“You wanna take ’im with us now?” Red said, dragging his big hand back and rubbing my face. “I’m for it if you are, nigger.” Maybe he was getting worked up again.

“Come on, cocksucker.” Rufus laughed like a big engine turning over and pushed my head away. “Get up off it.”

I kneeled back in the leaves. I was breathing pretty hard too.

“Like I said, Red. Just take it easy. The cocksucker know where we are. It’s funny now,” Rufus said, “Red bein’ my guardian an’ all. This carrot-headed honky’s crazy, boy. He’s a good ol’ white boy, but he’s crazy. I got to beat his hairy red ass from time to time—figuratively speakin’, that is—’cause I’m the only one of us who got any sense. But we make good partners. Look, Red, he wants it, he knows where to come lookin’ for it. Ain’t no need to get Big Sambo all upset on the first night the little bastard’s around.” Rufus pulled at his pants, kicked his leg a little—where I’d wet it down from the knee—and stepped up, pulling at his fly. “Can you walk, boy?” Rufus reached a hand under my arm and hauled me upright. Piss had collected in the knees of my pants and ran down my leg and ankle. You could hear it spill out on the brush, and over Rufus’s shoe. I was a little unsteady. But I felt good.

“Guess you right, Rufus,” Red said. He ran his big hand through my hair, frowned, shook the piss off it, then did it a couple more times. The last time he wiped his hand on his pants. Then he said, “Guess that’ll have to do you for tonight, boy. But I’ll tell you, I’m sort of lookin’ forward to seein’ you again.”

On the docks a siren sawed the silence.

“Come on,” Rufus said. “We go see what all the commotion is out there.”

Red stood up, took a breath.

Rufus started walking. Red started after him.

Rufus looked back. “Come on, boy.” I caught up; the nigger put his hand on my shoulder. “You be okay. Puke if you want. All that piss in your belly, you go on an’ puke.”

“He ain’t gonna puke,” Red said. “He likes it.”

I felt a little funny. But not like I was going to throw up. Just lightheaded.

We came out the bushes onto the docks.

Somewhere in the bushes, Red had shucked out of his shirt. He was barechested now, and, under the dock lights, looked like a big red bear.

“Jesus,” he said. “What you suppose …?”

Fifty yards down, a scarlet police-light flickered across the heads of some dozen people. Another truck was just pulling up among the loose crowd. As we walked, some older black kids ran by us.