Gon on, Jesus. Bust another one.
Yeah. Bust another one.
Stop repeatin after me, bitch.
Keylo, go to the sto fo me. Buy me a … he nodded at Keylo’s forty.
What about them stories?
Later for that.
Come on, Freeze.
Keylo.
Damn. Keylo tail-wagged off to the store — no, walking like an antelope, lifting hoof from knee.
And buy Jesus one too.
No, thanks, Jesus said. I’m straight. He fluttered his feathers.
No Face, go with him. Make sure he don’t get lost.
Aw, Freeze. But I wanna hear—
No Face.
Damn. Hey, Keylo, wait up. No Face trotted off. Jesus watched him grow smaller and disappear.
A pigeon skimmed the earth in flight, then headed toward the sky, and the sky breathed it in.
Freeze worked his arms through his T-shirt, and covered his bare chest and back. Pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pants pocket. Shook the pack until one cigarette eased its length, extended, like a radio antenna. Want a square?
No, Jesus said. I quit smokin.
Wish I could quit. Freeze pulled the antenna from the pack, tapped it against the back of his hand, then stuck it in his mouth. Using his thumbnail, he flamed a match. Where yo daddy?
What? Jesus said.
I said, where yo daddy?
My daddy? Jesus stood in a mass of tobacco smoke.
Yeah.
Jesus breathed in the silence. You don’t know me.
Freeze watched the lit cigarette end. Where yo daddy?
Hey, you don’t know me. Why you askin bout my daddy?
We got something to settle.
You must mean somebody else. He don’t even know you.
He stole a bird from me.
Sound strikes what skin is meant to shield. Jesus wobbles. What?
He stole a bird from me.
A trapdoor shuts inside Jesus’s chest. A bird?
Yes.
My daddy? Jesus fingers his chest, points to his heart.
Yeah. His name John, ain’t it?
Nawl.
His name ain’t John?
Yeah.
John ain’t yo father?
Nawl.
Who yo father?
Jesus looked into the sky. Thinking: I get it. No Face told you. Yall running a game. He laughed.
You think that’s funny?
Jesus drank Freeze’s milk-white eyes. No.
Ain’t John yo father? John Jones?
Yeah, he my father. So, what up?
Like I said. Freeze took a drag on the cigarette. Exhaled through his nose, dragonlike. He stole a bird from me. Light lay in four colors on his face.
You serious?
Freeze said nothing.
Jesus shook his head. Fingered the words in his mind, measured them, searched for color and sense. When did he steal it?
Freeze smoked the square down to the butt. Does it matter? He crushed the butt under his heel.
John know you?
Know me good enough to steal from me. Know me good enough to steal from me then run off and hide like a lil bitch.
Jesus let truth move inside him, let himself move around inside it.
So now you know.
Yes.
And you believe?
Yes.
Good. So then you know. Know what I need you to do. So then you know that I need you to—
I know, Jesus said. I know.
You know?
I know. And I will.
You will?
Yes. Yes I will. Yes, I’ll do it.
You can always choose—
Wait, Jesus said. He halted Freeze’s words with his palms. Pushed them back. Wait. Feet carried him away. He didn’t want to hear any more. No reason to. No reason, will, or desire. He walked, putting time and distance between himself and Freeze’s request, command, mission. Maybe Freeze did know John. Maybe. And maybe John had stolen from him. No surprise there. John was a thief. Water-slick. Easy in, easy out. And John was forever desperate, light, seeking to add some weight to his pockets. But would he accept any color or shape of pay? God marked every sparrow, Gracie said. Every sparrow. Gravity, Jesus carried the thought inside. Raised it. High. Descended down the spit-mottled steps of the subway.
Part Two CHOSEN
2
THE TRAIN LEAVES AT TEN. John held two pieces of luggage — a suitcase and a flight bag — muscled out in each hand. Runs express. A ten-hour ride. Call you as soon as I get there tonight.
John’s promise was like money in the bank. Gracie could count on it. In thirty years he had never missed a call.
You heard from Jesus?
Gracie heard nails in his voice. No. She recalled the day John tied Jesus’s shellacked baby booties to his rearview mirror, the hanging boots running when the red Eldorado kicked into motion.
That boy slippin. If he keep it up, he be six feet deep.
I guess so. She carried two images of Jesus. The last thing she saw of him, Christmas Day on his way out her door, the black circle stitched dead center to the back of his red winter jacket, still and watchful a sinful black eye, clean and clear, smooth as the back of his bald head. And the first (minutes after his red birth), the empty cave of his bawling mouth challenging her to enter.
Don’t worry. John put his hand in the small of her back, drew her in close. She watched his brown eyes, dark, wide, bottomless, two thick high piles of leaves. Maybe we could—
But she already knew the answer before he had fully shaped the question. Maybe we could have another one. To make up for the one we lost, Jesus. She slipped her tongue in his mouth. His met hers, and they held one another, hands and tongues exploring.
He drew back. Come on, now. You know I could stay here all day. But I can’t. I gotta meet Lucifer. His brown eyes twinkled a warning, as they had done that morning more than thirty years ago — time is the seed — when she had answered his first knock on her door, when she had opened it — in those days you could open to a stranger without first looking through the cautious peephole, open without a second thought, as if the stranger had muttered magic words under his breath — and saw him standing there, the brim of his hat in the circle of his fingers, and his smooth thin girl-lips parting, blowing a bubble of words, Miss Gracie, I jus thought you might need some help.
Gracie, Lula Mae says, why take the package when you can have the man too?
Maybe all I want is his package, you say. Maybe I don’t want the man.
He’s a nice boy.
I don’t care. I don’t wanna—
Why you always gotta be so stubborn? Sheila says.
Who asked you? You my sister. You ain’t my mamma.
Well, Lula Mae says. I is yo mamma and I think you should—
Jus had to get in yo two cents. Your voice directed at Sheila. Gracie directs her. Next time, save it fo church.
Come on, now. I gotta meet Lucifer.
I heard you the first time.
John cut a smile, avoiding an argument. He’s at—
That figured. Before all the years and blood, he used to say, I gotta meet Dallas. His old running buddy, run off into a dust and dirt cloud of memory, his funky unwashed pea coat billowing out from his shoulder blades like a racing car’s parachute. John and Dallas: used to be hard to know where one began and the other left off. Why don’t you say what you mean?
What do I mean?
I have to meet Lucifer at Union Station cause I have to catch a train to Washington and march and check on the war.
Then to New York. John kept his grin.