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the withering one. Why she didn’t want a six-foot stuffed panda in bright yellow rubber shorts adorning her apartment is beyond me, but since I couldn’t find a trash barrel big enough to take him, I welcomed him into my home.
    I dragged Harold from the bedroom into the dark kitchen and sat him in the chair by the window. The shade was drawn, and on my way out, I flicked on the light. If someone was watching me from the shadows, Harold should pass as me. Although my ears are smaller.
    I crept through the back of the house, took my Ithaca from behind the door, and went down the back stairs. The only thing better than an automag for the total firearms incompetent is an Ithaca .12 gauge shotgun with a pistolgrip. If you can’t hit your target with that, you’re legally blind.
    I stepped out into my backyard, wondering if possibly there were two of them. One for the front, one for the back. But that seemed as unlikely as there being one of them in the first place. Paranoia had to be checked.
    I hopped a few fences until I got to the avenue, slipped the Ithaca under my blue trench coat. I crossed the intersection and walked past the church on the south side. A road runs behind the church and the school, and I took that north. I passed a few people I knew along the way, gave curt nods, keeping my coat closed with one hand; have gun, will offend the neighbors.
    I slipped into the back of the schoolyard, soundless in my Avia high-tops, and pressed close against the wall until I reached the first corner. I was at the edge of the E and he was ten feet away, around another corner, in the shadows. I considered how to approach it. I thought of just walking up on him, fast, but people tend to die that way. I thought of crawling along the ground like they used to on Rat Patrol , but I wasn’t even positive anyone was there, and if I crawled up on a cat or two kids in a lip lock, I wouldn’t be able to show my face for a month.
    My decision was made for me.
    It wasn’t a cat and it wasn’t teen lovers. It was a man and he was holding an Uzi. He stepped out from the corner in front of me with the ugly weapon pointed at my sternum, and I forgot how to breathe.
    He was standing in darkness and wearing a dark blue baseball cap like they wear in the navy, with gold leafs embroidered on the brim, and gold writing of some sort on the front. I couldn’t make out what it said, or maybe I was just too scared to concentrate.
    He wore black wraparound sunglasses. Not the best thing to see properly when you wanted to shoot someone in the dark, but with that gun at this range, Ray Charles could put me in the grave.
    He wore black clothes over black skin and that’s about all I could tell about him.
    I started to mention that this neighborhood wasn’t known for its courtesy toward its darker neighbors after sunset when something fast and hard hit my mouth, and something else, equally hard, hit my temple, and just before I lost consciousness, I remember thinking: Harold the Panda doesn’t fool ’em like he used to.

6
    While I slept the sleep of idiots, the Hero came to visit. He was dressed in his uniform, carrying a child under each arm. His face was covered with soot, and smoke rolled off his shoulders. The two children were crying, but the Hero was laughing. He looked at me and laughed. And laughed. The laugh turned into a howl just before brown smoke began pouring from his mouth, and I woke up.
    I was on a rug. That much I knew. There was a guy dressed in white kneeling over me. I’d either been committed or he was a paramedic. He had a bag beside him and a stethoscope around his neck. A paramedic. Or a very authentic impersonator. He said, “You gonna be sick?”
    I shook my head and threw up on the rug.
    Someone started screaming at me in high-pitched gibberish-speak. Then I recognized it. Gaelic. She remembered what country she was in and switched to English with a heavy brogue. It