“Okay, but I’ll have to meet you there. I have to go home and see my folks. Then I want to stop by the radio station and see Otis.”

“Well, if you decide to come, it’s at Fiftieth and Broadway.

“All right. I’ll see you later. Excuse me, Pauline.”

“You’re excused.”

PAULINE HAD REALLY GOTTEN next to me. I didn’t want to believe that my only reason for not going into the army was to get attention. I had thought a lot about my motives while I was in prison. Otis had schooled me early in the importance of the sound and not the meaning of words. I had to admit that my beliefs were often shaped by the attention I thought they would get. But something happened once that showed me how believing in something could bring a kind of attention I hadn’t bargained for.

I was walking along 125th Street. At the corner of Seventh Avenue a crowd had gathered and was listening to a man speak. He was standing on a milk crate. There wasn’t much of him, just a hanger-thin frame on which his clothes were hung. He moved like a torch singer, using his body to make the lyrics of a song do something there were no words for. His mouth was a reckless gash with lethal doses of anger jerking at the edge of his voice. What he was saying must have slipped up on something familiar inside those present because necks were craned forward and attention claimed every face.

There had been some disturbance in the street earlier. The police had moved in to disperse the crowd and arrested a boy who didn’t move quickly enough.

“I may be young, but I’m old enough to know that youth ain’t never been a reason for gettin away clean…”

Heads nodded in rocking-chair fashion.

“That boy couldn’t a been more than thirteen. But they busted him for not movin fast enough. But where was he movin to? And who wasn’t it fast enough for?”

“Talk about it!” someone shouted.

“I’m not runnin for nuthin,” he said, “and I don’t wanna be in charge. I just wanna run this,” he said, jabbing his two index fingers into his chest. “But I can’t do that if I don’t go over to the precinct and see about that kid who didn’t move fast enough… Some of you may think messin with the po-leece is like goin barehanded in a brass-knuckle affair. Well, strength ain’t always a fat-mouth parade. It can also come on like a hush that even dogs can’t pick up on sometimes.”

He jumped down off the milk crate and began walking down Seventh Avenue. Almost immediately people began filling in behind him. I joined the procession, and soon it extended the length of the block. I don’t really know why I followed him, but I think it had something to do with the way his outrage recomposed itself in a word design that x-rayed his hole cards. It scared the shit out of me that anyone would open up like that in front of strangers. My senses were aroused in a way I’d never experienced before. I wanted more. So like everyone else I latched onto the whirlwind he’d created and rode his guts.