"Thank God," Dr. Criddle said, and we both laughed.

Heading north on King Street, I jaywalked to the other side, moving toward Harrington Canon's antique dealership across from the Sottile Theatre. Because I had the Southern boy's disease of needing to be liked by everyone I met, Mr. Canon had presented me with the dilemma of being impossible to please about anything. I never had to worry about whether Mr. Canon would be in a good mood: he lived out his whole life as an anthem to the pleasures of a bad mood. Our first weeks together had been nightmarish, and it took me a while to grow accustomed to his starchiness. It was not that he lived as though he were wearing a crown of thorns that bothered me, but that he cherished those thorns and would have it no other way.

When I approached the doorway of his shop, it was so dark my eyes had to adjust before he materialized, his head reminiscent of a great horned owl, at his English writing desk against the back wall.

"You're sweating like an up-country hog," he said. "Go wash up before your bodily fluids stain my precious merchandise."

"Hey, Mr. Canon. Why, I'm doing just peachy, sir! And so is my family. Thanks for your kind inquiries."

"You are white trash, pure and simple, Leo. A sad fact that you bitterly resent. I would never think of inquiring about your family. Because, sir, like you, they mean nothing to me."

"Does an up-country hog sweat more than the ones around Charleston?" I asked.

"Low Country hogs are too well bred to sweat."

"I've seen you sweat. Much worse than an up-country hog."

"You are a scoundrel even to suggest such a thing." He eyed me through glasses as thick as my own. "Charlestonians never sweat. We sometimes dew up like hydrangea bushes or well-tended lawns."

"Well, you sure do 'dew up' a lot, Mr. Canon. But I always thought it was because you were tighter than a tick and refused to turn on the air conditioner in this store."

"Ah. You are referring to my prudence, my admirable frugality."

"No, sir. I was referring to your cheapness. You told me once you could squeeze a penny hard enough to make Lincoln get a nosebleed."

"Lincoln, the great anti-Christ. The defiler of the South. I'd like to give him more than a nosebleed. I still think John Wilkes Booth is one of the most underrated of American heroes."

"How are your feet feeling?"

"When did you earn a medical degree, sir?" he asked. "The last time I looked, my feet belonged to me and me alone. I don't recall handing them over to you with a bill of sale."

"Mr. Canon," I said, exhausted by the subject already, "you know your doctor asked me to make sure you soaked your feet in hot water and Epsom salts. He's worried about you not taking care of yourself."

"It was a disgraceful breach of confidentiality," Mr. Canon said. "I'm still thinking about filing a report to the medical authorities and having him defrocked. He had no right to reveal such intimate details of my life to a common criminal."

I started weaving my way through a narrow path of bureaus and cabinets, until I reached the frayed drapery that led to a broken-down kitchen. I turned on the hot water, waited until it burned my hand, then filled an enamel washbasin half-full. I poured in a cup of Epsom salts, then made my way back to Mr. Canon's desk at a much slower pace. I had once spilled hot water on one of his overpriced dining tables, and he acted as though I had cut the thumb off the Christ child. His moods were predictable and ran from mercurial to stormy. Today seemed to be an easy day, and I predicted nothing but small-craft warnings for the rest of the afternoon.

"I will not put my feet in that lava," he said, his mouth set in a thin line.

"It'll cool down in a sec," I said, checking my watch.

"A sec. Is that a unit of time? I've been living in the South for over sixty years, and I've never heard of something called a 'sec.' Possibly you've taken up a new foreign language at that second-rate public school you attend."

I tested the water temperature with my index finger and heard Mr. Canon shout at me, "Please do not add your stockpile of school-yard germs to my footbath. I may be fastidious and old-maidish, but good hygiene I take with the utmost seriousness."

"Stick your smelly tootsies in here, Mr. Canon." I watched him slip out of a pair of elegant leather-tooled moccasins. He moaned with pleasure as his feet entered the hot water.

Again, I checked my watch. "Ten minutes, and then I'll be back to dry your feet with my hair. A Mary Magdalene kind of moment."

"Could you sweep out the shop for me today, Leo? And if there's time, I'd like you to polish the two English sideboards in the front. Do them right, and with great reverence. They speak volumes about the superiority of Mother England."

"Be glad to, sir," I said. "I'll be back to change your water in a bit."

"A bit? Isn't that something that's part of a horse's bridle? Or a small particle of almost anything? Or what a snake does to me in the past tense? If you insist on speaking English to me, Leo, I demand a modicum of precision from my employees."

I grabbed the broom and dustpan before I said, "I am not your employee. The courts of Charleston have punished me by making me your slave. I'm paying my debt to society by cleaning your foul antique store and washing your smelly feet. You seem to like slavery."

"I adore it. I always knew I would. My family owned hundreds of slaves for centuries. Alas, there was the Emancipation Proclamation. Alas, came Appomattox. Alas, Reconstruction. I was born into the Age of Alas. Then, when you thought life could get no worse-alas, came Leo King." He laughed a rare laugh. "I far preferred it when you trembled in your boots whenever you walked into this store. I love the smell of fear, glandular and base, given off by the servant classes. But then you figured me out, Leo. I've always rued that day."

"You mean the day I found out you were a pussycat?"

"Yes, that day, that damnable day. I let my guard down in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness," Mr. Canon said. "I loathe all base emotions, all sentimental claptrap. You caught me off guard, undefended. You did not know it, but I was under heavy medication that day. I was not myself, and you took advantage of my enfeeblement."

"I brought you a Father's Day card," I said. "You cried like a baby."

"I most certainly did not."

"You most certainly did. And Father's Day is coming up again. And I'm getting you another one."

"I forbid it," he said.

"Dock my salary." I headed up the stairs, where five pounds of Charleston dust awaited me; but Mr. Canon had assured me that I labored in swirls of dust made sacred and aristocratic by the history of families who had made my native city so lovely and fine.

Twice I changed the water and replenished the Epsom salts for the soaking of Mr. Canon's splayed, ungainly feet. I went into the bathroom and retrieved the various oils and ointments to massage his swollen feet. As a man of stupendous modesty, he always made me feel like a lower order of rapist when I pulled up a chair and dried his feet with his delicate, monogrammed towels taken long ago from a family long dead. But it was part of the regimen his doctor insisted upon, and I received no credit for community service if I failed to massage Mr. Canon's antique feet. He always made this part of our weekly ritual a moment of high drama.

"Leave my tootsies alone, rapscallion," he said.

"This is part of my job, Mr. Canon," I told him. "You always make it hard. Yet you and I know you like it. It makes your feet feel good."

"Don't go inventing words that never came out of my mouth, boy."

I caught his right foot then swung it up on my knee, where I dried it thoroughly. The intimacy unnerved him, and he placed a towel on his head as I turned my attention to his left foot.

"Next week we might need to work on the pedicure." I studied his toes. "Your pinkies look pretty good this week."

"This is what I live for, Lord?" he moaned. "For a common criminal to praise my feet?"

I then began applying a cream made of aloe and eucalyptus, and massaged his feet from the heels to the toes. Sometimes, he moaned with pleasure, and sometimes with pain when I applied too much pressure. My goal was to rub his feet until they glowed with a renewed, healthy circulation; or at least that was the goal his doctor required of me. Mr. Canon suffered from sciatica and a weak back and could not bend to touch his feet. He knew my ministrations were good for his physical health, even as I offended his overdeveloped sense of modesty.

"Dr. Shermeta called me last week," I told him.

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why I put myself under the care of a Ukrainian."

"The Ukrainian wants me to start giving you a full shower. I'm responsible for hosing down your whole body from here on in." I smiled at his towel-draped head.

"I would shoot you between the eyeballs if you attempted such a thing! How ghastly. So my life has come to this. Then, after I watched you suffer agonizing death throes, I would call a taxi, drive to Roper Hospital, and dispatch of this upstart Ukrainian. Then I would kill myself with a single shot to the head."

"So, you don't like the shower idea?" I asked. "Would you donate your body to science?"

"That's why God created paupers," he said. "My body will be buried in my family plot of distinguished ancestors in Magnolia Cemetery."

"Just how distinguished are your ancestors, Mr. Canon?" I teased him.

He caught the note of teasing and thundered, "Canon? Canon? Canon? Open any history book of South Carolina and even an illiterate would stumble across my family name. They would make your sorry family look like Haitians, Puerto Ricans, or even Ukrainians." Open any history book of South Carolina and even an illiterate would stumble across my family name. They would make your sorry family look like Haitians, Puerto Ricans, or even Ukrainians."

"Your podiatrist has to leave now," I said. "Remember to say your prayers. And always floss your teeth." Then I added in warning, "Soon I will have paid off my debt to society."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Judge Alexander has cut my community service to fifty hours, instead of a hundred."

"That's preposterous. I'll call the judge at once. You were caught with enough cocaine to satisfy the entire ghetto of Charleston for a week."

"I'll see you next Thursday. Can I bring you anything?" I walked toward the front door.

"Yes," he said. "You can, Leo. Try to bring me some sign of good breeding, a proper bloodline, a mastery of the small courtesies, and a much greater respect for your elders."

"Consider it done."

"You've been a great disappointment to me. I thought I could make something out of you, but I've been a dismal failure."

"Then why do you keep my Father's Day card in the top right-hand drawer, Mr. Canon?"

"You are a rogue and a blackguard," he cried out. "Never darken the door of this shop again or I'll have a warrant out for your arrest."

"See you next Thursday, Harrington."

"How dare you-the impudence of using my first name!" Then softening, he said, "Thursday it is, Leo."

CHAPTER 5.

Raised by a Nun.

I took Ashley Street north toward the medical college and St. Francis Hospital, where my brother and I were born. I took a right at the old Porter-Gaud chapel, then another right on Rutledge, and into the parking lot, where I locked my bike to a door handle of my mother's Buick. The sign that said PRINCIPAL ONLY filled me with a secondhand pride as I walked toward the school that had become a safe harbor. I had come to Peninsula High in complete disgrace. I knew that was what my mother wanted to talk to me about, with my final year approaching. took Ashley Street north toward the medical college and St. Francis Hospital, where my brother and I were born. I took a right at the old Porter-Gaud chapel, then another right on Rutledge, and into the parking lot, where I locked my bike to a door handle of my mother's Buick. The sign that said PRINCIPAL ONLY filled me with a secondhand pride as I walked toward the school that had become a safe harbor. I had come to Peninsula High in complete disgrace. I knew that was what my mother wanted to talk to me about, with my final year approaching.

Sitting at her desk in her erect posture, my mother looked like she could have led a destroyer into combat. "I thought you knew I'd been a nun," she said.

"No, ma'am. You never told me that."

"You've been an odd enough boy," Mother said. "I guess I didn't want to say something that would give you an excuse to be even odder. Do you agree that you've been odd?"

"You've never seemed satisfied with me, Mother," I said, looking out the window at the traffic on Rutledge Avenue.

"Your erroneous theory, not mine. And look me in the eye." She opened up a permanent file on her desk, and then spent several moments studying a record that seemed odoriferous to her. "You have not distinguished yourself as a high school student, Mr. King."

"I'm your son, Mother. You know how I hate it when you pretend we're not related."

"I treat you just like I treat every other student in my school. If you get bad grades in high school, no good college will accept you."

"I'll get into some college," I said.

"But will I think it's a good one?"

"I could get into Harvard and you'd think the whole Ivy League had lowered its standards."

"No good college would touch you." She studied my grades, tsk-tsking with her tongue against her teeth. Tsk-tsking belonged to the native vocabulary of nuns and atrociously bad public school teachers. "Your grade point ratio is 2.4 out of a possible 4.0. Below average. You've scored less than a thousand on your SAT exams. You have great potential, but so far you have wasted the best years of your life. Your grades in ninth grade destroyed your grade point ratio."

"I had a bad year, Mother."

"Disgraceful, I would call it." She lifted out a sheet of paper and pushed it across the desk toward me. I recognized the paper and ignored it. "That's the copy of your arrest warrant issued on the night of August 30, 1966. The night when you were found carrying a half pound of cocaine in your sports jacket. This forty-page document is the record of your trial in juvenile court. Here are the yearly reports of your probation officer. These are from your shrink, that love of your life."

"Dr. Criddle has been a great help to me."

"These are Judge Alexander's letters describing your progress," she continued. "There are other letters describing the community service you performed to keep you from serving time in the juvenile prison system."

"I'm sorry that I put my family through that," I said. "But you know all that."

She cleared her throat, another nun's trick, and said, "That night will follow you forever."

"I made a mistake, Mother. I'd been in and out of mental hospitals after what happened to Steve. Six years had gone by since Steve."

"Would you hush up about your brother? He doesn't play a part in your screwup."

"I walked into Bishop Ireland as a ninth-grader. The whole school saw me as a nutcase. Kids were nervous around me. I was invited to a party, my first high school party. You and Dad were happy that I was going to be a normal kid again. Some drinking was going on, then a police raid. A guy on the football team put a bag of something in my pocket and asked me to keep it safe for him, and I said okay. I was flattered that a guy on the football team knew my name. So I got caught."

"Yes, and the next day your principal threw you out of Bishop Ireland, preventing you from getting a Catholic education, your parents' dream for you."

"You were my principal, Mother. You kicked me out of school."

"I was following school policy. I resigned my position that same day. So did your father. We both fell on our swords to support you. Then you betrayed us by not telling the police the name of that boy who planted the cocaine on you."

"I screwed up."

"If you'd have named that boy, nothing would've happened to you."

"It wouldn't have been right to name that guy." I said it for the hundredth time.

"But it was all right for a senior to plant drugs on an innocent freshman?"

"No, it was wrong of him."