functions with reluctant shit.

The Protestants were no better. Their notion of a personal God was equal to making a pet poodle of the Deity, all trimmed and be-ribboned, and barking just loudly enough to frighten perhaps a cowardly kitten back to the straight gate that allegedly leads to salvation. If Catholics have made drag queens out of their priests, the Protestants—and particularly the Baptists—have made pimps, hustlers, and whores out of theirs. Protestant seminaries undoubtedly have fine courses in how to make cowards and Johns out of Christians, and shameless, strutting, hortatory beggars of their priests. If thieves had sneaked into the White House in Washington and were selling the nation's precious freedoms to the highest or lowest bidders, it was precisely because priests, popes, and presidents alike paid only lip service to the golden rule. Or had reworded it to read: Fuck your neighbr before he fucks you. As a consequence, the whorehouse on F Street was the only religious institution open in Cousinsville at^fo'clock in the morning following Richard Nixon's arrogar

nouncement to the effect that he had taken the money, and now he was ready to crawl off the scene.

The women on Hay Street were true followers of an exact religion. Simply stated, their credo was to pleasure the man for every penny he paid. Make them come; make them cry. This was the single most important sentence in their catechism. A whore did not survive long on Hay Street who could not draw both liquids from a man at the same time. One customer with a head for higher mathematics had estimated that, over a hundred years on Hay Street, enough tears had been shed by men alone to fill the Grand Canyon; and enough male ejaculations had taken place to twice move the nation and float it in sperm.

This calculation had been made during the time of Viola Anderson, the establishment's current madame emeritus. Viola had recently returned from retirement in Burnside upon the urgent solicitation of the whores. Her successor had died of a heart attack, and chaos reigned on Hay Street. Viola had moved to Burnside some years before with Quevedo, her Porto Rican boy friend; but when duty called, she rushed back to Cousinsville to discipline the old religion until a new high priestess could be found. Make them come; make them cry. With Viola back in charge, the girls knew that they'd damned well better.

They loved Viola because she could be stern, kind, colored, or white, as the occasion demanded. For she was big-assed, big-mouthed, big-breasted. At the same time, she had a master's degree in political science from New York University, which gave not only the house, but the girls themselves, a certain dash. Under Viola's careful eye, a staff of cooks kept the kitchen stinking with hog maws, chitterlings, Virginia ham, collard greens, corn bread, candied yams. Wine and whiskey flowed as freely as the fluids upstairs. The music— Al Green, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson—was good and funky. When a man finally went upstairs with his girl, he was more than halfway close to coming and crying.

The place was jumping when Bill Kelsey sashayed in with Miss Page. Appropriately it was Saturday, the Sabbath of the old religion. Viola Anderson weaved her way through the crowd, greeting regulars, making newcomers of every conceivable nationality feel right to home. Quevedo, her big, handsome Porto Rican, followed her, smiling. Viola was lavish in a white sequined off-the-body miniskirt that barely covered her vital spots. She wore a beehive wig of sleek brown coils, her favorite style. When she spied Bill and Miss Page,

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she screeched and hastened to them rather woodenly, for she was wearing platform shoes at least five inches high.

"Hello, Bill," she said, patting his arm. Then she said to Miss Page, "Have you heard about Nixon, that snake?" Her voice sounded almost greedy, as though she was talking about something good to eat from the kitchen. "I've heard," Miss Page said. Bill nodded several times. Wasn't Viola in on this juju shit? Apparently not, for she launched into a recital of Nixon's failings, using her very best vocabulary, since she was talking to another college graduate.

"Richard Nixon," she said, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the crowd, "will be particularly remembered for his kind of high-handed paternalism and his mealy-mouthed hypocrisy. He has made such an art of deceit that those of us who dared to see and speak clearly found that we were treated not only as children, but as traitors and idiots as well. As for black people, it was painfully obvious that Mr. Nixon punished us for not liking him enough to vote for him." Her voice held the gentle warmth of a woman addressing someone too stupid to be considered her peer—after all, Miss Page had only one degree to Viola's two—but smart enough to have made it to college in the first place.

"Even the crumbs that earlier administrations saw fit to toss us from the federal table, he maliciously withheld altogether. He activated whole new minorities and sent them to war against the older ones, so that we saw clashes between homosexuals and blacks and hard-hats, middle America versus the eastern Establishment, everybody at everybody else's throats in the names of law, order, peace, and prosperity."

She paused, and her heavy breasts eased their excited heaving. "Thank God he's gone," she said.

"Amen to that," Miss Page said. From the tone of her voice, it was impossible to tell what she thought about Viola's little diatribe. "Listen, Viola. I've got some business to take care of upstairs."

Viola laughed. "Me and my big mouth. Business always comes before pleasure, unless pleasure is impotent." Laughing heartily, she tottered away with Quevedo behind her, as though one of his duties was to pick her up if she stumbled and fell.

Then she came back again. "Bill, you be gentle, you hear? This child hasn't been feeling too well, but she insists on working."

"I'm all right," Miss Page said.

"Naw you ain't, sugar." She turned to Bill. "She's been fainting and throwing up all over the place. I told her to take a day or two

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off, but she won't listen to a thing I say. Will you take care of her, dear heart?"

"I'll take care of her," Bill said. His Johnson was already rising, like the sun at dawn. Miss Page seemed the picture of perfect health to him. He'd take care of her, all right.

"Thank you, darling," Viola said. She kissed Miss Page very gently on the cheek. Then she left again.

Bill went upstairs with Miss Page. Although he heard nothing, he could tell that almost every room was smoking with sex. Miss Page went into her room and lay backwards across the bed. In the dim lamplight, she really didn't look too well. "Miss Page, we don't have to do anything. . . . We can just talk, if that's all right with you." He was hoping she did want to do something. At the same time, he didn't like the idea of having a sick whore on his hands.

Miss Page got up and took off her jacket. Then she kicked off her shoes, and pulled her miniskirt over her head. That was all she had on. Her large body was beautifully developed. "You don't have to be gentle with me," she said. "Like I told Viola, I'm all right. Now take your clothes off. You didn't come here to talk, did you?"

She was so nice, Bill had to admit that. They did talk awhile. She told him about her boy friend, Jason. "He's in the Army. He was in Vietnam. O, don't look so surprised! Jason's broad-minded. With what he and I make together, we're putting enough money away so we can get married." She lay back on the bed. "But you didn't come here to listen to me talk about my boy friend. You got a girl friend, somebody regular?" He didn't want to tell her about Dicey, so he told her no. It bothered him that she had a boy friend, and she hadn't even mentioned him before. "I don't have a girl friend," Bill said.

"Then you really need me. Come on, sugar. Come on here and take care of business." She looked almost vulnerable, holding her arms out to Bill on the white sheets. There was a light coming from somewhere behind them that made her body glow like a yellow rose. "Come on, sugar. Come on, now." When they made contact, she squirmed down into the mattress and held her breath. Then she began moving in slow, tantalizing circles for a while, then faster and faster. "I . . . think . . . I'm . . . going . . . to . . . die . . ." she said. Her breath was coming in gasps. "O Lawd! I . . . think . . . I'm . . . going . . . to . . . die!" Bill liked that. He knew he was throwing some mean Johnson into her. He exploded inside of her. All of a sudden, her body stiffened. "Tell . . . Jason . . . I. . . love . . . him . . ." she said through clenched teeth. Her legs tight-

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ened like a vise around his waist. Then she went limp in his arms, but her legs still held him tightly.

"Miss Page?" He thought she had fainted. "Miss Page?" He sprung back, breaking the circle of her legs. Every muscle in her body seemed relaxed now. Too relaxed. He put his ear to her chest and listened to her heart. There was nothing. Miss Page was dead.

Bill just stood there. From somewhere, he heard the ticking of a clock that he had not heard before. Except for that, everything was very still. He couldn't even hear noises from the other rooms, as though this room had been launched into a dark, noiseless space. His knees gave way, and he slumped to the floor against the bed. Suppose rigor mortis had set in while he'd still had his Johnson in her? What would they do then? Would they have to bury him with her? Cut his Johnson off because she'd died with a death-lock on him? One of Miss Page's arms hung off the bed; he lay it back across her body. She was already getting stiff. He didn't know what to do, so he just sat there.

The clock ticked on. Searching with his eyes, he found it sitting on a high chiffonier, a small clock in the shape of a barometer. Had that been a present to Miss Page from Jason, so that she could watch the hours and minutes pass while he was away from her?

Then he felt very curious about the dead whore. He couldn't think of her as Miss Page any more, not after she'd gone and died on him. But what had killed her? Had he killed her with his dick? The thought pleased and disgusted him at the same time. And what should he do now? Should he run downstairs and tell Viola? Or should he leave as though nothing unusual had happened, and let them find her after he was gone? Viola had said she'd been sick. They wouldn't be too surprised, finding that she had died.

Something told him to put his clothes on, but he felt good being naked. He tried not to look at the dead woman. She seemed incredibly small now, as though life's leaving had caused her body to shrink. And now that the initial tremendous shock was wearing off, it seemed to him the most marvelous achievement of all his life—that a woman had died coupled to his Johnson. He decided to examine her belongings.

There were three wigs on stands—one blond, one red, another a bouffant black Afro. Miss Page had died with her brown wig on. There were combs, greases, lotions, and brushes. Bill opened a drawer and rummaged through boxes of powder, vials of perfume,

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and costume jewelry. Everything cheap and somehow pathetic, as though selected by a child.

In another drawer, he found a bank book in the names of Clair Page and Jason Dougherty. There were only deposits, no withdrawals, and the balance on hand was $4,054.28. The account was more than three years old. He went into the other drawers. They were stuffed with panties, brassieres, scarves.

There were two closets. In one of them were the costumes of her trade—gaudy gowns slit to the navel, see-through negligees, bikinis and miniskirts about the size of postage stamps, shoes with high heels, wedge heels, no heels at all. The closet was perfumed with stale sex and a heady sachet. It was like looking at a whore's insides, as though he had pulled her entrails out to examine them. He closed that closet and opened the other one.

These were the clothes that she wore on her day off, for those silent walks with Jason that Bill envisioned her taking in a green spring. College-girl dresses and sandals. A bright dashiki, probably to go with her Afro wig. The clothes smelled clean, with only a faint trace of mothballs.

Jammed into one corner of the closet on a shelf, there was a pink box tied with a red ribbon. Bill opened it, and found old letters from Jason mailed from different parts of the world. The most recent was dated just a month before. "Honey, I'll be home in a month or so. Then we can get married. I love you more than anything in this world." This fellow Jason, he wrote with a firm, bold hand. "Last night, I dreamed that you and I were making love. I woke up with a big hard on. A nigger hard. That's for you, baby. I'm saving that for you."

Now that he'd been through Miss Page's things, Bill felt ashamed. He didn't know what he'd expected to find. And she was lying there naked and dead on the bed. If this had been a motion picture, he would have kissed her. But she looked extremely ugly, as though her face had been carved out of dirty granite. Her eyes seemed made of glass. This was no motion picture. This was the real thing. He got into his clothes as fast as he could and went downstairs to find Viola.

She was still making her rounds with Quevedo. "Something's wrong with Miss Page," he said.

The broad smile froze on Viola's face. "Is it serious?"

Bill nodded. "Very serious, I'm afraid."

"I told that child not to work," Viola said. She cast a greedy eye

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over the main room. It was jammed. Some people were even standing on tables, chairs. Now a banner was strung across the room: Nixon's gone and we're so glad. Platters of steaming food darted here and there over the heads of the revelers, like large oval-shaped beetles skimming a surface of greasy, bobbing heads. The jukebox was sounding with a steady bass, a sleazy backbeat. "This is probably the greatest night we've had in the history of Hay Street," Viola grumbled. "And now you tell me there's something wrong with Clair. Well, what is it?"

"I think you ought to go see for yourself, ma'am."

Viola glowered. Then she snapped her fingers at Quevedo, and the three of them went upstairs. Considering the noise downstairs, it was as quiet as a chapel up here. The place had obviously been soundproofed for the better entertainment of its customers. They went down the thickly carpeted hall. Bill couldn't hear a groan, a bed squeak. Nobody coming, nobody crying. Nothing. He might have been in the deep recesses of a large church.

When Viola pushed open the door to Miss Page's room, she took one look and squawked like a chicken getting its neck wrung. "That child's deadr she whispered, taking immediate control of herself.

"Yes, ma'am," Bill said.

Viola dragged him and Quevedo into the room and closed the door. "How'd it happen?"

"We were just. . making love . . . and she went limp."

"I told that child not to work," Viola said darkly. Then she tapped her rather large teeth with a long, blood-colored fingernail. "We do have a problem. If I call the police, they'll close the place down right away. We'd be losing the greatest weekend, financially speaking, of our career." Now she frowned, deep in thought. Then she whirled and threw some words at Quevedo in Spanish. He left the room, gliding like a large, quiet cat.

"What are you going to do?" Bill said.

Viola was already covering Miss Page with the sheet, dragging it up from both sides of the bed, covering her that way, so she wouldn't have to be moved. Bill felt that all of this was unreal. Yet, he wanted to laugh at Viola, the way she was hustling, half-naked, pulling the sheet over Miss Page. "What are you going to do?" he said.

"Pack her in ice. That way, she'll keep until Monday morning. I'll lock this room off. Quevedo will keep the ice fresh. We'll put some pots, something, under the bed to catch the water when it melts." She patted some part of the dead form under the sheet. "She'll be all

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right. It's the way she would have wanted it. I'm so glad she had a college education. A more ignorant girl would probably resent what I'm doing. But Clair was a very intelligent girl."

"What about the police?" He really couldn't believe Viola was serious. "Won't you get in trouble for not calling them?"

"I'll call them Monday," Viola said firmly, as though Monday wasn't a good three days away. "Don't worry about the police. I won't tell them a thing about you."

He wasn't thinking of that. But he was grateful. He didn't want to fuck with no honky police. "But what about you?" he said. "Won't they give you a hard time?"

Viola smiled sedately, probably out of respect for the dead. "That's all they ever give me is a hard time," she said. She patted in the area of her pussy. "Especially the commissioner. Child, he feeds on me like I'm eggplant parmesan. Don't you worry about the police."

Bill admired her, the way she was taking it all so calmly. But his dick had been in Miss Page when she died. He felt tears burn his eyes. "Why'd she die?"

Viola looked at him strangely. "I thought you knew. I could tell the minute I entered the room." She patted the white form again. "This child's been conjured. She was messing around with that juju stuff. Now, somebody's threw it back at her."

Conjured? Juju? "It was Aunt Keziah," he said bitterly. Briefly, he explained to Viola about Aunt Keziah, how Miss Page had saved him from her. But when he finished, Viola shook her head. "I know about Aunt Keziah," she said. "But she didn't do this to Clair. Juju can't cross running water."

"What?"

"I said, juju can't cross running water. Whoever did this to Clair is here in Cousinsville, not down in Burnside. There's too much running water between—creeks, rivers, streams. The minute Aunt Keziah's juju came to running water, it would lose its power."

Bill had heard that before. Juju can't cross running water. So there was a juju here in Cousinsville who had done Miss Page in. "Who?" He wondered if he ought to tell Viola about last night, those people sticking pins in a doll that looked like Nixon. And then, Nixon resigning.

But before he could make up his mind, Quevedo came back with a large bag of ice and an aluminum scoop. Bill left the room quickly.

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He didn't want to see Miss Page being covered with ice to keep her from rotting. Viola followed him.

"Who did it?" he said.

Viola shrugged her big shoulders. "Who knows? Maybe somebody who didn't like the fact she was messing with you. It could've been anybody. Like they say in Spanish, Quien sabe? Boy, you must have something mighty sweet hanging in them white pants."

He felt like hitting her, talking shit like that while Quevedo was covering Miss Page with ice. He could hear the aluminum scoop biting into the ice, then the heavy shower as the ice fell around the sheeted corpse. Shivering, he went downstairs. He could hear Viola behind him, her shoes sounding like the footsteps of a sneaky monster. Maybe she'd fall and break her goddamn neck. He prayed she'd fall. He didn't believe anybody up here had conjured Miss Page. She probably died of a heart attack, something like that. Who the fuck believed in juju anyway?

Apparently, Viola did. Downstairs, she told him, "Don't you say a word about this, you hear? If people knew one of our girls had died of the juju, this place would be empty in five seconds. You want to ruin my business?"

"No, ma'am." The place was jumping, that was true. And this was a big weekend.

"Don't you worry about Clair," Viola said. "Dying like she did, she has to be buried special. I'll arrange everything. And I'll let you know." She steered him to the door. Then, she stopped short and snapped her fingers. "Child, we have to tell that white boy. I almost forget. He loved Clair, he's going to be very upset."

Bill felt his nose fall wide open. The hair on his head seemed to stand up like a million thin erections. "White boy? You mean that Jason Dougherty is white?"

"Of course, darling. We're not prejudiced here. Besides, with a name like Dougherty, what'd you expect him to be . . . Jewish . . . ?" She shoved Bill to the door. "Don't worry, honey. I'll take care of everything. You'll be notified."

Bill jammed his hands into his pockets and went out into blinding daylight. Naw man, he wasn't prejudiced. He was just disappointed as a motherfucker. All that shit Miss Page talked about juju, about niggers needing to concentrate their strength, about whitey. . . . And she'd been fucking one. An Irishman. Keeping his money for him. Planning to marry him. "Tell Jason I love him." She'd died with love for the white motherfucker oozing from her lips, even as she had

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Bill's Johnson in her. Black bitch. He felt terrible. He certainly didn't want to see Dicey right now. In fact, no woman.

Herm should be up by now. Bill went there and used his key to get in. Herm was still sleeping. The shades were down; the room was cool and dark. Bill undressed and pulled the sheet off Herm's body—it reminded him too much of that sheet over Miss Page.

When the cool air hit him, Herm moved. "Am I being robbed?" he said. He was still half asleep, but his voice was deep with satisfaction. "Take anything you want," he said. "But leave me my cherry."

Goddamn fag. Did he really think he was being robbed? And saying shit like that? Bill straddled his neck and shoulders and wrestled his head up. "Don't hurt me," Herm whined. He was wide awake now. With the shades down, the lights out, he didn't know who was attacking him in the dark room.

"Please don't hurt me," Herm said. He sounded terror-stricken. Bill wrestled his head up. His Johnson stood straight out. When it made contact with Herm's pursed lips, Bill pushed until the lips gave and his Johnson slid into a hot, wet cavern. He felt a keen sense of peace and satisfaction, although a vital part of him was pulsating with hate. Poor Miss Page, lying there dead in a whorehouse under mounds of ice, watched over by a pretty Porto Rican until Monday morning. Thrusting, Bill knew he needed him a white woman, that's what he needed. After all, somebody had to pay for this.

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_Book
Five

Orgy, Amen

he maid said Miss Maria Benes was in the bath. Could Mr. Kelsey call back in thirty minutes? Bill could. He was willing to wait because he knew what Maria was doing. She was getting herself ready to go and paint rocks at the house on Hay Street. It was Viola Anderson's judgment that since Miss Page had died of juju, that she should be buried by the sea, dressed in pure white, underneath «a form of many-colored rocks. Viola had invited Clair's friends to bring rocks to Hay Street, and to help paint them. The funeral was scheduled for Friday morning. Bill had told Maria, and she was very excited about going. Insofar as he knew, she'd be the only white person there. They had talked about it just last night, after Bill had called Viola. Maria was very excited.

They had been partying and making love since the day Clair died. O, Lord, how they did love! Bill left the telephone booth in the park and ambled out into the warm glow of a mid-August afternoon. A lot had happened since the death of Clair. Today was Thursday. Bill lit a cigarette and walked slowly, peacefully, thinking about all that had

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taken place since Clair died and he went to Herman Baskerville's apartment.

When Herm discovered that it was Bill Kelsey with him, and not a romantic highwayman, he was disappointed, and gently chiding. "You oughtn't do things like that," he said. "Suppose I had a weak heart?" He was fixing a mountain of pancakes for himself, a reasonable stack for Bill. "You don't have a weak heart," Bill said. Seeing Herm in daylight, eating across the table from him, Bill knew that he had to get away. To find him a woman. Dicey, no black woman, would do right now. He knew that eventually he would have to call Maria Benes, but he held off the moment when he would do it.

Although Herm tried to get him involved in conversation, and practically begged him to stay the day, Bill was quiet and withdrawn at the table. And he left soon after. "I'd like to see you again when you get over your mood," Herm said. He sounded slightly pissed. "I'm sorry," Bill said. "I'm just not feeling myself today."

"I understand," Herm said. He sounded like he did. "Sometimes, things come up. You work out your problems. If I can help you, come back and see me. Or call me up. O.K.?"

Bill smiled. Herm was a real good guy. "O.K., Herm. I'll be seeing you soon."

From Herm's, Bill went to see Bobby Bryant in Martland Hospital. If the whorehouse on Hay Street was Cousinsville's most viable religious institution, then the ugly pile of bricks and haughty black niggers known as Martland Medical Center on Bergen Street in Newark was like that city's symbol of its ineffectual fight against the incursion of death. Black and white hatemongers conspired to kill it. They agreed on only one thing—that Newark's independent-minded, thick-lipped black mayor should fail in his second term as he had not done in his first. Almost single-handedly, it seemed, Kenneth Gibson was keeping Newark's vital signs alive after a generation or more of mayors and mobsters had sucked the city's blood like oily-skinned vampires.

In his public life and statements, Mayor Gibson seemed to be an honest, intelligent black man. As in his first term, he was elected to his second by a coalition of blacks, whites, and Porto Ricans, who either saw that Newark's salvation could be accomplished only by a black man, or by those who wanted to see a black man preside over the city's final agony, so that he and his race, rather than the rightful murderers, could be blamed for its demise.

Herman Baskerville had talked to Bill about Newark. He also

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talked about Martland Medical Center; but Bill Kelsey and others like him from Anthony Homes on Seventh Avenue were better qualified to speak on Martland. For it was their bodies that were dragged here from Cousinsville by the bushel—stabbed, shot, stagnant with alcohol, saturated with drugs, screaming with pain, and scared shitless because they were in Newark's sanctioned House of Death, where patients usually lived in spite of themselves, and, life being what it is, in spite of the hospital's best efforts to kill them off.

First of all, the hospital seemed to exist on the Asian continent, for there was such a gaggle of doctors and nurses from Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Korea, the Philippines, and Indochina that native-born American doctors were as rare as hen's teeth. The other attendants were pure niggers—there is no more contemptible way to describe them as they cavorted up and down halls, in elevators, on the wards, as though they were in a larger, louder, and lower-classed version of Ludie's Lounge.

On the first floor, where Bill Kelsey always had to fight with West Indian wenches to get a pass, as though Bobby Bryant was indeed in prison, there was always the noise and confusion of a chittlin switch. And the guards, with their state troopers' hats, were the noisiest of all, as though their loaded revolvers gave them the right to annihilate the peace rather than to preserve it. The West Indian passes, so valiantly fought for, were, by law, to be waved under the guards' noses while they dug in their asses and scratched their nuts, presumably to show that they were awake on the job.

Next came the elevators. Unlike the ones in Anthony Homes, these monstrosities most certainly functioned by the grace of God. It was indeed His will that the large, jammed, noise-filled, stinking metal boxes should go down to the morgue after fifty doubting fingers had pushed the up button. What wiser way to remind us of our own mortality than to give us a brief glimpse of the sheeted dead when we are on our way to see the presumed living? And what better way to remind us that we are in the Atomic Age than to have the monster stop on its own accord, open its doors with a greasy grin, and show us signs that scream in letters the color of discarded blood

DANGER!!!! RADIATION!

while we stand packed like black sardines, wondering if our radiation intake has yet exceeded the government-approved level, before the

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monster oozes shut its doors, and we are taken up or down, or left to wait awhile where we are, as the case may be.

After what seemed to be a series of eternities, Bill Kelsey got to the ninth floor. He mumbled apologies as he elbowed his way out. And when the doors closed, he had the uncomfortable feeling that he had abandoned the other riders in their worst moment of travail, that he should have stayed inside the monster and ridden with them to heaven or to hell.

But, as it was, his white suit was dirty, wrinkled, and funky from the sardine can. His tie was wrapped almost around to his back. He had brought Bobby a quart of Thunderbird strapped to his calf in the wide-legged trousers. That, at least, was intact. Trying to put himself together, Bill went down the hall where a black guard was sleeping in a chair propped against the wall, hands wrapped around a hard crotch as though he was in the middle of a wet dream on state time.

At the nurses' station, there was the customary noise—three nurses and a couple of fag orderlies discussing absolutely nothing and giggling in loud voices. The whole atmosphere was hot, smelly, unprofessional. And when Bill walked into the ward, he noticed, as he had before, a kind of mute terror in the eyes of patients for whom statistics mean nothing, and who obviously were convinced that they were already in hell and didn't know it, or, the opposite being true, that they would never leave this place alive.

Bobby Bryant was standing by the window. Bill thought that this must mean that he was showing some progress; and he called Bobby. But when Bobby turned, something in his face frightened Bill. Man, he was nothing but skin and bones! How come Janie Mae had been telling him those lies about Bobby getting along fine? Bobby was dying, that was what. Couldn't Janie Mae see that? Or didn't she want to see?

"Hey, man. How you doing?" Bill said. He tried to make his voice sound casual, to hide the horror there.

Bobby walked toward his bed. When Bill tried to help him, he snatched his arm away. "I been doing fine," he said. "I hear from Janie Mae you been doing fine, too." He sat on the edge of the bed like an old man. He couldn't be any more than thirty or thirty-one; but he moved, and talked, and sat, like an old man who has an appointment with death before too long.

"I brought you something," Bill said. He'd thought that the Thunderbird might do Bobby some good. But that was before he got here. Looking at Bobby now, Bill considered that only a miracle—or, possi-

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bly, juju—could do Bobby any good. Bill didn't believe in miracles; he wasn't sure he believed in juju. Everything that had happened to him so far that might have been juju had been so damned confusing-Herm would have said ambiguous-that it might have been juju, or it might have been mere coincidence.

Anyway, he slipped the wine from his calf and sneaked it under Bobby's sheet. Bobby's thin little face lighted up as though something inside him had turned on a pale lamp near his bowels. "Man, I appreciate this," Bobby said. He stopped to catch his breath, he was that excited. And Bill took the opportunity to touch his bony knee and say, "I'd of come sooner, man, but I been busy. You know how it is."

"I know how it is," Bobby said. He had slid the wine from under the sheet and into his robe. "I've got to go to the toilet," he said; and he winked slyly. All the gray seemed to have fled from his eyes. His head looked like a skeleton's; his eyes were dark sockets, seeing nothing, almost impossible to see. "You go ahead and knock yourself out," Bill said. He sat on the bed and lit a cigarette. He could hear Bobby shuffling to the toilet; but he didn't turn to look. He'd never seen anybody age that fast in all his life. Lord. He sure hoped he'd go looking halfway decent when the time came.

He felt no remorse about bringing Bobby the wine, about the damage it might do. Hell, Bobby was going to die in this hole anyway— that was the clearest message he'd seen on Bobby's face. And the rest of the poor bastards here? Bill looked around. The ward was hot, and smelled of evil medicines. Patients in ill-fitting gowns and pajamas, provided by the city, drifted back and forth, sat on their beds, or just lay staring at the ceiling. Most of them listless. Some of them wrestling with their end of a conversation in the enforced fellowship that sickness imposes upon its victims. Bill hated the whole idea of a ward: It denied an individual the dignity of suffering alone, like a man who takes his whiskey straight. The guard was still sleeping down the hall; there was still a campaign of noise and giggling swinging into high gear in the nurses' station, as though the attendants there were being paid by the state to drive their patients mad. Bill got up and walked around, shaking his head.

It occurred to him that anyone who knew what was going through his mind might think that he hated his own people. Well, he did. Not his people though—he hated the caricatures of people they had become. Acting like white people in television commercials. Which meant that they acted like niggers when the boob tube's lights, its

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idiot cards, turned in other directions. The reasons were obvious before Herm told him so. The reason that blacks imitated whites—and, in the process, became cheap, obnoxious caricatures of themselves— had to do with the golden idol of success. Black people felt a new kind of freedom by consuming certain products advertised on television. Herm called it the concept of conspicuous consumption carried to its most ridiculous extremes.

"In the old days," Herm had said, "a black person tried to show that he was equal to the white man, if not better, by driving around in Cadillacs, wearing flashy clothes, spending all of his paycheck in one night, drinking top-shelf whiskeys. Now, they try to show they're better than white people by being louder, fatter, and more arrogant and obnoxious. In other words, what they're trying to say is that because they respond more accurately to the consumer impulse than white people do, they're better than white people. Yet, there's still the ingrained sense of inferiority, which accounts for the loud talk, the swagger, the Reconstruction-nigger syndrome, where freedom to the formerly enslaved is headier than a dozen drinks of wine. . . ."

Bill heard a noise beside him, and he looked up. Bobby had come back from the toilet and was sliding the T-Bird, what remained of it, underneath the sheet. He had killed off half the bottle. "I'll do the rest," he said, "tonight after everything quiets down a bit." His eyes shone with a high sparkle; he looked like his old self again. Bill stood up. He was glad he'd brought the wine. "Man, you look great. How you feel?"

"I feel great," Bobby said. He lifted imaginary weights three or four times, and then lay down. His breathing was heavy, but his color was good. Most of the yellow was gone that Bill had seen on his last visit here. And he noticed that Bobby's belly was flat. Shit. If Bobby did get out of here, they might as well try to make another baby together. Why not? If Bobby got out. He'd been here a little more than a year. That was a long time to stay anywhere.

"You hear about Nixon?" Bill said. It seemed to be the question everybody was asking today.

"Who hasn't? The sonofabitch. But he sure got over. There's a white guy here on the ward. He said he voted for Nixon. Now he says he's sorry he did. He says Nixon has half a billion dollars stashed away in a Swiss bank."

Bill whistled softly. "That's a lot of money." He certainly did hope that Bobby got well, and soon, too. Suppose he could get Bobby pregnant? That'd be a half a million dollars for each one of them.

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With that kind of money, fuck Richard Nixon's half billion. Fuck everybody.

Bobby was smiling like a man who knows an amusing secret. "What's so funny?" Bill said. He wondered if Bobby knew what he'd been thinking.

"A white man killed himself here last night," Bobby said offhandedly.

"What'd he want to do that for?"

Bobby shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe he was just tired of living. Sometimes I feel that way myself."

Bill looked at him sharply; but Bobby seemed deep in the arms of some euphoric dream. "Why'd the white man kill himself?" Bill said. He doubted that Bobby had the nerve to commit suicide.

"Nobody seems to know," Bobby said. "We were sitting in the game room playing cards. All of a sudden, he lay his hand down, walked over to the window, and jumped out. If you go in the game room, I bet you'd see the window is still broken. It'll probably stay broke, the way they do things around here."

For some reason, Bill felt his scalp prickle. "What was the man's name?"

"Richard something. It wasn't Nixon, but something like that. That's why I remembered, your asking about Nixon. Man, I sure do appreciate that T-Bird. I'd forgot what it was like to be high."

But Bill was interested in the man who jumped; he shot questions at Bobby like bullets. "Was the TV on when he jumped? The radio? What time was it?"

"Man, I don't know. We were playing cards. Nothing was on. Not even the air conditioner."

"Man, I got to go," Bill said. "I just remembered something important I got to do."

Bobby actually pouted; but the T-Bird seemed to hold his disappointment in check. "Cool, man. When you coming back?"

"Soon," Bill said. "I'll be back soon. You take it easy, you hear?"

But Bobby had laid down, already spiraling into another world. Bill went out to the nurses' station. He felt like he was all eyes, narrowed to the shape of sharp wedges. When one of the nurses finally noticed him standing there, she asked, "Yes, what is it?" She was either West Indian or from South Carolina; the geechy accent fell from her lips like small mouthfuls of rice and beans.

"Could you tell me where the recreation room is?" Bill said.

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"It's closed today. There was an accident last night."

"What kind of accident?"

Now everybody in the oblong room was quiet—nurses, fags, two or three of their friends in street clothes. Bill could see the geechy woman swell up with suspicion. "You a reporter?" she said. But after looking Bill up and down, she obviously decided that he was just another nosey nigger. "Why you interested in that white man that jumped out the window?" she said.

"I think he was a friend of mine. Was his name Richard Nixon?"

The geechy nurse and all her entourage laughed. "Richard Nixon used to be President of this country," she said wisely. "The white man that jumped, he was named Richard Dixon." Then, she swelled again with suspicion. Suppose Bill was somebody important? "The hospital is not responsible," she said. "Like everybody else when they're admitted, he signed a paper when he came in."

Bill had one more question to ask her—what time did this Dixon guy jump?—but the geechy nurse had gone back to bullshitting with the crowd. Well, there'd certainly be something about it in the paper. Bill went by the sleeping guard and punched the elevator button.

Was this another coincidence in his long and ambiguous association with juju? He was almost sure that those niggers around the fire last night, sticking pins in that doll, had something to do with that white guy who jumped. At the same time, it seemed too incredible, too far-fetched, for any reasonable man to believe. Still, this was what he expected of juju—something so fucked up, so awkward and unwieldy, that it couldn't even get the right Richard. But he was as uncertain of juju now as he'd ever been, so he shrugged and got into the elevator. One thing he did know: He'd better let somebody responsible know. When he finally got to the lobby—he prayed the sonofabitch down—he called the home of Maria Benes. She answered the phone herself.

"Hi, Maria. This is Bill Kelsey."

"Bill! I was just sitting here thinking about you. My parents are in Europe until after Labor Day. How would you like to come over? My husband's in California on business for about ten days. The maid's off today. I'm completely alone. I'd love to see you, Bill."

Man, his old Johnson got warm. He forgot all about juju, about the white man who jumped, about Miss Page still lying in the house on Hay Street until Monday should come and it would be safe to report her death. "I'd love to see you, too," Bill said. "You pick me up?"

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When she said yes, he told her where he was. "I'll be there in half an hour," she said. Bill went outside. He checked to see if there was any evidence remaining that the white man had jumped. But the curving sidewalks leading to the main entrance were clean. There were certainly no blood and guts there. If so, they had been scrubbed up. Or that white man probably hit the grass. Bill forced his mind into a blank until Maria pulled up in her car. He got in.

She leaned across the seat and kissed him. Her hand went to his groin, her tongue halfway to his tonsils. He knew that all those niggers were watching him kissing this white bitch. He squirmed around so that they could see where her hand was. Both of his were on her hard breasts. "Right on, brother!" some nigger said in an anguished baritone. Then Bill was satisfied. He freed Maria's titties and turned the ignition key for her. She drove with one hand to the house in suburbia. With her other hand, she drove Bill wild. If there was anything on earth that was really juju, it was this—a fine white bitch all over you, a bitch's fine car, her fine home. And, except for serving staffs that worked on Fridays, he got a keen sense of satisfaction from knowing that he was the only nigger within blocks, probably within miles, who was here to put his black ass in a white woman's bed.

It didn't seem that over a year had passed since he'd last seen Maria Beiies, when she gave him the money to take Bobby Bryant to Burnside. She had dyed her hair brunet; but the rest of her excited him the same savage way it always had.

They sat in the spacious living room, sipped drinks, and chatted. Maria had made gin and tonic without asking if he liked it. He realized that she took him for granted because he was black, as though the fact she drank gin and tonic made it mandatory that he do the same. "Relax," Maria said. She took a long drink, and then lit a cigarette. "If you're worried about the neighbors seeing you come in here, don't. This is Nixon country, and I suspect that everyone but me is zapped to the gills because old tricky Dick resigned."

Bill tasted the drink. He couldn't stand shit like that, so he walked over to the bar and dumped it in the sink. He chose an unopened quart decanter of I. W. Harper from the bottles on the glass shelf. As he opened it and poured a water glass full, he could feel Maria's eyes on him where she had turned on the sofa and was watching him intently, as though she thought he might swipe something.

Now that he was here with her, the bitch got on his nerves. He wondered how many other niggers she had brought here to humiliate

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and fuck. He threw his head back and drained the glass without looking at her. The whiskey almost knocked him on his ass; but he braced the muscles in his legs and thighs and steadied himself. It seemed impossible to him that he had lived and worked here after he came from Burnside. The place was like a palace. He remembered all the rooms he had cleaned—Maria's had dreamy blue curtains that used to blur before his eyes like the agitated beating of a hummingbird's wings— and he realized that for Maria Befies, he would always be a servant until it pleased her to free him. He poured the glass half full and emptied it.Then he carried the decanter back to the sofa with him.

Maria had finished her drink and was working on his. It shocked him that she drank after him, here in this living room, with her clothes on, although at their last meeting, he had transferred liquor from his mouth to hers while he was grinding and she was groaning beneath him. But that had been in a motel. Not here in her own home where she lived with her parents, her husband. Maybe she wasn't a bitch after all. Maybe she was just a woman who wanted some dick, and had to make her play when and where she could.

She lay her hand on his arm. "It's good seeing you, Bill." Her voice was gentle, undeniably sincere. "And I'm sorry about the drinks. It was bad manners on my part. Will you forgive me? Please?"

Shit. Man, this woman was together. The hospital had put him in a bad mood; but he felt the whiskey skimming away his nervous agitation like high-class paint remover. He didn't trust himself to speak, because tears were washing at the insides of his eyeballs, trying to find a way out. Her voice, her touch were so gentle that he could have laid his head between her golden mound of titties and cried for days.

Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and sucked all the lipstick off her mouth. She moaned and squirmed. Her arms were like steel cables; they damn near broke his neck. Her teeth clicked and clacked with his like ivory kung-fu fighters. "Let's go upstairs," she said. Her voice was ugly with desire, as though worms had crawled into her throat. "Let's go upstairs."

But he wanted her here, on the blond sofa. He nearly ripped her clothes off. When she was naked, she reached for his white suit with her claws out like a cat. But he stepped back. Shit. She could afford a new dress. But this was his best suit. He undressed, folding his pants and shirt neatly, draping his jacket over the back of a chair.

When he was naked, she seemed just about out of steam. But he

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knew what to do about that. He positioned himself over her with his head to her feet. She took him with the sound of a hungry shark swallowing large bait. Lord. She had a pretty pussy, red like swollen strawberries hinged together. He lowered his black, nappy, sweaty head. . . .

The telephone rang. It was on a table at her end of the sofa. The two of them froze in mid-stroke. But the noisy telephone had no intention of going away. Maria lifted his heavy thighs high enough to say, "I'd better answer it. Someone probably did see me come in with you. If I don't answer, they might call the police."

Bill got up and poured himself a stiff drink. Maria reached over the sofa arm and snatched the telephone from the receiver. She swallowed once, and said "Hello" in a perfectly neutral voice. "Why, yes . . . how are you, dear? . . . Me? . . . I'm fine. . . . Yes, fine. . . ." She reached for her drink and Bill handed it to her. He knew what the call was about, and he felt his guts tying themselves in sneaky little knots.

"Oh, him . . . Why, he's a very old friend of the family's. . . . We do have some colored friends, you know, even if they don't come to visit. Well, the colored gentleman you saw is our friend. Of course, never in the way you are. As a matter of fact, he's a minister. Yes, I know they call them preachers. But I prefer the word minister. He has the quaintest little church down in the colored section. Actually, I've been thinking about inviting his entire congregation here for a picnic on the lawn. They're very nice people, once you get to know them. . . . Yes, I know that . . . but it would be Christian, wouldn't it? Anyway, it's not definite . . . just an idea I've been playing with. ... He came here today to go through some old clothes that we thought some of his people might be able to wear. . . .

"Darling, of course not! I would never accuse you of being nosey. Never! As a matter of fact, it was sweet of you to be concerned. . . . Yes, I heard about Nixon. It's a disgrace what they're doing to him, after detente and all that. . . . Well, you go ahead and drown your sorrows, dear. . . . I've got to go through tons of old clothes with the minister. . . . Yes . . . yes . . . yes ... we must get together soon ... yes. . . . Don't drink too much, dear. . . . G'bye.

She waited a full ten heartbeats before she slammed the telephone down. She stood, every muscle in her body taut, and flung the whiskey glass across the room. It hit the wall and shattered. She banged her temples with both fists. Tears were streaming from her eyes.

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"Ohhhhhhh ... the hypocrisy ... the goddamn motherfucking sonofabitching hypocrisy of it all. . . I"

When she threw the glass, Bill stood up. He was scared shitless. Man, all he wanted to do now was to put on his clothes and get his black ass out of here. But Maria Beiies seemed so real, so very much in need of him.

Shit. He uncorked the decanter and drank half of the whiskey. He wasn't'used to good liquor, that stuff made him feel like King Kong. And here was this beautiful white bitch frozen in anger, crying her heart out, because she'd had to lie about a nigger being in the house.

He plumped one of the fat blond pillows into a comfortable support for his back. Then, sitting, one leg stiff and straight on the sofa, the other bent and resting on the thick carpet, I. W. Harper close to hand, he called Maria to him.

He had to call her several times. Finally she came. She knelt. She went down on him like she was trying to knock out the back of her throat, her vocal chords, so she never need lie again. Man, this chick was something else. This liquor was something else. The liquor burned his insides; Maria's hair warmed and excited his thighs. His heart swelled with love, exploded inside him. Gathered its strength and exploded again. That was the first time he'd ever felt anything like that before. Love. Man, he loved it! He thought how he'd been empty all his life. Now the hungry space in him was filled. Then, he didn't think at all as he and Maria maneuvered and locked solidly together, like two spacecraft finding each other in an expanding void, flying for days.

It was later on when Bill realized that there is a strength in people that does reach out and drag them together with the force of strong lodestones colliding. The conflict that follows is called love—Bill felt it as he wrestled and mauled and caressed and penetrated Maria repeatedly in the four days following Sunday. Sometimes, too, there was a sense of killing in the aftermath of the collision. But as he killed, so was he killed, and resurrected as he resurrected. He did not think of Dicey wondering and waiting for him in Anthony Homes. Nor did he forget her. He simply set on a shelf all that had gone before the death of Miss Page and the incredible life of Maria Behes, she who seemed to flow in and out of his nostrils, his pores, with the excited control of sacred water.

Maria had money, credit cards, and transportation. If the dreams of people like Dicey and Janie Mae on Seventh Avenue included a

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constant and common factor—if they dreamed at all beyond the borders of their familiar bondage—they saw themselves wallowing in the holy trinity of money, credit cards, and fine cars, like ecstatic pigs in particularly smelly shit. Credit cards meant prestige, and symbolized money kept by white people in white banks, after they had weighed one's credit, character, and references in the balance of commerce and found them not wanting. Automobiles had long ago taken the place of walking; and in the specious evolution of blacks and whites alike, feet were important for standing, for working gas and brake pedals.

Feet were also valid for kicking novices under the table in places like "21" or the Playboy Club, if someone like Bill unconsciously picked his nose while he was there with Maria. Or if he was about to ask the waiter what the fuck he meant by giving him a menu in French that he couldn't read. Because who the fuck from Seventh Avenue could read French? And because there was only one candle enshrouded in a deep-red globe to accommodate some two or three hundred people who needed the eyes of sober cats to read the fucking thing in the first place.

"I'll have a hamburger and French fries," Bill grumbled. Maria had kicked him harder than she intended; but they both knew that. Besides, she was paying the bill. And he was handsome in an all-new outfit of burgundy pants, cream-colored shoes with medium heels, and blue mod blazer with sterling-silver buttons. He wore a twenty-five dollar shirt, a fifteen dollar tie. Maria had paid for all that. He even had on a pair of five dollar drawers, something he never wore. But Maria was paying, so he was sitting there in a pair of booty huggers that threatened to choke him to death.

"MsLeu?*

"With ketchup and raw onions," Bill said, looking with contempt at the little fag. "And a large Coke."

Maria laughed. "My friend is being humorous," she said. "We'll begin with the pate. And a bottle of Cote du Rhone, 1968, slightly chilled. For the main course, we'll have coq au vin. We'll order dessert later."

"Oui, mademoiselle."

"Madame, m'sieu, s'il vous plait"

"Mil pardon, madame"

So they had mashed liverwurst on stale crackers, lukewarm red wine, chicken in a kind of red puke, pole beans mixed with some kind of chopped nuts, and a chocolate-colored puke.

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That was Saturday or Sunday. Or was it Monday? And when had they gone to the Playboy Club at Great Gorge, rolling back and forth across the great beds like kids on soft grass? For Bill Kelsey, time had gone underground; it flowed there like subterranean rivers that sought daylight with the greatest reluctance. But last night, too many questions had surfaced for him to ignore them any longer. What had Viola done about Miss Page's body? What was the real story behind the white man who'd committed suicide at Martland? What was Dicey doing? He knew the answer to that—she was looking for him with a bug up her ass and a switchblade stuck between her titties.

"Maria, you got all those newspapers piled up over there. You got last Friday's paper?"

"It's probably there." She was naked; he liked the way her tight behind moved as she went away from him, the slow, strong swing of her breasts as she came back with the Star-Ledger.

"You want to read the paper now? I let them pile up, and read them all together. Or I throw them out. Why on earth do you want to read the paper now?"

He appreciated her confusion. She was giving him some great head, and he'd asked for the Star-Ledger.

"I just want to see what the number was." He propped himself against the pillows; she went back to scoffing his Johnson while he forced himself to concentrate on the newspaper.

The headline read: nixon resigns. The story Bill wanted was on page three under a one-column headline:

CANCER PATIENT

IN DEATH LEAP

AT CITY HOSPITAL

The man's name was Richard Dixson, and he was suffering from terminal cancer of the pancreas. He had jumped at 1:10 a.m. What the hell were Bobby and those other sick bastards doing playing cards at that hour of the morning? Bill didn't know what time it was when he'd been with Miss Page and those other people in the dark field. But he did know that it had been after midnight.

Juju? Shit, he didn't know. Maria was doing a fine job on him; and he grabbed her. The only thing magic about him was his dick. It made babies, and it made babies out of grown women like Maria Benes, and Dicey. Sometimes it even killed, like with Miss Page. Juju shit. He'd killed Miss Page with his dick. Now he did his best to kill Maria. But she damned near killed him. The Star-Ledger got mashed

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and torn between them. Bill's hands were hot and sweaty. It meant that he was excited, or that he was scared. Maybe both. He had to put that juju shit out of his mind.

But it persisted there until he and Maria came up for air. He decided to talk about it by talking around it, like a nigger sneaking the long way round to a chicken coop. "You know what NATO means?" he said.

She looked surprised. "The North Atlantic Treaty Organization?" She was so damned naive, he loved her for that.

"No. It means Niggers Are Taking Over.³' After that little preamble, now he was ready to tell her about juju, all about his mother, and Aunt Keziah, and Miss Page sticking pins in a doll. But Maria looked at him with such deep disbelief when he said that niggers are taking over that he felt foolish and tongue-tied.

"Do you really believe that?" she said.

He shrugged, and forced a laugh. "/ don't. Some niggers do."

"Well, it's not true," she said. "Black people—I wish you wouldn't use the word nigger. I get the feeling that you're putting me down when you say it—but black people are just about in the same position now that they were back in slavery time. Don't let anybody fool you, buddy. You're still on the bottom."

Her simple smugness annoyed him. "How the fuck do you know?"

She was nibbling an olive. "Because I'm on top," she said. "It's easier for me to see things from where I am than it is for you to see things from where you are." As though to emphasize her point, she went to the large picture-glass windows and pressed a button that parted the drapes. They'd been fucking around all afternoon, and now it was dark outside. Still, he easily made out the towering outline of the projects on Seventh Avenue. He got up and stood next to Maria. She was on top all right. The projects seemed to be down in a valley, deeper than he'd remembered.

"You've made your point," Bill said. "Close those goddamned drapes."

She went somewhere and came back with two drinks. Hers was the standard gin and tonic; but he'd insisted on Thunderbird, and she'd bought a couple of gallons. Now he didn't want it, but he didn't want to refuse it, either. She'd really got to him with her talk about being on top. Of course she was on top. Which meant that he was either on the bottom or trying to fight his way to some kind of middle position.

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Either way, he wasn't where she was. He never would be, although the two of them were standing naked, belly to belly, chest to breast, while the drapes whined together, closing off a reality he'd tried to forget. "What this country needs is a fucking revolution," he said bitterly.

"I'm for that," Maria said. She led him to the bed by his Johnson. But he was struck by the fact that when he'd called for a violent social upheaval—probably one in which she'd be raped by fifty niggers, then be drawn and quartered like a chicken, and fed to black dogs— when he'd said that, she'd answered as matter-of-factly as though he'd made some mild comment about the weather.

He never did talk to her about juju. But he did call Viola, who told him that everything had been very cool with the cops. She explained to him about the funeral arrangements—that business of burying Miss Page by the sea, under a pile of many-colored rocks, that sounded very weird to him—and she said that Miss Page's mother was flying in from Alabama tomorrow morning.

"Quevedo and I are going to pick her up," Viola said. She sounded somewhat tired, as though the last several days had drained off some of her enormous strength. "Our main problem is to find some place to entertain the mother," Viola said. "She can view the body at the funeral home. But we need some place to impress her, so she won't think Clair was a failure. You know how mothers are. And Clair was an only child. You got any ideas, dear heart? Money's no problem. The girls, bless their hearts, every one of them has gone on double duty. What they make on their own, that'll take care of Clair, with some left over for the mother. But we need some place nice. That's our main problem."

Maria was riding him now. All this fucking, it reminded him of when he'd been with Aunt Keziah. "I do have an idea," Bill said. "I'll call you right back."

"All right, darling. But in case you don't—in case you can't—TU. expect you here tomorrow at eight to help paint the rocks. All right, dear heart?"

So, she'd been talking to Dicey, that's what Viola meant. "I'll call you back," Bill said. He hung up; he put Maria Benes on the bottom, just to show her that she wasn't always on top; and he threw the best fuck at her she'd ever had, that was what she said.

"I want you to do me a favor," Bill said.

"Anything, darling. Anything." She was kissing him all over. Damn! Didn't she ever get enough?

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"Maria . . . Maria . . . quit . . . ! I want to tell you something. . . »

"Tell me . . . tell me anything. ... I'm yours, Bill. Don't you know that?"

Yeah. He'd heard that cold shit before. So he got on top of her so that his weight, his warmth, would keep her from running away when he told her about Miss Page, and the whores, and Clair's mother. Maria listened with polite interest, until he told her that they needed a nice, decent place to entertain the mother while she was in town. "She's from Alabama. Viola, she's in charge of the whorehouse, Viola wants the mother to think Miss Page was a success. You know what I mean?"

"Yes. Why do you call that woman Miss Page. Were you fucking her?"

"I was." He kissed her quickly, to take away whatever sting she might have felt from that. "As a matter of fact, I was fucking her when she died."

Maria wiggled provocatively. "I wouldn't doubt that," she said. "So, what you want me to do is lend you the house so the mother will think Miss Page lived here. Right?"

Bill's eyes bugged. "Right. How'd you know that?"

"I'm not exactly dumb," Maria said. "The question is, is the mother that dumb? I mean, will she really believe that her daughter lived here?"

"Probably. She's from Burnt Corn, Alabama."

"She's that dumb," Maria said. "Tell your friend she can use the house. I'll tell my friends you're that church congregation. You remember I said I might invite you up?" Her smile seemed genuinely happy.

"I'd thought about that," Bill said. Man, he felt like crying, he was so happy. He called Viola and told her. Viola was happy, too. "Darling, how nice! Tell your white friend how much we appreciate what she's doing in our time of crisis. Who knows, we might be able to help her someday. After all, everybody has to die sometime."

Bill didn't tell Maria that. What she needed, she worked on until the old boy stood up. Then she got back into her earlier position. Bill put his hands beneath his head and humped almost indifferently. He was thinking about this white woman's house full of black whores, and Miss Page's mother walking about thinking that all of it belonged to her daughter. He wondered if she'd try to take the stuff with her.

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That would cause problems. One thing he was glad of—they wouldn't have the body here. That would be just too gruesome.

Maria was bouncing hard on him, almost injuring his stomach muscles. "Put your finger up my ass," she said harshly. "It makes me come quicker." So he did. But he wondered if, after four days of moaning and groaning, she had been waiting for an advantage like loaning her house to a bunch of whores so she could tell him how to make her come quicker. At any rate, she knew what she was talking about. She got her nut in less than a minute flat. Then she turned her back to Bill and went to sleep. She hadn't done that before, either. Shit. He needed a nut now. So he beat the old boy until it quivered and splashed white tears. Then he slept too.

Now, Bill was waiting for Maria at their usual meeting place in the park to take her to the rock painting. Viola had told him to bring as many rocks as he could. "About as big as your head," she said, when he asked her what size they should be. He had changed into blue jeans and a blue denim shirt, because whatever a rock painting was— he couldn't quite believe it was the thing Viola described—it sounded messy. After he walked about awhile, he went into the underbrush and brought out three or four rocks before Maria drove up.

Whatever her idea of a rock painting was, she had evidently gone to Lord & Taylor with her charge plate and got herself outfitted in a tan denim safari suit and a pair of low-cut suede boots. "Hi!" She was all full of piss and vinegar; being sensible, she'd brought the station wagon to pile the rocks in. You'd have thought she was a den mother going on an outing with a pack of Cub Scouts. But, in a way, she was cute, too. Bill liked the way she accepted things. Not a whole bunch of bullshit questions. Whafs a rock painting? Why does Miss Page have to be buried under rocks? Why do the rocks have to be painted?

She trusted him, his judgment, his good sense. So questions were unnecessary. At the same time, he wanted to ask the same questions, which made her something of a fool. Bouncing about like Doris Day. Uttering little gasps of pleasure when she found the right-sized rock. Turning red in the face as she lugged it back to the station wagon and stored it with the rest. She was a nice white bitch, that's all he could say.

Then he felt guilty as hell. If he was with her always—and the fact that he was thinking in terms of a permanent relationship with her surprised him—would he always be privately putting her down for

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being a white woman? He would swear and go to hell that she loved him precisely because he was black. Not in spite of it; not even any attempt to ignore his blackness. She loved his color, his skin, all that was in it, all that came from it. Now, she'd told him that. And he loved her because she loved him. Anyway, that's what he thought. He just wished she wasn't white.

He looked at her juicy ass turned skyward in the tight denims, and his Johnson started crawling down his leg. Was that love, every time his Johnson moved? Man. He didn't know. Why was everything so fucking complicated? At the same time, he found himself thinking about Aunt Keziah and those early years with her. Did Maria Behes have the same kind of juju on him? Did she even know what juju was? He didn't want to ask her, because it might make him sound like a field nigger.

The sun was going down, and the heat trapped in the woods made him sweat. Searching here and there, they had found about twenty-five rocks, most of which were larger than his head. "Let's go," he told Maria. He drove, so he wouldn't wonder why she didn't ask where they were going. Yes, he'd told her they were going to Hay Street. But did she know what Hay Street was, what the house there represented? She held the muscle of his right arm as he drove. A trusting child. Or a dumb-ass white woman.

The house on Hay Street was lighted like a Christmas tree. People were coming from all directions, bringing rocks, in sacks, in their hands, unloading them from cars. In a way, it reminded Bill of the old days in Burnside, second Sunday in August, when people came to church for the week-long revival, bringing baskets of food that they spread on tables under the trees for the feast after the singing and preaching. He found a place to park the station wagon; but he sat for a minute, wondering if it was really wise to take Maria with him. He lit two cigarettes and gave her one.

"I know what you're thinking," she said. "Listen, Bill. I'm a grown woman. I can take care of myself. After all, it's not a zoo we're going to, is it? Sometimes I get the idea that you're prejudiced against your own people."

That pissed him off. But he didn't feel like arguing. Actually, what he wanted to do was to slap the shit out of her. But he kept very quiet, watching the people go into the house. He didn't see one white person. Well, if that's the way she wanted it, fine. "Let's go," he said. "I'll get some help to bring the rocks in."

"Shouldn't we at least take one apiece?" Maria said.

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"I guess so." He gave her a rock, took one himself. Then they went into the house. He felt like a damned fool.

Compared with the finger-popping and partying of the past weekend, today's gathering was severely sedate. There must have been half a hundred people in what the whores called the Grand Ballroom. They milled about, most of them drinking, talking in low undertones. Everyone was dressed casually, as Viola had told Bill to do on the telephone. In the center of the floor, there was a pile of rocks. And as Bill watched, Quevedo, Viola's Porto Rican boy friend, added two more. He had on loafers, faded jeans, and a short-sleeved white shirt. He saw Bill and smiled. Then he disappeared into the kitchen, and reappeared almost immediately with Viola.

Viola was not casually dressed. She had on what seemed to be a kind of flowing black robe trimmed down the front with red velvet. Her hair was pulled back from her face and gathered behind in a black bun, after the fashion of old maids and librarians. When she lifted her robe to come and greet Bill, he saw that she was wearing low-heeled red slippers.

"Bill, honey! I'm so glad you could come. I'm sure you know everybody here. And who's your pretty white friend?" In this light, instead of the usual dimness, her teeth, framed in the large red oval of her lips, looked like she'd borrowed them from a welfare mule. Her breasts swelled from the V neck like smooth brown bombs.

"Hi, Viola. This is Maria Benes, a friend of mine."

After the European fashion, Viola rubbed cheeks with Maria, hugging her at the same time. "Welcome to Hay Street, Maria. I'm so sorry you came at such a solemn time, but I'm especially pleased you're here."

Maria didn't flinch, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for a black whore dressed like some kind of cardinal to greet her so amiably. "You're very kind," Maria said. "Bill and I've brought practically a station wagon of rocks. Where should we put them?"

Viola snapped her fingers, and Quevedo took both rocks. "Why don't you paint them, darlings? Quevedo will wash and dry them for you. We're just about ready to start painting." She asked Bill where the station wagon was parked; when he told her, she led them from the doorway. "Quevedo will see that the rocks are brought in," she said. "It was very thoughtful of you to bring so many."

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"It was our pleasure," Maria said. She seemed completely at home.

"My, my, my," Viola said. "I do like the way you speak up, dear. Bill, where did you find her?"

But before Bill could answer, Maria cut in smoothly. "Bill and I used to work together."

"Well, you children enjoy yourselves," Viola said. "I've got to circulate, you know." She rubbed cheeks again with Maria before she left, all a-swirl in black robe and red slippers.

"What a fantastic woman," Maria said. "She positively generates energy."

Viola a fantastic woman? He took it as an insult to the whole race. "She's a whore. This is a whorehouse. She's the chief whore." He said it cruelly, like biting off nails.

But if he disturbed Maria, she didn't show it. "I've nothing against whores. Or whorehouses. Would you take me to the kitchen? I want to watch that beautiful Spaniard wash rocks."

So, however begrudgingly, he had to admit to himself that Maria Benes was a fantastic woman. Or just plain dumb. Was he always to be torn between two possibilities, one always the opposite of the other? Juju was very strong in his mind tonight. He'd been around it all his life, and he still wasn't sure whether he believed or not. Some things had happened that might have been juju. But he needed more proof than he had now. Viola said Miss Page had died of juju. So they were here now to paint rocks, because Viola had said that Miss Page, having died of juju, couldn't be buried underground. He had a lot of questions to ask; but who was there to ask? For example, what the fuck was he doing here?

Neither Viola nor Quevedo was in the kitchen; wherever he was washing and drying rocks, he was doing it somewhere else. There was just a large black woman with gray hair leaning on both elbows over the sink and washing something under running water down in the basin. Bill didn't know the woman; but the smell of what she was cleaning was unmistakable. That ought to take some of the starch out of Maria's stiff formality, the way she accepted everything as though nature had created niggers just for her to sigh and sob about. It did not bother him that a few hours earlier he had thought he loved her because she did accept things. Well, he was wrong. And she was wrong now, acting the way she was. Shit. Man, she was in a whorehouse getting ready to paint rocks for some dead whore she'd never seen. The smile, the way her face shone, you'd have thought

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she was in Europe or some other foreign country, admiring examples of medieval architecture. Well, he'd show her reality, she'd stop smiling soon enough.

"Come on, honey. I want to show you something."

"All right." Her hand was soft, confident, in his.

The old woman looked up from the sink. "Hello there, children." In her eyes, Bill could see that she was wondering what the fuck a white woman was doing in her kitchen. But Maria was too busy looking into the sink to pay attention to the old woman's expression.

Bill introduced himself; he referred to Maria as "my friend." The old woman dipped her hands and arms under the fresh water, rinsing them; and then she dried them on her apron. "I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Kelsey." She said nothing to Maria. But at exactly the right moment, Maria seemed to come from her trance and grabbed the black woman's hands. "My name is Maria Benes, ma'am. I'm very pleased to meet you. But you sure do have a lot of hog maws and chitterlings to clean. I'd help you myself, but I can't stand to touch the things. Although I love them once they're done."

Completely won over, the old woman laughed. "You don't need to help, honey. I been cleaning maws and chitterlings longer than you are old. My, you are a smart little thing. Not many white folks know what chitterlings are, much less about eating them."

"You just get them done," Maria said. "You'll see one white person who loves them."

"Well, I'm mighty pleased to hear that," the old woman said. "Now you children run along so I can get back to my work. It's really been a pleasure talking to both of you."

Maria said, "Yes, ma'am"; Bill said, "Yas'm." They went out into the Great Hall.

Bill's emotions were functioning on about four levels at once. Toward Maria, he felt astonishment and pride. "How'd you know about chitterlings?" he said. At the same time, his own gut drew into a fist, because about ten feet away from him, Dicey was standing with a big, dumb-looking, red-haired white man. Both of them were glaring at him. He knew that the white man was Jason, Miss Page's boy friend, and that Dicey—someone—had told him that Bill was fucking Miss Page when she died. He moved closer to Maria. "How'd you know about chitterlings?"

"The maid cooks them for us whenever I ask her. My husband and I love them. Mama and Daddy don't."

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Man, this chick was all right. Now he was glad that she accepted things—truly glad—because it made him happy and important, larger and smarter than he was. How could he not love her? What difference did it make that she was white? She acted black. She acted blacker than any black chick he'd ever known. Including Dicey, who was glaring at him like she wished he'd drop dead. The big white boy looked like he was getting ready to kick some ass. Bill felt his heart pumping, throwing on extra coal. Now he was ready to fight or flee. And he certainly wasn't going to flee. He kept his eye on Dicey.

She looked fine, with her short wig all shiny, a white blouse that struggled with her breasts and the switchblade she carried there. She had on white hot pants that showed off her luscious thighs. Her feet, in white sandals, were prettier than he'd ever seen them. As for that white motherfucker, he was a big bastard. And he was mad. He started for Bill, pulling away from Dicey's hand. Bill got all loose, that was the best way to take an attack from somebody that big. But, like magic, Viola and Quevedo came between them, handing everybody paint brushes.

Viola was the very soul of graciousness. "Why hello, Dicey. And how are you, Jason? I see you've already met Bill and Maria."

"I know her," Dicey said. They hadn't met; but Bill had told Dicey what went down when he'd worked for Mr. Benes. "Her father built Anthony Homes."

Once again, Maria held her own. "I guess you could say he did. Although they looked considerably better then than they do now." Man. Bill felt good. Maria was determined to kick ass, too, if the occasion came to that.

But Viola was determined to have peace and harmony. "Well, most of the girls here live in Anthony Homes. I think it was nice of your father to undertake the job of providing public housing for so many colored people." She was saying one thing, but she meant another: There 11 be no shit in this house tonight. We're here to paint rocks, and that's what we're going to do. Her eyes narrowed, in case the warning wasn't understood; and the long black lashes with the blue shadow around them made them look as though they were covered with faded cobwebs. Quevedo stood a bit behind her and to her left. He could take Bill and the white boy at the same time, although he was smiling. But it was the dangerous smile of a beautiful tropical snake.

Jason was the first to give. Probably his military experience had taught him to respect unbeatable authority. "Pleased to meet you,

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Bill. You too, Maria." He even smiled; he didn't look so dumb when he smiled.

So, they murmured pleasantries all around, holding paint brushes like kindergarten children about to attack Clean-Up Week. "Now, we've got work to do," Viola said. She clapped her hands loudly. "Attention, everybody! We're going to start painting now. Do a good job, and try to keep the place clean. There're newspapers over in the corner. And everybody is invited to the burial tomorrow at Wild-wood-by-the-Sea. Ask any of the girls. They'll give you complete details."

They sat and kneeled and squatted, and painted rocks. There were many more rocks than people. But, under the prodding and supervision of Viola and the girls, a certain order was soon established. The paint was of the latex variety, and dried quickly, with little mess. Quevedo passed out rocks and collected the dried ones; and as it became apparent that the rock-painting was going to be a success—Bill had approached it with absolute dread; he'd never painted a rock before in his life—Viola broke out the wine and beer. Everything was on the house, so the affair took on a festive aspect.

Bill, Maria, Dicey, and Jason painted together. Perhaps because they were both white, Maria and Jason made a comment to each other from time to time; and that helped some to fill the hostile gap between Bill and Dicey, who found themselves painting side by side.

The muscles in Bill's face were quite stiff, as though he had pasted another mask on top of the one he was wearing when he spotted Dicey and Jason staring at him. But the painting soothed him in a way he couldn't explain. At first, he had felt foolish; but as he smeared red paint on a rock, turning it in his large hand like a master craftsman, he thought calmly about the many faces he'd been obliged to wear all his life.

In the beginning, he had worn an eager, smiling mask for his mother, his father, all white people, and all preachers. And one of almost equal texture for his teachers, until he had met Miss Page. Toward her, and his peers, he had worn the sneer of a cocksman, the slouch of a savvy dude who didn't give a shit whether or not the sun rose tomorrow. He had perhaps been most honest, his truest self, with Aunt Keziah, for she had laid out the boundaries of his freedom, the lines for his conduct. Looking back now, he found that he had enjoyed those years with her—the sex, the domination, the servitude,

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the illusions or delusions that had made him feel like a man imprisoned on all sides by woman.

As for Dicey, she'd always been just a convenience—someone with a place for him to stay, somebody to feed him, somebody he could fuck. But all those goddamned children. And that jealous streak that made a good-looking woman like her walk about with a switchblade between her breasts, looking for him. He had to admit that usually she was a very cool chick; he'd given and she'd taken more shit than the average black woman would. But, at the same time, wasn't she getting the good of him? It pissed him off that she was sitting there mad as hell, ready to cut his heart out, slapping white paint on a rock. Jason was telling Maria about some asshole heroics he'd done in Vietnam—"I captured five VC all by myself. Two of them turned out to be women."

"How interesting," Maria said. She was sharing a can of green paint with Jason; but it was obvious that her mind was not on what she was doing. Bill detected a tenseness in her, as though she, too, was waiting for Dicey to explode. Well, he'd always heard that the best defense was an offense. "You mad?" he said to Dicey, in what he thought was a soft, conciliatory tone.

But the fact that he was here with a white woman, had been shacking with her for five days, probably that had hurt Dicey to the point where her only defense lay in being loud and nasty. "I've packed your clothes," she said. "I want you to move out." Her lips were trembling like she was going to cry. Then, as an afterthought, she said, "You dirty motherfucker."

Everybody with ears must have heard what she said. Bill was too hurt to get mad, or to try and be cool. "You putting me out?" My God, he was nearly forty, he'd lived with her all these years, and she was putting him out. He just couldn't believe it.

"I'm putting you out," she said. She didn't even look up. "I got me another man."

Another man? That clobbered him like a sledge hammer. And, like a goddamn fool, tears scalded his eyes. "Aw shitF He threw the paint brush down and stood up. Everybody seemed to be looking at him, everybody seemed to know. And their faces. Twisted with the same lewd excitement he'd seen those many years ago when Mr. Willis de-nutted the screaming bulls.

Viola and Quevedo were coming at him like a double football team. So he went almost into a crouch. If they were going to put him out because he was hurt, because Dicey had took his manhood and

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trampled it with hobnailed boots—if they were going to put him out for that, then he was ready to fight. And every nigger in the room knew a fight was brewing; some of them dipped their brushes; some of them painted furiously; some of them just held their brushes, like charms to ward off evil, and stared.

"You can come live with me, Bill." Was he hearing voices again? It sounded sweet and clear as a silver bell. Then Maria's soft hand touched his arm; and she said it again, loud enough for everybody to hear. "You can live with me, Bill. There's no problem. Now, I think we ought to be going."

The impact of what she said stopped Viola in mid-stride. Quevedo almost barreled over her. Shock and dismay seemed to whiplash through the Grand Ballroom like summer lightning. Maria linked her arm in Bill's and led him past Viola, whom she acknowledged with a courteous nod. "Thank you so much for inviting us," Maria said.

Viola, with all those college degrees, she quickly got her black ass together. "It was nice of you to come, dear. And we'll expect you both tomorrow at the burial."

"We'll be there," Maria said.

Bill was still too hurt and confused to speak. But pride stood straight in him like a young giant. Man. This white woman was going to take care of him! He felt like slapping his thighs, he was that happy. And Viola made him feel even better when she said, "Bill, why don't you drive me? I'm going with Jason and Quevedo. I've rented a limousine. Would you mind?"

He mumbled something. Viola was backing him, too, probably because she was a good business woman and didn't want somebody like Maria Befies to walk out of her whorehouse in a huff. He bet Dicey felt like shit. He felt beautiful. Quevedo could drive like a motherfucker. But Viola had asked him to drive her to Wildwood-by-the-Sea. "I'd be proud to drive you," he said.

Viola kissed him and Maria in the Continental fashion, on both cheeks. When she embraced Bill, her breasts poked him like pointed hands. He almost got dizzy from her dusky aroma of exotic spices and new honey, as though she had bathed in an oriental beehive. "We'll see you tomorrow," she said.

The spell was broken. People went back to painting and talking. As Bill swaggered out with Maria on his arm, he looked back at Dicey. She was huddled over, holding her belly, like she was hurting. Well, fuck her. And Jason, he was sitting cross-legged like a dumb Irish Buddha.

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As they were leaving, one of Viola's girls gave them a mimeographed schedule for tomorrow's activities. The first item was: Pick up mother of deceased at airport. Quevedo and Viola would certainly do that. The second item: Reception for mother of the deceased. That would be at Maria's. All the niggers would have a chance to see where Bill would be living. He felt too beautiful for words.

Outside, they walked in silence for a while. He was too full to speak, too much of a black stud to say something as common as Thanh you. So it pleased him to think that Maria knew he was grateful. Women knew things like that. It was a beautiful night, agreeably warm, romantic with moonlight and sweat from the black body of Cousinsville curled around them. After a while, Maria said, "I guess I'll have to go to the burial by myself tomorrow."

"No. You can take the bus. The schedule says there'll be a bus leaving at one-thirty. I think you'll like it. You'll probably be the only white person on board, but you'll feel right at home." When he took her in his arms, her body pulsated against his like the breathing of a large cat. "You're my black woman now," he said huskily. "We'll be happy together. You'll see."

She said nothing. Now her body throbbed like a heartbeat. He kissed her deeply, gently. She twined her arms around his broad shoulders, one hand holding the tight muscles of his neck. She smelled slightly of warm delicious apples. When he released her, they walked on.

"I'm glad you're coming back to work for us," she said. "The woman we've got is all right. But you were the best we ever had. Besides, I can't go to her room at night."

He almost staggered, like she'd zapped him with a ray gun. Mother/wc&/ He'd thought the bitch was talking about setting him up in a heavy pad, buying him clothes like she'd been doing all week, taking him places, and then dying over his dick as her reward, trusting him to resurrect her after every death. But she wanted him to come back as a servant.

Just like before. Bowing and scraping. Dusting and sweeping. Cooking and cleaning. Making beds and scrubbing motherfucking toilets. Mixing drinks and carrying out garbage. Driving the old man to work, the mother to market, the daughter to Lord & Taylor's. And the husband, Maria's husband? Bill didn't even know him, but he hated the sonofabitch already. What kind of man was he to live with this kind of woman, to not have her under control, tied by a leash to his own prick so she wouldn't be out looking for some other man's?

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He felt so goddamned hurt, so mad, he wanted to hit her. But he kept his cool. Man, he had no other choice. If Dicey had put him out, where else could he go? What else could he do?

"It'll work out fine," Maria said. "You'll see. I'll arrange everything." She took a quick step around in front of him. "Aren't you happy, darling? I thought that woman . . . that Dicey ... I thought she was absolutely awful. How could you stand to live with her? Did you love her? Do you love me?"

He was numb. "I love you," he said.

She kissed him quickly. Her lips felt ice cold. "I don't know," she said. "Sometimes I think you love me, sometimes I think you don't. Can you prove it to me?" She was being playful and deadly serious at the same time. "I mean, I've done things for you. Remember the money I gave you last year? And all this week, I've been spending money on you, taking you places. Now I'm going to see that you get your job back. With a good salary, too, you'll see. Whenever you want me to, whenever / want to, I'll come to your room at night. Nobody will suspect a thing. My husband, poor dear, he sleeps like a log."

She rattled it off like popcorn shitting from a movie machine. It was the first time Bill had seen her even close to being nervous. So she wasn't sure whether she had him or not. But she had him right by the short hairs. "I love you. You know that."

"Yes ... I guess so. But I want you to prove it, Bill darling. I mean, if this was back in the days of knights, you'd go out and bring me a chest of gold, a dragon's head, something like that."

They had been walking slowly. Now they'd come to a bust of Martin Luther King that the black people of Cousinsville had erected in a small clearing after King's death. Except for a streetlight, it was very dark; and King's head and shoulders seemed to be growing out of a white slab of marble.

"I've got to take a piss," Bill said. "I'll piss on that. You know what Martin Luther King means to me . . .to all black people."

"Yes, yes, yes . . . /" She hissed like a frantic snake. Her eyes were greedy, bright. "Piss there. Right on his head. Then I'll know you love me."

He dug out his Johnson. For some reason, it was half hard. Man! Was he freaking behind this kinky shit? Pissing on a statue, a monument, that wasn't the same as pissing on the man. Still, it represented something to Maria, even if it was just plain pissing to Bill. He hadn't cared about Martin Luther King one way or the other, although he

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thought King's widow was a fine-looking woman. A little airish and uppity. But a good man could put her nose in the dirt.

"Go ahead," Maria said.

He was standing right over the monument. His Johnson was almost completely hard now, because Maria was holding it, aiming it; so he couldn't pee that easily. He locked the muscles in his ass and thought of running water. When he felt the flow of hot piss, he looked at the stars, the star-bright moon. Man is ugly. Nature is beautiful. That's what he thought.

He shook his Johnson and put it away. Why was the motherfucker hard? The bust of King was shiny with piss. As he and Maria walked back to the station wagon, Bill had the feeling that, for a long time, she had been conspiring to make him do that unclean thing.

"You love me," Maria said. She was wrong. He hated her. He wanted to snatch his arm from her, knock her fucking head off his shoulder, kick her up and down the street like you'd kick a mad dog.

"I love you," he said. They got into the station wagon. He turned the radio on to WNJR, a black station. The old Temptations were singing about evolution, revolution. Maria snapped her fingers, bouncing on the seat. "I just love soul music," she said. How'd he ever think she was so different? The Temptations sang: And the band played on. Bill nodded; he didn't know whether Maria noticed that he'd nodded or not, it was that black. He was that black. With just another white bitch.

He drove to her house, where they always entered under cover of darkness. "I had an absolutely wonderful time," Maria said, as she stepped into the shower. "You have no idea how boring it can be, living up here."

Bill sat on the bed, arms hanging between his legs, head bowed. Maria seemed to be waiting for some response. But when he said nothing, she turned on the water. In a little while, he could smell the perfume of soap and her body combined with warm mist. Goddamn. Goddamn. She was humming. My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty. . . . Was she laughing at him some kind of way?

He peeled off his clothes and stepped into the shower with her. But before he could do a thing, she had grabbed him and mashed him against the tile wall. "You're silly," she said. "Why do you look so glum?"

The water was pisswarm on his back, his ass, his legs. And he had to piss again. Probably his nerves. Man, he had a right to be nervous.

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"I love you," he told Maria automatically, without any enthusiasm. He found her mouth and tried to swallow her whole. At the same time, his bladder gave way, and he pissed. If Maria felt it at all, she probably knew it was piss. After all, hadn't he pissed on Martin Luther King? And what else does a man do in a warm shower before he fucks?

Early next morning, they got up to clean the house. For Viola's schedule said quite clearly that the reception for Miss Page's mother would last from 11 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. "Just the downstairs," Bill said. "Nobody's going upstairs." He was naked, rested, very much in control again; and he didn't feel like doing a thing. But Maria seemed full of energy. In a white pants suit with a pink apron tied around her waist, she looked every bit the housewife. "You just relax," she said. "Fix yourself a drink. I'll have this place spotless in a jiffy." So he poured himself some Thunderbird over ice and watched her do her thing.

He felt like a husband. He'd never been a husband, but he had the warm sensation that this was the way good marriages worked—the husband drinking, his Johnson half hard, belly full of sausage, early pussy, soft eggs, and orange juice; the wife humming over the vacuum cleaner, attacking the furniture with a cloth dipped in lemon oil, dusting pieces of priceless crystal and bric-a-brac, putting them carefully back in their places around the large living room.

Maria kissed Bill before she bounced into the kitchen. "Comfy?" she said. He nodded. It was such a nice word for her to use, so nice of her to wonder if he was comfortable while she was doing everything and he was steadily getting tore up on T-Bird. Maybe coming back to work for her wouldn't be so bad after all. This was what he lacked with Dicey: the sense of a home to care for, a woman to love, a woman who bowed to his maleness so he could stand erect over all men everywhere.

He was getting drowsy. Maria was humming in the kitchen. Was it possible that he loved her without even knowing it? Her certainly felt that she loved him, although it might not be the exact kind of thing he was looking for: love that recognized its own importance, simon-pure, without being purled up, or overly proud of the other person's dependence upon it. Was he getting that from Maria? And, more importantly, could he return it... ?

He had been sleeping lightly when the rubber-soled caravan crept up and caught him unaware. Through the front window, he saw a line of black limousines parked along the curb. One thing sure: Viola

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had spared no expense, which meant that the girls on Hay Street had put in a hell of a lot of overtime. Also, with the eye of every neighbor on them as they slid sedately from the cars, they gave the perfect appearance of church sisters who'd been invited to the home of a liberal white.

Maria had bought Bill a deep-blue suit for the occasion; he hurried to the bathroom and dressed; and he was shrugging on his jacket when the doorbell rang exactly once. "I'll get it!" Maria yelled. She sounded very excited, so many niggers coming to her house at the same time. He bet this was the most niggers that had ever been in this town since the white folks came here. Then he remembered that Maria had told her neighbor friend over the telephone that he was a preacher. A minister, she'd called him. That tickled him, because preachers sure did love pussy, fried chicken, and chocolate cake. So did he. Besides, hadn't he and Reverend Cobb somehow achieved a marriage of bodies and minds that Baptismal Sunday in Burnside, when Aunt Keziah's hold over him had begun to slip? The Reverend Bill Kelsey. Maybe Viola would introduce him to Miss Page's mother that way. It was a masquerade he'd love to play.

But, as it turned out, the burden of pretending fell on Maria. Bill stood back and let her open the door. Viola and Quevedo were on the front steps. Between them was a small, stylish-looking woman dressed completely in black. "Mrs. Page," Viola said, "I would like you to meet Maria. Maria, this is the Mother of the Deceased."

"How do you do?" The little old lady stepped right on in. "You must be Clair's maid that she wrote me so much about. Well, I do the same kind of work down in Alabama. And don't worry what I think about you, honey. This integration thing has everybody turned upside down. Live and let live, that's what I say. Why, some of my best friends are white folk."

When it was her turn to meet Bill, Mrs. Page looked him up and down with open appreciation. "Clair wrote me some nice things about you," she said. Now, he knew she was lying; and he felt a little sad. Not because the old lady was lying—old people did that all the time—but because he couldn't think of a single good thing Miss Page knew about him—other than that he fucked like a dream—that she might have written to her mother.

He shook the old lady's dry hand, and murmured the usual nonsense. But he kept his eye on Maria. She was definitely rattled. In her white outfit and apron, she really might have been the maid. Besides, she was the only white person present. She had turned fire red, part

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of which could be attributed to her sunburn. But when she threw her hands behind her, as though to remove her apron—as though by taking off an apron, she would set the record straight with the mouthy little black woman—Viola shot her a stern but clear warning: Darling, if you don't be the maid, I shall simply have to whip your ass.

Maria swallowed hard, but she stepped aside to let them all in. Viola and Quevedo looked as though they had stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine. Quevedo wore a black pin-stripe that matched the shiny color of his hair, eyebrows, and mustache. He had a white carnation in his lapel. The shine on his shoes gave the appearance that they were made from fine mirrors. As for Viola, she had on a simple gown of the deepest purple, with see-through sleeves. It swept the carpet regally as she walked, and fanned behind her like large wings. Mourning ribbons of the same deep purple were braided into a black beehive wig that rested on her head in three tiers, like the Pope's crown. She had on white lace gloves; she pulled them off and fanned. "I'm dying of thirst. Mrs. Page, would you care for a little eye-opener?"

Mrs. Page was halfway across the living room, inspecting everything. "An eye-opener? Well, I don't usually drink this time of day. But I could use a little Bourbon and branch water, considering the sadness of the occasion." She talked through her nose, at a kind of soft, almost muffled angle, as though her words were squeezed through Alabama snot.

So Viola instructed Maria. "I'll have a martini, dear. Very dry. And do rub lime peel on the inner rim of the glass. It goes without saying that the glass should be chilled."

"Yes, ma'am," Maria said. Her color was better. She even smiled at Bill when she passed him. But the smile was held intact by the rigidity of all her face muscles, like a mouth-shape imbedded in granite the color of Copper Tan. Bill almost felt sorry for the bitch. But she'd been acting the maid before the mourners got here. And hadn't he pissed on the monument to Martin Luther King last night to show his love for her? Well now, she had a golden opportunity to show her love for about a hundred niggers who were still squeezing through the open door.

But they were cool niggers. Viola had obviously told them how to act. Don't steal anything. Leave the rowdiness at home, darlings. In other words, act like you're white. They ate nothing; they talked in subdued tones. Except for Viola and Mrs. Page, no one touched a drop of liquor. Bill sneaked to the kitchen from time to time and

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swallowed some Thunderbird. But he was pleased, and most impressed, by how well the black people acted. Some even stood on the lawn, chatting very sensibly. If Bill hadn't known that most of them were whores, he might have easily mistaken them for the kind of upper-middle-class black women who go to church parties and Ebony fashion fairs.

Not even an ounce of titty was showing, although Viola's breasts, even when covered by the deep purple, gave the impression of warm basketballs shot with deadly precision into the top part of her gown. She, or someone else of excellent taste, had apparently supervised the wardrobing of the other whores. For their attire, and that of their escorts, was impeccable. All the great designers, or their best imitators, were represented-Givenchy, Yves St. Laurent, Chanel, Gucci—and if Bill Kelsey did not know that, it is possible that Maria Befies did, and that she perhaps felt shoddy in her summer polyester outfit from Lord & Taylor's branch store at the local shopping mall.

Elegantly genteel, the ladies from Hay Street wore tasteful hats, gloves, shoes with sensible heels. The colors of their dresses fluctuated from smart black to Viola's deep purple. They talked in subdued tones. When they smoked, they went outdoors and ordered their escorts to stub their cigarettes in the gutter.

As Bill circulated, he overheard conversations that left him mystified.

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really. So I said, 'That'll be fine, Miss.' And she wrapped it up."

"But that much money?"

"I take it off my taxes, dear."

"Of course. Of course. Who's your accountant?"

Bill's chest stuck out a mile. Man, he was proud. He'd fucked most of those women on Hay Street. He knew how raunchy they could be if they had a mind to. Well, today they were being white. Indeed, they were so eminently genteel that a reasonable observer would have thought that, in truth, these were proper folk, rather than the progeny of some white man's greedy genitals fed into the vaginas of captive black women. And perhaps a reasonable observer would have wondered why they did not—could not, in truth—live here in the arrogant and isolated vulgarity of upper suburbia rather than in the ugly edifices on Seventh Avenue, which could be seen at a distance through the gleaming picture-glass windows.

Bill was thinking along those lines when Maria Befies fucked up.

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After perhaps an hour of being a servant to servants, and appearing to enjoy it, she went to the stereo and pushed a button. A record could be heard falling into place, obviously one she had already put on the turntable just for this moment. Then, after a pause filled with soft scratches as the needle searched for the groove, there came forth from four speakers the muted blare of horns and drums, a full orchestra swelling into what seemed to be a slow, almost triumphant march.

"Cut that thing off!" Viola snapped.

This time, Maria turned beet red. But she did not move. So Viola went to the stereo and switched it off.

"I sort of liked it," Mrs. Page said. She was still handling everything. "My madam plays that kind of music all the time. What was that you turned off?"

"Wagner. The 'Funeral March' from Gotterdtimmerung"

"I liked it," Mrs. Page said.

But Viola shook her head vehemently. "Most inappropriate. Most inappropriate." For the barest instant, she and Maria locked eyes. And it was Maria who gave in. She said, "Would you care for another martini, ma'am?"

Viola flung her head contemptuously. "No. I've had my limit." She seemed furious, but controlled.

What had set her off? Surely not the fact of funeral music at a wake. Or had it? Bill didn't know. But Viola was pissed. She began herding everybody out to begin the long trip to Wildwood-by-the-Sea. There were still forty-five minutes to go before the reception should end, according to the schedule. When Viola deviated from her schedule, that really meant something unusual was going on.

Mrs. Page was still inspecting furniture and bric-a-brac. Finally, she wrinkled her nose in exasperation. "Well, if Clair liked this kind of stuff, I guess it's O.K. But it seems sort of . . . coarse ... to me."

"I couldn't agree more," Viola said. She was pulling on her lace gloves. "We're ready to go now, Mrs. Page."

The old lady set her empty Bourbon glass on a paper doily. "I was just wondering. . . . After our talk, I think I would like to take something home to remember Clair by. Can I have this?"

And now Bill understood why Viola had turned off the music. It gave her an advantage over Maria Beiies, and some leverage to Mrs. Page, a cover under which to make that outrageous request.

For the piece that Mrs. Page had chosen, most certainly with Vi-

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ola's encouragement, was a solid jade sculpture about five inches high, very heavy for its size, of a black mother suckling a round-headed infant. When Bill worked here before, Maria had especially called his attention to it. Maria had also said that the piece was worth over three thousand dollars on the open market. Now Mrs. Page was asking for it.

"I see no reason why not," Viola said sweetly. Maria hesitated the barest second. "I'll wrap it for you," she said. But Mrs. Page dropped the piece into her handbag. "It fits nicely here, thank you."

"Well now, it is time to go," Viola said. She guided Mrs. Page by the elbow to the door. "We've a long ride ahead of us. You'll be with the undertaker in his Cadillac. I believe that's the custom."

"That's the custom," Mrs. Page said. She nodded and waved to Maria. "Thank you so much, dear. Thank you so very much."

"You're welcome, ma'am," Maria said.

Bill wanted to wait and talk to Maria alone. But Viola called him. "Remember, you're driving me," she said. Bill nodded. "I'll be right out," he said.

Now the house was empty. Except for the missing sculpture, and perhaps what the neighbors had seen, there was no indication that anyone had been here at all. Not even a church congregation could have come, and left, and carried the stench of their ritual with them so efficiently.

"I hope Viola didn't get on your nerves," Bill said. "I thought you were swell."

He had his arms around Maria, and she snuggled up to him. "Oh, I enjoyed it," she said. She sounded very sincere; and he wondered if she had trained herself to sound that way even when she felt the exact opposite. But the warmth of her body, the sweetness of her kiss, seemed genuine enough.

"I have to go now," Bill said. "I'll see you in Wildwood. You'll have to drive to Hay Street and get the bus there."

"It'll be fun," Maria said. She was already untying her apron. "I'll see you later." Halfway down the hall, she turned. "Do you still love me?"

"I love you, baby. I think I love you more than before."

She wrinkled her nose. "I'm glad." She blew him a kiss and disappeared into the bedroom.

Bill drove Quevedo and Viola to Hay Street, where Viola went in and changed from her deep purple gown into a violet one of chiffon. She had traded her beehive wig for a flatter red one that was topped

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by a toreador hat, also in violet. Now that her breasts were unstrapped, they seemed to converse with each other in round movements underneath the thin material of her gown. Her only jewelry was a cameo imbedded in glossy obsidian. Quevedo had taken off his jacket and tie and rolled up his sleeves. As for Jason, he had been waiting at the whorehouse; he got into the limousine with Viola. "The bus will be here soon," Viola said. "Tell them not to leave without Maria." Then she settled herself beside Bill. "That girl is an absolute wonder," she said. "I'll have to give her something to replace that statue."

Bill smiled to himself. He thought Viola was a wonder, too. She didn't have all those college degrees for nothing.

"She didn't mind being the maid at all," Bill said.

"I should think not," Viola said, as though she'd been served martinis by white women from birth. "Now let's get started for Wild-wood-by-the-Sea. We're right on schedule, and I want to keep it that way."

Bill pulled off. The quiet power of the limousine thrilled him right up through his asshole. Some cases of wine and beer were packed in the back seat along with Quevedo. Large pots of collards and hog maws and chitterlings were jammed in the trunk; it was clear that Viola trusted no one else with that important cargo. "Normally, as a matter of respect," Viola said, "I'd ride with the Mother of the Deceased. But I came with you boys because you both loved Clair. And I want you to be friends. I insist."

She sprawled between Bill and Jason like a demilitarized zone, in case war should break out. But Jason seemed in a pensive, almost happy mood. And Bill felt damned good himself, especially when Viola ordered a bottle of wine from Quevedo. "It's from my own private stock," she said. The wine was dry, light, ruby-colored, and delicious, with a very healthy kick. After the second bottle, somewhere near Perth Amboy on the Garden State Parkway, Viola began singing "That Old Rugged Cross" in what might have been an uneven baritone. Bill and Jason joined in, while Quevedo beat out a slow bongo rhythm on his thigh.

The car was air-conditioned, so they rode with the windows up. And the interior was filled with pot smoke, which Quevedo enjoyed by himself until Jason asked for some. Smiling, Quevedo passed the biggest reefer Bill had ever seen. Jason swallowed the smoke, held it, and then let it out loudly. He handed the reefer to Viola, but she declined—"Wine's my bag," she said. "Good wine. Not that garbage

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they sell in the ghetto." She was already good and high. So Bill smoked. The reefer made him bold enough to ask Viola who might have done the juju on Miss Page. And Viola seemed just high enough to tell him.

"Why does it matter?" she said cryptically. "What's done is done."

He felt chillier than the air deserved. "You know? You know who did it?"

Viola nodded rather heavily. "Cherchez la femme. That's French. It means, Look for the woman. Now let's change the subject."

But Jason picked it up. "If this juju stuff is true, how do you know it won't happen again?"

Now Viola nodded wisely. "It might. It just might."

Jason turned pale underneath the red. "Suppose it happens to me? I mean, I've got to be back at the base by midnight tomorrow."

Viola laughed hilariously. "Now who'd want to juju you?" She seemed to strangle on her own juices; then she dabbed at her eyes. "Furthermore, the best defense is to find out who's doing it to you. Unless you know that, you're helpless. All the charms, and counter-charms, and running water in the world won't help you." Two rather slender tears squeezed through her eye makeup; but she caught them with the corner of a purple Kleenex. "Poor Clair. She was such a fine girl. She'd want me to be this way, drinking wine between her two lover men, feeling good on the way to her funeral. I'm glad she had a good education. A less intelligent girl just couldn't understand."

Then she took some three-by-five cards from her purse and studied them. Apparently they were notes for the remarks she was going to make at the burial. After a while, she put them away. "Is everybody happy?" she bellowed. She seemed completely zapped herself, and she kept on slugging wine as Quevedo fed it to her. "I'm fine," Bill said. But he'd worn swimming trunks under his pants—Viola's schedule had suggested that beachwear would be acceptable, considering the place of burial—and they were uncomfortably tight. But he did feel fine. As for Jason, he said, "I'm O.K." His eyes were bleary; and he seemed very worried about what might happen to the Army and the national defense if someone did decide to juju him and he couldn't report in tomorrow night.

Bill wondered how Jason had really felt about Miss Page, whether all that shit he wrote her was true. Yet, there was the bank account; and in Bill's world, when two people put money in the bank together, that was fine proof that they loved each other.

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Quevedo kept the reefer on a steady round. Bill smoked as he drove. But he was doing some heavy thinking. Look for the woman. There was only one woman he could look for. Dicey. That liver-lipped bitch. She believed in that shit. Was that how she'd held him all these years?

Now he felt a terrible fear for Maria, riding on the bus with Dicey. Suppose something happened to Maria? He'd break Dicey's goddamned neck, that's what. Now he was glad she'd told him to leave Anthony Homes. He'd never liked it there anyway. And he was high as a motherfucker.

He carried the limousine on in to Wildwood-by-the-Sea, feeling at peace with at least a part of the world. Hadn't Maria demonstrated a dozen times over that she could take care of herself? Shit, she might even put the juju on Dicey. He started laughing, and everybody laughed with him, each for their own reason.

They passed through Wildwood, a gaudy resort town primarily for migrant rednecks, and continued on to an isolated area beyond Wildwood-by-the-Sea. On the way, they crossed a wide, modern bridge, and then the road became rough and rocky, finally turning into sand. "We can stop here," Viola said. They got out. There were large trees set back from the beach, twisted and bent toward Burnside by years of torturous northern winds. But today, the wind was low, moving like slight ghosts around them. The sea, aglitter with sunlight, was gray-green, turning black in the depths as the eye looked farther out.

While they were waiting for the bus and the rest of the funeral procession to arrive, Bill, Jason, and Quevedo emptied the car of what food and drink they had brought. Arms clasped behind her, Viola paced the isolated beach, looking somewhat like a buxom madwoman in her steady hat and flowing gown. Beyond her, the horizon was a straight line drawn by a sharp-pointed pink pencil. The dying sun was hot, but pleasantly so, buffered by the lissome breeze. It was a good day for a funeral, Bill thought. He stripped to his trunks, a lightweight white bikini that contrasted nicely with his strong-coffee color and gave him the feeling of being naked while showing respect for the dead at the same time.

Jason went behind some rocks to change into a pair of baggy plaid bloomers. But he was built well, if one could forgive his freckles, and the fact that he was hairy as an Irish setter. Quevedo undressed on the beach and pulled on a pair of trunks similar to Bill's. "Same-o same-o," he said to Bill, smiling. Bill nodded. It was the first time

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he'd heard the big Porto Rican speak. Fittingly, Viola remained in her hat and gown. But she drank wine and beer from the bottle, along with the men. "After all," she said, "life must go on. Clair would have wanted it this way." But Bill thought he heard some doubt in her voice. And he wondered if Miss Page might not have preferred to be put away with the benefit of a church pulpit, rather than at a picnic by the sea.

"I think I'll take a stroll," he said. He was surprised when Jason asked if he could come along. "Come on," Bill said. He wondered if the big clunk wanted to get him away from Viola and Quevedo and try to beat his ass. But Viola was ever alert. "I want you all to be friends," she said. "Clair would have wanted the same."

Jason nodded. Bill said, "Yas'm." He and Jason ambled along the beach. He had a strong feeling that Viola wanted them to go so that she and Quevedo could knock off a chunk before the other mourners arrived. Man. This was some funeral. Then he realized that this wasn't a funeral at all. It was a mistake to think like that. They were going to eat, drink, dance. The lucky ones would fuck behind the rock formations or up on the low hill about five hundred yards from the sea. Then, probably before or after a few words by Viola, they were going to pile two or three thousand pounds of painted rocks on top of Miss Page's body, as though they were trying to mash her into heaven through the back door, instead of letting her soul stand upright, guts intact, and strut her stuff through the Pearly Gates.

Jason seemed to be thinking along the same line as they scrambled up the hill. "This is kind of a peculiar funeral, wouldn't you say?"

Bill was all innocence. He wasn't going to admit that niggers might be making fools of themselves. "You think so? It seems all right to me."

"Well, I guess everybody's got their way of doing things," Jason said. They had reached the top now. He shaded his eyes and looked seaward. The expanse of ocean was flung like a broad piece of turquoise cloth overlaid with ripples of pink. "I think Maria is a great girl," Jason said, still squinting. "I really liked the way she handled that situation last night. It could've got nasty."

Bill nodded. He was completely at peace with the world. There was a bush of late-blooming roses on the hilltop, as though the whole hill was somebody's grave. "Dicey's a great girl, too," Bill said. "She just had her ass on her back last night."

"I acted pretty stupid, too," Jason said. "I'd been drinking. I wanted to apologize to you for what I did."

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"That's all right, man. You didn't do nothing." He was interested in two things. First, as he had suspected, Viola and Quevedo were going at it hot and heavy on the beach. The other had to do with the formation of the land. The part of the beach where they were, where, presumably Miss Page would be buried, was a miniature island. The ocean was to the left of them. And on the right, to the west, was a deep channel that curved so that each of its ends met the sea. The land they stood on was shaped like a half-moon. That explained the bridge they had crossed, which Bill could see at a distance of perhaps two or three miles. Well, nobody can do any juju here, Bill thought, after seeing the lay of the land, that they were completely surrounded by water. As he looked, he saw the first cars of the funeral procession come into view. It was led by the usual car full of flowers. Then came the hearse, followed by a streamlined bus that looked like a Greyhound Scenicruiser, and a string of nine or ten other cars. The flower car and hearse ordered the pace; and they moved down the rocky road, and then onto the sand, proceeding with pomp and the obsequious solemnity affected by those who traffic in the dead.

Jason had sprawled on the ground and closed his eyes. Bill shook him. "They're here," he said. He looked down at the beach. Viola and Quevedo must have heard the engines, for they were dressed again, drinking something from the same bottle. Jason rubbed his eyes, looked; and then he and Bill headed for the beach. Halfway down, Bill stopped. "There's just one thing I want to tell you," he said to Jason. "Miss Page—Clair—there was nothing between us. She used to be my teacher when I was in high school in Virginia. That's been a long time ago. There was nothing between us at all. She loved you. She said that you and she were going to get married. The last thing she said was, 'Tell Jason I love him.'"

Jason looked as though he didn't want to talk about it. "Is that true? She said she loved me?"

"Man, would I lie about something like that at a time like this?"

Jason stared him in the eye. His own eyes were a deep, searching blue. "No. No, you wouldn't. Thanks for telling me. It means a lot."

"I'm glad," Bill said. "I thought you ought to know. And I didn't know Miss Page was that sick, I really didn't."

"I didn't know she was sick at all," Jason said. "She never mentioned it to me."

They half-walked, half-slid down the rest of the hill. "What'd she die of?" Bill said.

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"The coroner said a heart attack. But insofar as I knew, her heart was perfect." Now he looked troubled. "You believe in that juju stuff? I just didn't want to hurt Viola's feelings. She sure believes in it. How about you?"

"Naw, man. I've heard that shit all my life. But everything people said was juju could've been explained some other way. If the coroner —man, that's a doctor!—if he said she died of a heart attack, she died of a heart attack."

She just couldn't stand his Johnson, that was all. Then he felt guilty, thinking something like that when Miss Page's body was right there in that hearse. The caravan had come to a stop, each vehicle lined up side by side so that all faced the sea.

Bill went to the bus and waited for Maria to get off. It was a real swank bus, a Greyhound as Bill had thought. Those whores really must have done a lot of overtime to pay for this. There was even a toilet on board. Everybody who got off was obviously in one stage of drunkenness or another. And Maria and Dicey were no exception. Maria kissed him boldly, hanging on him heavily for support. "It was a wonderful trip, darling! I'm so glad I came. We practically flew down the Parkway. But when we got here, that's when the hearse slowed down. And look who I've become friends with." She kissed Dicey on the cheek. Women are like that, Bill thought—clawing and scratching one minute, hugging and kissing the next.

"Hi, Dicey." She nodded, with absolutely no expression on her face at all. But he could tell that she was half-tanked; that's when she looked like old Stone Face. "Did Janie Mae come?"

Maria had already wandered away to where Viola was giving instructions to just about everybody at the same time. "Janie Mae's at the hospital with Bobby. I understand he's very bad off."

Poor Bobby. Bill hoped the wine he'd taken him hadn't fucked him up too much. "He's sure having a hard time," Bill said.

Dicey took a step toward him, then back again. "Are you all right, Bill? Will you be all right?"

He appreciated her asking that. It meant she still had a heavy thing for him. "I'm fine," he said. "I'll pick up my clothes tomorrow."

"Don't hurry," she said. "I had the royal ass last night, seeing you with that white woman. Maybe I spoke too hastily. You can come on back if you want to."

Hot dog! Now he didn't have to be a servant to Maria and her family. But he decided to play it cool. Not chilly, just cool. "Why don't we talk about it later?" he said.

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"Talk about what?" It was Maria. He didn't know how much she'd heard, how long she'd been standing near them.

"Just about things," Bill said. "What's Viola causing all that commotion about?"

Maria laughed. Her teeth were a healthy white against her copper tan. She had on a simple white dress; she carried her sandals in her hand. "First they're going to unload the rocks from the trunks of the cars. Some people want to take them from the cars and put them right on the deceased. But Viola wants them unloaded, and then put on the deceased." She frowned somewhat drunkenly. "Is there a difference?"

"There's a difference," Bill said. "Listen, you'd better get out of this sun." There was some shade at the foot of the hill where he had gone with Jason. "Dicey, I'll see you later, O.K.? And thanks."

There were probably a hundred people present. Bill was certain that more would have come if this hadn't been a work day. He went and sat in the shade of the hill with Maria. Viola was walking now with Miss Page's mother. She conducted the old woman to a folding chair set up underneath a beach umbrella facing the sea. "What did you thank Dicey for?" Maria said.

"We were talking about my clothes. She told me I could pick them up any time I wanted to." It annoyed him that Maria was questioning him. And also, that he lied to her. But he didn't belong to her yet. If things worked out—if he went back to Anthony Homes and threw some good dick on Dicey, he'd straighten things out—and then Maria could find her somebody else to scrub her toilets. But he'd made no firm decision yet. Anything might happen before this crazy day was over.

"You're going back to live with her, aren't you?"

"Now what give you that idea?" Bill said. He was sweating, and he didn't like it.

"I talked a lot with Dicey coming down. She loves you. I believe you love her, too."

"Baby, I love you. Didn't I prove it to you last night?"

She frowned and stood up. "All you did was piss on a statue," she said harshly. "Don't you think I'm a fool, Bill Kelsey. I won't have you thinking I'm a fool!" She was shouting, and it surprised him. Dicey was cool right now. So he decided to take Maria over behind the hill and calm her down. He certainly didn't want to fuck his shit up; two women wanted him, and he wanted to keep both options open in case one of them decided to really close a door.

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"Come here," he said. He got up and half pulled her to the other side of the hill. "Did you wear a bathing suit?"

"I did. By the way, you look nice in yours. It goes with your color."

He didn't know how to take that, so he ignored it. She let him lower the straps of her dress; he had trouble with the zipper in the back, and she helped him. When she stepped out of her dress, she had on a two-piece white bikini that would've made a blind man see. "Take it off," Bill said.

"Take yours off," she said, laughing. He stepped out of his trunks.

Seeing him naked, his Johnson standing at the ready, her face became ugly with passion. "I hope you're not playing some kind of game with me, Bill. I'm not unattractive, you know. I could have most any man I want. But I want you. I love you."

"I ain't playing no game, baby. Just lay down there. The sand's cool. You'll feel better."

She couldn't seem to keep her eyes away from his Johnson. "I want you to fuck me," she said. "Right now."

"What'd you think I was going to do, baby?"

She reached behind and unsnapped something; and the top of her bathing suit popped away from her breasts. Then she slid a hidden zipper down the side of the bottom part and stepped out of the suit.

"Lay down," Bill said gently. "Lay down, honey. I'm going to fuck you real good."

"You'd better!" she said fiercely. "You'd damned well better!"

Man. He had to keep this door open, however pissed he might be with Maria for the way she was ordering him about. He didn't let any woman do that to him without paying for it.

So he brutalized her; and she loved it. He penetrated her roughly, rougher than he'd ever done before; and she bit her lips with pain and pleasure. He lifted her from the sand and walked around in little circles, pulling her back and forth onto him as she wept against his chest. His legs got tired—that had been happening a lot here lately— and the idea of being old and alone lent the solid edge of genius to his fucking. He carried her round and round, pumping like a piston gone mad. She nibbled at his chest, his lips, his nose and eyes. She was having almost constant orgasms. "Bill . . . Bill ... I didn't know it could be this good. . . ."

Shit, he could've told her that. He didn't like for any woman to

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order him around, to talk to him like he was a dog. Hadn't Dicey apologized for that shit last night? Now he was teaching the same lesson to Maria Benes: Ym the man, bitch. Don't you ever forget that. He took one long thrust, and popped his nuts. The force of the emission almost knocked him out, for he was still holding her with her legs and arms twined around his neck and waist. For a long moment, he was dizzy. But every muscle in his body was painful with joy. This woman was his; Dicey was his. Why did he have to choose between the two? Shit, he'd have himself a harem. He'd find some way to make them both dig it.

Before he and Maria went back to the others, they ran farther down the beach and into the sea. The water was surprisingly cold, but invigorating. They played for a while, laughing, splashing until it dawned on both of them why they were here. "My God," Maria said, "they must think we're crazy, out here playing in the ocean at a funeral."

"I think you're right," Bill said. "We'd better go."

But when they got back to the others, no one seemed to have noticed that they'd been missing. Old Mrs. Page was subdued and dignified in her folding chair under the beach umbrella. Viola had managed to get the rocks unloaded and placed at a convenient spot near the seashore. Near the water's edge was a very cheap-looking coffin. Baskets and pots of food were sitting on the sand. But hampers of iced beer and wine were on the bus to protect them from the sun, which seemed to have turned hotter. When Bill went on the bus to drink a can of beer, he saw one of the mimeographed schedules. "What time you got?" he asked the driver, who was dozing on the back seat. He was a black man, and his eyes were red more from liquor than from sleep. "It's almost four o'clock, brother."

"Why don't you come out and join the party?" Bill said.

"Brother, party's what's got me laying down here now." He rolled over, presumably to go back to sleep.

Bill checked the schedule. 4:00 v.m.—Burial of the Deceased. 4:30 ym.—Funeral Oration by Viola Anderson, A.B., M.S. Bill gulped one beer, then another. He felt his energy returning. He left the bus and went to stand with Dicey and Maria. He felt very daring; he put his arms around both of them. Neither seemed to mind. They were watching the undertaker and three men, including Quevedo, remove the body of Miss Page from the cheap pine coffin.

In death, she seemed almost enchantingly small. One man carried her shoulders, another her feet. A woman sidled along with them in

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the interests of modesty, to keep the wind from blowing her dress, and to hold her arms in place slightly beneath her breasts. Shrouded in a plain white gown, hair flowing, she might have been fashioned from wax or marble. A vivid red smile was painted on her lips, as though she found death exceedingly funny. Like so many dogs about to bury a cache of precious bones, some other men had scooped a shallow hole in the sand for Miss Page to lie in. But most of her remained above ground, as Viola had said was fitting for someone who had died of the juju.

Jason went and stood next to Bill. The big Irishman was crying. Bill didn't know what to say, what to do. He felt like crying himself. The woman he'd known wasn't this grotesque thing they were settling into the sand. That thing, it looked bizarre. He moved just close enough to Jason so their naked shoulders touched. That was all he could do. But it seemed to impress Jason. He mashed his nostrils and blew snot on the ground. Then, after he'd wiped his nose and eyes with his hands, he put his shoulder back against Bill's. Mrs. Page was weeping silently under her beach umbrella. Bill felt sorry for the old woman; he wondered if she had the slightest idea of what really was going on. He and Jason leaned against each other for support; they had been Clair's lovers; it was not proper that they should participate in her burial.

Viola clapped her hands, and the other mourners were soon at work like ants, men and woman alike, carrying stones to place on the body of Miss Page a few feet from the sea edge. Dicey and Maria worked along with the rest. In time, the rising tide, and eventually, the old ocean itself, would cover Miss Page's bones. But for now, she was being rapidly covered by the painted rocks, as though the people were hurrying to bury her before disgust overtook them.

For word had certainly spread about how Miss Page had supposedly died. The mourners, in their bathing suits, took no chances. They heaved rocks from a safe distance until the corpse, however battered, was safely hidden. Probably out of respect, Viola had Quevedo carry a red rock that she solemnly placed on the first layer. Then the mourners moved in again. Under Viola's supervision, they worked like slaves building a miniature tomb for the repose of a lesser queen. They stacked the rocks in the form of a flat-topped pyramid. Of course, Viola had her say-so about the laying of every stone. By the time the supply of rocks was depleted, the truncated pyramid stood some six or seven feet high. The Deceased had been most adequately mashed.

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It was a curious-looking structure, a form of many-colored rocks that perhaps made a statement about death, God, stupidity, in whatever order of importance. But for the funeral-goers, life was at its peak, now that Miss Page had been put away. They had smashed the coffin and built fires with the evil-smelling wood to heat the hog maws and chitterlings, the collard greens, and other dishes prepared last night by the old black woman on Hay Street. The cooling sun was like a hymn subtly hummed by the pungent, nigger wind.

But no one was to eat before Viola's Funeral Oration. The schedule clearly said so: Oration, first; Colation, after. Even now, Quevedo was helping Viola atop two beer crates stacked on each other. Mrs. Page, looking surprisingly calm, was bring transferred to a closer position. Somewhat reluctantly, the crowd turned off radios and moved in around Viola. She seemed slightly drunk, but she held herself with aplomb. And Quevedo was at her side to bolster her in case she fell. Bill stood once more with Dicey and Maria, his arms around their shoulders. When there was silence, Viola looked over the crowd, catching every eye.

"If you have tears, prepare to shed them now," she said. "First, however, I'd like you to know that I'm not going to talk about death. I'm going to talk about life. Specifically, I'm going to talk about pussy, and what it means to life."

When there were murmurs in the crowd, Viola held up a hand for silence. With the wind gently blowing her chiffon gown, she seemed like an empress in exile, addressing the elements. "The United States Supreme Court has ruled that, in matters of obscenity, community standards shall prevail. Now all of us know that the standards of our community are not so rigid. In fact, our children cut their teeth on such words as dick, pussy, motherfucker. I have been a schoolteacher, and I know that these same children think the word sex is a number between five and seven."

There were titters in the crowd among those who appreciated her sad little joke. "So let us be our most honest," Viola went on, "which is the finest way to demonstrate our deepest grief." She took a deep breath, and her titties seemed to rise to her chin, then slide down again. "On occasions such as this, people generally speak of God. What or who is God, what he did for me was that he made me old, black, and somewhat fat. What he did for Clair was that he took away her breath. So let us rather speak of Clair, that dear dead child's sweet pussy—so young, so beautiful, so full of life.

"On Hay Street, she used her pussy to express a momentary love,

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or for the purposes of recreation or therapy. But feeling is what pussy is all about. Yet, feeling is a prisoner locked inside the cage of society, its laws and institutions. They have made a mockery of this most important of human emotions. And to mock feeling—whether it paces the bare, lonely floors of its divine enslavement; or whether it is free as a girl's ribbon blowing in the wind—to mock feeling is to mock humanity.

"Bodies such as Clair Page's have extraordinary sensors of their own. During the enlightened part of her lifetime, Clair gathered her arts and used her pussy to wipe the smirk off humanity's face. She knew that feeling, unfrustrated, ennobles humanity. It gives us truth, light, liberty of the spirit. Fettered, it makes us twisted, ailing creatures who subsist on pills and potions and the preachments of today's witch doctors masquerading as physicians and priests.

"But Clair was a true artist in that respect. And her art was fucking. Men came to her as Moslems to their Mecca; her pussy was their sacred black rock. For men are animals made of unheavy stone, and woman are the sculptor's hand that molds them, that bestows hardness and grace upon them, that lends strength to the weaker parts of their armatures. Clair sold a lot of pussy; she made a lot of money; she spread happiness like a farmer woman sowing seed. Now she is no longer with us. The question of death is the most terrifying mystery of life. But aside from the fact that death is frightening because it is so secretive, so sneaky, so horrible, it is also the main part of the tragedy of foreclosure that takes place when a woman dies, when she is unable to reach into her purse and say with a soft smile to her man, 'Here. Take it. I have plenty for more.' So today, we all here are the victims of a tragedy. Clair Page, and her dark jewel that we call pussy, have ceased to exist. Yet, she lives on in the erotic memories of all the men she lent life to.

"How noble it would be for each of them who fucked her to die now, this moment, on the spot! But Clair would have had it otherwise. She would not have the foreclosure on her mortgage extended to those who were, at one time or another, her panting tenants. She would have all of us continue to pay our rent in this mockery called life. And were she here now, at the laying away of another woman, she would have been woman enough to eat, drink, and enjoy herself. And then to enter her art by fucking in the open air, belching the odor of chitterlings and beer into the ear of a stone figure until he slowly ripples to life."

Viola paused. The falling sun splashed against her, and she seemed

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like a large piece of old gold. She gave a half-smile that seemed somewhat ironic. "Let us go about our duties, then. Those of you who loved Clair will follow out her last will and testament—that we love one another. Those of you who did not love her will best benefit by watching and learning. For there, underneath those rocks, lies the noblest pussy of all. At any rate, I thank you all for your attention." She bowed her head sharply. "The oration is done."

There were little dabs of applause. Viola seemed neither to notice nor to care. She stepped off the beer crates into Quevedo's arms. And when Mrs. Page collected herself and rushed to Viola, Viola seemed dazed and on the verge of tears. "That certainly was an interesting talk," Mrs. Page said. Viola seemed to come back for a minute from where her mind had carried her. "Did you like it? I'm glad. Right now, I've got some business to attend to. Just make yourself to home. Maybe you'd like to go on the bus and rest awhile?" Mrs. Page nodded. "Maybe I will do that," she said. "This has been a trying day." Viola watched until Mrs. Page climbed into the bus. Then she and Quevedo walked far up the beach where they took off their clothes and fucked in the amber sand.

There were a few tears among the women. Most of the men, stirred by Viola's oration, still carried the remnants of an erection. But Bill had a hard on that sagged his trunks. Almost unconsciously, he dropped his arm from Maria's shoulders and wandered with Dicey into the jungle of nearly naked niggers, where some of them had already begun to fuck. Bill felt so natural, his arm around Dicey's waist now, the sea breeze lapping his ankles like a woman's lips, his nose filled with the pungency of pig gut-and-belly, onions and pepper; the green-iron aroma of collards bubbling over the now low fire from Miss Page's coffin. He grabbed a bottle of hot wine and squeezed Dicey's shoulder.

"Let's go fuck," he said. Dicey nodded. Halfway down the beach, he remembered Maria. She came running after them in tears. "Viola was so beautiful, what she said. I blubbered like a baby. Dicey, lend me your handkerchief, please." Dicey did; she had a few tears in her eyes herself.

"I'm going to fuck Dicey," Bill said bluntly.

"I think you ought to," Maria said. "Viola was so magnificent, I think everybody should make love."

Was Maria inviting herself? Or should Bill invite her? Hell, she'd already had her piece. Besides, he didn't know if Dicey was ready for a three-way scene just yet. "Well, we'll see you later," he said to

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Maria. Dabbing at her eyes with Dicey's handkerchief, she did truly seem to be transformed. Her strong teeth glistened; her cheeks glowed with light from an unseen source. She smiled serenely, and walked away.

People were fucking up and down the beach. Even Jason was humping and bumping some black woman. Isolated from everyone, Viola and Quevedo were still going at it strong. The evening sun lay like a warm and generous hand over everything. Bill walked on with Dicey. He thought it was the best funeral he'd ever been to, certainly a fitting tribute to the memory of Miss Page.

He went behind the same hill where he'd fucked Maria. Dicey wouldn't be happy on the beach with so many people fucking. And he found that being with Dicey again was delicious. He could tell she felt the same way about being with him. They neither spoke, nor groaned, nor gnashed their teeth as they went through the discipline of fucking. Indeed, they were both controlled, accurate, stable, like Earth on its axis, revolving and rotating with immeasurable precision as Dicey went into her usual spiral of orgasms. And Bill thought, Now this is my woman. This really is my woman. If he'd ever thought Maria was for him, he must have been nuts.

He was aware that it was turning dark. Certainly more than an hour had passed. Yet, each of them was going strong. It reminded Bill of the old days, when they'd first been together, and couldn't get enough of each other, like beggars gorging themselves on the first good meal ever set before them. Bill consumed her everywhere, until the musk of every part of her was on his nose and lips, his teeth, his greedy tongue. Dicey worked on him like a young girl trying to trim down an extremely hard and resisting popsicle. The line of her body was perfectly molded against his, even as the sun moved to a sharp angle left of them. Yet they kept on, until Bill's body was racked by a single ejaculation that seemed to blast Dicey a foot or two away from him, like the debris thrown up by a starting jet.

They lay perfectly still for perhaps ten minutes. He'd never found Dicey's body so heated before. And her eyes were bright, as though she had a fever. "I've got to go swimming," she said. She was touching her body everywhere, as though she'd been stung by nettles. "Why don't you wait awhile?" Bill said. He was ready to fuck again. But Dicey was determined to go into the water. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she said. "I don't even care that much for swimming. Besides, it'll mess up my hair." Bill had to smile to himself—his Johnson sure did the strangest thing to women. "Go ahead and

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swim," he said. "But make sure you come back here. I'll be waiting for you." With the sunlight in them, her eyes looked very strange, as though filled with blood. She didn't even bother to put on her suit. When she ran, her butt moved with almost severe beauty. Bill sprawled and closed his eyes. My woman, he thought. My beautiful motherfucking woman. Thinking of going back to Seventh Avenue with Dicey pleased him. That was his real home, and he'd been away far too long.

He found himself thinking about those early years in Burnside. Could his dead mother see him now? Did she know what he was doing? If she did, she was frowning. Or had so many years in eternity mellowed her? And what about Aunt Keziah—was she still alive, talking her shit about juju? He felt supremely content. Every muscle in his body was relaxed. His mind curled into a fetal position, and he was on his way to sleep.

But he was jolted fully awake by a man's shout. It came from the beach; and Bill listened for a few seconds before he pulled on his trunks and started running. He couldn't understand what the man was screaming—would he never forget the same scream from the castrated bulls?—but it was precisely because he couldn't understand that he ran down to the beach.

And he saw an old man whose name he didn't know. But the man had a reputation for being a wino. Even now he was waving a wine bottle and pointing excitedly at the sea, hopping from one foot to the other. And he was screaming. Other people were converging on him from the upper beach, but Bill got to him first. "What happened?" Bill cried. He was hardly panting, and he thought that was all right for a man of his age. "What happened?" He grabbed the old man and shook his thin shoulders until he stopped screaming. "What the fuck happened?"

"Something big . . . something white . . ."

"Yeah?"

"It come up from the water. It took that woman with it. Wrapped its arms around her and took her with it."

Bill wet his lips and tried to fight back the dread. Insofar as he knew, Dicey had been the only woman in the water at this part of the beach.

"Where? Where did you see this?" If he saw at all; he seemed drunk on either wine or terror. "Where?" Bill insisted.

The old man pointed at a spot almost directly in front of them. Bill went sailing into the water. He was aware, as the cold waves hit him

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and tried to throw him back, that the other people had got to the old drunk just as he dived; and that if what had taken Dicey was a shark or something like that, then his ass was gone too.

Before it leveled off for the beach, the ocean was about fifteen feet deep at the spot that Bill explored. Every minute or so, he came up for air. The tide was rolling in, and it resisted his body with all the strength of a fat woman with her legs tightly crossed. Even when he knew that it would be too late to save Dicey, even if he did find her, he kept flinging himself into the water. Other divers split the water around him. Until Viola's cool voice called them to her one by one, and they sat dripping in a circle around her feet. She placed her hand on Bill's head. "We've checked. It was Dicey. It's too late to do anything about her now. I've sent the bus driver to town for the police."

He wept bitterly. He tried to stand; the ground twisted under him. He was going to faint. He felt like a bitch, fainting. Dicey's dead. Something white came up from the water and carried her away. Now the ground was moving like the back of a large snake. Or was it his knees? Arms that could only be Quevedo's caught him, and he fell into merciful darkness. . . .

When he woke up, he was under some kind of blanket; and the big Porto Rican was squatting beside him. The sky was dark except for a few stars that winked like the small eyes of cats. Turning his head, he saw several police cars with spotlights converging in the salty water where tattered pieces of seaweed moved lazily with the green tide. At least three divers in full gear were working far out from shore, air hoses attached to an emergency rescue truck. Skin divers were searching closer to shore. They're looking for Dicey's body, Bill thought. The flashing red and blue lights on the police cars cut the air like flights of bats. Bill felt a hand on his forehead. Quevedo's. The man's touch had the double quality of strength and tenderness. "I'm O.K.," Bill said. "Thanks." Quevedo stood and stretched. Then he strode across the sand to Viola, where she was talking to a policeman who was taking notes on a pad. Bill got up and followed.

He saw that everyone else was fully dressed. With only his trunks on, he was chilly in the night wind. When he got to the grouping, he saw Mrs. Page was standing with them, but she had been hidden by the policeman's bulk.

The fact that the policemen were white made him wonder briefly where Jason and Maria were. But as his eyes became accustomed to the glare, he spotted them standing at the edge of the crowd. Maria

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tried to smile, probably to encourage him; but she looked horrible. Bill was glad that Dicey's death affected Maria like that. Because, with Dicey gone, Maria had to be his woman now. There was no other choice.

Oddly enough, it was old Mrs. Page who dominated the conversation. "I've never been so rattled in all my life," she complained. She kept her voice at the steady level of a sickening whine. "One minute I'm sleeping, dreaming of angels, if you please. The next thing you know, I'm on the floor of this madman's bus, going ninety miles an hour."

The bus driver stood like a drooping ghost beyond the compass of the light. "I was doing exactly the speed limit. Besides, she paid me ten dollars to go." He aimed an accusing thumb at Viola.

"I didn't tell you to speed," she said tersely. "I always function inside the law. Besides, how did I know Mrs. Page was on the bus?"

Mrs. Page dared to jam her hands indignantly to her thin hips. "You should have known! You were the one who told me to rest there."

So they bickered back and forth. Bill looked for the form of many-colored rocks; but it was hidden in darkness beyond the ugly glare from the spotlights.

"All I know, sir, is that this lady here give me ten dollars to come and get you. I had a headache. I was sleeping."

"So was I," Mrs. Page cut in vehemently. "The next thing I know, I'm being tossed up and down on the floor by that maniac . . . ! I should've known something was wrong with him."

"She paid me ten dollars to go," the driver said stoutly.

"The nerve!" Mrs. Page said. It seemed strange to Bill that a rocky bus ride had upset her whereas all the day's insanity combined had not.

"Darling, a woman is dead," Viola said patiently. "We had to do everything possible to find her." Her university accents were becoming ragged around the edges; it was clear that she was about to lose her temper. Even Mrs. Page could detect that. "Well, maybe I am making too much of a fast bus ride. ..."

"I think you are, darling. I really do think you are. Now, if you'd let me finish talking with this nice gentleman, we all can go in a few minutes."

The policeman had the open, honest face of a sneaky white man. "You must be Bill Kelsey. I understand you lived with the missing woman." He talked through his nose, a displaced cracker. When Bill

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said nothing, he made a doodle or two on his pad, and said, "How do you feel?"

Bill managed a shrug. Man. There was nothing left in him to feel.

"I understand you did a good job of trying to find the woman's body."

"Her name was Dicey. She was my woman." He wanted that made perfectly clear, especially to Maria. "You've got to find her body. She had seven children." He didn't know what difference that last part made. And he thought he was shouting, but his voice came out almost timidly.

Viola stepped closer to him. "Dear heart, they'll never find the body." There was a twin warning in her voice he could count but not separate.

The policeman was very polite, very uninterested. "I'd call it a simple case of drowning at a picnic," he said. "No big deal. It happens all the time."

"It wasn't no drowning." The drunken old man also stood beyond the light's reach. "Something white come out of the water and took her. I saw it with my own two eyes."

"Might've been a shark," the policeman said. Now he was making large doodles on his pad.

"It won't no shark that I saw."

"Well, what was it?"

The old man hunched his shoulders. He'd gotten rid of the wine bottle, probably out of respect for the law. "I don't know what it was. It was something big and white. . . ."

"Probably a shark." Using a microphone, he called the divers in. "What's left of her body'll probably wash up tomorrow, or it'll drift out to sea." He was talking to Viola, actually to her titties. "No sense wasting any more of the city's money."

He tipped his hat and said good night. "I'm really sorry about what happened here. We're always glad to have picnickers from out of town. Hope this won't be your last time." Then he and his men piled into their cars and pulled off in a screaming, blinking caravan. The divers sat in the body of the emergency rescue truck that lumbered like a noisy elephant behind the faster, sleeker cars.

Viola sighed most heartily. "I was afraid they'd see the rocks and make us take them down. Well, I'd say we've all had a full day. And Mrs. Page, you have a plane to catch. I'll see to it that you're taken to the airport."

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Mrs. Page was standing next to Maria, and she touched her fondly. "I've been meaning to tell you," she said to Viola, "how thoughtful it was of you to let Clair's maid come. We do it all the time down home. I mean, white folks don't mind at all if I go to funerals for people I work for. I just have to know how to conduct myself properly. Although I must say, I've never been to a funeral Hke this." She had apparently forgotten about the shaky bus ride.

Viola patted her arm. "It's the way we do things up North, darling. Especially for someone we care a lot about. This affair cost quite a penny, you know."

Now Mrs. Page seemed horrified. "I know! I know! I don't see how I can ever hope to repay you."

"Everything's been paid for," Viola said. "Now I think we ought to be on our way. Bill . , . darling ... I know how you must feel inside. I feel the same way myself. But Dicey would want you to carry on for her sake. You do understand, don't you?"

"I understand." But he didn't. He understood nothing. How could they be talking so calmly about going home, about the cost of funerals, when Dicey was out there in the ocean somewhere? Something white. Maybe in the belly of a shark. Maybe not.

Then he thought of Maria. She had slipped away after Mrs. Page's comment about maids being allowed at funerals. Bill threaded his way among the car lights, where the mourners were preparing to go. He found her waiting at the bus with Jason.

Sobbing, she flung herself into his arms. "Bill, I'm so sorry. So very, very sorry . . ."

"Me too," Jason said. He touched Bill's shoulder awkwardly before he walked away.

"You're all I got left," Bill said. His throat felt tight. "Don't let me down now, baby."

"I'll never let you down," Maria said fiercely. She leaned back from him and inspected his face. "Will you ever forget Dicey? Will she always stand between us?"

"I'll forget." But he wouldn't. He couldn't.

And in that moment, in less than the time it takes a heart to beat, he saw a flicker of hatred in Maria's eyes. Had she been reading his mind? Could she read his mind?

Suddenly, her arms felt like cold serpents around him. He pulled away. He felt like a damned fool. He just couldn't believe what his mind was telling him.

Maria's eyes bored into his, and he knew that he was right. Now

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he knew why Viola had chosen this place to bury Clair, what Viola had been trying to warn him about in front of the policeman.

Only black juju couldn't cross running water. White juju, like the air, was everywhere.

He felt cold almost unto death. "Give me Dicey's handkerchief," he said.

She reached to touch him, but he stepped back. Look for the woman, Viola had said. Well, he'd found the woman. A white woman. He was almost too surprised to be angry.

"Bill, I won't harm you. I love you. I'd do anything for you."

He stared at her levelly. "Shit. Give me the fucking handkerchief."

She reached somewhere and found it. He folded it into his trunks like a flower.

Maria was scared, he could tell that. She was saying anything to hold him. "Now I know what you mean, Bill, what you mean, what you feel, when you're black. Let's do start a revolution. I'll help."

Now anger rose in him with a taste like vomit. "Start your own fucking revolution. I'll start mine. You dumb bitch."

He hit her with his open hand. She didn't budge, as though her feet were imbedded in concrete. And he'd hit her with every muscle, every pound he had. He saw anger and pleasure on her face, and a sure promise in her eyes that she'd make him pay dearly for hitting her.

"If you're going to get violent, then we have nothing more to say." She climbed the steps into the bus.

"Bill." It was Viola standing behind him. "Here're your clothes, darling. Put them on and take Mrs. Page to the airport for me, will you? It'll help take your mind off your troubles."

He pulled on his trousers, his shirt. He felt like a man recently dead. When the bus pulled off, he saw that the beach was almost deserted, except for the limousine, and a car that was apparently waiting for Viola and Quevedo. "When you get finished, bring the car back to Hay Street." She squeezed some bills into his hand. He had a million questions to ask her; he asked none. He was thinking about all those children of Dicey's back in Anthony Homes. What in hell was going to happen to them?

And ... if Maria Beiies decided to throw her shit at him . . . what in hell was going to happen to him? There is active evil among us. But where would he go to accuse her? Who would believe him? What would he accuse her of? Juju? Or whatever it is white ptopte

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call themselves when they can make white things come from the sea and carry black people away. He felt fear like never before. But there was some satisfaction in Maria's claim that she loved him. Maybe she wouldn't throw her shit at him after all.

Viola and Mrs. Page said their goodbyes very formally, like antagonists who have decided, however reluctantly, to part without fighting.

"It was beautiful beyond words."

"Thank you, darling. I'm certain it's what Clair would have wanted."

"You knew her so much better than I did. I mean, being colleagues, you certainly shared the same tastes."

They brushed cheeks tentatively, clawing each other's shoulders secretly, like chained cats. Then Bill collected Mrs. Page and started for the airport.

Mrs. Page made an occasional remark as Bill drove through Wild-wood and then hooked up with Garden State Parkway. She nursed her handbag against bosom and belly as though she was delivering the Hope diamond. And, indeed, the jade sculpture she'd practically stolen from Maria's house was in her handbag, Bill remembered that.

He didn't feel like talking; but so many thoughts were coming at him so fast that he decided conversation might help. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray—the limousine handled like a dream—and he felt Mrs. Page draw away from him, as though he'd meant to do her harm. "You don't have to be afraid of me," he said broadly. He wondered if she'd seen him slap Maria, if that was why she seemed afraid.

Now she clutched her handbag like a weapon. "You're the one that killed Clair," she said quietly.

"What the fuck do you mean by that?" Bill shouted. He was really pissed, feeling guilty about Dicey the way he did. And now this bitch was accusing him of killing Miss Page. He was too rattled to drive, so he pulled off to the shoulder. "What the fuck do you mean?" His hands trembled as he lit another cigarette. "Miss Page died of a heart attack."

The old woman seemed to snicker. "Honey, I wasn't born yesterday. Clair died of the juju. I knew that even before Viola told me. That's what I meant about you killing her. Not that you directly did it. Somebody wanted you bad enough to kill her. That's what I meant."

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He kept very quiet. He had the sensation that she was going to tell him something enormously important. To the left side of them, cars whizzed by like large beetles with bright eyes and red lights in their tails.

"It's the same reason that other woman disappeared in the ocean," Mrs. Page went on. "Somebody put the juju on her." She turned on the seat and tried to look in his eyes. But he stared straight ahead. He was remembering a conversation he'd had with Herm about life being a chain of accidental or preordained encounters. How many years had it been since he'd first sat in a car with Clair Page, dead now, mashed into heaven, certainly surrounded now by the sea, touched most intimately by crabs and other scavengers of the ocean . . . ? Now he was sitting with her mother. Accidental? Preordained? The difference between the two, according to Herm, was the difference between madness and sanity. . . .

"It's that white woman, isn't it?" Mrs. Page said. "I knew all the time she was nobody's maid. It's her, isn't it?"

Still he said nothing. She was getting ready to tell him something that would propel him to the inviting order of madness or pull him back into the chaos of sanity. He could feel it. He waited patiently, almost happily. Either way, it would soon be over.

"The young, the young, the young," she said, almost musically. "How do you think you got here, where you are now? Folk my age, black folk, we're not foolish failures because we're old. How did you get here?"

"My people fucked, that's how."

"Young man, there's no need to be impolite. What I'm talking about is survival And we black folk have survived in this country against the most tremendous odds. It's because we have strength that only a few of our own people know about. Those who don't know become disillusioned. Those who know don't believe."

"Like me," Bill said. The same old questions stirred in him: If juju was all that powerful, why didn't it change things now? Why did it have to take three hundred and fifty years? And, more importantly, if Maria Benes knew juju, who taught her? And why was hers stronger than anybody else's?

"I know what you're thinking," Mrs. Page said. "There're some questions nobody can answer. But it might help you to know that the white people are unified, black people are not. It's the concentration behind the thought that makes the miracle work. We don't have concentrated thought. The white man does."

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She certainly wasn't talking now like she was anybody's maid. He wondered if she really was. At any rate, he didn't want to hear any more of this bullshit. He reached to release the hand brake; but Mrs. Page stopped him. "It's all right if you don't believe me. Very soon, you'll find out the truth yourself. Meantime, don't worry too much about that white woman. She can't destroy you. She had your woman's handkerchief? I have this." She pulled out the jade sculpture she had taken from Maria's home.

Bill's head was spinning. Certainly Viola had sent him with Mrs. Page to hear this. He just didn't know what to think. But he did know that juju, white or black, needed something that belonged to the person you were going to throw the shit at. Maria had had Dicey's handkerchief. Mrs. Page had Maria's sculpture of a black woman nursing her child.

And what did Maria have of his? His milk, his come, that's what. He almost shit. Then he felt absolutely glorious. Was juju just another name for love? Twisted, tortured sometimes, beautiful sometimes, painful always, even in the midst of pleasure? Was it possible that the very people who practiced it did not know that juju was the enslavement of love?

Did he dare believe? He did not dare. He did not want the sterile peace of madness; nor did he want things to continue as they were. Angrily, he jerked the brake free. He was falling again into familiar traps. And when it came to juju, when it came to anything—real or unreal, visible or invisible—he knew now who had the most power, the clearest vision, the strongest love.

Hadn't Maria got rid of two women just so she could have him to herself? That meant something to him. She stood up for him, she fought for him, she loved him in the most desperate way. Clair Page and Dicey, they'd just been poor black women with hearts like empty bank vaults. Maria Benes was white; she was rich; and she wanted him.

Mrs. Page must have known that he'd made a decision. She said nothing as he pulled back into the stream of traffic. Whitey's where everything is at. But he had no intention of forgetting he was a nigger. How could he forget that?

Now he didn't feel like driving Mrs. Page all the way to the airport. So he took her black ass to Penn Station in Newark and put her on a bus for the airport.

"Goodbye," she said. "And don't forget what I told you."

"I won't." He already had. "Have a good trip."

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"Honey, I'm scared to death of airplanes. Pray for me, won't you?"

He laughed. "I will." What kind of talk was that coming from a juju? What the hell was a juju anyway? He felt very, very warm. He said goodbye again to Mrs. Page, and drove to Hay Street.

When he left the car with Viola, she looked at him knowingly. But he didn't want to get involved in a conversation with her. "Thanks for everything," he said. He was burning up; he wondered if he was catching a summer cold. Between sanity and insanity, the preferable alternative is action. He slapped his hands over his ears. Now, who'd said that? He was hearing voices again. He trotted to Seventh Avenue and took off his clothes.

Dicey's children were all asleep. Poor bastards. Tomorrow he'd tell them about their mother. They'd cry. But they wouldn't care. The older ones probably would accept it as part of the fucked-up life they lived; the younger ones would be more interested in what death was, rather than the fact that Dicey had been its victim.

He was so hot. He stretched out naked on the bed. He was sweating. What the hell is wrong with me? he thought. He closed his eyes for a second, and then it was morning.

He could hear the children already up, scrounging for breakfast, arguing, getting ready to go outside and play. He just lay on the bed. It seemed like he'd only been there five minutes; yet, the whole night had passed.

After a while, there was a knock on the door. "Come in." It was Dicey's oldest son. "Where's Mama?"

Bill wet his lips. "She's dead. She drowned yesterday. They couldn't find her body."

The boy looked at him a long time. He didn't shed a tear. After a while, he shrugged. "I'll tell the others," he said. "You going to stay here? Who's going to take care of us?"

"Somebody will."

The boy nodded, closed the door, and left. When Bill looked out the window ten minutes later, the young ones were playing, the older ones were talking to their friends. Mama's dead. Life went on. That's the way it was on Seventh Avenue.

Shit. In her own way, Dicey had been a damned good woman. Somebody ought to do something about her being dead. Bill thought maybe he'd go talk to Herm. But he was sick of Herm. Maybe he'd go to the hospital and see Bobby. But Dicey had said yesterday that Bobby was bad off, and Bill didn't want to see anybody sick. He felt

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sick enough himself. The fever from last night, or whatever it was, was gone. But he still felt shaky.

And moved, as though by unseen hands. He put on his jeans, his desert boots, his plaid shirt. Then he went to the utility room where the maintenance men for Anthony Homes kept their tools and equipment. He found a pickax and went to the corner of A-l, the building where he lived, and Mrs. Greco with her cockroaches, and Dicey had lived with all her children. The building where Mrs. Nellie Royster was burned to death under a flaming mattress. And where he and Bobby Bryant had tried to make a baby on the rooftop to get a million dollars and then retire to Mexico.

He remembered that he and Bobby Bryant had helped put up these buildings, their pride in the work they were doing, the hope they'd felt that it would mean a new, a good, beginning for people like themselves. But somewhere along the way, the dream had turned into a nightmare. And he, Bill Kelsey, had helped create this monster.

He spit on his hands, rubbed them together, and swung the pickax against the building. The point glanced off; only a small puncture appeared in the red brick. Bill felt as puny as an ant trying to take a significant bite out of the universe.

He swung again. And again, this time so hard that his very balls bounced and hurt, and he went up on his toes like a ballet dancer.

Suddenly, a large chunk of the brick crumbled. Bill felt fine. That piece of brick was very important. It proved that the fucking place wasn't indestructible after all.

He swung again, and the pickax took out another chunk. But he felt a sudden heavy sorrow descend on him at the same time that the rock broke. And he knew that Bobby Bryant—who loved him, who was as much a symbol of Anthony Homes as Mrs. Greco, as himself, as anyone here—he knew that Bobby Bryant, in his bed at Martland Hospital, was dead.

Poor Bobby. You're probably better off. That was what Bill thought.

He looked at his crotch and found with a sense of near shock that his Johnson was hard. And it wanted Maria. Not him; his Johnson. He had the feeling that she was watching him, that she could see and command him from those suburban hills.

Man, his Johnson was right. Even now, it was pulling him back into a familiar and consoling servitude. Or was it the magic of his

262

own soul, corrupted by centuries of shuffling and shucking, working against him?

His Johnson was aimed at suburbia like a divining rod. Maria Behes was calling him. If there was such a thing as juju, the white man's was the strongest, no doubt about that. He was born black, but he'd been in the hands of white witch gods from birth.

Shit. He stumbled toward those elegant hills, their sweet servitude, with the certain hope that, if her plane didn't crash, a black woman somewhere held a sculpture of another black woman and her suckling child; and that one or possibly both of those figures represented and preserved the part of him that was sacred, soft, pussy-pliant and half-free.

263

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