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focus, to understand where it found itself, to get a fix on this latest in a procession of dangers, the exact nature of the catastrophe. Even as we watched, the head fell. Its eyes filmed over as light left them.
    “It’s gone, child,” Lester said. “Dead, like the others.”
    Lester and the boy went off behind a stand of oleander where, with a stick and a fragment of sharp-edged wood, they dug a shallow grave for the bird. I offered to help, but Lester declined, saying it would be better if they did it themselves. So I sat watching, warmed as always by the relationship these two had, each in his own way forever the outsider, one of them having seen, suffered and survived most of what the world had for him, one given eternal youth and thus forever given to seeing the world anew. That was good, to a point. But the pain came as strongly each time as did the wonder; it never diminished.
    “Others?” I asked when Lester rejoined me. The boy, whom he had left sitting by the grave, now walked to the edge of the park and stood pressed against the mesh fence there, motionless, like a statue caught in netting.
    “Close to a dozen this past week, I expect. Someone poisoning them, is what they say. Almost have to be.”
    “And no one’s looking into it?”
    “Lewis. They don’t care ’bout all our young colored men dying out there for no good reason, who in this town you think’s gonna bother themselves over a few pigeons more or less?”
    “You do.”
    Lester smiled. “Yes sir, I expect I do,” he said after a moment.
    “So does my boy over there. And that, I expect, is the long list.”
    “Maybe not.”
    Lester stood to carry the squat bottle over to the garbage, dropped it in. Another man materialized at his side and pulled it out. This one carried two black plastic bags bulked and lumpy with objects and wore a gray pinstripe suit over a soiled white shirt with tail out, dress shoes with tassels. Tassel fringes poked out every which way. The outside edges of the heels were worn down to slivers. When Lester came back to the bench, the newcomer followed, sitting between us, by the boy’s pack.
    “You come here all the time, don’t you?” he said. “I know, I see you. Started me thinking what I had that you’d like.” He spent the next half-hour pulling various items from his bags and offering them to Lester, a plastic clock with one hand, a pair of white earth shoes gone fish-belly gray, a sandwich bag of paper clips, rubber bands and gum erasers, whether with a thought to profit or as gifts never becoming clear; I’m not sure he knew. Lester would tell him he wasn’t interested and the man would talk for a few more minutes about people in the neighborhood, where he’d obviously spent his entire life, about this one who had been arrested or was in the hospital or that one who had suddenly attacked family members with a crowbar or electric carving knife, before starting up again with “I’ve got just the thing for you” and dipping back into his bags.
    “Can’t use it, sorry,” Lester said for the twentieth or thirtieth time.
    “I understand, I understand.” He sat quietly for a moment looking off towards the line of palm trees across the street, then towards the fence where the boy still stood immobile. Messages might come through at any time, from any source, any direction. “That’s your boy, right?”
    Lester nodded.
    “Fine young man. I know, I watch him here, I can see that. They are a pleasure, aren’t they?” He was shoulder-deep in his bags again. “Look, you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ve got just the thing for the boy here. He’ll love it,” coming up with a green rubber scuba mask. The seals were rusted, the straps rotten. “Perfect fit.”

Chapter Seven
    BACK IN BASIC, over near Mobile, they put me in a barracks full of white men not altogether reconciled to their new living arrangements. Working beside us was one thing. These weren’t, after all, your educated, privileged