Read Magic Street for Free Online Page B

Ceese clutched the baby as close as a football and started for the edge of the grass.
    Raymo just laughed at him, but Ceese was used to that.
    "Hey, buttgas!" called Raymo. "You know who owns this skateboard?"
    Ceese looked back. Raymo was standing at the edge of the road, right at the hairpin turn, where Ceese's skateboard had flipped to. Ceese was clear down by the fancy white house at the end of the little valley.
    "You know it's mine!" called Ceese.
    "Don't see nobody's name on it!" called Raymo.
    Ceese didn't know for sure what Raymo was about, but either he was trying to provoke Ceese into walking all the way up the steepest part of the road to get his skateboard, and then probably trying to goad him into riding it home while holding the baby—or he was planning to steal the board and taunt Ceese while he was doing it, just so Ceese would feel helpless and small.
    But standing there with that baby in his arms, Ceese wanted with all his heart to be free of Raymo and everybody else like him, all the bullies who kept looking for nasty stuff to do, and always had to have an audience for their nastiness, and didn't care much about the distinction between audience and victim.
    Sure enough, Raymo had been heading right for him. But he wasn't going to crash into a hedge just for a lame joke.
    So he hooted at Ceese and got back out on the road. "Mama Ceese got herself a widdo baby!"
    He was holding his own skateboard and riding Ceese's. Of course.
    Ceese didn't say anything. Just watched him go.
    Why've I been hanging with that vienna sausage anyway? Makes no sense. Sure thing I got no desire ever to see him again. Why did I put up with all his crap for so long?
    Right up to the minute I found this baby, and not a minute longer.
    Ceese's face burned with—what, embarrassment? Or the flush of sudden realization?
    Maybe he had spent all this time with Raymo, making his mother all worried and coming close to getting into trouble a dozen times, just so he'd be at the drainpipe today, to find this baby.
    That was just crazy. Who could arrange something like that, God? And God sure as hell wasn't going to use a dipstick like Raymo as an instrument of his divine will. That would be like the devil sending Gabriel to fetch his laundry, only in reverse.
    When Ceese got to Du Ray, Raymo was nowhere to be seen. No surprise there. Ceese took the left on Du Ray, then the next left on Sanchez. It wasn't far. And when he got to the front door, Mama was there, holding it open behind the screen.
    "Just tell me that what you got ain't yours," she said coldly.
    "Don't know whose it is," said Ceese.
    "You mean you don't know if you're the daddy?" There was real menace in her voice.
    "I mean I found it. I don't know who the mama is. And I sure know I ain't no baby's daddy.
    Less it can happen by looking at pictures."
    Mama gasped. So did Ceese. He'd never talked like that to his mama in his life. Which, he was sure, was the only reason he was still alive. And from Mama's face, that was about to come to a quick end.
    At that moment, the baby cried softly. Which was about the only thing that could have changed the subject from how Ceese had just said his last words.
    "Inside a Lucky's bag and covered with ants," said Ceese. "It's a boy. He's alive."
    "Seeing how I'm not blind and stupid, I already knew that."
    "Sorry, Mama." He said it fervently enough that it might cover for what he said before.
    "Before you ask, no, you can't keep it."
    "It's real little, Mama."
    "They get bigger."
    "I don't want to keep it, Mama, I just don't want it to die."
    "I know that," said Mama. "I'm thinking. Okay, I've thought. Take it over to Miz Smitcher. She's a nurse."
    "Don't you want to take it?" said Ceese.
    "No, I don't," said Mama. "That baby was conceived in sin and left to die in shame. Don't want no sin or shame in my house."
    Ceese wanted to yell at her that the baby didn't commit any sins and the baby had nothing to be ashamed of, and what about "Even as ye