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call it total fear would be a misrepresentation. Yes, dread and terror were involved, but also perplexity. Exploration. Where does nonexistence take you? What does it mean to be stripped of your own consciousness? How do we live with the idea that we are always tantalizingly close to death? At any moment the bridge can collapse.
    On the other side of the bridge, and perhaps on the other side of the death shudder, was another symbol. This symbol had a name—Delores. Delores lived in the first house when you crossed over. She lived with her mother and, to my eyes, Delores was the most beautiful girl in the world. She had black hair and brown eyes, and when I listened to Curtis Mayfield and his Impressions singing “Gypsy Woman,” I knew he was talking about Delores:
    From nowhere through a caravan around the campfire light
    A lovely woman in motion with hair as dark as night
    Her eyes were like that of a cat in the dark
    That hypnotized me with love
    She was a gypsy woman
    As a kid, I didn’t even know what a gypsy was, but whatever she was, Delores fit the bill. I was drawn to her mystery. I was attracted to her shyness. She seemed unknowable, and yet I was moved to know her. Then why couldn’t I muster the courage to say anything to her? Lord knows I was an aggressive dancer. I pursued puppy love all the time. But Delores, who lived just on the other side of the bridge— which is to say, on the other side of death—was deeply different.
    Delores existed as a young girl, but she was also an idea. She stopped the shudder. She stopped my heart. She took my breath away. She seemed to say, In this world where death is always imminent, always threatening, always frighteningly possible, I can make you happy with a simple smile.
    Then there was Eliot’s smile.
    Eliot Hutchinson was a schoolmate, a beautiful brother with a sunshine disposition. Easy-going brother, help-you-out brother, fun-to-be-with brother. Eliot wasn’t a gangster and Eliot wasn’t a bully. Eliot was cool people. Eliot got along with everyone, growing up with all of us, dancing, playing sports, joking, doing his homework, and living his life. Then tragedy struck. Eliot got a brain tumor and, just like that, cancer consumed him. Eliot died.
    I’ll never forget Eliot’s funeral. The level of grief was extraordinary. The pain on his parents’ faces is something that still lives with me. The wailing, the crying out to God, the casket in the ground. Death came home to Glen Elder. Death took Eliot. And I couldn’t help but wonder— Why not me ? Who gets to live and who gets to die? I had no answers. Wasn’t enough to say, God is in charge and we can’t understand or question God . Jesus was real and Jesus was love, but why couldn’t Jesus’s love have kept Eliot alive? The fact that my friend fell without warning or reason haunted me. Eliot’s death seemed so absurd it created a surd—a gaping hole—in my understanding of life. It excited a certain panic in my way of thinking and feeling. It sucked all the meaning and rich sublimity out of being alive. It had me fixated on this dead-end notion of nonexistence. For the first time, I understood that most common of expressions— I’m scared to death .
    Yet I cannot characterize myself as a frightened child. As fascinated as I was by death, I was still deeply in love with life as it was lived in the black neighborhoods of Sacramento, California in the fifth and sixth decades of the twentieth century. I was deeply in love with life because I was deeply in love with music and girls and sports. I can’t overemphasize the role of sports. Because both Dad and Cliff were superb athletes, I was inclined to excel as well. I had no compunctions or conflicts about running out on the baseball diamond, putting on a glove, and fielding those hot grounders to second base until I absolutely perfected my double-play move. In fact, my father, along with our neighbors—other black men involved in their sons’