buddah

“LOOK AT THIS LITTLE Buddha-head dude, man,” one of them said. He pushed closer. “He got them Chinese eyes.”

“He got a big old head, too, man. I think we should make him say somethin. He don’t respect us,” another voice said from behind him. Buddah kept his lips pressed warm together and felt the voices slide forward, tighter, taking away the air. He couldn’t breathe, and woke from the dream with the dry heat pressing through the walls; hot air seemed to waft into the room as if a giant mouth were hovering around it. A tickle of sweat curled around the skin behind his ear. He lay still, listening for the snores of Rodriguez and Sotelo, the two boys who shared his room. But their beds were empty, he saw, and fear pulled at his ribs. Did Gaines and T. C. make them guys leave so they could jump me? he thought, and when he turned his head and felt the rough pillowcase against his neck he remembered that Sotelo and Rodriguez had gone home to L.A. on a week pass.

It was his seventh day. I can’t go on home-pass till I been in this place for a month, he said to himself. They gon talk me to death, bout behavior and pattern of your life, and them Crips gon try and dog me every time I turn around. He opened the door and looked out at the bare land, the stiff yellow grass like dog fur in patches, that surrounded St. Jude’s School for Boys. Now everybody on they home-pass, and ain’t nobody left but me and them guys that messed up or don’t got nowhere to go, he thought. The gray-green weeds close to the fence shivered in the wind. Every day he thought of the miles of desert and boulders he had seen when the social worker drove him in from L.A. “Your program is six months,” the man had said.

No one else was awake yet; none of the other boys were roaming the walks in front of the buildings, hanging over the balconies, waiting for an overheated car to pull in off the highway. If a woman ever got out to look for help, they would swarm like dust toward her. Buddah listened to the wind. Must be lettin us sleep cause nobody goin home. He looked down the railing to the other end of the building to see if Jesse, the counselor for the thirteen-to-fifteen-year-olds, was awake, but his door was still closed. A long row of doorknobs glinted in the sun. Third door Gaines and T. C. Sotelo said they ain’t got no home-pass. They gon be on me all the time, talkin bout am I gon buy Gaines some pants with my state money. Am I gon give up the ducats.

He thought of the dream, the shapes pressing forward, and he touched the trunk on the floor by his bed. That circle of voices was how he had gotten his name, months ago. A delegation of Bounty Hunters stood around him when he neared the project. “Fuckin Buddha-head, can’t even see out them eyes, they so slanty.” He’d been waiting for it, and had gifts ready for them: a car stereo, sunglasses from the Korean store, and himself. “I can pull for you,” he whispered to them.

At St. Jude’s, he had covered the scarred top of his trunk with a sheet of white paper, the way the others had, and written his name in curved letters:

BUDDAH

SOUL GARDENS BOUNTY HUNTER’S

He thought the name might protect him here, but it had been a mistake. He wanted to be left alone, to collect his things invisibly, not to speak. That first night, when they were asked, Sotelo and Rodriguez read the trunk and told the other boys, “New baby? He’s red, man.” Bounty Hunters wore red bandannas, called each other “Blood.” Crips were blue-raggers, and shouted “Cuzz” before they shot someone.

But there were only two other red rags at St. Jude’s, and they were in the oldest group. In Buddah’s group there were two Crips. Gaines and T.C. Harris had flashed their hands at him, their fingers and thumbs contorted in the signals Buddah had always run from. Gaines fanned his fingers out over his biceps and said, “Oh, yeah.”

Now it ain’t nobody in the room but me, six more days. Buddah looked at the low, wide windows and imagined the shapes he would see at night, blocking the light from the parking lot when they walked past the curtains; he saw the room as dark and gold-toned as if it were night now, and the crack of light that would cut in as they opened the door.

He let the lock clink against the metal edging of the trunk. It contained everything he had at St. Jude’s: the jeans, white T-shirts and cheap canvas shoes Jesse took him to buy with part of the state money. “You got to lock your shit up all the time if you want to keep it,” Jesse had said, and Buddah laughed through his nose. Locks ain’t about nothin. Shit. They tellin me bout locks.

Buddah opened Sotelo’s nightstand and saw only paper covered with drawings of heavy-eyed girls. He bent and looked under Sotelo’s bed; he’d seen him drop something behind the head one night. This was the first time he’d been alone, able to look. He saw a blunt shape against the wall, lying in the folds of green bedspread. It was a short length of pipe, dull heavy iron. Shit, everybody must got one a these, he thought. He bent to Rodriguez’s side and heard Jesse’s voice, heard him banging on doors with the flat of his hand, calling, “Get up, hardheads, we got places to go.”

Montoya’s clipped words came from the doorway next to Buddah’s. “Hey, man, Jesse, you wake up so early? You miss me already, man?”

“Yeah, Montoya, I couldn’t wait,” Jesse said. “Get ready for breakfast.”

Buddah slipped to his trunk quickly and dropped the pipe behind it. He heard it land, muffled, on the edge of his bedspread, and then Jesse swung open the door, saying, “Five minutes, Smith. How you like this heat?”

Buddah looked at Jesse’s long feet on the hump of the doorway. Ain’t here to be likin it.

“Still can’t speak, huh?” Jesse said. “Maybe you’ll talk at the beach if we cool you off.” He turned and Buddah saw the flash of a bird diving to the parking lot for potato-chip crumbs.

They waited for Jesse near the long white van. Montoya, his hair combed smooth and feather-stiff, walked his boxer’s walk in baggy cholo khakis. Carroll, a white boy, leaned against the van, arms folded under the “Highway to Hell” that crossed his T-shirt. Buddah stood apart from them, in the shade of a squat palm tree, preparing to be invisible. His arms were folded too, and he pushed down on his feet, feeling the long muscles in his thighs tighten. The ghostly bushes past the fence turned in the wind.

Won’t nobody see me. Them Crips be busy talkin shit to Jesse, and I ain’t gotta worry bout nobody else. I’ma get me somethin at the beach. It’ll be somethin there.

The sound of electric drums, sharp as gunfire, came from the balcony. Buddah waited until they approached. T. C. wore new razor-creased Levis and a snow-white T-shirt, a blue cap set high and slanted on his sunglasses. He carried the radio, a box of cassettes and a can of soda, singing loudly, “It shoulda been blue” over the words of the woman who sang, “It shoulda been you.”

Gaines followed him, pointing at Buddah when T. C. sang “blue.” “If we was at home, nigga, it be a .357 to the membrane,” he whispered to Buddah, taking the pointing finger and running it around his ear.

Buddah pulled in the sides of his cheeks, soft and slippery when he bit them with his back teeth. Yeah, but I wouldn’t be wearin no red rag, cause I ain’t no Bounty Hunter. I’m a independent. Red, blue, ain’t about shit to me. He was careful not to let his lips move; he had to be conscious of it, because when he spoke to himself, he would feel his lips touching each other sometimes and falling away as soft and slight as tiny bubbles popping. Probably look like I’m fixin to cry, he thought.

No bandannas were allowed at St. Jude’s, no careless hand signals, nothing to spark gang fights. Gaines looked carefully for Jesse, and smiled close to Buddah’s face. “The red rag is stained with the blood of disrespectful Hunters, slob. You gon respect us.” He got one a them devil peaks, Buddah thought, like Mama say when people hair all in a point on they forehead. Mama say them some evil people with peaks. He glanced away, at T.C., who was uninterested, popping his fingers and singing.

You don’t never stop talkin. You always runnin your mouth, that way everybody look at you, know where you are. He saw Jesse appear from the office, and Gaines moved away. Not like me. I’m bad cause you don’t see me.

It was easy because he was so small and quiet; he walked into the stores imagining that everything in his face blended together, skin, lips, eyes all the same color. He wasn’t hungry with hard rings around his stomach, like when he didn’t eat anything for a long time, but he wanted something else in his mouth, a solid taste like he had chosen whatever he wanted. When they still lived in a house, when he was ten, his mother left pots of red beans on the stove when she went to work in the afternoon. Sometimes she left greens and a pan of cornbread, or three pieces of chicken, one each for him, Danita and Donnie.

He used to walk with her to the bus stop, saying nothing, watching her skin begin to shine from the heat, like molasses, with a liquid red sheen underneath the color. Her mouth moved all the time, to smile, to tell him to hurry and get back to the house and damn it, don’t be hangin out in the street. Say somethin, David! All right, now. Lock the door.

He always waited until five o’clock had passed and then left the house, saying sternly to his younger brother and sister, “Y’all watch TV. Don’t move. I be back.”

He stepped over the jagged hole in the wooden porch and walked past children riding bicycles, thin knees angling like iron pipes. The store was five blocks away, a small grocery store with a Korean man behind the register. Women crowded the store then, shopping before they went home from work. They walked around the stacks of cans blocking the aisle, picked over the bright, shiny vegetables and fruit.

Fingering the quarter in his pocket, he brushed past the women near the bread and potato chips. He bent next to one woman, watching, and slid bags of potato chips into the pit of his dark blue wind-breaker; they rested silent and light against his stomach. For Danita. He imagined his eyes were like ball bearings, greased, so that he didn’t move enough of anything else to rustle. Zingers for himself. At the counter loaded with candy, he knelt to look at the bottom row and beside his knee, pushed a Butterfinger up the sleeve of his jacket. He paid for Donnie’s pack of gum, watching the Korean man’s eyes, comparing them to his own, holding his plasticlike jacket very still. I got somethin, he thought, looking at the man’s hands. I got your stuff.

Walking home quickly, he always touched the food with the same pride. The store was different. He had slipped in and out, and something was changed, missing.

“Oh, man, look who comin, Loco Lopez,” T.C. said. “He done lost his home-pass cause they busted him with that paint thinner. My man was high.”

“Qué pasa?” Lopez said to Montoya.

“Shut up, T. C,” Jesse said. “Let’s go. Only reason I’m takin you to the beach is cause it’s so damn hot out here I can’t think.”

“I got shotgun,” T.C. said.

Jesse looked at him hard and said, “Who are you, ghetto child goes to the beach? Where’s your lawn chair and picnic basket?”

T. C. opened the van’s front door and said, “I left the caviar at my crib, homes. Too Cool only taking the essentials. And I been to the beach, O.K.? Me and my set went to Venice, and it was jammin, all them bikinis and shit.”

“Yeah, well, don’t expect to pick up any girls at this beach, not dressed like that,” Jesse said. He looked at them. Buddah watched Gaines sit alone in the long seat behind T. C. Montoya and Lopez sat together in the back seat; Carroll and Buddah sat far from each other in the middle of the van.

“Anybody gets out of my sight, we go back,” Jesse started, turning onto the highway. “Anybody talks shit, like you guys did at the skating rink last week, T. C, we’re gone, right back to the Jude’s.” Jesse paused to look in the rearview mirror. “I’m takin you guys to Laguna. It’s not the closest, but it’s small, so I can keep an eye on you.”

The back of Gaines’s neck glittered with sweat. Buddah felt the hot wind from the window scour his face; he watched T. C. rest his hand on the radio and pop his shoulders so they rippled. Buddah felt a tremor in his chest, a settling of his spine, and he touched the window.

The low purplish mountains that rimmed the desert were wrinkled in strange, thin folds and trenches, like his grandmother’s neck. He saw her, sitting in her tiny yard in Long Beach the way she’d been the only time he’d ever visited her. She was silent like him, her body rocking slightly all the time, watching her greens and peas grow against the chainlink fence. The velvety skin near her hairline was still tight, and her eyes were slanted upward like his. The mountains came closer as the van began to leave the desert, and soon they were smoother, covered with burnt-gold grass and stunted trees. Buddah was thinking that he hadn’t seen a beach in Long Beach when the music began to beat through the van. T.C. drew circles with his hands in the air, and Jesse reached over and turned the radio off. “Man, you ain’t got no soul,” T. C. complained.

“I’m gonna tell you guys, no blasting the box when we get there,” Jesse began again. “And something else. Montoya, Lopez, Smith, I don’t want you guys even looking at anybody’s stuff. Montoya, you see what happened to your buddy Jimenez when he took that jacket at the skating rink. Two months added to his program.”

“So, man, I been a good boy,” Montoya said, and Lopez laughed.

“That’s why your mother said she didn’t want you home this time, right?” Jesse said. “Last home-pass you took twenty dollars from her purse.”

Now he gon start all this talk about behavior and why do you steal, Buddah thought. But Jesse said, “Smith,” and looked into the mirror again. “You been doin pretty good, but this is your first off-ground, so don’t blow it.” Buddah felt them all look at him, and he turned his face to the window, angry, tasting the inside of his cheeks again. Bunk you, man. Don’t be tellin me shit. A wine-colored Thunderbird pulled past the van. The faces inside were green behind their windows, staring at the name painted on the van door, at the boys. What y’all lookin at? He felt the glass against his lips. You lookin at me, and I had your T-Bird. Woulda been set.

They had moved to the seventh building of the Solano Gardens housing project, an island run by Bounty Hunters in an ocean of Crips, just after his eleventh birthday. At the welter of railroad tracks behind the junior high, he walked rapidly, seeing the blue bandannas, the watching faces.

But he lived in Soul Gardens; the Bounty Hunters owned him. He had to be occasionally valuable to them, because no one could step outside the project alone, without a protective cadre of red rags. He watched them gather in the courtyard and then walked slightly behind. They left him alone until they needed something.

The dent-puller, long and thin, pierced into car locks easily and pulled the entire silver circles out for him. The cars were like houses, each with its own smell and a push of air that he felt against his face for an instant when he bent to pull the stereo, someone else’s smell that he let escape. He learned to start the car if Ellis told him to, and the feel of each steering wheel under his fingers for a moment made his stomach jump. Soft, leather-bound he’d felt once, but cold and ridged usually.

They hadn’t gotten caught when they stripped or stole cars in the neighborhood, but Ellis decided he wanted a T-Bird. At the house he finally chose in Downey, where the 7-11 they passed had only white faces inside, a wine-red Thunderbird was parked. Ellis looked at Buddah with a strange smile on his face. Buddah had been waiting for this, too. “Ain’t doin no house,” Buddah said, and Ellis pushed him. “You know they got a VCR. You better be down,” Ellis said.

Buddah loved the cars, their metallic shine like crystal sugar on the fruit candy that was his mother’s favorite. Some of them even smelled sweet. But the house, even when he stood under the eaves moving the lock, smelled heavy and wrong, and when the door opened and the foreign air rushed at him, he heard the screaming of the alarm and then running.

The ocean glinted like an endless stretch of blue flake on a hood.

Buddah had never seen so much water, so many white people. Jesse said, “What you guys think, huh?”

“None a these women got booty,” T.C. said. “No ass to hold onto.” Jesse drove down a street that curved toward the water. Clean, shining cars lined both sides: Mercedes, BMWs, station wagons, a Porsche. Buddah looked at the cars, at the chalky clean sidewalks and smooth grass. Jesse circled twice before he found a parking space, and then he said, “Damn, we don’t have quarters. We’re gonna have to walk to a store to get some, cause if I pull out we won’t find another space.”

They trailed behind him like fish, swerving and shifting. “Where we goin, man?” Lopez asked. “I don’t see no 7-11 or nothin.”

Up close, the cars looked even better, a gleaming line unbroken by a parking space as far as they walked, the perfect doors and weak round locks. Ellis would tell me to pull the Mercedes, Buddah thought, and just then Gaines said, “Mercedes, the ladies, when I get one they gon be crazy.” Buddah slowed; he’d been thinking about telling Ellis where the cars were, but when he heard Gaines’s voice, the same one that had been whispering to him every day for a week, he thought, shit, I don’t even know where we are. Ain’t tellin Ellis shit when he ax me where I been. Think everything for him.

They walked through an art show that lined the sidewalk, and had to go single file to get past. Buddah watched T. C. rock his shoulders in step to the beat inside his head, passing closely by people to brush them with air, making them move and look at him. Jesse pulled them inside a restaurant lobby and went to get change. “I ain’t seen no brothers, man,” Gaines said to T.C.

“I’m tellin you,” T. C. said. “We gon be specks like on a sheet.”

At the start of the steep asphalt trail down to the crescent-shaped beach, a large sign read:

Glenn E. Vedder Ecological Reserve

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE

Shells, Rocks, Plants, Marine Life, or Game Fish so that others may see and enjoy them

TAKE OUT ONLY THAT WHICH YOU BROUGHT IN

Jesse stopped and read the sign silently for a moment; T. C. said, “Man, it ain’t school time,” when he read it out loud. After Jesse finished, T.C. said, “Thank you, Mr. Man. How people supposed to know you went to the beach if you don’t got no souvenir?”

“You suppose to come back with a suntan, man,” Lopez said. “Big problem for you, huh?”

“Man, I’ll kick your ass,” T. C. said, and Jesse pushed him away.

Buddah stared at the shifting colors, felt the sand against his palm when he sat down. Green plants cascaded from the cliffs behind them, and the bathing suits and water were in motion. He saw a sea gull overhead, hovering. It was clean, thick white, like his T-shirts after his mother bleached them. The gull glided, circled, dipping slightly to turn; it never moved its hard, sharp wings, just bore down on the crowd of people and suddenly pulled up to place its feet on a rock ten feet away. He look just like T. C, Buddah thought. Think he bad, showin off.

T. C. had been watching, too. “That’s how we is in the set, man, be swoopin, just like that bird, ain’t never move false,” he said. “We see what we want and we on it, cool.” Buddah looked at Gaines. His shoulders were hunched uncomfortably, like loaves of bread against his neck, and he stared out at the water. “What we suppose to do?” he said to Jesse. “Just sit here?”

“I didn’t say you guys couldn’t move, I just said you can’t disappear,” Jesse answered. “Do whatever you want. Look at the scenery. Don’t drown.” No one moved. “Can any of you swim?”

Carroll said, “I used to know. I went to a lake one time.” They looked at him. “A goddamn lake ain’t no ocean,” Gaines said. He looked back at the water.

“Just go touch it,” Jesse said. “It won’t kill you.” He took off his shoes, and his long feet were ashy gray and rough. Walking toward the water, he said, “Come on, I’ll save you if you trip and get your hair wet.”

Somebody else gotta move first, Buddah thought. Not me. We specks for sure, like them rocks. T.C. turned up his radio; he and Gaines watched girls walk by and stare. Carroll, Montoya and Lopez had gone to the water’s edge, where they stood near Jesse. Buddah saw Jesse gesturing to boats far out on the ocean.

“Forget this shit, man, I ain’t sittin with no slob red-ragger,” T. C. said. “Ain’t shit to do here.” He stood over Buddah. Gaines was watching the waves; he seemed to have forgotten Buddah.

You ain’t bad now, Too Cool. Nobody payin good attention to you like you want. You just a speck. T. C. picked up the radio and pushed Gaines’s foot. “Dude down there sellin sodas, homes. Come on, man, fore I have to fuck this red boy up.” Buddah waited. Gaines looked at him and said, “When you givin me my money, punk? I ain’t playin.” He stood up. It ain’t your money. Buddah got up and walked forward slightly, waiting until he heard the music leave.

He looked at the tangle of wet black rocks on the left end of the beach, about twenty yards away, the spray flying from behind them. He felt eyes on him, from the blankets and towels. Now I’m botherin you, cause I ain’t movin, I ain’t swimmin or nothin. How you know I ain’t come to this beach all the time and it’s boring?

Three kids made a sand castle, looking up at him now and then. It was plain and round, and the walls sagged because the sand was too wet, too close to the waves. See, I woulda had that castle sharp. Have me some shells line up on the outside, have a whole fence made outta shells. Jesse and the others walked back to the blankets. “Where’s Gaines and T. C?” Jesse said. Buddah lifted his chin toward the soda seller. “Don’t get too happy about bein here, man,” Jesse said impatiently. “You could be sweatin back at the Jude’s.”

“I’m goin over here,” Buddah said.

Jesse raised his eyebrows. “He says. Don’t go past the rocks.”

When he made it to the first rock, it was dry and grayish; he ran his hand over the hard warmth. Tiny broken shells were jammed inside the rock’s holes. Buddah walked toward the wet, glistening black closer to the ocean. He stood on the edge of the wet sand, feeling his feet sink, and saw the smallest waves, the tiny push of water just at the edge, after the wave had washed up on the beach and before the water pulled back. The dying waves lined the sand with circlets of bright white. He walked forward and smeared the lines with his shoe.

The tall square rock in front of him had a smooth side, from which a fat pale boy climbed down. Buddah stopped, turning away from the boy’s staring face. When he had passed, Buddah walked to the wet part and sat on one of the low, flat rocks. From far away, it had looked deep black, but he saw that it was only slightly wet. Green feathery plants hung near the bottom, and he was surprised at the shells and animals clinging to the top. The shells clamped down tightly when he touched them. Lockin up, like you a house. But I could get you if you didn’t stay inside.

I could get some a these shells, like them big pretty ones. I go out on them rocks and people only see black, not me. The rocks led to a long formation—a pier, almost, out into the water. Buddah pulled himself up the face of the first rock; at the top, white foam spilled over the end. Small pools of water, still as plastic, were everywhere around him as he walked, picking his way past clumps of seaweed, until he found a dry spot to sit on.

I’m gone. Can’t nobody see nothin. He felt his skin warm to the rock. Snails and long insects that looked like roaches dotted the rock. Buddah saw a small snail near his hand; its shell was dull and dry, ashy like Jesse’s feet. He touched it with his finger and it didn’t move or tighten down like the round shells. He must be dyin, too dry. Must of got left here when the water dried up from one a his holes. A pool of water nearby was empty. He pulled at the snail lightly, wincing at the sucking resistance. Let go. You know you can’t be out here all dry. It’s some water for you right here. He turned the shell up to look at it; the rim was pink, and a blank, hard eye covered the snail inside. You can open up, let me check you out. But you probably ugly like any other snail.

He dropped the shell into the shallow pool and it was suddenly vivid under the water—the pale dull purple darkened to green, and brighter markings showed in a spiral pattern. The snail came out after a second and rocked its shell. Buddah pulled it from the water. You done lived dry that long. I’ma take you back, get some salt from the kitchen, make you some good water like you need. He waited for the snail to right itself in his palm, but it stayed inside. Cool, stay locked till we get back. Gently, he pushed the shell into his jeans pocket.

The darkness of the rocks made him secure. He turned around slowly, squinting until he could see Jesse and the others. They were drinking sodas. Carroll stood with his feet in the water, arms folded, watching the boats.

Buddah walked farther down the rocks. He sat again near the largest pool of water; whole and broken shells and round, smooth stones waited on the bottom, their colors clear and glossy like red beans soaking in a bowl.

“Slob, man, you been out there playin with yourself?” Gaines said when Buddah approached.

“Shut up, Gaines. That’s why we gotta go, cause you guys get bored and talk too much shit,” Jesse said. He turned to Buddah. “I was hoping you would see us packin up, Smith.”

Jesse started up the beach, talking to Carroll. T.C. and Gaines waited to walk behind Buddah. He felt the shells in his pockets, hard weight against his thighs like money. “You lettin us get behind you, slob, so watch out,” Gaines whispered. “You all alone.”

Buddah let his head fall back a little so that he looked up the sandy trail. I got something from here. Y’all could be lyin bout bein here, but not me. He felt himself out on the rock, in the spray, listening to the power of the waves, and Gaines’s and T. C.’s voices were like bird cries, far away. “Why you look at the water? You can’t hide in no water. I’m tired of waitin for my money, pussy.”

Buddah fingered the sharpest of the shells and smiled with his head turned toward the cliff.

It was almost ten o’clock, lights out. The noises circled around the courtyard and flew up to his room; through the window screen, Buddah could hear the older boys in the next building shouting something to their counselor and Gaines and T. C. talking out on the balcony, the radio still playing from their doorway. Jesse would come by in a few minutes and make sure they all went into their rooms. Buddah listened in the dark.

“Inside, guys. If you didn’t run your mouths so much today, I was thinking of takin you to the Stallone flick next weekend.”

“What flick?” T.C. said.

“First Blood,” Jesse answered.

“Shit, man, why you gotta say that word in my presence and shit,” T. C. said. Buddah imagined his head jerking violently. “First Cuzz, I told you. You disrespectin me.”

“You see, T. C? I’m so tired of that shit. It ain’t the real world. You got table clean-up all week.”

“Man, Jesse, you the one don’t know. You could die for that shit.”

“Inside, punks.”

Jesse stopped at Montoya’s door, and then Buddah heard the feet slide to his. Jesse was wearing house shoes; he’d be going to bed now, and the night man would watch St. Jude’s.

Light flashed in the doorway. Buddah sat motionless, but Jesse didn’t leave. He walked to the trunk suddenly, where the white paper was brightly lit. He see the pipe, Buddah thought, and pushed hard with his feet on the floor. “Bounty Hunters, shit,” Jesse said. “What bounty did you get? Nothin valuable to you, just shit to sell and all this red-rag crap. Soon as you start talkin, you’ll probably bore me with all that shit, too.” He waited, and then closed the door.

Uh uh, cause I ain’t workin no job for the blue, like T. C. and them. But now Jesse got them mad, and they probably come. Buddah got the shells out, arranging them in lines, in fences. He leaned forward and touched the cool pipe on the floor. I could wait and wait, and then what? He went to the sink, where the snail was in the soap dish, and pushed at the tightly-closed shell. You waitin, too, for me to leave you alone. But you could wait forever.

The night man’s hard shoes cracked the grit on the balcony when he opened the doors every hour in the beginning. Buddah knew he would quit checking after he heard no noise; he would sit in the room downstairs and watch TV. Buddah waited until the moonlight shifted in the window. He sat, still listening, until the brightest part had gone over the roof. He took off his shirt and opened his door.

His bare feet pressed into the sharp sand. He imagined himself on the black rocks, invisible as he pressed close to the stucco wall. T. C. and Gaines were breathing hard and long, he could hear through their screen. The doorknob turned easily, since it was turned so many times every day and night. Buddah stood in the close air by the wall and listened to them breathe. He had stood by his mother every time, hearing her throat vibrate, before he went out to meet Ellis and the rest of them. Buddah moved away from the wall. The cassettes were on top of T. C.’s trunk, in neat stacks. Buddah lifted off the top four from the closest stack and held them tightly together so they wouldn’t click. He pulled the door slowly, straight toward him, and turned the knob. On the balcony, he stood for a moment, looking down the dark tunnel of the overhanging roof to the edge of the stairway and then the flat land past the fence that was exposed, lit silver as flashbulbs by the moonlight coming from behind the buildings, from behind his back.