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familiar voice said, “Good afternoon. I’m Matthew Cloud, just moving in across the way. I was checking up on my son, who I understand might be bothering you folks over here.”
    Mrs. Marshall laughed. “Oh no, Mr. Cloud, he ain’t no trouble. He jus’ finishin’ up a plate of chitlins and collard greens right now. That boy needs some fattenin’ up!”
    Dad walked in to see me with a forkful of chitlins suspended between plate and mouth. Hannah, evidently the messenger who had alerted Dad to my abduction, peeked her blond head around the door like a sideways Kilroy.
    “Well, I suspect you’re right about that point,” Dad chuckled, apparently amused at the sight of me tossing down the chitlins like one of the family. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to borrow him back. It’s a little matter of a dozen boxes in his room he was supposed to unpack before he took off.”
    The Amazon clicked her tongue disapprovingly, and I suddenly felt guilty. I gulped down the chitlins and jumped up.
    “Thanks.” I looked at M. “I guess I have to go back now.”
    Mrs. Marshall nodded at me. “You’re welcome, Mark. And I hope you come back when you done your chores.”
    I looked at Dad. “Sure, if it’s not too late.”
    Unpacking took until after dark, but Sunday after church I returned. M took me on a tour, starting with a basement much more interesting than mine. Poor lighting, unfinished walls, and exposed rafters gave it the ambiance of a cave. M grabbed a hammer and pounded furiously at a sixteen-penny nail jutting from one of the studs.
    “When Papa hits a nail, there’s sparks fly,” he said with respect, and swung the hammer again. “Hey, I think I saw a spark. Here, you try it, man.” I declined, but M wouldn’t rest until I had taken a few ineffectual swings at the nail. No sparks.
    The rest of the house wasn’t much different from mine, albeit in a more advanced stage of disintegration. M’s attic view faced the opposite street, so I was able to see how the other half lived as we sat on an old trunk and squinted through the grime. More roofs and trees in their final stages of abandonment.
    “That’s the school over there.” M pointed at a square roof several blocks away. “What grade are you in, man? I bet it’s fifth.”
    “Fifth.”
    “And Bingo was his name-o!” he cried and attempted a pirouette, but the cramped quarters of the attic made it impossible. He settled for a jig and a chuckle. “Me too. Which class? I bet it’s Ma Barker’s.” He stood poised for another victory dance.
    “I haven’t been yet.”
    “Oh, yeah.” He sat back down on the trunk. “What’s it like in Texas?”
    “I don’t know. Like here, only no basements. And hotter.”
    “One day I’ll go see. I’m gonna go see everything, like Marcus Garvey.”
    “Like who?”
    “The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey.” He waited, but I had nothing to say. “Never met the guy,” seemed flippant.
    “Malcom X?”
    I shook my head.
    “Thurgood Marshall?”
    I shook my head.
    M looked at me for a long while with an impassive stare I couldn’t interpret, as if he were trying to make up his mind. He suddenly stood up and walked down the attic stairs; I followed him to his room. He pulled a thin paperback book from a cardboard box next to his bed and shoved it at me. I looked at the title:
The Negro Protest: James Baldwin, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King Talk with Kenneth B. Clark
. I looked back up at M, but he just walked past me and down the stairs. We walked through the kitchen to the back door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, man,” he said and closed the door behind me.

CHAPTER THREE I was indeed in Ma Barker’s class, who turned out to be Mrs. Barker, a middle-aged white woman and not, as far as I could tell, the matriarch of a bloodthirsty outlaw gang. But you have to admit, being a fifth-grade teacher would have been a great cover.
    After school I found M waiting at the back fence.
    “Come on,” he