“See?” Leon said.“His mind nothing but mush.” He took the old man by the shoulders, turned him around, and gave him a shove toward the street. “Get going now, hear?”

“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,” the man said. He stumbled as he turned down Pettigrew Street.

“That’s all for today, Captain,” Leon said.

As Robert drove away he saw Leon in his rearview mirror, fists on hips, a fierce angel guarding vacant ground.

It was the spring of 1964.The office had hit its Friday afternoon stride, windows open to the late March air, cool flowering smells replacing stale cigarette smoke. Conversation had fallen off, and the room was quiet except for the hum of the fans, the zip of parallel bars, the slap of plastic triangles, the pop of the suction cup on the base of a lead pointer.When Maurice started humming, Robert wasn’t consciously aware of it.

Maurice broke off in mid-note and looked at him. “What are you doing?”

“What?” Robert asked.

“Hey, boss,” Maurice yelled in the general direction of Antree’s office, where he’d been holed up since lunch.“Come out here!”

“Look, I didn’t mean anything,” Robert said. It was the opening riff from Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” that Maurice had been humming, and Robert realized he’d been whistling along. Antree emerged into the drafting room, collar open, pink shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow.“What’s up?”

“Your boy here listens to Coltrane,” Maurice said.

Antree squinted at Robert.“Is that true?”

“Yes,” Robert said, pleased and embarrassed.

“Just Coltrane?”Antree asked.“Or anybody else?”

“Miles,” Robert said.“Jamal. Dizzy, Bird.”

“ ‘Bird,’ ” Maurice said, shaking his head.“ ‘Bird,’ the man calls him.Who said you could call him

‘Bird’?”

“Cool it, Maurice,”Antree said.“Everybody calls him Bird. Robert, step into my office.” Maurice followed without invitation.

Antree’s office was cool and dark, with only a floor lamp in one corner for illumination.Thick drapes hid the window, and wall-to-wall carpet muffled their footsteps.There were framed prints by an artist Robert didn’t recognize, full of distorted figures and odd blue colors.

“So tell me, Bobby,”Antree said.“How long has this been going on?”

Robert shrugged.“My father was into the swing bands, the early cool stuff. I started listening to bop when I was in Germany.American bands were always touring Europe.Art Taylor and Donald Byrd, Bud Powell with Kenny Clark— they were living over there. I saw Miles in Paris in December of ’57 at this tiny little club in St. Germain....”

Antree and Maurice looked at each other.“Definitely,”Antree said.

“You ever hear Charlie Shavers?” Maurice asked.

“I’ve got one of his records,” Robert said. “Like Charlie?”

“Well, tonight,”Antree said,“you’re going to be seeing him in person.”

Robert’s emotions felt like crickets, jumping in the cupped hands of his chest.“I can’t,” he said.“Ruth doesn’t even like music, and—”

Antree slid the pointer on his metal address book to “C” and popped the lid. He ran his finger down the listings, then dialed Robert’s home number.

“Mrs. Cooper? Mitch Antree here. I’m doing splendidly, thank you, how about yourself? Almost feels like spring, doesn’t it? Well, I did have one thing. I asked Robert if he’d be able to work late tonight, and he expressed some concern as to whether that would be all right with you. Uh huh.Well, I’m afraid it might be very late indeed.We’ve got a very significant client in town that we need to have dinner and discussions with, and I expect it will be, oh, round about midnight before Robert gets home.”Antree winked at Maurice, who made a face.“Oh yes, I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important. No, I’ll see to it that he gets a good supper.Why, thank you, Mrs. Cooper.The same to you.”

He hung up and smiled at Robert.“Any other questions?”

“No,” Robert said.“No more questions.”

At 6 they all got into Antree’s Cadillac, with its factory air conditioning, leather seats, and 396-cubic-inch V8. Robert hung back slightly to see how the seating arrangements would fall out, and wasn’t terribly surprised to see Maurice automatically take the front passenger seat. They were in Hayti in five minutes.Antree idled on Pettigrew Street outside the Wonderland Theater while Maurice ran up to the box office to get tickets. Robert tried not to stare. Close as it was to the office, Robert had never been there on a weekend.At home, on Woodrow Street, a few of Robert’s neighbors might sit out on their porches of an evening, cigarettes and citronella candles burning against the mosquitoes, while everyone else hurried inside to their televisions. Here the entire neighborhood seemed to be on the sidewalk.

It was like the stories Robert had heard about street corners in Harlem. Negro businessmen in suits stopped to shake each other’s hands.Women wore skirts slit nearly to the waist, and blouses cut for maximum provocation.There were Negrogis from Camp Butner, tightly creased and standing in clumps, school kids in striped T-shirts and bright jackets, old men with suspenders and canes and snap-brim fedoras.

Maurice got in the car and Antree edged into the traffic, crawling east to Fayetteville Street, where he found an open spot at the curb and parked.

“I suppose we’re going to Elvira’s,” Maurice said.

“That jake with you?”Antree said.

“I expect I can take it if Robert can. How’s your tolerance for grease, Robert?”

“Compared to what I get at home,” Robert said,“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

They locked the car, and Robert found himself swimming upstream through a river of black humanity. Along with the crowd came the sound, a chorus that rose and fell in slow waves, peaking when three or four voices surfaced momentarily into audible words, then fading again below the rattle of broken mufflers, the drumming of high heels on concrete, the chirp and whistle of distant radios, the claps and hoots and laughter and surprise.

It was impossible not to brush up against strange Negro bodies. Robert quickly got over his first shock and found nothing to be afraid of. No one seemed to pay him particular attention. I’m handling this well, he thought.

A couple of the storefronts along Fayetteville Street were boarded up, but when they turned the corner onto Pettigrew, business seemed good.They could hear the presses working inside Service Printing on the corner, and the Carolina Times next door was bustling. Next to Pee Wee’s Shoe Shop was a big plate glass window that read elvira’s club dine-et. It was part of a contiguous block of storefronts whose second floor sat back a good ten feet from the first. Peeling white paint covered the bricks as high as the tops of the doors and windows, with plain red brick above.

“So what gives, here?” Robert said.“This place doesn’t look like a slum to me.”

“Keep your voice down, won’t you?” Maurice said.“Some folks around here are not that crazy about the word ‘slum’ these days.”

Robert felt his face heat up.“Sorry.You know what I mean.This isn’t what I expected.”

“Not enough winos in the doorways for you?” Maurice asked.“They’ll be out later, never fear.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“It was different here, even five years ago,” Maurice said.“Better. It was only when all this renewal talk started up that everybody gave up trying.Why put glass in that broken window when the appraisers are going to pay you the same for cardboard?”

Through the screen doors of the restaurant wafted smells of burning fat, yeast, cornbread, collards, and spilled beer.

“We can talk inside,” Antree said, rubbing his hands. “I need me some soul food.”

With one foot in the doorway, Robert had a sudden memory of the stories his father had read to him as a child. It was possible to come and go from Fairyland as long as you followed a few simple rules: Don’t pick up any stray objects, don’t make any wagers with magical beings, that sort of thing.Above all, never eat the food. Once you’d eaten their food, they had you forever.

For all its shabbiness, Hayti seemed a magical place.As he crossed Elvira’s threshold he thought,What would it be like to belong here?

In the end the food was neither unpalatable nor particularly exotic.They all had fresh chicken fried in grease that was not so fresh, collard greens with bits of dried ham, white corn, and sweet potato pie.Afterwards Maurice accepted a Lucky, and he and Robert smoked while Antree drank a third beer. Robert’s feelings were complex. He’d been married for two years now, and a full-time employee for just as long. He had found moments of contentment standing in the morning mist and looking at his house, his lawn, his quiet street.There was still pleasure, on rare occasions, in bed with Ruth.Work alternately absorbed and bored him, and the excitement of rebuilding Hayti and creating rtp seemed to recede constantly into the future.

He and Ruth had little social life, and she had lost interest in dancing after the wedding date was set. Once or twice a month she would go to her parents’ house for the weekend. Sometimes Robert would go along, spending long hours with her father and trying to stay awake through endless sports broadcasts, sometimes on television, often droning on endlessly from the radio. Wilmer Bynum’s encyclopedic knowledge of players, statistics, and history was largely wasted on Robert. Lately he would drop her off at the farm and spend the weekend at work or alone in the house with his records. He hadn’t been to see live music since college.The idea of it stirred something in him, memories and longings, a sense of formless possibility, a tang of the forbidden.The libertine atmosphere of Hayti magnified the risks—not only the physical danger that lurked there, but the loss of control that beckoned from darkened doorways. It was, Robert thought, something like Havana before the revolution, a place where you checked your inhibitions at the door.

“Shall we?” Maurice asked, pushing back his chair.

“Yeah, man,”Antree said. Robert felt like a teenager, dizzy with anticipation. The Wonderland Theater was two blocks east, between Elvira’s and the Biltmore Hotel. It was a three-story red brick cube, with a wide arch across the front that rose as high as the second story windows on either side.The words wonderland theater were cut into the stone of the arch, and the box office nestled neatly inside the recess.The place still served as a movie theater, and glass frames held posters for The Great Escape and Fun in Acapulco.

A crowd had already formed, with an hour yet until showtime. Robert couldn’t remember ever being among so many black people in such close proximity.The truth, he saw, was that he was at one end of a spectrum of skin colors, many of them no darker than his own.The crowd was mostly male, mostly in coats and ties, though there were some turtlenecks and open sport shirts.The main thing that struck him was the obvious care and effort that virtually every one of them had spent on his appearance: hats, slickly processed hair, brightly shined shoes, rings, cufflinks, tie tacks. Then there were the women. Some wore furs and broad-brimmed hats, others simple linen dresses and dime store gloves.They had an ease with their own bodies, no matter what size or shape, that Robert found both alien and appealing.And some of them were simply stunning. He was unable to stop looking at one woman whose long, white silk dress clung to her hourglass figure as if static electricity was all that held it on. She had curly black hair past her shoulders, creamy tan skin, olive-colored eyes, delicate features, and a half smile that made her seem oblivious to everyone around her, as if she were turned inward to focus on the soft hum of the biological machinery that moved her so gracefully through the crowd.

They began to file into the lobby.The slightly threadbare, multicolored carpet there held the smell of popcorn, though at the moment the concession stand was serving liquor.

“You want something?”Antree asked. Robert shook his head, thinking he should keep his wits about him.Antree waded away through the crowd. Maurice didn’t seem inclined to conversation. He was nodding slightly as people caught his eye, smiling occasionally. Robert put his hands in his pockets and tried in vain to look inconspicuous.

Antree came up behind him with two glass tumblers.“The only scotch they had was J&B, that all right?”

“You’re buying, I’m not complaining,” Maurice said.

“Look who I ran into at the bar,”Antree said, and Robert turned around to find himself face to face with the woman in the white dress.

“Hi,” he said, thinking fast.“I’m Robert.”

She raised one eyebrow and let him take her hand, which she offered with fingers down and wrist bent.“Charmed, I’m sure,” she said. She was not as tall as he’d thought at first. Her perfume was delicate, sweet, intoxicating.

“Barrett, how’re you doing?” Maurice asked, reaching past Robert to shake the hand of someone standing next to the woman in white.

“Maurice.What you know good?” the man said.

Antree said,“Barrett Howard, this is Robert Cooper, my new engineer.”

Robert forced himself to look away from the woman long enough to shake Howard’s hand.The man’s grip made a statement, Robert discovered.The statement was,“I can take you.” He was six feet tall and looked like he lifted weights. His hair was unprocessed and grown out unevenly half an inch or more. His broad, dark face looked too young for the number of lines crisscrossing it. He wore a blue dress shirt, open at the throat, with a thin black tie hanging loose and a navy blue blazer on top. His pants were dark khaki, worn over suede cowboy boots with pointed toes.“Hey there,” he said. Robert had seen Howard’s face on the evening news.“He looks like a gorilla,” Ruth had said, and Robert had let the racist implications pass at the time. Newspaper and tv commentators portrayed him as a kind of monster, violent and threatening in an almost sexual way, not just an integrationist but a communist and a revolutionary. Randy Fogg, on wral radio, regularly referred to him as “Fidel” Howard,“The Red Negro,”“The Black Stalin,” and a dozen other epithets.Yet here he was, shaking Robert’s hand.

“Nice to meet you,” Robert said, then hated himself for the banality. Before he could redeem himself,Antree had his arm around Howard’s shoulder.

“You going to talk tonight?”Antree asked.

“Nah, man, I’m here to listen to the music, like everybody else. Listen, I got to go.”

“I can dig it,”Antree said.“You be cool, now.”

Howard nodded distractedly, scooped the woman up by her narrow waist, and pushed into the crowd.

“Who is she?” Robert asked.

Maurice looked at Antree.“Now see what you’ve done?”

“Don’t even think about her,”Antree said.“Don’t even look.”

“What’s her name?” Robert asked.

“Trouble,”Antree said.“Capital T.”

“I know who Barrett Howard is,” Robert said.

“I’m not talking about Barrett Howard,”Antree said.“Forget that crap you see on tv. Howard’s a pussycat. She’s the one you have to watch out for.”

Robert looked at him blankly.

“You know what a mambo is?”Antree asked.

“Sure. Perez Prado,‘Cherry Pink and Apple—’ ”

“No, man, I ain’t talking about some Cuban jive.Tell him, Maurice.” Maurice cleared his throat.“The rumor has it that she’s a voodoo practitioner. A mambo. Did you see her earrings?”

Antree said,“I think he might have noticed a necklace, if it hung low enough.”

“What earrings?” Robert said.

“Those little heart-shaped things?” Maurice said.“That’s hoodoo stuff. Same as on top of St. Joseph’s church.” He watched Robert’s face.“You’ve never looked at what’s on top of St. Joseph’s church, have you?”

“You mean the cross?”

“Look again, daddy-o,”Antree said.“That ain’t no cross.”

It felt to Robert like the first few weeks of junior high, when the older boys had mocked him for his ignorance of sex. He hadn’t wanted to know what they were taking about, didn’t care about the mystery. He wanted them to leave him alone.“Tell me her name,” Robert said.

“Mercy,” Maurice said.“Her name is Mercy.And if you have any sense at all, you’ll leave it at that.”

At 8:15 the double doors opened, and the crowd made its way down the aisles.The seats had curved wooden backs and red velvet cushions, many of them loose. Rself face to face with the woman in the white dress.

“Hi,” he said, thinking fast.“I’m Robert.”

She raised one eyebrow and let him take her hand, which she offered with fingers down and wrist bent.“Charmed, I’m sure,” she said. She was not as tall as he’d thought at first. Her perfume was delicate, sweet, intoxicating.

“Barrett, how’re you doing?” Maurice asked, reaching past Robert to shake the hand of someone standing next to the woman in white.

“Maurice.What you know good?” the man said.

Antree said,“Barrett Howard, this is Robert Cooper, my new engineer.”

Robert forced himself to look away from the woman long enough to shake Howard’s hand.The man’s grip made a statement, Robert discovered.The statement was,“I can take you.” He was six feet tall and looked like he lifted weights. His hair was unprocessed and grown out unevenly half an inch or more. His broad, dark face looked too young for the number of lines crisscrossing it. He wore a blue dress shirt, open at the throat, with a thin black tie hanging loose and a navy blue blazer on top. His pants were dark khaki, worn over suede cowboy boots with pointed toes.“Hey there,” he said. Robert had seen Howard’s face on the evening news.“He looks like a gorilla,” Ruth had said, and Robert had let the racist implications pass at the time. Newspaper and tv commentators portrayed him as a kind of monster, violent and threatening in an almost sexual way, not just an integrationist but a communist and a revolutionary. Randy Fogg, on wral radio, regularly referred to him as “Fidel” Howard,“The Red Negro,”“The Black Stalin,” and a dozen other epithets.Yet here he was, shaking Robert’s hand.

“Nice to meet you,” Robert said, then hated himself for the banality. Before he could redeem himself,Antree had his arm around Howard’s shoulder.

“You going to talk tonight?”Antree asked.

“Nah, man, I’m here to listen to the music, like everybody else. Listen, I got to go.”

“I can dig it,”Antree said.“You be cool, now.”

Howard nodded distractedly, scooped the woman up by her narrow waist, and pushed into the crowd.

“Who is she?” Robert asked.

Maurice looked at Antree.“Now see what you’ve done?”

“Don’t even think about her,”Antree said.“Don’t even look.”

“What’s her name?” Robert asked.

“Trouble,”Antree said.“Capital T.”

“I know who Barrett Howard is,” Robert said.

“I’m not talking about Barrett Howard,”Antree said.“Forget that crap you see on tv. Howard’s a pussycat. She’s the one you have to watch out for.”

Robert looked at him blankly.

“You know what a mambo is?”Antree asked.

“Sure. Perez Prado,‘Cherry Pink and Apple—’ ”

“No, man, I ain’t talking about some Cuban jive.Tell him, Maurice.” Maurice cleared his throat.“The rumor has it that she’s a voodoo practitioner. A mambo. Did you see her earrings?”

Antree said,“I think he might have noticed a necklace, if it hung low enough.”

“What earrings?” Robert said.

“Those little heart-shaped things?” Maurice said.“That’s hoodoo stuff. Same as on top of St. Joseph’s church.” He watched Robert’s face.“You’ve never looked at what’s on top of St. Joseph’s church, have you?”

“You mean the cross?”

“Look again, daddy-o,”Antree said.“That ain’t no cross.”

It felt to Robert like the first few weeks of junior high, when the older boys had mocked him for his ignorance of sex. He hadn’t wanted to know what they were taking about, didn’t care about the mystery. He wanted them to leave him alone.“Tell me her name,” Robert said.

“Mercy,” Maurice said.“Her name is Mercy.And if you have any sense at all, you’ll leave it at that.”

At 8:15 the double doors opened, and the crowd made its way down the aisles.The seats had curved wooden backs and red velvet cushions, many of them loose. Robert could not have cared less. In the muted glow of the footlights he saw a black grand piano, a small trap set, a few microphone stands adjusted to varying heights. It was like the first sight of the ocean in summer. They found seats in the tenth row.Though the show was not scheduled to start until nine, the room was filling quickly. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, as if Robert had crashed a private party of a thousand or so. Men stretched across rows to shake hands, women leaned over the railing of the balcony and shouted through cupped hands. Even Antree was getting into the act, calling out to people in the aisles, while Maurice slid ever lower in his seat, staring at his own knees. After a few minutes Robert began to feel invisible, began to accept that no one was about to evict him or demand an explanation, and he was able to sit and smoke and observe. He watched Barrett Howard and the woman, Mercy, sail through the crowd like royalty, never lingering with any one group, finally landing on the front row. Everything was foreign, exotic, from the slang that, at its fastest, Robert found incomprehensible, to outsize gestures that were more like dance than anything in Robert’s white world of economical movement.

And then, at last, the lights came down and from the darkened stage a man’s voice said,“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Wonderland,” drawing out the ends of the words,“where later tonight Durham’s own native son is gonna cool this joint, and you know I got to be talking about Mr. Charlie Shavers and his horn of plenty. But first, from North Carolina College, let’s y’all give a warm Wonderland welcome to the Manny ... Jackson ... Quartet!”

In the darkness another voice counted to two and then, twice as fast, to four, and the ride cymbal and standup bass took off in a breakneck shuffle. A single, dissonant piano chord broke over the rhythm section like an egg into a hot skillet, and then the lights came up and the tenor sax rode in fast and loose. Jackson’s quartet played for close to an hour. During intermission Antree went for more drinks, and Robert sat in a state of quiet euphoria.Then the Shavers quintet took the stage. Shavers himself was short and thickset, with hair cut so close and jowls so big his head was pear-shaped. He had a pencil-thin mustache and charcoal gray suit and seemed to vibrate like a kettle on full boil, an impression borne out when he would lean back and point his trumpet straight up into the air and unleash a high-pitched squeal of pure joy.

What Robert was beginning to understand was that everything he had painstakingly figured out as he listened to his favorite records, the concepts of harmony and modality and counterpoint, all those ideas were not only true and correct, but in the live, red heat of the moment they were so obvious as to be inconsequential, no more important than Shavers’ clowning on stage. All that counted were the pure emotions that the musicians were transmitting from their guts into Robert’s. When the last encore was over, standing in a knot of people outside the Wonderland, Robert knew that he had been transformed, the way heat and pressure turned dull gray shale into glittering mica schist. Secrets he could never put into words had been revealed to him. Some in the audience had heard them and many had not.

Antree, for one, had been largely unaffected. He stood talking to Barrett Howard, and Robert saw that Howard, too, had not been particularly moved. Maurice had. He and Robert looked at each other with the eyes of initiates and nodded and smiled.And Mercy, the woman in white, seemed to float as she walked up to them. Her face perfectly mirrored Robert’s own emotions, and she acknowledged it with a radiant smile.As if in a dream, Robert felt her slip into his arms and rest her head against his chest for a heartbeat, then two. He didn’t react other than to bring his right hand up and rest it below her shoulder blade, as if they were slow dancing. She was fully present in his arms. He could feel the pressure of her breasts and the heat of her breath through his shirt, smell the aromatic oils in her hair.Then she slipped away again and turned in a slow, elliptical orbit around Howard, lost to everything except the inner worlds the music had opened in her.

“Did that just happen?” Robert asked.

“No,” Maurice said.“It most definitely did not happen.”

They drifted leisurely down the street, still part of the concert crowd,Antree basking in Howard’s attention, Robert tinglingly aware of Mercy as she took her own erratic course around and through them.

The crowd slowly melted away until the three of them were alone on the street next to Antree’s Cadillac.

“Well, Maurice?”Antree said.“How’s our boy?”

“He’s fine, Mitch. Let’s go home.”

Ruth was asleep when Robert got into bed, her back to him.An arousal came over him that was as dreamlike as the rest of the night, but far more urgent. Lying behind her on his side, he began to touch her gently through her nightgown. She responded to him without waking, and he slipped out of his pajama bottoms. She didn’t come fully awake until he had entered her from behind, and then her first reaction was to press harder against him.A second later she said,“Robert? My goodness, Robert, what are you...?”

By then nothing could have stopped him.

Afterwards, as he collapsed onto his pillow, she rolled over and kissed him on the forehead.“My goodness, darling, I would have thought working late would have tired you out.You’re like a man possessed.”

The possession had left him. Sleep bore down on him like a train, and he couldn’t manage to speak before it took him.

Robert took Maurice to lunch the day after the concert.They ate at Woolworth’s downtown, and though Maurice got some hostile looks, the counterman was willing to serve him.

“So I’m thinking maybe I underestimated you,” Maurice said.“Maybe.”

“I’m not trying to prove anything,” Robert said.“I’m not trying to impress anybody. I just love the music.”

“I can see that.” Maurice reluctantly unwrapped his hamburger and lifted the bun.A thick layer of chopped onions lay over the meat.“You heard me say ‘hold the onions,’ right?”

Robert nodded.“Mitch said something last night about Howard speaking. Does he give lectures or something?”

Maurice scraped the onions onto his plate and reached for the bottle of catsup on the counter.“He probably spit on it, too, when we weren’t looking. Lecture isn’t exactly the word. Rabble-rousing is more like it.”

“If he was doing this somewhere, how would somebody find out about it?”

Maurice reassembled the burger, took a bite, chewed and swallowed. He ate a few rippled potato chips that lay next to the onion pile and took a drink of his Coke.“You don’t have any more interest in hearing Barrett Howard speak than you have in living in Ethiopia.”

“Sure I do.”

“You’re hoping Mercy will be there, so you can wake up crawling out of some graveyard, mandrake roots all over you, and go work in some swamp until the gators drag your numb, brainless body away.”

“So does he do it in Durham much?”

“You want to know why Barrett got kicked out of the naacp? He used to be the president of the Durham branch.Then he wrote a letter to Martin Luther King saying that he was in favor of pacifism as much as the next man, but if an armed white man came into his house without an invitation, he was prepared to, quote, meet violence with violence, end quote.”

“I don’t even own a gun.”

“People make mistakes. For instance, I think you’re about to make one. If you haven’t got sense enough to be afraid of the woman, maybe you could manage to be afraid of the man.”

“Mitch said he was a pussycat.”

“Mitch sees things the way he wants them to be. I think Barrett puts up with Mitch for the same reason I do. He’s what they call a holy fool. He thinks everybody in the world is like he is, and it makes him fearless. He thinks it’s okay to try to be a big shot because he doesn’t think anybody will get hurt by it, that it’s all some kind of game.”

“Isn’t that what we’re all doing? Trying to be successful? That’s what this country is all about.”

“I don’t think most black people would see it that way. No offense. From where I stand, somebody always gets hurt. Look at those people in Hayti whose houses we’re knocking down.Where are they going to go? A lot of them didn’t get paid anything like what their property was worth. Most of those houses were better than anything they’d ever had in their lives, and there’s no place left for them to move.”

“That’s temporary.You’ve seen the plans.There’s that development with close to 2000 rooms.We can’t build it until we clear the ground for it.”

“Yeah.” He looked down at the pile of onions on his plate.“That’s what I keep telling myself.”

April arrived, and Robert found that it added only five minutes to his drive home to detour down Pettigrew Street, through the heart of Hayti. Maybe ten.After the first time, he asked himself what he thought he was doing.Within two weeks it was part of his daily routine. The dreams had been coming more often, three or four times a week.They lacked action and concrete images, consisting mainly of odors and textures and sensations that evoked female sexuality. Lurking in the background was an unseen presence, distinctly feminine without being identifiable as anyone he knew, not Mercy or anyone else. He could not say for certain that it was even human, only that its nearness brought him comfort and calm.Waking brought a drab, hollow feeling that lasted into the morning. One afternoon he saw Barrett Howard outside the Donut Shop, two doors down from the Biltmore Hotel. He was arguing with another Negro on the street, a younger man in glasses and a dark brown suit. Howard looked violently angry, and Robert drove past without slowing down. Mercy was nowhere in sight.

The next day, after work, he parked on Fayetteville Street, walked back to Pettigrew, and went in the office of The Carolina Times.

The paper came out once a week, on Saturday morning, and for the last three weeks he had driven to a corner grocery in the nearby Walltown neighborhood to pick up a copy. He told Ruth that Antree had asked him to do

it, to gauge the reaction of the neighborhood to their work. In fact there was nothing in there about the renewal, nor was there any mention of Barrett Howard speaking anywhere. Most of the stories were about the difficult progress of the Civil Rights Act through Congress and the ongoing demonstrations

in Mississippi and Alabama.The rest was local church news, or glowing reports of achievements by Negroes around the country.

A young colored woman sat at the desk in the front office.“Yes, sir, may I help you?”

His hands began to sweat and he had trouble finding his voice.“I was wondering if you knew a way to get hold of Barrett Howard. I understand he writes for the paper sometimes.”

“He hasn’t written for us in some time. He and Mr.Austin have some differences of opinion. May I ask what this is about?”

“No, I just ... I had some personal business that I wanted to see him about.” “Are you with the police?”

“Me? No, no, nothing like that.”

A man stuck his head through the door that led to the back of the building. He looked to be about 60, with short, thinning hair, glasses, and piercing eyes. His nose looked like it had been broken and badly set. He wore a tie and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.“Is there a problem, Ellen?” “No, sir.This gentleman is looking for Mr. Howard.”

“You won’t find him here, sir.”The man gave Robert a look that drained the last of his resolve.

“Uh, okay.Thank you.Thank you both.” He retreated to the sidewalk and made his way as purposefully as he could toward his car.

Then, without warning, he heard Antree’s voice.“Bobby? What are you doing here?”

Robert turned to see Antree standing next to his Cadillac.“Mitch. I ... I was...”

“Bobby, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He couldn’t think of a lie, couldn’t avoid the question.

“I’m looking for Barrett Howard,” he said.With the admission came a sense of release. He hadn’t truly relaxed, he realized, in weeks.

“You looking for Barrett, or for his chick?”

Robert shrugged.

“Man, you are way out of your depth.” He looked Robert up and down.

“I must be crazy to even bring this up. He’s meeting some people at Mercy’s house tonight. I can bring you with me, but you have to not fuck up.You understand what I’m saying?”

“I’ll be good.What’s the meeting?”

“Howard’s talking about trying to start a union. He hasn’t got a hope in hell, and I have to pretend to take him seriously. So don’t say anything.” “All right.Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. I mean really, do not mention it.” He looked at his watch.“Elvira’s? My treat.”

The residential streets of Hayti after dark were not designed to make Robert feel at home. Beamon Street described a short arc east of Roxboro Street and south of the tracks.The houses there,Antree told him, had been built for tobacco workers in the downtown factories around the turn of the century.They were wood frame with a triple-A roofline, which was to say the transverse gable over the front door matched the gables on the sides. Most of the roofs sagged. Cars, tires, wooden crates, and tough scrub brush filled the yards.There were no streetlights.

Mercy’s house had lights blazing, and Robert heard voices from inside as they pulled up.“You still up for this?”Antree asked.

Robert nodded and got self-consciously out of the Cadillac, careful to lock the door. Unlike some of the other, identical houses on the block,109 had an actual sidewalk leading up to the front porch. Robert waited there for Antree, then followed him up the steps, through the screen door, and into the crowded living room.

The room was 20 feet long and 12 feet wide, sparsely furnished.The walls were a light pinkish-purple and appeared recently painted.There was a fireplace on the interior wall, where Howard stood with one arm resting on the mantel.

Another dozen or so men, all black, fidgeted in twos and threes. Robert didn’t see Mercy. His emotions, running at high-school levels, began to sour.

He suddenly recognized Leon and Tommy Coleman,Tommy with his arms folded and his back and left boot to the wall. Robert joined them, offering his pack of Luckies around.

“Booker’s not here?” Robert asked.

“No, sir,” Leon said, waving the cigarettes away.Tommy took two, parking one behind his ear for later.“Booker be living large tonight,” Leon said. “Friday night, payday night. Booker’s eagle be flying tonight.” Robert realized that Leon was nervous too.

Howard’s voice was suddenly louder than anything else.“All right, let’s start this thing.” Conversations broke off and people shifted to face him.

“This is my show, so I guess I got to take the reins,” he said.“I wanted y’all to come here tonight so we could talk about what’s going on. I mean what’s happening to our neighborhood, and what we can do about it. I wanted to talk to y’all, because y’all are the ones doing the real work that is going to make this new road happen. So I want to talk a little about roads and cars what all that means to you and me.

“The East-West Expressway started with Henry Ford.Y’all know that, right?”

A few people went along with him and shook their heads or said,“What you talking about?”

“Henry Ford,” Howard said,“had the idea of ‘a motor car for the great multitude.’ He thought everybody should have one, because then everybody would be free.Well, and he would make a few dollars along the way.

“Thing is, there’s all different kinds of freedom. Cars used to be about freedom, about being able to drive anywhere you wanted to go. Now cars is another kind of slavery.

“You don’t have a car here in the South, you can’t work.You can’t get to the store to buy groceries.You’re sick, you got to get your own self to the doctor somehow, because he don’t make house calls no more.

“What are we building here but another superhighway, going to hook up with the Interstate system? I can tell you how that’s going to turn out. Going to turn out the same as when they put the railroad through, or the first paved highways, or the first turnpikes up in New York.Where the highway is, businesses are going to grow—unless they already knocked them all down, like they doing in Hayti now—and everywhere else, the businesses going to die. So the cities get more and more spread out along the highways, and then you need more cars, more cars need more highways, and on and on.”

Robert looked for Antree to see how he was taking it.Antree was by the front door, shoulder to shoulder with a man in a suit who looked like a preacher, and he was smiling.

“Henry Ford believed in the individual,” Howard said.“But there’s different kinds of individuals, too.When Ford cut his prices too much, his investors took him to court and won, because according to the law of this land, the purpose of a business is to make money for its stockholders.

“Because that is the individual that this is really all about, and in the end old Henry Ford, he saw it that way too.When the Depression hit, he cut wages below what everybody else was paying.And he fought longer and harder than anybody to keep unions out of his business.

“Thing is, it’s the same idea at the heart of all this, whether we talking about freedom of the roads or freedom of the rich to make more money.When you say every man for himself, you can bet it’s going to be the ruthless and the greedy come out on top every time. Every time.”

As Howard got his cadence going, some of the men were nodding along. The preacher was one of them, like a drummer tapping his foot to another drummer’s beat.

“I’m talking about your Rockefellers, your Carnegies, your Vanderbilts,” Howard said, and Robert felt a twinge of guilt, as if, for the sake of his father and grandfather, he should stand up to Howard and argue with him.

“These are the people America looks up to as heroes,” Howard said.“These are the men that created the oil companies and the steel mills and railroads that made America what it is today.They all got rich from it, too, not just a little rich, I’m talking about fifty-car rich, houses with rooms you’ve never been in rich.And all that money came from the labor of other people. Other people that they kept on the edge of starvation or shot down in the streets when they got uppity, shot them down with their own private police forces, like the Ford Service, which at one time was the largest private army in the world.

“These men never stood together without selling each other out.They were individuals, by God, and they had no friends and nobody they trusted, and nobody they could even talk to.And they were miserable, by all accounts, every one of them, and scared sick of losing their money. But they wrote the story of this country, and that is the story of the individual above all else.

“And that is why we are here tonight. On the one hand is the lie that America is built on, the lie that all men are equal, the individual is sacred, don’t tread on me. Behind that lie is the rich man, the powerful man, the greedy man.

“On the other hand is the truth that when the poor, the black, the disenfranchised stand together, there is no force on earth can stop us.We outnumber the rich and always will.This is still a democracy, more or less, and we have the ability to vote with our brains and not some kind of mixed up idealism that makes us go against our own interest.And we can organize, so that when the rich and privileged don’t keep their promises, we have a way to make them listen.”

It was a tough crowd, Robert saw, and when Howard said the word “organize” they began to slip away. Unions smacked of the North, of communism and disloyalty and troublemaking. Howard saw it too and regrouped.“Because we are looking at a world of broken promises. Integration is a broken promise, broken since 1954. Look at Mississippi and Alabama and tell me the promise of voting rights is not broken. And we got serious broken promises here in Hayti.

“They told us we were going to have new buildings for our businesses, new homes for our families, and all they do is tear things down.This federal urban renewal program that’s paying for all this, it happened right after we won Brown v. Board of Education, and you can’t tell me that was a accident

“For every step forward there has been a step back.After slavery there was sharecropping and Jim Crow. Now that we’ve got Jim Crow on the run, there is something else happening, something even worse, some kind of all out economic warfare, war against the black and the poor, and if we don’t want that to turn into actual war in the streets, we have to do something.”

There it was, the threat behind the rhetoric. Robert realized he had been waiting for it, hardly breathing. Now that it was out there in the room he felt sad more than anything else.The mood around him was uneasy. People shifted their weight, talked in nervous whispers.

“We have to get together and stand together,” Howard said, and Robert heard the first hint of desperation in his voice.“We have to stand together and say,‘If you want this road, give us our houses and our businesses. Do that first, then we build you your road.’ ”

“We say that,” asked a voice Robert didn’t recognize,“who puts the food on our tables?”

“If we start a union, and if the union has a action, we don’t have to be fighting alone.That’s the whole point.The iww been fighting actions like this for fifty years. I ain’t saying it’s going to be easy. I ain’t saying I got all the answers. What I am saying is, we have to start talking about it.We have to start now, because otherwise it’s going to be too late.There won’t be anything left of Hayti, no place for any of you to spend the money you make on this job, no place for the black man in America except prison or living on the street.”

Robert, strangely, found himself rooting for Howard. Don’t leave it there, he thought. Give us some hope, some good news, something to believe in.

Instead Howard seemed to have run out of gas.“That’s all I got to say, really. If y’all got questions, ask them.Talk to each other, talk to me.This is about all of us, and whatever you got to say, I want to hear. In the meantime, I think Mercy has got some coffee and cookies and things like that.”

Robert’s head jerked around at the sound of her name, and there she was, coming out of the swinging door that led to the kitchen, carrying a tray and a coffee pot. She wore a white cotton dress, the top tight and low cut, the short loose skirt buoyed up by petticoats, revealing long, bare legs. It took Robert a while to realize he’d stopped breathing.

She put the tray on the table with poor grace and set the pot next to it. When she went back in the kitchen her gaze swept over Robert without seeming to register him.A moment later she was out again with another tray, this one stacked with mismatched coffee mugs. She set those down too and then walked straight up to him.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Robert.” He was amazed the word came out so clearly.

“Robert. Do you dance?”

“Yes.” He had to clear his throat and try again.“Yes, I dance. I’m a little rusty.”

“That’s all right. Long as you don’t have to sit out, you won’t be too bored. Wait here.”

She made her way through the crowd with a languorous walk that rolled her hips and took her shoulders up and down.The rest of the men in the room didn’t seem to pay her that much attention, maybe out of respect to Howard.To Robert she had the power of a slow hurricane.

She blew up to Howard where he stood talking to Mitch Antree and the preacher. Robert couldn’t hear any of the words, only saw Howard excuse himself and turn to her.With growing horror, he saw Mercy point to him and saw Howard stare at him with narrowed eyes. Robert held up both hands, miming his incomprehension. Howard shook his head in what looked like disgust and turned to Antree. Robert watched Mercy walk past him, and he thought, with a hint of disappointment, that the crisis was over.Then she was back, clutching a white patent pocketbook and saying,“Let’s go.”

“What?”

“I said,‘let’s go.’ ”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“There’s a swing band at the Biltmore Hotel.You are my chaperone.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Like the lawyer said, don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.Are you coming or not?”

“I thought you were Barrett’s woman.”

“You, and Barrett, and everybody else needs to understand that I am nobody’s woman other than my own. I’m not taking you out to fuck me, I’m taking you out to dance with me.” Robert felt his face catch fire.“As long as Barrett don’t want to dance with me, who I dance with is my own damn business.And as long as I’m going, he’s better off having somebody with me that’ll watch out for me. Now, for the last time, as the singer said, is you is or is you ain’t coming along?”

The Colemans had edged away from him, as if sensing danger. Robert himself did not need a slide rule to do the calculations.There was nothing he wanted more than to go dancing with this woman. Not his job, not his marriage, not his physical safety.

“As the lady said,” he shrugged,“ ‘let’s go.’ ”

He followed her out onto the porch.“I don’t have my car,” he said.“I came with Mitch.”

“We’re taking my car.” She produced a set of car keys in a leather folder and tossed them to him.“You’re driving.”

She had a brown late model Impala sedan, four doors, white vinyl seats, a family car.“I was expecting a red mg,” he said, opening the passenger door for her.

“I use this car for work.Which is why you’re driving. I’m tired of it.” As he got in on the driver’s side the irrationality of what he was doing hit him like a freezing wind.Antree had specifically told him not to screw up, and

here he was. Once the car was rolling, though, the feeling passed. In its place came a sense of unreality, like lying between waking and sleep on a Saturday morning, when fantasies blended seamlessly into dreams and began to play themselves out. He glanced at Mercy, who had coiled into the juncture of seat and door and was sizing him up.

“Where’d you learn to dance?” she asked.

“It started with my mother. My father stopped dancing after they got married, so she taught me when I was little. She’d play big band records, and we’d dance on the linoleum in the kitchen.What about you?”

“Men taught me.”

Best not ask, he thought, how many. “So where do you work?”

“Mechanics and Farmers. I’m the head teller.” Next to NC Mutual, Mechanics and Farmers was the most successful black business in Durham. Its offices had always been downtown on Parrish Street, the so-called Black Wall Street, though they had a branch in Hayti.

“That’s impressive.”

“Once I finish my master’s at ncc, they’re going to move me into accounting.” North Carolina College, formerly North Carolina College for Negroes, was on Fayetteville Road on the southern end of Hayti.“Then I’m going to get me a nice house in South Durham, maybe on Hope Valley Road, get me a white boy to mow my grass.”

“You don’t want a family?”

“What do I want a family for? So I can end up like all my friends from high school? Fat, broke, and miserable, with a bunch of screaming kids? I don’t think so. Park anywhere along here.”

There were no spaces on Pettigrew, and Robert had to circle the block and park on Dillard. He walked around to open Mercy’s door. She swept out of the car like royalty and left Robert to lock up and follow along behind.

He could still, at this point, deny any serious wrongdoing.They weren’t having an affair. Howard knew where they were, and Robert had called Ruth from Elvira’s, so she knew too, more or less.When Robert looked into his own heart, though, he saw desire and betrayal beyond forgiveness. The Biltmore Hotel was three stories of dark red brick and a striped awning over the main entrance.The music spilled out onto the street, where it had drawn a small crowd, some of them dancing on the sidewalk, some clapping time. Mercy reached for his hand and drew him through the lobby, then shifted impatiently while he paid admission to a man at a card table outside the ballroom. The room itself was small compared to the Durham Armory and some of the other local halls.The floor was polished hardwood, and the band had an elevated stage at the far end.There were eight of them, including four horns and a girl singer, all Negroes.They were playing Basie’s “One O’Clock Jump,” and Mercy dragged Robert straight onto the floor, already crowded with 40 or more couples, saying,“All right, Robert, let’s see what you got.”

Instead of the wild energy he’d expected from her, Mercy danced with smooth economy, swiveling on the swingouts and throwing embellishments into her other footwork, yet always showing up where she needed to be, right on time. She followed well, and Robert struggled to come up with new moves to keep her amused.

Meanwhile, on all sides, he glimpsed dancing like he’d never seen outside of the movies.Women were tossed in the air, flipped into handstands, thrown over partners’ backs and hauled up between their legs.And that was just the flashy stuff. Even the older dancers were hitting the breaks in the music, styling with their hands and arms, throwing out kicks and slides, stomping and clapping, cutting up and cracking up.

Robert managed to finish with a quick dip.As he brought her back to her feet, Mercy smiled and said,“Who’s rusty?” Robert thought it was perhaps the best thing anyone had ever said to him. The band went immediately into “Woodchopper’s Ball” and Mercy made no sign to leave, so Robert picked her up and swung her out again. He kept an eye on the other leaders, and some of their milder stuff reminded him of moves he knew. He sharpened his timing, putting more leverage into his swingouts, more precision on his tuck turns, letting his right hand hover at shoulder level when he wasn’t using it. He felt the dance get better, the balance of pressure and resistance seeming to come straight out of the music.

By the end he was sweating, exhilarated, and exaggeratedly aware of Mercy’s body. On stage, the orchestra stopped to adjust its sheet music. Mercy showed him her smile again.“Not too shabby,” she said.“Your mama taught you all that?”

“Not all of it,” he said.

Then he felt her attention fade. She glanced around the room, as if looking for someone, and Robert felt a pang of rejection. Had he really expected her to dance with him all night long? A moment later a tall, thin Negro of about 60 appeared, wearing a white shirt, bow tie, and newsboy cap, his shirt sweated through to reveal a sleeveless T-shirt underneath. He tipped his cap to Mercy and nodded to Robert.

“Hello, Bernie,” Mercy said.

“Evening.” He looked at Robert.“Might I borrow this young lady for a dance?”

Robert looked at Mercy, caught her nearly invisible nod, and smiled with the best grace he could manage.“Certainly,” he said, and stepped aside.

He retired to a folding chair along the wall as the band lit into a swinging version of “Perfidia.”

Bernie began slowly, reeling Mercy in and out, turning in place. Unlike the leaders who hunched low as they worked, Bernie was casual, collected. He barely seemed to move, Mercy responding to the merest flicks of his wrist with big turns and spins. Now that he was on the sidelines, Robert saw how high her skirt flew when she twirled; the entire length of her magnificent legs was on display, all the way to the edges of her white cotton panties.The sight constricted Robert’s breathing. As the song went on, Bernie dug deeper. Mercy began to hop as she moved in, first sitting on his bent leg, then letting him swing her around his back. Toward the end, he threw her in the air and caught her on his shoulders. She pushed off and did a split in midair, then landed cleanly, taking his hat with her. She put it on and kept it for a minute or so, then Bernie finished with a dip so low the hat came off again. He snagged it before it hit the ground and put it back on his own head. Mercy gave Bernie a hug, and then there was another man waiting. Robert wondered if he’d get another dance.There were more men than women in the room, and no white women at all. He was far from home and had no idea of the rules.

He finally managed to look away from Mercy and saw Bernie walking toward him. Bernie had a longneck beer bottle in one hand, and he eased himself down into the chair next to Robert.“Lord, lord, lord,” he said, stretching out his long legs.“Getting too old to be dancing like that.”

“It was amazing,” Robert said.“I wish I could dance like that.”

“I guess it’s like anything else. It’s not too hard once you get the hang of it.”

On impulse, Robert said,“That move where you put her over your back. Could you show it to me?”Aerials were strictly forbidden at the dances Robert had been to. Bernie looked at him hard and squinted one eye.“I might could.Wait till this dance over, see can we get somebody to help us out.”

The entire room now knew that Mercy was there. Before the last notes of the song had died out, men were circling her in a feeding frenzy, and Robert worried that they might turn on each other. Bernie waded into the chaos and returned with a slight woman in a yellow sundress. Her slack expression added to the impression of childishness.“What you want with me, Bernie?” Her voice was a high chirp.

“Going to help out my friend here.”To Robert he said,“Minnie don’t weigh hardly anything. She’ll be easy to learn on.”

“Don’t want nobody learning on me,” she said.

“I’m Robert,” he interrupted, offering his hand.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Minnie said, and curtseyed.

Bernie gathered her up in closed position.“I’ll walk through it once as slow as I can.Thing is, you can’t slow it down too much or you lose your momentum.”

It took Robert ten minutes to get the basics of the move—the footwork, the lead, the mechanics of the lift, the follow-through. Minnie was stoic throughout. Finally he took her onto the floor and worked the pattern in again and again, having to abort the first couple of times, missing the timing on the next few, then, like a miracle, working it over and over.

When the song was over she shook his hand and said,“Thank you very kindly for the dance, but I believe you has worn me out.”With great dignity she walked over to the chairs and sat down. He went over to thank Bernie, and found him talking to a woman in her forties, heavier than Minnie, and yet not, Robert thought, out of the question for his new move.“This is my friend Robert,” Bernie said.“Robert, this is Audrey.” “Hi,Audrey,” Robert said.“Would you care to dance?”

After that the ice was well broken. He started to ask strangers.A few turned him down, and he smiled and moved on; others, especially the older women, gave him a chance and he felt he was able to show them a good time.

The band struck up “Moonglow,” one of Robert’s favorites. He was looking for a likely prospect when an arm slipped around his waist from behind.“Did you forget about me?” Mercy’s voice asked. He turned to face her.They were both hot, sweating, flushed.“No,” he said. She moved into his arms.The band took it slow, and she laid her head against his damp shirt. He smelled the perfume in her hair and the warmth of her body, like fresh ironed linen.

“I saw your new trick,” she said.

“Bernie’s a great teacher.”

“Something like that,” she said.

He wasn’t sure what she meant, didn’t need to know.The only thing that mattered was the pressure of her body against his, the music.They danced like old lovers who knew each other’s every breath and heartbeat.

The reckless feeling that had been haunting him passed in the course of the dance. By the end he felt a quiet determination, something like destiny.

He dipped her long and slow on the final chord, one hand behind her neck for support.As he brought her up, she held him by the arms and didn’t let go. “Want to show me your trick?”

“If you’re willing to risk it.”

“Like the gambler said,‘What’s to lose?’ ”

Mercy ignored the two men standing next to her, waiting their turns.The piano player called for Charlie Barnett’s “Skyliner,”“on the tracks.” She took Robert’s left hand in her right and put her free arm on his shoulder.The band took off like a Redstone rocket. Robert got on board.The speed of the music made everyone crazy.Women flew, men hit the floor in splits and bounced up again, couples spun around each other like Tilt-A-Whirl cars. Robert put Mercy over his back and liked it so much he sent her over a second time, which earned him a “Whoooo” from her, nearly lost in the thunder of the band and the cries of the other dancers.

When it ended they were hanging on each other, out of breath.The piano player said the band would be back in 15 minutes and Mercy said,“Take me outside. I need some air.”

The night had turned cold. Steam came off the dancers’ clothes as they stood on the sidewalk, pointing at each other and laughing. Robert passed his pack of Luckies around. Bernie and Mercy and a couple of others helped themselves, and he lit them all with his Army Zippo.The talk was about the band, about the ncaa basketball tournament that had ended a couple of weeks before. Robert leaned against the bricks of the hotel and closed his eyes. When he opened them again Mercy was leaning against the wall next to him.

He tried to think of something conversational to say, then let it go. Ruth felt compelled to fill every silence with talk and it was peaceful just to lean. He knew more or less what she was thinking.There would be songs still echoing in her head, the pleasant hum of fatigue in her muscles, memories of weightless moments above the dance floor.

When their Luckies burned down, he pushed himself onto his aching feet and felt Mercy slide her arm through his.As they strolled inside, he wondered where he would find the energy to dance any more, at the same time that he knew he would, and in fact did, as soon as the music started again. He danced again with all the women he’d danced with in the first set, and Bernie volunteered to show him another move, and Robert learned it, and it seemed like every third or fourth number Mercy was there to dance with him again, and she always found him for the slow ones. He neither sought her out nor questioned his fortune, simply accepted it for the gift it was.

At midnight the band took another break and Mercy said,“That’s it. My dogs are barking.” She limped alternately on both feet to make her point. I suspect your friend Mitch is long gone. How you going to get home?”

He hadn’t thought that far ahead, hadn’t thought how it would hit him in the pit of the stomach to say goodbye to her.“My car’s down the street.You could drop me if you like.”

She gave languorous hugs to some of the other dancers on the way out, and a kiss on the cheek to Bernie. She whispered something to him, and he looked at Robert and laughed.“My pleasure,” he said.“Y’all be careful now, hear?”

They walked side by side to her car, close without touching. Robert was thinking about kissing her. He was pretty sure she would let him. He wondered what those wide, swollen lips would feel like under his. He felt as if he’d been waiting his entire life to find out.

She stepped into the street, toward the driver’s side, and held out her hand for the keys. Robert passed them to her and waited for her to get in and reach across to unlock the passenger door. She started the car and said,“It hurts to work the pedals.” Robert closed his door.“Where are you?” she asked.

“Fayetteville Street. South of Pettigrew.” He savored their last moments together. He was calm and happy being near her, the way he felt in dreams. She was like one of those negative ion generators he’d read about in Time, that were supposed to make you feel like you were on a beach or next to a waterfall.

Cars slowly cruised the streets, windows down, radios blaring, young black men leaning out to call to people on the sidewalk. It was utterly unlike the world Robert had grown up in, yet it seemed comfortable, familiar. Maybe it was the fatigue.

“It’s the black Mercury there on the left,” he said.

She stopped the car there in the street, halting traffic behind them, and turned to him.“Thank you,” she said. Her tough façade was nowhere in sight.

“My pleasure.” He saw then that to kiss her at that moment would be predictable, and would thus surrender his only advantage. Still, it was more than he could do to simply walk away. He put his right hand on her cheek, barely touching it, then ran his first two fingers across the fullness of her lower lip. She closed her eyes. He noticed, finally, her earrings, tiny scrollwork hearts.

“Take care,” he said, and got out into the street. He stood next to the line of parked cars and watched her drive away, half-blinded by the oncoming headlights.

He laid his sweat-soaked clothes across the washing machine and showered before getting into bed. Unlike the last time he’d stayed late in Hayti, he felt no desire for Ruth as she lay snoring gently next to him. Rather he felt as if he’d wandered into the wrong house, and that if Ruth woke she would fail to recognize him, would scream and call the police.

At the same time, the reality of what he’d done began to sink in. Undoubtedly he’d made an enemy of Barrett Howard, which could be disastrous for Mason and Antree. Someone might have recognized him at the Biltmore or on the street outside.Word could get back to Ruth, or, worse yet, her father. Then he remembered the sensation of Mercy’s arm sliding around him and her voice saying,“Did you forget about me?” His face felt odd and he touched it, finding it stretched wide by a smile he hadn’t known was there.

He fell asleep to “Moonglow” playing in his head.

All day Saturday Robert worried that Antree would call. He might be fired. How could be possibly explain?

In the early afternoon he made a weak excuse and drove to St. Joseph’s ame church in Hayti, remembering what Maurice had said.And it was true. The thing on top of the steeple was the same symbol that hung from Mercy’s ears.The memory of his fingers on her lips, the heat of her breath on his fingertips, made him squeeze his eyes shut, not to push it away but to hold on a little longer. That night he took Ruth to the country club for dinner.Afterwards they danced to Lawrence Welk-style schmaltz delivered by a band of senior citizens.After three songs Robert excused himself to stand out on the patio, light a Lucky, and stare at the gently rolling fairways of the golf course. He was alone except for a teenaged daughter of Durham society, who nursed a bottle of Coke and pretended not to watch him.

The eastern sky glowed with the lights of downtown, turning the clouds a smoky red. Hayti was over there, and Barrett Howard was probably out in it with Mercy. Her body was probably moving under her dress the way it would under satin sheets, the fabric soft and clinging, still not softer than her skin. A waiter stepped out from the kitchen, dressed in white shirt, black pants, and a black bow tie. He was the same age as Robert. He carried a white towel over one arm and an empty tray under the other.“Beautiful evening, ain’t it, sir?” he said. He began to clear glasses from one of the tables.

“Yes,” Robert said.“Yes, it is.Won’t be this cool much longer.”

The man chuckled as if Robert had offered some profound wisdom.“No, sir, you got that sure enough right. Summer be down upon us before you know it.Ain’t no doubt about that. No, sir.”

Reflexively Robert offered his Luckies.The man held up one hand and said,“No, thank you, sir.Very kind of you, but we ain’t allowed to smoke on the job.”

The “we,” Robert understood, referred not to the job description but the skin color.

“Anything I can bring you, sir? Drink from the bar?”

“No,” Robert said.“Thanks. I need to be getting back in.”

“Then you enjoy your evening, sir.”

Robert nodded, deeply uncomfortable, at a complete loss for a way to bridge the chasm between them. I’m not who you think I am, he wanted to say. I was in Hayti last night, dancing at the Biltmore. How condescending did that sound? How many unwarranted assumptions did it make?

“Thanks,” he mumbled. He flipped his cigarette into the thick, green lawn and went inside, back to the cool, clean arms of his wife, the tepid music, the loud voices of white men, the clinking of glasses, the life that was laid out before him like a narrow road with high, neatly trimmed hedges on either side. All the way to work Monday morning Robert dragged his anxiety behind him like an anchor.The night had been one long, anxious dream of lost piece drawings, desperate searches, waking, turning, falling again into nightmare.

He was at his desk by 8.Antree arrived at 9:15 and went straight into his office without speaking. It was a relief when, half an hour later, he finally opened the office door and called Robert in. Too much coffee and too many cigarettes had left Robert feeling breakable. He sat with his elbows on his knees, shaky hands clasped in front of him.

“Howard is going forward with the union thing,”Antree said. Nothing in his tone pointed to Robert’s betrayal of Friday night.The feeling of relief was so powerful that Robert thought he could fall asleep where he sat.“Even Leon and Tommy were thinking about it.This could do us real harm.”

“He’s asking for what, more money for the workmen?”

“I don’t care about the bread.There’s enough of that around, and those men get paid pretty good anyway.The hassle is that Howard is asking us to come through on our promises.The shopping center, the apartments, the housing developments, everything.”

“I don’t understand.We’re planning to do all of that, aren’t we?” He finally met Antree’s eyes and saw claustrophobia there.

“It’s not up to me. I’m just a cog. Howard may single us out because of the expressway. He said at one point Friday, he said, ‘There’s not going to be an expressway until we get houses.’ But then, you weren’t there for that part.”

Uh oh, Robert thought.

“He can stop the freeway if he has a mind to,”Antree said.“We don’t have the right of way yet, can’t get it until DoT makes the route official. He can make that hard. Strikes, sabotage ... it could get ugly.”

“Can’t we build some houses?”

“That’s not our contract.”

“Whose is it?”

“I don’t think that’s been bid yet.”

“The freeway contract you keep saying is ours isn’t let either.”

“Yeah, only that one is guaranteed to come our way.You may not think too much of me. I know a lot people think I’m a happy-go-lucky idiot.The thing is, this is a lot harder than it looks. It’s a balancing act, every day. If it was just me I wouldn’t care, but I got employees, I got overhead, I got the people in Hayti I made promises to, I got the future of Durham at stake, because if rtp doesn’t work, this whole town could go under.

“I got into this business because I wanted to do some good in the world. I guess I was pretty naïve, all right. But I’m not ready to pack it in yet.”

It was all Robert could do not to look behind him, to see if there were someone else in the room that Antree was performing for.

“There is a point to this,”Antree said,“and the point is this. Howard seems to like you, God knows why.”

“Really?”

“I’d be looking to kill you, myself, after Friday night.Apparently he’s used to that kind of thing with her. Seems she told him she liked the way you handled yourself, that you were a quote unquote real gentleman.”

Robert longed for detail that he knew Antree didn’t have. He forced himself to concentrate on what Antree was saying.

“He wants to meet with you.Wednesday afternoon, one o’clock. Meet him in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel.You know where that is, right?”

Robert saw the bait and refused to take it. He was keeping his night with Mercy strictly to himself.“Yes,”

he said.“Do you have any idea what this is about?”

“Haven’t got the foggiest.And I’m counting on you to take mental notes. I want to know everything he says to you and the tone of voice he says it in. You dig?”

Robert stood up.“This is all too weird.What did I do?”

“I don’t think what you did is the issue. It’s more about who you are.”

Robert shook his head.“Is that supposed to be mystical or something?”

Antree waved his hand and started looking through the papers on his desk. “Nothing,” he said.“Never mind.”

Robert reached for the door.

“One more thing,”Antree said.

Robert froze, thinking, here it comes.

“You may have used your connections to get this job, but don’t push it.You understand what I’m saying?”

“Connections?” Robert said, turning slowly to face him.

Antree stared.“Your father-in-law? And his pal, the voice of race hatred on wral?”

Robert sat down again.“What are you talking about?”

“No, you wouldn’t know, would you? I was wondering how somebody so cold-blooded could pull off that innocent act so well. Only it isn’t an act at all, is it? That’s what Howard and Mercy and everybody else is so taken with. Me too, God help me.”

“Are you talking about Randy Fogg, the sportswriter? I don’t even know the guy.”

“Maybe you don’t. Ruth’s father does.”

“And what does Fogg have to do with you or this job?”

“Look, I’m sorry I said anything, all right? Forget about it. Forget I said anything at all.”

All Robert could think of was the way he’d bragged to his father that he’d won this job through skill alone.What did he have, really, that was all his own? His skills as an engineer, which he’d barely used.A hi-fi and some records, an aging Mercury hardtop sedan.

“Get to work,”Antree said, with a cheer that rang as false as his earlier melodrama.“Go on, now.”

Robert stood and walked numbly to the door.

“And don’t forget Wednesday,”Antree said.“One pm sharp.”

For the rest of the day his mind circled between Randy Fogg,Wilmer Bynum, and Ruth. He’d told Ruth, naturally, when he applied for the job, given her all the details. She must have known about Randy Fogg’s connection to Mason and Antree—whatever it was—and gone to her father. For that matter, the idea that Antree was involved with a racist like Fogg was baffling, incredible.As badly as he wanted to know what the relationship was, he was equally afraid of finding something out that would make it impossible to go on working there.

Behind it all lurked his own sense of guilt. He was in no position to talk about betrayal after Friday night. Not to mention the thoughts he’d had since, more vivid and more credible now than they’d been the week before.

At five he left the office determined to have it out with Ruth, only to feel his will erode the closer he got to home. He ended up staring at the reservoir from Club Boulevard until he was late for dinner. He spent the rest of the night swallowing his feelings the same way he’d choked down the overcooked, tasteless pork chops, listening to Ruth prattle on, remembering the long, stoic silences of his father and not wanting to repeat them, unable to find a way to break the pattern.

By Wednesday the pain had dulled, and the need for reckoning lost its urgency. It was easier to carry the hurt than share it.

And by then it was time to meet Barrett Howard.

Robert got to the Biltmore ten minutes early. Once he was sitting in an overstuffed chair, gazing into the ballroom where he and Mercy had danced, the tie he was wearing seemed too much. He pulled it off, folded it, and stuck it in his jacket pocket.

He’d lain awake for an hour that morning, watching the hands of the clock crawl toward 6:30. He’d pictured Howard taking him out into the countryside, pushing him to the ground and shooting him in the head. I won’t kneel, he’d thought. If he’s going to shoot me anyway, at least I can die on my feet. In the light of day the fantasy had seemed ridiculous. It came back full force when Howard finally walked into the lobby, scowling, the stub of a cigar smoldering in the corner of his mouth. Robert stood up.

“Sorry I’m late,” Howard said, and offered his hand. His left eye was squinting against the cigar smoke, Robert thought, that was all. He wore jeans, a blue chambray work shirt, and a flowered tie.“Been waiting long?”

“No,” Robert lied.“Not long.”

“You up for walking? I want to show you some things.”

“Sure. Okay.”

They turned left outside the hotel and walked past the Regal Theater, then turned into the Donut Shop.The space was long and narrow, with a chrome counter and stools along the right hand wall and booths along the left. Older men in suits filled half the seats, teenaged girls in long dresses the rest.The air smelled of yeast and sugar, and Ray Charles was on the jukebox, singing “I Can’t Stop Loving You.”A middle-aged woman at the soda fountain flipped Howard a two-fingered salute, and he leaned across the counter to hug her. “Anybody in the Jade Room, Miss Ella?”

“Just let out,” she said.“You want anything to eat?”

“Not this time. Showing my friend Robert around.”

“Hello, Robert,” she said, with a smile.

Even as Robert saw the “my friend” for the blatant manipulation it was, he couldn’t deny the warmth it gave him.“Hi,” he said, and smiled back. A door at the far end of the shop led into a second, parallel room, even more narrow, done in pea-green wallpaper with pink trim. Square, unframed mirrors every ten feet or so gave the illusion of more space. Eight pedestal tables, side by side, ran the length of the room, covered with white tablecloths and the remains of lunch.Two middle aged women in elaborate dresses were fussing with their hats and gossiping as Robert and Howard walked in.

“Afternoon, ladies,” Howard said.

Apparently they recognized him. Heads down and all but clucking their tongues, they squeezed past and bustled out the door.

“The Jade Room,” Howard said.“Official meeting place of everyone from the North Carolina Lawyers Association to bridge clubs and kids’ birthday parties.This is where community happens, here in this room.”

His sincerity was palpable. Robert felt petty when he asked,“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you need to understand what it is that you’re tearing down.These are not just buildings.This isn’t just history.This is a living, thriving culture with roots that go deep into this particular patch of ground.You cut the people loose from Hayti and you’re not only taking away their homes and their businesses, you’re taking away the glue that holds them together, that makes them strong.You’re taking away their barbers, their babysitters, their mechanics, the faces they nod to every day even when they don’t know their names.”

“You act like I have some say in this. Like I have the power to stop it.”

“Mitch Antree listens to you. He trusts you.Why else did he bring you to that meeting the other night?”

Because I ran into him on the street, Robert thought. Instead he said,“This is bigger than Mason and Antree, and you know it. If Mitch refused to do the work, they’d just get somebody else in here, probably somebody who’d take a lot more pleasure in it and get the job done a lot faster.”

Howard slowly deflated. He settled into a chair and slumped forward.“Shit,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“No. No, you’re right.” Howard pushed his massive fingers through his thick, unprocessed hair.“All you have to do is look around, see what’s going down everywhere else. Paradise Valley in Detroit, the Shaw District in DC, the Hill District in Pittsburgh.What the government hasn’t knocked down yet they’re going after.”

“I could quit,” Robert said.“You could work on the next guy Mitch hires, maybe you could get him to quit too.And the guy after that.”

“No, that ain’t no good either.”

Robert sat down facing him.“Well, at least you could finish showing me around.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m interested.”

“You don’t have to humor me.”

“This is for real. I want to know.”

Slowly Howard got onto his feet.“All right. Come on, then.”

Robert followed him out to the sidewalk.They stopped at the Biltmore Drug Store, occupying a corner of the hotel lobby, to get Howard a fresh cigar. The woman behind the counter was the daughter of Gloria Pratt,“the most beautiful woman I ever saw,” Howard said.“I used to come in here and buy a pack of Juicy Fruit every Friday afternoon, just to look at her.” He smiled at the cashier.“You’ve got her eyes.”

Robert hadn’t known that Negroes could blush until that moment.“You’re still going to have to pay for that cigar,” she said.

“So you grew up here,” Robert said to Howard.

“Born in Monroe, North Carolina, down by Charlotte.” He took his change and held the door for Robert.“Moved here when I was four. Left when I was seventeen to live with my auntie in Chicago so I could go to school at Chicago State. Got a master’s in sociology. Got tired of racism in the north and came down here to fight it at the source. Married once, too young. Got a son I don’t get to visit. I like to bowl.Throw a decent hook and own a 201 average. Something about that little black ball and all those white pins.Anything else you want to know?”

There was a lot Robert wanted to know. Most of it had to do with Mercy and he wasn’t ready to borrow that particular trouble yet. So he asked,“What do you do with a master’s in sociology?”

“Teach. I got three sections at ncc, one freshman and two advanced.When I can, I teach some classes at Durham Tech.And the other thing you do when you’re a black man with a sociology degree is, you have opinions.That’s the problem with education.You get to thinking your opinion is worth more than some ignorant fool’s.”

“Any fool in particular?”

“If you’re trying to get me to say Mayor R.Wense Grabarek, then I would ask you why you want to ask a question if you already know the answer?”

Howard’s confrontations with the mayor of Durham were a recurring story in the Herald, and something in his tone made Robert let out a short, surprised laugh. Howard smiled, and for the first time Robert saw the vulnerability and need to please under the showmanship.

They were in front of the Wonderland Theater.“I know you know this place,” Howard said.“I want you to know something about the man that built it.”

“Tell me,” Robert said.

“His name was Frederick K.Watkins.They called him ‘the Movie King.’ He built the Wonderland in 1920. He had a chain of theaters across the Southeast, and he lived here in Hayti. He went before the City Council in the thirties, trying to get black police officers for Hayti. Didn’t get them, but he tried. He got his start in movies by making them himself and taking them around and showing them in schools.”

They walked on.“When that place goes, won’t be anything like it to take its place,” Howard said.“You ever been to Europe?”

Robert nodded.“I was there in the Army.”

“You know what I’m talking about, then.They got buildings there hundreds of years old. It’s history you can walk around inside of, you know what I’m saying?”

People they passed called and reached out to Howard. Most of them were young, most of them male, but there were women too, and Robert had a strong feeling that Mercy was not the only one straining against the limits of the relationship. None of these people seemed to want anything more than the acknowledgement that Howard gave them—a nod, a handshake, the sound of their own names.

“Down at the end of the block, that’s the Carolina Times. Louis Austin bought it in 1927, used to be the Standard Advertiser. That’s thirty-seven years that man has been fighting.We don’t always see eye to eye. He’s a very religious man, which I am not. He got his positive message, which I sometimes don’t think is justified. But damn.Two or three editorials every week, for longer than I been alive, going up against the Klan, the nrc, the City Council, the Durham Select Committee, never backing down, not even in the face of death threats, never giving up, never losing his faith. I cannot imagine that. If you was to read that paper—”

“I do read it.”

That stopped him.“For real? Since when?”

“A few weeks now.”

“Why?”

Robert shrugged, wishing he hadn’t said anything.

“Jungle fever, that’s why,” Howard said.“You got the fever for Mercy.”

“Are you sure you want to talk about this now?” Robert said.“Here in the street?”

“Why, you afraid I’m going to come after you? I ain’t going to come after you. Not unless there’s something I don’t know about.”

“No,” Robert said. He felt a drop of sweat run down under one arm.Then, amazed, he heard himself say,“Except what’s in my head.”

Howard stared at him.“Man, you either brave or crazy, one.”

Later, when he tried to explain it to himself, Robert thought it was the loneliness. He couldn’t talk about Mercy to Ruth or Mitch Antree; not to anyone else at work; not to any of his casual acquaintances at the country club. Barrett Howard was the only man he knew who could possibly understand what he was feeling.

“Come on,” Howard said.“Let’s get this off the street.”They were standing in front of Elvira’s. Howard walked up to the door and motioned Robert in. They sat at a red vinyl booth, and Howard ordered two bottles of Schlitz.

“I have to go back to work,” Robert said with little conviction.

“Antree knows you’re with me. He ain’t going to say nothing.”

The waitress, a heavyset beauty in her late thirties, was already back. She ran her hand affectionately through Howard’s hair as she dropped off the bottles.

“Drink your beer,” Howard said.

Robert drank.The beer was as cold as freshly melted snow, so cold it tasted like nothing at all.

“So what are you trying to say about Mercy?” Howard asked.“Are you in love with her?”

“I don’t know,” Robert said.“I don’t know what I’m feeling. I’ve never felt anything like it. I’m all knotted up when I’m not with her, and when I’m around her, if she’s even somewhere in the vicinity, then I’m calm and happy.”

“This is based on what, seeing her twice in your life?”

Robert had to stop to count.“Yeah. It’s like she’s a place and not a person. Like a tree house when you’re a kid.”

“I never had no tree house,” Howard said.“not that many trees in most of the places I lived.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Couple years.”

“Where did you meet her?”

Howard thought it over for a second or two, then shook his head.“I can’t tell you that.”

“Is this that voodoo business?”

Howard fixed him again with a look that should have terrified him.“Yeah,” Howard said.“Yeah, it’s ‘that voodoo business.’ I went to her for instruction.” He took a long drink and then put his left arm up along the back of the booth.“I don’t know any of what you’re talking about, that calmness and all. It was the power that got me.There is something about a powerful woman that does the trick for me, and I felt it the first time I saw her.” Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, as if he had to prove ownership, he said,“She felt it too. She was in my bed that same night.”

Robert had to look away from him, down to the rings their beer bottles had left on the table.

“Look,” Howard said,“you are in so far over your head you got no idea.You ain’t got the idea of an idea.You think this is all about Bebop and the Lindy Hop.That shit ain’t even a gnat on that woman’s windscreen.”

“You’re wrong,” Robert said.

“You’re telling me I’m wrong? ”

“I’m saying I know how she feels about the music and the dancing. I feel the same way. If you don’t feel it, how can you understand?”

“Motherfucker,” Howard said, and his voice was barely a whisper,“you want to understand, I’ll give you understanding.” He stood up and for a second Robert thought he might be in serious physical danger.“You be outside your house at midnight.You might want to be wearing old clothes. I’m a come pick you up. Be out there waiting,‘cause I don’t want to have to come in there and wake your ass up.”

He threw two dollars on the table, finished his beer in one long swallow, and walked out the door. Robert went back to the office. His hands felt weak and unsteady and he couldn’t control his pencil.When he tried to roll the lead against the parallel bar it leapt out onto the page; when he tried to letter the point snapped off. He knew he should talk to Antree, but still jumped when he heard Antree’s voice suddenly behind him saying,“My office.”

Robert followed him in and closed the door.Antree’s smile melted when he saw Robert’s face.“What the hell happened?”

“Nothing,” Robert said, his shrug stiff and unconvincing.“He wanted to give me a history lesson so I would stop knocking Hayti down. I tried to tell him it wasn’t my decision.”

“And then what?”

“What do you mean, then what?”

“You look like a college girl trying to smuggle dope through customs.What did you do?”

Robert shrugged again.“We talked about Mercy.”

“Holy Christ.What did he say?”

“We just talked.”

“The hell you did.Why does this always happen? Why does some chick come along, and everybody starts thinking with their dicks, and everybody else’s hard work goes down the drain? Friends, business partners, employees, everybody turning on each other and burning everything down, and for what? A piece of ass? Something that will come and go and leave nothing but regrets?”

Robert thought it would be worth anything to avoid one of Antree’s bouts of self-pity. Rare as they were, they seemed endless when they came.“It’s not like that,” he said.“He made me drink a beer with him in the middle of the afternoon and it gave me a headache. In fact, we’re going to hang out some more later tonight.”

Antree’s emotions spun in a tight circle and came roaring back.“You’re kidding. No shit?”

“It’s true,” Robert said.

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place? This is great. I don’t know how the hell you pulled this off, but it’s groovy, dad.Take the rest of the afternoon off.You’re going to need your wits about you.”As Robert stood up,Antree came around the desk and put his arm around him.“You’re the key to this whole deal,”Antree said.“If you can handle Barrett Howard, man, we are home free.”

All the way home Robert tried to come up with a believable excuse for going out at midnight. His brain was sluggish. He had pulled all the way into the driveway, in fact, before he noticed the brand-new red and white Buick sedan parked in front of him.

Ruth met him at the door.“Oh my Lord,” she said.“Is something wrong? I can explain about the car.What are you doing home? Are you sick? Is everything all right?”

“Whose car is it?” Robert asked, his thoughts leaping automatically to infidelity. He almost hoped it was true.

“It’s mine. Ours, I mean. I was going to surprise you.Well, I guess I did surprise you. Daddy bought it for my birthday next month, and I’ve been keeping it parked down the street. I didn’t think you’d be home—”

“Down the street?”

“Well, I know how you feel about Daddy’s money, and him paying for the house and everything.”

Not to mention buying my job, Robert thought bitterly.

“And so I was trying to think of the right way to tell you without you getting upset, or feeling like...” She broke off and attempted a smile.

“Like what?” Robert asked, keeping his voice calm.

“You know, like you can’t take care of me or anything. In the style to which I’m accustomed.”

Robert saw then that he didn’t have to explain anything.All he had to do was walk away. And, surprising himself yet again, that was exactly what he did.

“Robert?” she called after him from the front door.“Robert, where are you going?”

He got in the Mercury, headache gone, elation rising in his chest. I don’t know, he thought. I don’t know where I’m going.And I don’t care.

He drove toward town out of reflex, then remembered that Howard was supposed to pick him up at midnight. He had no phone number for Howard or Mercy, no way to reach either of them other than driving to their house. So that was what he did.

He arrived a few minutes after four and parked behind a boxy black 1960 Ford Falcon on the street. Mercy’s Impala sat in the driveway, and the sight of it excited him. He looked at his hair in the rearview mirror and fingercombed it away from his forehead, checked his deodorant, which had not yet given up, and got out of the car.

It was a beautiful afternoon, cloudless, hot, not yet suffocating the way it would be in July and August. Here in Hayti it was less beautiful than it was among the rich lawns and overarching trees of Woodrow Street. Life here was exposed, raw, transitory.

Robert climbed the steep sidewalk to the porch and knocked on the front door.There was no answer, so after a minute he tried again, louder. He hesitated a few seconds, then, suddenly self-conscious, started to turn away.

The door opened. Howard stood there in nothing but a pair of blue jeans, primal and imposing. Behind him, Mercy leaned against a doorway in a white terrycloth robe. She wore her usual abstracted smile.“Hello, Robert,” she said.

Howard seemed more amused than angry.“I guess God really does look after fools and drunkards. I can’t believe you come pounding on my door like this and I ain’t killed you yet.”

“I’m sorry,” Robert said.“I didn’t mean ... I didn’t realize I was interrupting...”

“You didn’t interrupt anything,” Howard said.“If there had been something to interrupt, I wouldn’t have come to the door. But I still have hopes, so tell me what you want and be on your way.”

“We need to meet someplace else tonight,” Robert said.

Howard turned to Mercy.“You go on back to the bedroom, honey. I’ll be there in a minute.”

He stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door to.“What happened, your wife throw you out?”

Robert shrugged, not yet ready to think through what he’d done.“You could pick me up at Elvira’s or something.”

Howard looked at him closely.“You all right?”

“I’m good,” Robert said.“Really.”

Howard started to go in, then said,“This thing tonight. Mercy don’t know about you being there. It might be better for everybody if we kept it that way. You understand what I’m saying?”

Robert nodded, though he did not, in fact, understand.“Can you pick me up at Elvira’s? Midnight?”

Howard nodded once, sharply, and went in the house. Robert tried not to think about him going into the darkened bedroom, slipping out of his jeans, opening Mercy’s robe, peeling it back from her shoulders, her still smiling that mysterious smile.

He drove to the Kresge’s downtown to eat, and while he was there, not knowing when or if he would go back to the house, he picked up a cheap white shirt and a change of socks and underwear.The defiance was liberating and a bit dangerous, as if he were a teenager running away from home. He ate a hamburger at the lunch counter. None of the black people that shopped all around him were eating. Robert was still trying not to think of those other two black people and what they might or might not still be doing. Images from racy films he’d seen in the Army came unbidden into his head, with Howard and Mercy substituting in the lead roles.

Once cool, the hamburger lost most of its appeal. Robert grazed on the remaining potato chips and pickle slices, then surrendered to his impulse to return to the office. Outside of Ruth, his records, and his tentative new life in Hayti—none of which were available at the moment—work was all he knew. The lights were all on and Miles was in the midst of one of the more dirgelike moments on Sketches ofSpain when Robert opened the door. Mitch looked up from his central drafting table, blinking, as if he’d been asleep. His tie was loose and his collar open, his eyes puffy and his chin dark with stubble. When he saw Robert, he smiled.“Bobby! I thought you’d be home with the little woman.”

Robert’s innate caution kept him from saying anything about Ruth. He shrugged instead.

“You still seeing Barrett tonight?”

“Later. I got a few hours to kill.”

“Hell, let’s make some plans, then.” It was a joke Mitch never tired of.“You want a drink?”

“That’s okay.”

Robert went to the drawers and took out the plans and elevations for a suburban bank branch that Fred Mason had drawn. Mitch went to his office and emerged with a highball. On the way back he took Miles off the turntable and put on Cannonball Adderley’s Them Dirty Blues, leading off, appropriately, with his brother Nat’s “Work Song.” The change in tempo brightened the room. Robert taped down the drawings and began taking sections through the walls, stopping at interesting intersections to lay out piece drawings for the individual members. It was work that occupied the part of the brain that worried while leaving free the part that listened to music. Mitch kept the music coming, moving from Adderley to Duke Pearson’s Dedication, then to Ellingtonat Newport, and finally back to Miles for The Birth of the Cool. He seemed to be rationing himself to one drink per album, a pace nonetheless sufficient to put him well in the bag by 8:30.

“That’s it,” he said at last.“Time to split this lame joint.The service is for the birds.”

“You okay to drive?”

“Hell, yes.The day I have to drive sober, that’s the day you should start worrying.” Robert knew that Mitch was drunk, even if he couldn’t point to clear symptoms. His hands were steady and his speech was clear, but his eyes were anesthetized.“Good luck with Howard. Don’t worry about coming in on time tomorrow. Get a decent night’s sleep.”

Robert nodded, not sure such a thing was possible.A minute later he heard Mitch’s Cadillac start up over the last notes of “Darn That Dream” and gently squeal its tires as it pulled out of the lot. With Mitch gone, Robert’s concentration faded. After 15 restless minutes he shut the office down and pointed his car south, past Hayti and St. Joseph’s, past Beechwood Cemetery and out into tobacco country, one small farm after another, the plants only a few inches high and pale green in the moonlight. At some point he pulled over and walked out between the rows. He fired up a Lucky, the end product of all this effort, though it was no longer made in Durham. Somewhere near where he was standing the new Interstate 40 would go, connecting the south edge of Raleigh to the south edge of Durham and the north edge of Chapel Hill. Meanwhile I85 would swoop down and replace State Highway 70 across the north of Durham, meet up with 40 on the far side of Hillsboro, and the two roads would run west together until Greensboro.

Durham’s East-West Expressway would connect the two.When it was done, it would split off from I85

eastbound near Robert’s house, cut through downtown, then curve south to meet I40 on the edge of rtp. There was talk that the East-West Expressway might get designated an alternate route for I40, which would put them in the way of even more federal money. Altogether the three highways represented millions of tons of concrete that would change the face of the Triangle, of all of North Carolina, wake Durham from its coma, bring jobs and money and the whole starspangled dream. Despite Barrett Howard’s union speech, it was still a dream Robert believed in, a dream where the jobs and the money weren’t ends in themselves but the raw materials of freedom.

However tainted his entry, the dream was his to be part of, if he could keep his focus. His career would survive a divorce, if it came to that. If the improbable happened with Mercy, the thing that he believed in and Barrett Howard insisted was his ignorance talking, Mitch would sympathize if anyone would. And if he couldn’t save Hayti, he would save all he could.

He drove slowly toward town, feeling the length of the day, the lateness of the hour, and drank coffee at Elvira’s until midnight.

Howard was late, and Robert began to let himself hope that nothing would happen. Elvira closed up and put him on the street, and Robert was thinking about where he was going to spend the night when Howard’s black Falcon jerked to a stop in front of him. It was 12:15.

“Get in,” Howard said. Robert climbed in the passenger seat, trying to judge Howard’s mood. Not anger or triumph, but something more turned in, private, determined. Once they were moving, Howard handed him a large gray hooded sweatshirt.“Put that on. Once we get there, keep the hood up so you won’t be so conspicuous.”

Robert had speculated that wherever they were going had to do with the things Maurice had warned him about.The voodoo. He associated the word with pins in dolls and mandrake roots and stealth and subversion. Something in Howard’s grim expression said this would be confrontational. Up until that moment he had assumed that being with Howard would keep him safe. He felt the first chill of real fear. He sniffed at the sweatshirt. It smelled clean. Mercy washed this, he thought. The idea gave him comfort. He pulled it on over his short-sleeved white shirt.

Howard said,“One other thing. I can’t let you see where I’m taking you. Obviously I can’t drive around with a blindfolded white man in my car. So I need you to kneel down on the floorboards there and lay your head down on the seat.”

“What, you mean now?”

“Now would be good.”

Robert did as he was told.The Falcon had bench seats, and with his feet against the firewall, his knees were shoved hard against the base of the seat. He folded himself as tightly as he could, put his left cheek against the vinyl, and closed his eyes.

“Good,” Howard said.“That’s good.”

Howard drove for a while in what seemed a deliberately random pattern, turning every few blocks, and Robert quickly lost all sense of direction.Then they were in the country.The air had a deep green smell, and Robert heard frogs singing to the wet spring night.

The road got rougher, turning first to gravel and then to rutted dirt. Robert thought it had been at least 20

minutes since they left Hayti, probably longer. They could be halfway to Pittsboro or Wake Forest. Howard made a slow, bumpy turn and said,“Okay, you can get up now.”

At first Robert thought there was something the matter with the car’s engine.Then he realized that what he heard was drumming. He was familiar with congas and hand drums—Chano Pozo from Cuba had played with Diz and Bird even before the mambo craze of the fifties. But these drums were wrong.They were playing much too fast.They sounded like panic, and the feeling went into Robert’s chest and legs. Above the drums was the clank of metal, highly syncopated.The sound made Robert think of chains.And above that were the voices. Singing, ostensibly, though the highest voice, too high above the others, was more like a scream.

They tried to tell me, Robert thought. Maurice, Howard, Mitch.They all tried.

“Okay,” Robert said. He was still on his knees on the floorboards.“I believe you now. Can we go back?”

“Put the hood up on that shirt,” Howard said.“Get it down over your face. And keep those lily-white hands in your pockets or someplace.”

Robert put the hood up and got awkwardly out of the car.The sound came from a wooden structure 200

yards away.The flat, sloping roof was corrugated steel.White light leaked out through the gaps between the vertical boards of the walls. Another 20 or more cars and pickup trucks had parked in the same empty field as Howard’s Falcon. Except for that field and the long stretch of grassy ground between it and the shed, everything in sight was old-growth pine forest, dark and menacing. Haze muted the thin sliver of a moon.

Howard started walking toward the shed. Robert could not get his legs to work.“I ain’t fooling with you, now,” Howard said, looking back.“Let’s go.”

Robert stumbled forward stiffly. Like a zombie, he thought, without humor. He pulled the sleeves of the sweatshirt down over the unsightly paleness of his hands.

Howard waited until Robert caught up, then fell into step with him.“Once I get you settled, you do not move, you do not speak, you do not call attention to yourself in any way whatever.You have questions, you ask me later.You understand?”

Robert nodded.

“I can’t hear you,” Howard said.

“Yes,” Robert said.“I understand.”

An old black man, skin wrinkled like an elephant’s, stood by the opening at one end of the shed. He had a shotgun and a walkie-talkie, and Robert realized there must have been other watchers along the road.The old man nodded to Howard, who pushed aside the blanket hanging in the doorway and gestured for Robert to go in.

The place was some kind of abandoned barn, too big for a tobacco shed, maybe 40 by 60 feet.The instant they were inside Robert began to sweat.The air was thick with humidity, and the drumming and singing battered him in tangible waves.What must have been a hundred candles lit the room.Their heat and the smell of burning only amplified Robert’s fear.

Four drummers sat along the left wall, playing tall, tapering drums that looked like congas. One drum had a battered blue sparkle finish, another looked crudely homemade.Two of the drummers played with open hands, two with one hand empty and the other holding a forked stick shaped like an upside down checkmark.They were bare to the waist, pouring sweat, their eyes closed or rolling back in their heads.A fifth man tapped a black iron hoe blade with an oversized nail, swaying, rapt.The rhythm loped like feet running away, the way Robert’s feet ached to run.

Five women shuffled rhythmically from side to side toward the rear of the shed.They wore loose white cotton robes and had white scarves knotted around their heads.They moved together like the fingers of a single hand. Dust from the hard-packed floor made a cloud around their feet.Whatever they were singing was not English. Maybe some kind of Haitian Creole, maybe something more ancient and African.The words came in a blur of speed, sometimes in call and response, sometimes in a jumble of frenzied chanting.

In the center of the room, a single post ran from floor to ceiling. It was white with a red stripe that spiraled up the length of it, like a perverse barber pole. Near it, a wooden model of a sailing ship, complete with paper sails, hung from a rafter. Opposite the ship was a smaller pole, three feet high, forked at the top.A woven straw bag hung from the fork.

Between the big pole and front door, drawn in the dirt and filled in with colored sand, was the symbol from St. Joseph’s church. From Mercy’s earrings.

Mercy herself was nowhere in sight. Robert’s relief far outweighed his disappointment. Twenty people sat on three rows of wooden benches near the entrance. Howard led Robert to the farthest corner of the last bench and settled him there. For an instant he thought Howard was going to leave him there and he let Howard see that fear in his eyes. Howard shook his head sharply once, silently greeted a few of the men and women around them, and finally sat down to Robert’s right. The drums roared to a finish, and the voices carried on without them for a few seconds.When the drums started again they were slower and more melodic.A man came in through the back of the building dressed in white pants, a loose white shirt, black belt and shoes, and a bright red tie. His head was shaved, and he showed a gold incisor when he smiled. His skin was a deep matte black. He carried a thin pine branch about three feet long and he was the only person in the room not sweating. He went straight to the straw bag and pulled a bottle of rum from inside. He took a long drink and then started to draw in the dirt with the thick end of his pine bough. He drew a cross, then added circles at the end of one pair of arms and stars at the ends of the others.Then he added Xs and curlicues up and down all four arms.

“The crossroads,” Howard whispered.“He’s calling Papa Legba to open the way.” Robert, as he had been told, did not answer, did not look at him, did not acknowledge him in any way. The priest finished the drawing, stood up, and sprinkled rum over it, holding his thumb over the neck of the bottle.Then he reached into the bag and scattered peanuts, roasted corn kernels, and dried chunks of some orange substance, maybe sweet potato, over the drawing. Finally he began to chant. Robert heard the name Legba and words that he recognized from his college French, including something about a chapeau and a grand chemin. Robert was starting to think that it was not so bad, that maybe he could endure it, when one of the women brought out the rooster.

He was speckled black and white and had a bright red comb. His feet were tied, his wings free, and unlike Robert he was giving voice to his fear. The woman could barely hold on, and the sight of him brought the crowd to its feet.

“Stand up,” Howard said, and Robert stood.

The people around Robert were singing now, writhing where they stood, and the drummers began to hit accents that cracked like gunshots, making the muscles up and down Robert’s legs twitch and jump.The priest took the rooster from the woman and made a complete circle of the room with it, the bird fighting him all the way.When he got back to the center pole he held the bird with his left hand alone, reached up with the right, and quickly wrung its neck.

Robert heard its death squawk over the drums, over the singing, over the pounding of his own heart.A spatter of white guano hit the dust at the priest’s feet, and the crowd yelled approval. The priest threw the dead bird aside and began to dance, taking hunkered, bowlegged steps, thrusting and jerking as if the spirit of the rooster had entered him.The drums changed again.

“Now Loco Atisou,” Howard said.“After Legba, always Loco.”

“Va Loco Loco Valadi,” the women sang. “Va Loco Loco Valadi.”

One by one the members of the crowd sat again.The priest drank from the rum bottle and sprayed more of it around the room.

The drums stopped.

As much as the drumming had frightened Robert, its absence was worse. The women were singing now, and the priest slowly backed out of the middle of the hut to stand behind the silent drummers.The women began to move in a new formation, a rocking step that took them two paces back for every one forward, clearing a path. Everyone stared at the space they’d opened, focused, waiting. From the rear of the shed came a noise like a ship’s foghorn, only higher, more hollow and mournful.At the first note the women stopped singing, and complete silence fell for the first time. Mercy stepped into the light carrying a conch shell the size of her head. Like the other women, she wore a loose, belted white dress and headcloth, except her dress was gauzy and loosely woven and seemed to drape over her in multiple layers, tantalizing Robert with hints of the flesh underneath. She walked to the center pole and turned her back to them, holding the conch shell with her left hand all the way into the opening, bringing the broad, flat end to her mouth. She blew into it and released the loud, alien, foghorn cry again before turning and directing a final blast toward the crowd. Robert shifted until the woman in front of him blocked his view of Mercy’s face, and then he looked down at the dirt floor.At first he had felt the warmth that the sight of her always gave him.Then he’d seen her eyes, which were as strange and distant as the sound of the conch shell. She handed the shell to one of the dancing women, who took it to a long low table in the rear of the shed and added it to the pile there of cakes and bottles and embroidered flags and bits of iron and images of the Catholic saints. Mercy closed her eyes and began to sing.The language was again French or something like it, and her voice was high and sweet and true, not the voice that Robert would have expected to come from that lush body. Though he could not make any sense of the words, the yearning and passionate melody spoke to him clearly.

As if answering her call, a young man entered from the front door, carrying a straw mat loaded with objects. He walked slowly, formally, bringing his feet together with each step. He was in his early twenties, with short hair and acnescarred skin of a deep, rich brown. He was barefoot and he wore white cotton pants and a white T-shirt.

He knelt at Mercy’s feet and spread out the mat, revealing a bottle of white wine, a white enameled pot, a white paper bag, and two straw cages. In one cage were two white doves, in the other a white chicken.When he was finished he stepped away, and the priest came out from behind the silent drummers.The priest reached into the paper bag and came out with what looked like a handful of white flour, which he sprinkled over the mat. Mercy was singing all this time. The priest reached for the cage with the doves in it, and Robert closed his eyes, expecting more blood.A moment later he heard the sound of wings and opened them to see that the priest had merely released them, and they were fluttering around the room, trying to find a way out. The priest took the cover off the pot and poured some of the wine into it. He drank from the wine bottle, with an exaggerated show of pleasure that got a laugh from the crowd.Then he beckoned the young man toward him.

The other women began to sing behind Mercy.At first the melodies intertwined, then the other women became more urgent.They began to dance again, and gradually Mercy stopped singing and became very still.

The young man lay down on the mat. He was trembling, which Robert thought did not bode well.The priest dipped both hands in the wine and whatever else had already been in the pot and pantomimed washing the young man’s head with them.

The drums were still quiet as the women’s voices got louder and Mercy began to sway back and forth. Her eyes were closed, but not in relaxation. Every muscle in her body was tense, the tendons in her neck and hands standing out, the movements of her legs becoming stiff and awkward. Howard’s voice was in his ear again.“No matter what you see in the next five minutes, do not move from your seat or I will kill you.”

It looked as if someone came up behind Mercy and gave her a hard shove from behind. She went down on hands and knees in the dirt, right into the heart-shaped drawing. She stayed there for a long second, then another and another as the singing stretched the moment tighter and tighter. When she got up she wasn’t Mercy anymore.

Something swelled inside her, something larger than she was, something of vast animal power.Whatever the thing was, it was female. Her movements were sinuous, erotic, as she swayed onto one knee, then to her feet. Her golden skin, sleek and damp in the blazing candlelight, was satin smooth, soft as a featherbed, warm as the sand on a summer beach. It cried out to be touched. Robert’s own skin tingled. He could feel where his shirt touched the hairs of his chest, like sunburn without the pain.

She began to dance.The thing inside her seemed to exult in finding itself in such a glorious body. Robert felt its joy.The display lacked all calculation or deliberate provocation; the gauzy wrappings of her gown were confining her, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that she should pull them off, one after another, and toss them aside.There were six sheets of gauze, and when the last one fell, she was naked.

The man on the mat had come up on his elbows and turned toward her. He was breathing hard, and his erection was clearly visible through the white fabric of his pants. Despite his fear, despite the freakish circumstances, Robert could not help being aware that this was Mercy’s body, the body he had held in his arms, fantasized about, longed for. Mercy’s full breasts, stiff dark nipples, gently rounded stomach, thick black tangle of pubic hair. Not innocently sunbathing or changing clothes, but sexually charged and provocative. Even as he was aroused he was embarrassed, repelled, angry, and jealous.

She circled the room, taking wide, strutting steps, and as she walked she twisted slowly at the waist, cupped her breasts and ran her hands down her thighs, seemingly oblivious to the eyes watching her. When she finished her circuit she saw the man on the mat. She started toward him, walking with her legs spread wide, her toes pointed out, her crotch thrust forward.

Apparently Robert’s need to look away was not strong enough.As the man on the mat watched, hypnotized, she lowered herself slowly toward him until she was on her knees and his mouth was on her sex. Now, finally, Robert was able to close his eyes, but he could not close his ears a long minute later when she cried out, less in passion than in triumph, and when Robert’s eyes opened involuntarily he saw her rise again, laughing in unconstrained delight. The man had fallen onto the mat, eyes closed, a damp stain spreading down his trouser leg.The priest and another man came and took one arm each and helped him stagger dazedly out the front entrance.

She stood near the center pole, singing, now in a lower, harsh voice. Her eyes were wild and her chest was flushed, her nipples taut, her pubic hair wet and matted, the pink flesh of her cleft showing through. Robert’s need to be away from her, from that place, from the blinding light and piercing sounds, was now stronger than his fear of Barrett Howard, or of the priest, or of the creature that Mercy had become. With a final, shrill cry, she collapsed in the dirt.Two of the female dancers rushed to her with a white terrycloth robe. It looked exactly like the one he’d seen her wearing that afternoon. He stood up.

“Sit down!” Howard said, his voice muted but furious. Robert ignored him. He pushed his way past the other people on the bench, and as he got to the aisle he saw Mercy out of the corner of his vision. Her eyes were open, and she was staring at him. Robert looked back at her for what he was sure would be the last time.

Then he turned and walked out into the night.

He pulled off the sweatshirt as he walked and threw it into the grass. He moved quickly, not running, borne on the relief of being in the clean night air, relief that grew stronger with every step. He was beyond fear, more or less indifferent to what might happen next, with one single desire in his heart: to return to the life he’d had six months ago, a life that was orderly and understandable, with a small, tidy house, an alarm clock to wake him in the morning, a newspaper on the lawn, familiar streets to drive to work, dinner waiting when he got home.

Finally he stopped and looked back. No one pursued him. He took a deep breath and reached for his cigarettes.

The drums took off again.

The cigarette pack flew from his hand.The sound, he thought, would make him physically ill. He went to his knees, located the white pack in the deep grass, scooped it up and got a cigarette lit. For want of another plan, he found Howard’s car and sat on the hood. He had no idea where he was, there were certainly armed guards on the roads, and if Howard wanted him dead there was no escaping it by running, not unless he kept going, out of Durham, maybe out of the country. He sat there in something like a state of shock, arms wrapped around himself, smoking when he thought of it, for about 45 minutes. Finally Howard appeared, by himself, carrying the sweatshirt.“Get in,” he said.

Robert threw down his cigarette and opened the car door.

“Face down on the car seat, like before,” Howard said.

With mild interest, Robert processed the information. If it mattered that he not see where they were going, then Howard must mean for him to live. He got in the car and knelt on the floorboards. Howard seemed completely without emotion. He cranked up the car, backed out, and drove over the same bumpy road they’d come in on. He was, Robert noted, driving faster. Robert grunted at a couple of worst lurches, as did the Falcon’s suspension.

Howard didn’t speak again until they were on hardtop and the cool night air was whipping through the open windows.“You got any questions?”

“Yes,” Robert said.“One question. How could you ... How could you sit there, while that man ... while another man ... did that to Mercy?”

After a silence Howard said,“That wasn’t Mercy.That was a lwa, the lwa Erzulie.” He was quiet again for a while, then he said,“Erzulie was using Mercy’s body, that’s all. Riding her, they call it.”

Do you really believe that? Robert nearly asked.The hesitation in Howard’s voice was all the answer he needed.

When Howard told him to sit up they were in Walltown, a black neighborhood north of Duke’s East Campus.They rode in silence through downtown and then, as they turned onto Pettigrew, Howard asked him where his car was.

They parked at the curb behind the Mercury.As Robert opened the door, Howard said,“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Robert said. It came out with a bitterness that surprised him.

“Everything,” Howard said.“I’m sorry for everything.”

Robert stood on the curb and watched him drive away. It was three in the morning. Robert stank of smoke and the sour sweat of fear. He had been given what he asked for. But when he reached for the door of the Mercury, he felt as if his hand could pass right through it. He drove to the house on Woodrow Street and parked in his tree-lined driveway, behind Ruth’s shiny new Buick.The porch light was on. He turned it off and locked the door behind him.“Robert?” Ruth’s voice called sleepily from the bedroom.“Is that you?”

“I’m home,” he said. His voice sounded like someone else’s, but Ruth seemed to recognize it.“I’ll be there in a minute.”

He stood under a hot shower until he realized that he could stand there for hours and it wouldn’t remotely be enough.When he got out he found himself with hands planted on the marble countertop, searching the mirror in vain for some sign of the corruption that had lodged inside him. Ruth was asleep when he got in next to her, and soon so was he. If he had dreams, he didn’t remember them.

In the morning he had Ruth phone the office and say he was sick. He lay in bed until noon, dozing intermittently. He saw that he could go on that way all day, so he got up. Ruth watched him without asking questions. She was like a puppy that had been spanked and then fed. She no doubt assumed he’d gotten drunk, maybe gone to one of those places on Highway 70 and been with a prostitute. It disturbed him that she didn’t seem to care.

He volunteered to grill steaks for dinner, and she was pathetically grateful. Somehow he made it through the day and night, and Friday morning he went back to work.

Mitch arrived at 10:30, jumpy and excited, and called Robert into his office. Robert was unable to summon either concern or relief. He was a drafting machine. If Mitch sent him out to do demolition, he would be a demolishing machine.

“Two things,” Mitch said.“First, Howard cancelled the strike meeting he’d called for this afternoon. I heard about it from Leon. I don’t know how you did it, but you are the golden boy around here until further notice.”

Robert nodded.

“Here’s the second thing.” Mitch spun a copy of an offset-printed press release across the desk. It was two pages long and much handled. It had an ibm letterhead and a date of April 7, 1964, two weeks ago. It announced the company’s plans to begin selling a new product to be called the System 360. It was the first mass-produced computer, designed to sit in businesses as well as college computing labs.You could buy one outright for five million at the top end, or rent one starting at less than three thousand dollars—the price of a new car—every month.

“Sounds like a big deal,” Robert said.“Something like that could change the world.”

“You ain’t just whistling Dixie, Slim,” Mitch said.“The world it changes could be your own.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mass-produced.That means manufacturing.That means new plants.That means they need to be in rtp.”

“You may know that, but who’s going to persuade ibm?”

Mitch smiled and leaned back in his chair.“Let’s just say a lot of people would be willing to go a long, long way to get ibm here.All the way up to the governor’s office.This is strictly on the qt, but land sales have been dropping for years.This whole rtp dream could go in the toilet if we don’t snag some major names, and fast.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“Au contraire, cat daddy. I think we’re about to have it made.”

That December he and Ruth drove to Asheville to spend Christmas with his parents. Ruth fought the idea long and hard, but Robert’s parents were older than Ruth’s, and he hardly saw them, while Ruth’s family was a constant presence, in spirit if not in fact.

Robert’s father had retired that summer at age 60. He and Robert’s mother lived in one of the cottages in Biltmore Village, outside the walls of the estate. These were the homes that George Vanderbilt had constructed for the workers who built his mansion in the 1890s, and that his daughter had sold off after World War I.

Ruth had never been to Asheville, never been farther west than Durham, and her delight was obvious as she saw the tall trees and narrow half-timbered houses, lit by moonlight and streetlamps, their tile roofs lightly dusted with snow.“It’s like something out of a Christmas movie,” she said. The house smelled of fresh-baked gingerbread, the Frazier Fir in the living room, the blazing logs in the fireplace. Robert’s parents were truly happy to see them, herding them into the kitchen for snacks and mulled wine before sending them upstairs to bed.

It was late the next morning before Robert managed to be alone with his father.They had gone to the basement, where Robert’s father kept his model railroad layout, now more than tripled in size since Robert had last seen it.

It was ho scale, the tracks 5/8 of an inch wide, one inch in that world equivalent to more than seven feet in Robert’s.The upper left side of the layout, against the back wall, was a miniature version of Biltmore Village in its prime, with a replica of the elegant station that head architect Richard Morris Hunt had designed. From there the tracks wound to the right around a sheer mountainside, passed through a tunnel, and came out in the post-World War I town of Boone, with its icehouse, People’s Bank, and five-and-dime.Then they stretched across a four-foot long bridge over the Cape Fear River and descended, finally, to the Outer Banks at the far right.A pier jutted into glassy rolling waves, and sunbathers in antiquated costumes, less than an inch high, watched from beach umbrellas that bent before an intangible wind.

The front half of the oval layout led inland, and Robert noted that his father had added downtown Durham halfway between the beach and Asheville, complete with sidings where miniature workmen offloaded Brightleaf tobacco onto ramshackle trucks bound for nearby warehouses.

“Durham started with the railroads,” his father said.“Durham Station, 1850, named after the doctor who donated the land for it.” He was wearing a dress shirt and a burgundy cardigan, wool slacks and leather house shoes, and merely being in the presence of his creation seemed to kindle an inner glow. He lifted a hinged section near the beach and stepped into the open center of the layout, then knelt, taking care of his back, to plug the transformer, bolted to the underside, into the wall. The trains and some of the props—the animals, the human figures, the autos, and some of the trees and shrubs—were storebought. Robert’s father had meticulously constructed the buildings and the terrain himself with balsa, plaster, glass, and papier-mâché.The layout preserved forever the summer of 1919, when Robert’s father had been 15 years old.When Robert had asked the reason for that year in particular, his father had rattled off a list of events from 1920: Prohibition, Hitler’s first public speech, the division of Ireland, the first commercial radio stations in the US. Nineteen-nineteen was, his father said,“the last time when things were simple.” Robert could only infer that he meant it personally as well as politically.

Now, as the tiny locomotive pulled out of the Biltmore Village Station, Robert felt the power of that nostalgia wash over him as well. His father had created a world without voodoo ceremonies or superhighways, a world without revolution, without any change at all beyond the occasional miraculous appearance of new, changeless towns or scenic views, where the perfect wave would never break on the shore, leaves never fall, birds never flap away into the sky.

“As best I can tell,” his father said,“in 1919 it was still the Southern that provided passenger service through Durham, taking over the Richmond and Danville roads. Most of the freight was through the Seaboard Air Line, though why they called it an Air Line is beyond me.”

This obsessive knowledge of railroad history was new, too.“You’ve changed your mind,” Robert said.“Haven’t you? About the highway system?”

“Maybe I’m getting old.When your mother and I went to Paris last year, we felt such a sense of community there.We never got in a car or a taxicab. We rode the Metro everywhere, and it was clean and safe and efficient. If we’d chosen to, we could have retreated behind a newspaper or a book, but we didn’t, and so we talked to people we would never have met otherwise and learned of a marvelous flea market and a splendid Moroccan restaurant.”

“America is different,” Robert said.“Europe is old and gray and cluttered. America is wide open.You couldn’t have enough trains to take everyone where they wanted to go.”

“Perhaps,” his father said. His father had always been a gentle man, as sure of himself as he was reluctant to impose that certainty on others. Robert’s mother had been in charge of discipline. The train pulled into Durham station, and Robert suddenly realized that he was standing where Hayti would have been.

“Who owns the world?” Robert’s father asked suddenly.

Robert looked at him in confusion.“I don’t know what you’re asking.The rich and powerful, I suppose?”

Robert’s father nodded.“I suppose. I would like to think that we all own it, in common. It’s an interesting word, is it not,‘common’? It’s a pejorative if applied to manners or dress, but as a plural noun it was the heart of the village. And a thorny problem.Who is responsible for the things we all hold in common? Like the air we breathe, or the oceans? If it’s everyone, is that not the same as saying no one at all?”

“That’s government’s job.”

“It would be, if we gave them the power to do it.We had a nationalized railroad system in 1919, did you know that? The United States Railroad Administration, which lasted a sum total of twenty-six months. It was because of the Great War, of course.The individual railroad companies could not bring themselves to cooperate, and it was hurting the war effort.They were still robber barons by nature.”

“Did I just hear you say ‘robber barons’? I’m stunned. Father, what’s come over you?”

“Too much time on my hands, I suppose.Too much reading and thinking. I used to believe that the rich were the only ones with the resources and objectivity to provide for the public good.As I look around, all I see is that trust betrayed.When I read about the awful violence that these men perpetrated, the Commodore among them, or the stock manipulations that left hundreds of thousands destitute, all for no other purpose than the enhancement of their profits, I fear for the human race.”

“That was a long time ago.We have anti-trust acts and incentives for small business. No one has that kind of power anymore.”

“We can hope so.At any rate, yes, the government nationalized the railroads, got rid of the redundant routes set up by squabbling rivals, raised wages, particularly for the lowest on the ladder, and in the process designed a series of locomotives that became the de facto standard for years to come. Like that one, a usra Light 2-8-2 Mikado.”

He pointed to the locomotive now crossing the seemingly fragile bridge on the back of the layout. Robert understood that the numbers had something to do with the number of wheels on the various parts of the engine, though the parts themselves were somewhat vague to him. Mostly he liked that his father was so deeply immersed that he felt no need to explain.

“It couldn’t last,” his father said.“For Americans nationalization was Bolshevism, and so the roads went back to private industry, which has now all but destroyed them. I’ve heard rumors that the Southern is going to stop passenger service to Durham.That would break my heart.”

Robert’s father no longer drove on the highway except in cases of dire necessity, not trusting his vision or reflexes in high-speed traffic. His mother had never learned to drive at all. Losing the train would mean seeing his parents less.While his love for them did not have the intensity and demands of Ruth’s love for her father, it was nonetheless strong.

“Yes,” Robert said.“I would hate that too.”

“When the day comes that there is no cheap, reliable public transportation in this country, something will have been lost forever. Once the commons is lost, swallowed up by private greed, how do you get it back?”

“I think you’re letting yourself be seduced by the past,” Robert said.“Things change, that’s all.We’re moving faster now, too fast for railroads. People are flying more and more, and the airline industry is regulated. Once the Interstate system is finished, it’ll be cheaper and faster to ship by truck than by rail, and the trucks will pay their own way with gasoline and road use taxes.”

“Perhaps,” his father said.

“Do you think I should quit my job?” Robert said.“It would hurt me to think you disapproved of what I’m doing.”

“No, not at all.You are serving the public, and the public has made its decision.As Carlyle said,‘Do the duty which lies nearest to you.’And it’s the duty of the old to believe the world is going to hell. In that way we make it easier for ourselves to go.”

“Not anytime soon, I hope,” Robert said.

“No, I expect not.And don’t ever think I’m not proud of you.”

They stood there, separate but close, watching the train move through its dream landscape, and Robert suddenly felt it was possible to talk to his father about Ruth.As he was searching for the right words, the door at the top of the stairs opened, and Robert’s mother said,“Lunch is ready, you two! Everybody off at the next station!”

• In the spring, Robert found himself sitting in the audience at a press conference at the offices of the Research Triangle Institute, in the woods east of Durham. It was 11:30 in the morning and Robert was in the suit and white shirt Mitch had instructed him to wear.

Mitch himself was on the podium with Fred Mason and a host of movers and shakers that included North Carolina Governor Dan K. Moore and former Governor Luther Hodges, both pale, overweight, and white-haired. Hodges was now Chairman of the Board of the Research Triangle Foundation, a clear signal that rtp was going to happen.

Next to the politicians were three representatives from ibm: Clarence Frizzell, head of the systems manufacturing division;Arthur L. Becker, former general manager of the Rochester, Minnesota, plant; and Donald F. Busch, former manager of the Endicott, New York, lab.The ibmers looked like tyrannosaurs in dark suits and narrow ties, exuding willpower and monolithic vision. At the back of the audience, silent, the object of much whispering and attention, sat local celebrity Randy Fogg: sportswriter, white supremacist, and mysterious associate of Mitch Antree. Apparently all involved had done a good job of keeping the announcements secret. Once the ibm contingent got to the meat of the proposal, the bankers and developers and real estate agents in the crowd were audibly excited by figures like “$15 million plant,”“400 acre site,” and “over 1,000

employees,” two thirds of whom would be local.

Frizzell had the podium. He was thin and jug-eared, with an uncomfortable smile. A temporary office would open within the next few days to start hiring, he said.They would be looking for highly skilled technical workers, and the number of major universities in the area had been a major factor in the decision.

“And finally,” Frizzell said,“let me introduce to you the gentlemen who will design our rtp campus. Fred Mason and Mitch Antree, of Mason and Antree,Architects and Engineers.”

Mitch and Fred both stood up. Mitch had for once foregone his usual turtleneck in favor of a tie, though he’d kept his sideburns and tinted fighterpilot glasses.As the audience cheered, he looked straight at Robert, grinned, and pantomimed shooting him with his index finger. As Robert had predicted to his father, the pace of change was accelerating, like the thrust of the new Chevy Chevelle SS he’d bought in January, a kick that he could feel in his gut. Robert no longer read the Carolina Times, but the news was all over the Durham Herald as well—Johnson’s wholehearted push for the Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King winning the Nobel Prize, the Bloody Sunday attacks on civil rights marchers in Selma the month before.

They’d been followed two weeks later by the first manned Gemini flight on March 23, the next step in a program that was supposed to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.And if it happened, it would be made possible by computers like the ones ibm would be building at rtp. Robert supposed it had been the same way for many men.There came a time when you made a decision that from that point on you were not a kid anymore. He hadn’t been dancing since his trip to the Biltmore with Mercy, and it hurt sometimes to think he might never dance like that again. Other times he was able to look back on the madness of those days as if from a great distance, and take a quiet pleasure in it. He’d done things that no one else he knew had done and come through them intact.There was a good deal to be said for that.The vivid, sexual dreams that had haunted him were also just a memory. His life had become a paragon of the ordinary.

And then, like a ghost from those times, Barrett Howard walked into the press conference. Like nearly everyone in the room, he wore a dark suit, white shirt, and narrow tie. He pushed past a commotion at the doorway and stood in front of the podium.

“When you talk about white collar jobs,” he said,“you’re talking about white-skinned jobs, am I right?”

Becker, who would be managing the plant, looked at Mitch Antree next to him. Mitch whispered something in his ear, and Becker nodded.“Sir,” Becker said,“we fully support the Equal Employment Opportunity provisions of title VII of the Civil Rights Act.” Becker looked like a retired cop, especially around the eyes.“ibm does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Beyond that, we have an Open Door policy that’s well known in the industry. Employees can take their concerns all the way up to the Chairman.”

“You reading that off a cue card?” Barrett asked. No one laughed, and none of the white photographers moved to take his picture. It was not his audience. Robert, embarrassed, stared at a patch of beige carpet between his feet.

“What special efforts will you be making to recruit black workers?” Howard demanded.

“We will consider any and all qualified applicants,” Becker said.“We need workers.We are ready to get this show on the road.”

The audience cheered and applauded.Topping it, Howard said,“How is a black man going to get the qualifications to build a computer?”

A chair scraped loudly at the back of the room. Robert braced himself and turned to look. Randy Fogg, all six foot four of him, had gotten to his feet. In a thick central Carolina accent, Fogg said,“This here is a press conference, Mr. Howard.What paper do you represent?”

“I’m here as a citizen.”

“I believe you’ve had answers to your questions, Citizen Howard. It sounds to me like your people are going to get every consideration.”

Howard winced at the words “your people.” It seemed to Robert that Howard had only two choices: He could walk away with the remnants of his dignity, or he could go berserk and physically attack Randy Fogg.The temptation for the second option was strong, and Robert could see Howard fight it down.With one last look to the group on the dais, lingering longest on Mitch, Howard pushed his way out of the room.

Fogg sat down and Governor Moore stood up and a few more banalities were passed around praising the other fine businesses who had been pioneers in the park, and how that had helped sway ibm’s decision, not to overlook the vision of the men like Luther Hodges who had created the park in the first place.The mood of self-congratulation and imminent wealth soon returned. Robert’s own recovery was slower. Howard, he reminded himself, and all the things that he and Howard had done, belonged to the past.All eyes were on the future now, and the past had no power to hurt him. That afternoon Fred Mason officially unveiled the plans for the ibm plant to Mitch’s staff.The design was good enough, Robert thought, to have won on its own merits, and he hoped that in fact it had, with no interference from the Durham Select Committee or anyone else.

It was an open secret that Mason no longer did his own renderings, instead farming them out to a local painter who also did covers for science fiction paperbacks. In this case the artist seemed to have served both masters at once. The building was white, clean, and restful, at home in the woods it inhabited, yet quietly dazzling.The people who moved through its covered walkways and lounged in the grassy margins looked like a golden race from a distant future, where computer technology had brought human perfection.

It was only as an afterthought that Robert noticed that not one of them was black. Mitch had consulted on the engineering, and whatever his other failings, he knew his business.The walls would be precast, pre-stressed, with Styrofoam panels laid into the concrete to reduce weight and increase insulation.The double-T floor/ceiling members were strong, thin, and elegant. Maurice had made a start on some of the floor plans and elevations; Robert recognized his signature north arrow on the tracings.They were works of art, with a line quality Robert had never been able to achieve, and hand lettering that exuded style and confidence.

“Some of you may be wondering,” Mitch said,“how we plan to handle this volume of work. So this is a good time to lay another announcement on you. We’re going to be expanding in to the rest of the building and hiring more staff.We’re on our way to being the biggest firm in the Triangle.”

There was scattered applause. Robert didn’t mean to spoil the moment, but the question seemed to pop out of his mouth before he had time to think. “What about Hayti?”

“What about it?” Mitch said.“We’ll have enough staff to deal with Hayti if and when the time comes.”

“Pah,” Fred Mason said distinctly.

The room went completely quiet. Robert listened to the fans creak overhead.

“Hayti is over and done,” Mason said.“And good riddance.”

He was huge, lion-headed, invincible. He stared at Robert as if daring him to argue.After a few long seconds, Robert looked at the floor.

“Now,” Mason went on,“as Mitch said, we’re hiring. If you can recommend anyone, we’ll be paying bonuses for referrals.And until we get to full staff, there will be plenty of overtime, at time and a half, for anyone who wants it.”

Robert caught Mitch’s eye. Mitch grinned and shrugged. It’s none of my business, Robert told himself.As the man said, I’m all right, Jack.That turn of phrase evoked Mercy’s voice unexpectedly, and there, in the midst of the celebration, Robert found himself counting his losses. The official groundbreaking ceremony was September 23, five months later. Luther Hodges was there, and so was ibm chairman Thomas Watson, Jr., sharing a strange little three-handled shovel with an ibm vp. Newspaper stringers took the obligatory photos while Randy Fogg watched from the crowd. Within a month Robert was setting the bolts in the foundation that would hold the precast wall sections. It was good to be building something of substance, something monumental. Robert was chief of the erection crew, a title he found more than a little ironic, given the sexual famine that prevailed in the bungalow on Woodrow Street. He had Tommy and Leon Coleman as senior men, and up to a dozen day workers, white and black, as needed. He theoretically reported to the general contractor, a grizzled white man in his fifties who was missing three different fingers between his two hands, making him, to Robert’s mind, someone who didn’t learn from his mistakes.The new weight that the Mason and Antree name carried meant that the general was all smiles and accommodation, and Robert got everything he needed. On a crisp November morning they gathered to bolt the first wall sections into place.The crane was there when Robert arrived, and the operator turned out to be Porter, the snuff-dipping union man from Robert’s first demolition. Porter was surprised that Robert knew his name, and didn’t seem to recall their first encounter. Robert felt no need to refresh his memory.

The job was exacting, and a cold north wind didn’t help.The crane had to lift the multi-ton wall section upright by two steel rings that protruded from the top, raise it into the air, then delicately lower it so the men could guide the holes in its base plates onto the threaded ends of the bolts in the foundation.The bolts—four per base plate—were fitted with nuts and washers. Once the slab rested on the washers, the men made minor adjustments to the nuts below to bring the wall section plumb.At that point a second set of washers and bolts went onto the top of the plate.The final concrete floor would fill in around the bolts and create a structure that would be as strong and permanent as anything man had ever built. In the meantime, somebody had to climb a shaky ladder in the biting wind and hang a plumb bob from the top of the wall,20 feet up.They all took their turns, all except Porter, who sat and dipped snuff and offered advice.“It ain’t my ass on the line,” he would begin,“but if it was me, I’d have me a cutting torch here and cut them base plates to where them bolts really are instead of where some genius thought they might be.”This after Leon had used a six foot section of pipe to correct the angle on one of the bolts. It didn’t help that Porter seemed to have trouble with the third panel he tried to lift. He’d barely gotten the top end clear of the ground when the butt end began to shift. He yanked hard on it, then suddenly slacked off, and the panel thrashed at the end of the steel cable like an angry fish. Leon was standing next to Robert.“He keep jerking that panel like that, he going to pull the ring right out of it.”

“He must know that,” Robert said.“Right?”

Leon didn’t answer.

Porter began hoisting again and got the panel nearly to vertical, then slacked off again.The entire crane shook as the weight of the slab hit the limits of the cable.