He rolled just before it reached him.

The car bumped over his bicycle, the teens calling him a little pussy as they hit the gas around another turn, part of the bicycle caught beneath and sparking in the darkness, their laughter and yells following them down the street.

4.

UNDER THE TIN ROOF of Slocumb's Service Station, noted above with a sign reading COURTEOUS and a big red button for Coca-Cola, I watched the cars speed by Crawford Road with their big-eyed headlights glowing white in the weak gray light. It had been a sluggish, heated morning between rain and sunshine when the air almost wants to break, thunder in the distance. Fat-bodied Fords and Chevys and Hudsons and Nashes would stop in every few minutes and Arthur and I would wander out of the garage to check their oil, clean their windshields of mosquitoes and lovebugs, and fill them up with the all-new, high-test Petrox.

And soon they'd again join the snaking line up and out over the bridge and out of Alabama or deeper on to Birmingham or Montgomery. Arthur liked to talk to folks, excited to know where they were headed, maybe secretly wanting to escape Phenix, too. He'd smile and speak in that careful, deferential safe ground for negroes, but always laugh and joke with me as a friend, not a boss.

I wore an Army slicker over my green Texaco coveralls and a matching ball cap with the red star logo. In between customers, I checked the shelves for Vienna sausages and saltines and searched the cooler for Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper. There were cases filled with candy and bubble gum and cartons of cigarettes and chewing tobacco; Borden's ice cream was hand-dipped from a freezer by the register.

It was almost lunch when a sky blue Buick coupe wheeled in.

Reuben Stokes walked into Slocumb's, announced with the tingle of a bell over the door, and I looked up. Reuben's hair had been freshly cut and combed tight in the back and sides with a high poof on top; he wore a royal blue leisure coat with long, vertical white stripes and pleated white pants. He smiled like a confident circus performer.

"You're not gonna rob me, are you?"

"How much you got?" Reuben asked.

"Couple hundred."

"Maybe I will."

Outside, a skinny man in a pink cowboy shirt and a fat man with a head the size of a watermelon got out of the Buick, stretched, and talked with Arthur. I recognized the man in the pink shirt as Johnnie Benefield, a local clip joint operator and safecracker. He was bone thin, with big teeth and a face that resembled a skull, black eyes, and a few strands of black hair combed over his bald pate.

The fat man, whom I didn't know, wore big overalls and a dirty white undershirt. His face was pink and jowly and looked like he hadn't shaved for days.

"Me and Johnnie headin' over to the Fish Camp. You want to join us?"

I smiled because it wasn't a serious offer. Anyone in town knew an invitation to Cliff's Fish Camp wasn't about dinner. Sure, they served fried catfish and hush puppies with slaw. But their main attraction was a stable of whores that Cliff kept up in glorified stalls out back and you could take your pick for dessert while you waited for your meal.

"Who's the other fella?"

"Moon? We just givin' him a ride."

Over Reuben's shoulder, I watched the fat man walk to the edge of the gravel lot and begin to unhitch the straps of his overalls. He hefted himself out and then began to urinate in the weeds.

"You can tell him we have restrooms here."

"Moon wouldn't know how to use 'em any more than a mule."

Reuben stuck a cigarette into the corner of his mouth, his breath smelling of sharp whiskey.

"Johnnie workin' for you now?"

"Some. Been with a few different folks since Big Nigger got himself killed."

For some reason people had taken to calling Johnnie's old partner "Big Nigger" before he'd been killed in a shoot-out last year. The man had been as white as me.

"I can always use a good man who knows engines."

"Shoot."

"It's gonna last. Y'all can't even open back up."

"You saying Phenix City's going straight?"

"I'm just saying people around here are fed up."

The man finished urinating, pulled back the straps on his overalls, and wiped his palms on the bib.

"You sound like this crazy man who walks up and down the streets at night. Have you seen him? He wears a blue robe and holds up a sign painted with Bible verses. He says this is all the end times and that we stand in the center of Sodom. You ain't headed that way, are you?"

"I didn't say it's the end times. I just said it's going to be different."

"Pat wasn't Jesus Christ."

"Didn't say he was."

Outside, Arthur cleaned off Reuben's windshield and ran a gauge on each of his fat whitewall tires. When the car was filled, he walked in and told me it had been three dollars and forty-five cents.

I made change and shoved it across the counter, closing the register with a sharp snick. Reuben crushed the bills into his wallet and left a crisp fifty on the counter. I took it and followed Reuben back out, the light growing dark.

"I'm sorry about Pat," Reuben said, holding open the door of the Buick. "I really am."

"You know anything about that?"

He was about to turn, but the question amused him and he smiled at me with a big cigarette clamped between his teeth.

"Do you remember our last bout, before the war?" he asked. "A five-rounder, wasn't it? You always wondered about it."

"Not really."

"You miss that? Waking up and going over to see ole Kid Weisz at that rathole of a gym, working out till you couldn't even stand or lift your arms? You know I felt like I was invincible, like I could bust through a brick wall."

"Haven't felt like that for a while."

"Haven't felt like that since the war."

"I'm sorry about that."

"Shit, I ain't lookin' for pity, Lamar. That wasn't nobody's fault. That was just the world on fire."

I tucked the fifty into his leisure coat's pocket.

He grinned at me. "Your head has always been like a rock."

I stood in the doorway and watched him leave. More thunder grumbled in the distance, but it didn't feel like serious thunder and I paid it little mind.

The fat man, Moon, and Johnnie Benefield waited in the car. Johnnie hunched into the center of the car, turning the radio's dial. The fat man stared straight ahead, immobile in the backseat, a simple, solid smile on his face.

Reuben walked back, leaving the car door halfway open. "There's no need to be a hero right now," he said.

I smoked down the cigarette and flicked a tip of ash into the gravel.

"Just go home, Lamar. Watch your family."

"A threat's not really your style."

"It's not a threat," he said. "You understand?"

I nodded at the words and watched as the car drove off, my stomach feeling weak and cold.

WE BURIED ALBERT PATTERSON OUTSIDE A SMALL CHAPEL in Tallapoosa County on a hot, airless June day after an endless stream of handshakes and condolences and sermons and prayers. After, a train of cars followed the long highway back east where the women of Phenix City filled the Patterson home with fried chicken and deviled eggs and macaroni and cheese and cool Jell-O molds and chilled lemon and chocolate pies. Most of the men still wore their black suits, the doors opening and shutting and battling the summer heat, while people mourned by exchanging loose talk about the killing, giving hugs, or exchanging funny stories about how stubborn ole Pat could be or how rotten this town had grown.

I grabbed a plate of cold fried chicken and some baked beans and found a little chair out on the small front porch with my wife and kids.

I still wore a black armband as one of the pallbearers.

"You doing okay?" Joyce asked.

"Fine and dandy."

She had a soft summer glow on her face and a light dusting of freckles across her nose. A hot wind brushed the brown hair, which she'd recently cut short to match the new Parisian styles, over her dark eyes.

I smiled at her. She winked at me.

"Reuben came by the filling station the other day."

"What did he want?"

"He tried to warn me off. Tried to give me fifty dollars."

"Fifty dollars? You should've taken it."

"You don't mean that."

"Sure I do."

"He's connected to this thing. They all are, whether their hands are dirty or not."

"Did you ask him about it?"

I nodded.

"You two were such good friends. When I married you, I thought Reuben was part of the deal."

"You never liked him."

"The thing you hate about Reuben is that you have to smile when you see him. He has that way about him that just makes you laugh."

"I don't think it's intentional."

"I think it is."

"You know, when we used to spar, he'd play and josh around for the first couple rounds. Always smiling and laughing, tapping out the jabs, while the Kid would yell at us for half-assing it. And then he'd come on, drop that head and lay into you with a cross that would leave you with stars. That's Reuben, all laughs till he decides to knock your lights out. He's been up to something, I know it."

"When is Reuben not up to something?"

"Did I tell you he was with Johnnie Benefield?"

She shook her head and looked away. "He never learns."

We stayed till late and helped the Pattersons clean up, the night growing cool and dark, Anne and Thomas joining a cluster of kids in the backyard, running and chasing lightning bugs in little shadowed pools under oaks and magnolias. The kids held fat pickle jars with holes poked in the lid with forks so the bugs could breathe.

Joyce stayed in the kitchen with some other women cleaning dishes, while I helped Hugh Britton stack some folding chairs they'd borrowed from the Methodist church back into his station wagon.

I'd barely seen John Patterson all night, but when I came back into the house to grab Joyce and the kids John called me into a back room. He'd dropped his jacket somewhere and loosened his black tie. He looked out in the hall and then quietly shut the door.

An old mantle clock whirred away in his parents' bedroom by a loose grouping of sepia photos in silver frames. The room smelled soft and ancient, like an old woman's powder box. Albert Patterson's cane hung on the back of the door.

"Hoyt Shepherd called."

"Now, that's class."

"He wants to see me."

"When?"

"Now."

"Tonight? You got to be pulling my leg."

"Would you ride with me?"

"Sure. You want me to get Hugh?"

"Maybe you can get him to take your wife and kids home," John said. "You mind driving? Not really feeling up to it."

I nodded and then watched as he opened the top drawer of his father's bureau and pulled out an Army-issue .45 he'd probably carried in North Africa and Sicily. He checked the magazine. "Let's go."