It was Ike who first called it "carrying the cross." That is what integration felt like for everyone after Brown v. Board of Education Brown v. Board of Education, when boys like me and Ike and men and women like my parents and Coach Jefferson were put to the noble task of making it work.

Panting in the shade of the lower bleachers, I said, "You are one fat-assed George Washington Carver Junior. Why don't you lose some weight?"

"Take off your glasses next time I carry your ass to the top," Ike said. "What do those things weigh-about twenty pounds?"

"You're just weak as water."

"Me? Weak? If the other white boys look like you, we're gonna get our asses whipped good this year."

"How many guys from your team are coming to Peninsula?" I asked.

"Maybe ten. My daddy would like to get another dozen or so, but a lot of guys wanted to stick with the high school in their neighborhood. Like me. But your old lady messed up my plans by making my daddy the coach."

"Instead of having to listen to you run your gums every day, Ike, why don't we go down and have a fistfight on the fifty-yard line? Let's just get it over with; then we can get on with working out."

"We can't have a fistfight until after lunch," Ike said. "We're having lunch at my house, and I can't have you bleeding on my mother's new rug."

"Who said I was eating lunch at your house?"

"My daddy," Ike said, in exasperation. "Our coach did. I ain't ever eat with a white boy, and I'll bet you make the food taste like shit." "I'll try to make it a nightmare for you."

"You're already a nightmare," Ike said. "Please shut up. Here comes my daddy."

Coach Jefferson entered by the alumni gate and walked slowly toward where we sat at the bottom of the bleachers. "You boys look like you've been working hard. Your clothes are soaked. You two get along okay?"

"Your son wouldn't even shake my hand at first, Coach," I said. "Then we did great."

"We did okay," Ike said, a slight echo of insolence in his voice that Coach Jefferson caught in an instant.

"No lip from you, son." He studied Ike, then said, "Tell Leo why you didn't shake his hand, and tell him true. I'm not asking-he needs to know."

"I've been going to Brooks since kindergarten," Ike explained. "Thought I'd graduate this year from Brooks. I've always been afraid of white people. They scare me to death."

"Tell him why, Ike," the coach said.

"My uncle Rushton got shot by a white cop in Walterboro. He shot him in the back, killed him. Said he back-sassed him and threatened him. The cop got off with a warning."

"Go on. Tell the rest of it," Coach commanded.

"My uncle was a deaf-mute. Never said a word in his life," he said. Then he surprised both of us by tearing up, angry tears he was at pains to conceal.

I was taken aback by the tears and muttered, in perfect sincerity: "That's the worst story I ever heard in my life."

"It is that," the coach agreed. He put his arms around us and began walking us toward the north side of the field. For a minute we just walked, waiting for Ike to gain control of his emotions.

"I am naming you two young men as the cocaptains of the Peninsula High Renegades for the coming season," Coach said.

"Coach, a lot of guys are coming back from last year's team," I said, "who're a lot better football players than I am. Wormy Ledbetter is one of the best fullbacks in the state."

"King, I didn't say you were my first choice as the white cocaptain. In fact, I called Wormy's home to give him that high honor. He's a better football player than you. I watched all the films."

"What did he say?" I asked.

"Not a word, at least not to me. His father found out who I was and said no nigger son of a bitch better call his house again. So I assured him I would not. I called two other white players and I got the same results. We're going to be lucky to be able to field a whole team this year. But you are my white cocaptain, and Ike is my black cocaptain. And boys, together we're going to make history.

"Now, I want you two to meet at nine every morning of this summer, except Sundays. Coach Red Parker said we could use the weight room at The Citadel. Chal Port's going to design a weight program just for you two guys, and I'm going to devise you a workout from hell. I'm going to practically kill you. I can't be here; it's against the rules. But I trust you two guys with my job and my heart. When football practice starts, you're the two studs who're going to take me across the finish line."

I looked at Ike and said, "I'll outwork you."

"That'll be the day, you honky cracker son of a bitch," he said.

"Start running, son," the coach snapped. "Five laps."

"I forgot, Daddy."

"Seems like Dr. George Washington Carver Junior doesn't have a very good memory, Coach."

"Kiss my ass," Ike said, then added, "Strom Thurmond."

We both laughed, and I started running with Ike.

"King, you don't run. You didn't screw up," the coach shouted.

"When my cocaptain runs, I run," I said. "That all right with you, Coach?"

"I'll be." He hurled his hat to the ground. "It sounds like the beginning of a goddamn team to me."

By the end of that summer, I could carry Ike Jefferson two times to the top of Johnson Hagood Stadium, and two times down. Because he was stronger, Ike could make it to the top three times, but collapsed on the top step. Though I had never been through anything like it physically, Ike and I were more than ready when practice began in August. The surprise of that summer was that I ripened into a strong and formidable young man. But the real shock to everyone was that Ike Jefferson and I would be friends for the rest of our lives.

CHAPTER 4.

Downtown.

A few days after Bloomsday, I walked down Broad Street and spotted Henry Berlin measuring the width of a man's shoulders with his measuring tape. I knocked on the plate-glass window of Berlin's clothing store. He made a notation with a piece of chalk, waved at me, then called out, "Hey, jailbird." That wicked yet good-natured salutation always made me laugh. I hadn't forgotten that Henry Berlin had been one of the first Charleston adults to embrace my reentry into life after my turbulent week as the most famous unnamed drug dealer in the county. Though the few days after Bloomsday, I walked down Broad Street and spotted Henry Berlin measuring the width of a man's shoulders with his measuring tape. I knocked on the plate-glass window of Berlin's clothing store. He made a notation with a piece of chalk, waved at me, then called out, "Hey, jailbird." That wicked yet good-natured salutation always made me laugh. I hadn't forgotten that Henry Berlin had been one of the first Charleston adults to embrace my reentry into life after my turbulent week as the most famous unnamed drug dealer in the county. Though the News and Courier News and Courier could not use my name because I was underage, Leo King came up in even the most casual conversations on every street and restaurant that month. By calling me "jailbird," Mr. Berlin had offered the first exit out of my predicament by allowing me to laugh at myself. could not use my name because I was underage, Leo King came up in even the most casual conversations on every street and restaurant that month. By calling me "jailbird," Mr. Berlin had offered the first exit out of my predicament by allowing me to laugh at myself.

Normally, I would have stopped and talked to him, but he was busy with a customer, and I was cutting it close for an appointment with my shrink, Jacqueline Criddle. She was as serious about time as a watch repairman, so I jogged to her office above an antique store. I passed through an alley, then took a flight of flimsily built stairs to the second story and entered an air-conditioned room that was an oasis of good taste and serenity there in the heart of downtown, sitar music playing on a stereo. When I had first come to this room, I was still fresh from my traumatic trial in juvenile court. It took me more than a year before I could begin to appreciate the rain-foresty tranquillity of the room, which smelled of hyacinths and ferns. After a rocky start, I had come to revere the skills of Dr. Criddle as she proceeded with infinite care to put my life in order again.

Soundlessly, a green light came on above her office door. I entered and went straight for the leather chair where I always sat facing her.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Criddle," I said.

"Good afternoon, Leo," she replied.

Though I was a teenage boy locked in that maddening, wet-behind-the-ears stage of complete social unease, I thought that all women over thirty years old were menopausal and approaching their deathbeds. But it was not lost on me that Dr. Jacqueline Criddle was a most attractive woman with an admirable figure and pretty legs.

"So, how goes it, Mr. Leo King?" She looked over some notes from my file.

I thought about it before I answered. "It's going great, Dr. Criddle."

She glanced up with a quizzical eye. "You've never said that to me in all our time together. What's happened, Leo?"

"I think I'm in the middle of living a good week. Maybe a real good one."

"Whoa. Back up. Hold your horses. You sound like you're on drugs for sure."

"I'm feeling so good ..." I paused. "I'm even starting to like my mother a little bit."

My shrink laughed. "Now, surely that's a hallucination."

"I've found myself feeling pity for her. I've put my parents through a lot. Did you know my mother was once a Catholic nun?"

"Yes," she said. "I was aware of that."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"It never came up, Leo," she said. "You never mentioned it."

"I just found out. Why wouldn't she tell me something like that?"

"She must've thought it'd only make things worse for you."

"I guess. But things couldn't have been much worse, could they?"

"They were pretty bad," said Dr. Criddle. "But you've come a long way. You're the pride of juvenile court."

I laughed. "Music for my mother's heart."

"She's actually proud of what you've accomplished," Dr. Criddle told me. "You've done everything the court has asked of you. And much, much more."

"Y'all kept me busy."

"Judge Alexander called today. He wants all of us to clean up our business with you this summer."

"I still have a hundred hours of community service to finish."

"He's cut it down to fifty."

"What about Mr. Canon? He needs me."

"I've called him, Leo. It's true that he fully expected you to be his personal manservant for the rest of his life, but he'll have to make do."

"He's told me as much."

"What a dreadful man," she said. "When they assigned you to him, I argued that it was cruel and unusual punishment."

"He's all alone in the world," I explained. "I think I'm all he's got. He's afraid to let people see his kind side. Always looking for trouble that never comes. I'm grateful to him. To all of you. You especially, Doctor."

"You've done the work, Leo," she said. I could feel her withdrawing into her shell like a box turtle you stumble on in the woods. "I've facilitated your therapy. Remember, I'm just court-appointed."

"Remember how I was when I first came to this office with my parents?"

"You were a big mess."

"How big?"

She picked up my file from the table that separated us. It was thick enough to strike an ominous chord in me each time she displayed it. In my mind, my file represented some cold-blooded book of hours compiled with malice by that most cunning enemy of my childhood-myself.

"Here is how I described you at that time. 'Leo King seems terrified, depressed, anxious, ashamed, totally confused, and possibly suicidal.'"

"Don't you miss that guy?" I asked.

"No, I don't. But it took a lot of work to get where we are today. I've never had an adolescent boy work as hard to make himself well. Your mother looked like she wanted to kill you that day. Your dad looked like he wanted to run far away with you and leave no forwarding address. There was such agony in this room. That was almost three years ago."

"You spotted my mother that first day," I remembered.

"She is a formidable woman," she said. "A good woman, but she overpowered you and your dad that day."

"Nothing's changed there," I told her. "We're still not in her league."

"But you've learned strategies to work around her. And with her. Do you remember what your dad did that day?"

"He cried for an hour. Couldn't stop. Said I blamed him for Steve's death."

"You did blame him ... at least a little bit."

"It was the only clue I had, Dr. Criddle. The week before he died, Steve was sleeping when I heard him screaming, 'No, Father. No, please.' I woke him up and Steve told me he was having a nightmare. He laughed about it. Then he was dead."

"I've never seen a father love a boy like yours loves you, Leo," she said.

"You've never liked my mother, though."

"Don't go putting words in my mouth," she said.

"Fair enough, Doctor. But you've taught me to tell you the truth. Otherwise, therapy isn't worth a hill of beans. Your exact words. Here is what I think is true: you don't like my mother."

"What I think about her is irrelevant," she said. "It's what you think about her that counts."

"I've come to terms with her."

"That's a great accomplishment. Sometimes that's the best we can do. You've become patient and forgiving with your mom. I'm not sure I could do the same in your shoes."

"She's not your mother."