I got no business here.

But somehow, the quiet of the hospital, the slow-moving nurses, all the eyes, had grown unbearable, and he had rushed out, suddenly, and wandered to this part of Farragut, where rats were known to eat dead children, where the women sold their evil-smelling bodies for a buck, where men carried ritual scars and believed in voodoo.

I got no business here!

But Joey knew that it wasn’t wholly so. For standing in the little room, the dark face there about to vanish, he had heard a voice: Go take a walk, boy. Go to Jeremiah Street. See all the sights. See your people. Your people. Then come back. There’s time!

“Hey, Jim, you got a cigarette?”

He turned and faced an old Negro in a double-breasted blue suit, wide tie, sweat-soaked gray hat. The man was drunk, and dirty.

“You got a cigarette for Sonny?”

Joey reached into his pocket and withdrew a package of Pall Malls. The man took one of the cigarettes and tried to light it. In the darkness, Joey saw that he bore scars and bruised marks on his flesh.

“You want some fun?” the man said.

Joey shook his head and started away. A clawlike hand tightened on his shoulder.

“Wait, I ask you, you want some fun? Listen. Come on, you ain’t in no big fucking hurry. Come on. Listen.”

“Get your hand off me.”

“Bullshit,” the man said. “What kind nigger are you, anyway? You a fairy-boy? Maybe you think I kidding you. Listen, I don’t kid nobody. I got my little girl staying with me, and I mean, she something. She really something. All this other ginch around here ain’t worth poking a finger in. But Harriet—let me tell you something, Jim. She been a year in New York. She ain’t really working, now, I mean, she just paying her daddy a visit, see. But she do anything I tell her. Five dollars and she go down, you do anything you want. She—”

Joey grasped the wrist firmly and pushed it away. He began to walk quickly. The man danced along behind him, shrieking: “You no fucking man, you a fucking queer. Hey, queer! Hey, fairy-boy!” Then the man stumbled, and Joey glanced back; but the man did not move.

Joey walked to the hospital, which was an old house like a boardinghouse, and went up the steps.

The waiting room was filled with people.

He passed the receptionist’s desk, turned right, and climbed the flight of stairs. They were covered with dark linoleum which had worn through in the center and was edged with misshapen aluminum stripping.

He entered the silent, sharp-smelling hall. His fingers drew into fists. A large woman in the well-lit alcove where the nurses made their reports and took their calls looked up.

“Is he any better?” Joey asked quietly.