destruction, a stick of dynamite ready to explode.
“Let’s watch for a while, Fearless.”
“How come?”
“Maybe he’s got some accomplices in there. These are desperate men. If we walk in and find ourselves outnumbered, they ain’t gonna let us stroll.”
Fearless didn’t look convinced, but he sat tight. We had a good relationship in the field. He would call me the intelligence officer, while he was the man with the heavy artillery.
We moved down to the end of the block to watch the house from a distance. That street was populated by black people from the South. Almost everyone in that neighborhood was from someplace down in the western South. Texans, Louisianans, some from Arkansas. Southern neighborhoods, even in the North, were friendly in the extreme.
Small children were drawn to us first.
“Mister, why you sittin’ in your car?” a boy no more than three asked Fearless. He was wearing a T-shirt with horizontal rainbow stripes but no pants or underwear.
“Waitin’ for somebody,” Fearless replied.
“He waitin’ for somebody!” the boy yelled at a gang of kids who were standing in the driveway of a nearby house.
The children then wandered down to the patch of grass at the curb next to our car. One girl, probably the boy’s older sister, brought down a small pair of blue pants for the brave scout.
“He don’t like his clothes,” the shy six-year-old told us while tussling with her brother.
They asked us a few more questions and then set up camp there next to the car, playing games and shouting. I was nervous having them there, but Fearless calmed me.
“It’s like camouflage, Paris,” he said. “Nobody gonna be suspicious of kids tearin’ and rippin’ around.”
After the little kids the older ones came by. First it was the twelve-year-old boys on their bicycles and then their older sisters. The girls were young and budding nicely. They were part children and part women, leaning up on Fearless’s side of the car.
“Could you take us to the store?” one fifteen-year-old asked.
“Not my car, honey,” my friend said easily.
“But if your friend wanted to, would you take us?”
I was beginning to get nervous because there was a definite logic to that line of guests. First the babies, then the children, next the boys on bicycles that they dream can fly, after that the young girls who feel the stirrings of womanhood — wary mothers and angry fathers wouldn’t be too far behind.
“That him, Paris?” Fearless asked.
The tree trunk of a man was now wearing yellow pants and a loose-fitting, striped red shirt. He also wore a straw hat, for a disguise I guess. He walked leisurely to my car, dropped into the driver’s seat, and released the emergency brake. By the time he’d rolled down to the curb, the door was shut and the engine turned over. It was a poor way to treat an automobile, but I had no desire to tell him that.
“Follow him?” Fearless asked.
“No. No,” I said. “Let’s go check out the house.”
“I thought you said he might have some friends in there?”
“They don’t know us.”
“What about the girl?” Fearless asked sensibly.
“That girl ain’t nobody’s friend.”
I started the car and rolled away from the curb.
“Where y’all goin’?” the little scout shouted.
TAKING FEARLESS’S QUESTION into account, the first thing we did was knock on the front door. I didn’t think that there was anybody there, but it was always good to be certain.
To my surprise the door swung open.
Elana Love looked better every time I saw her. She was wearing a short brown bathrobe that barely covered the tops of her brown thighs. Her hair was wrapped in a towel. That lovely flat face considered us a moment and then
