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me,” Rock said, once again aiming the gun at Leroy’s head. “Matter fact, just pull over.”
    “All right, I’ll pull over,” Leroy said, then made a hard left and slammed the accelerator to the floor as he came around the curve leading to Wayne Avenue.
    The sudden turn caused Butter to slide across the backseat and bump into Rock, who sat stuck against the door, struggling against Butter’s 130-pound frame. In the front seat, Leroy opened his door and crouched, waiting for a second before he jumped. Pookie followed suit, fighting desperately against the door handle before she finally got it open.
    Rock, his eyes wide open, was yelling something no one could hear as Butter, his terror-stricken face flush against Rock’s chest, pulled at the door handle. When Leroy and Pookie rolled from the vehicle, barely avoiding the stone curb that buttressed the asphalt street, the car barreled into the steps of a row house. The last thing Pookie saw before the car burst into flames was Rock’s horrified expression as he pounded against the rear window. Neither Pookie nor Leroy saw Butter crawl from the other side and collapse a few feet away. And neither of them cared.
    Leroy got up quickly, ignoring the flame-riddled car. He started toward Wayne Avenue, trying to walk normally in spite of the rapidly increasing swelling in his right knee. Pookie, her face scraped badly along the left side, tore her gaze away from the burning vehicle, got up from the oil-slicked asphalt, and jogged half a block to catch up with him.
    “Pookie, go lay in the street,” Leroy said. “That’s the only way we gon’ get outta here.”
    There was a gentleness in his voice that hadn’t been there before. She looked at him to see where it had come from and their eyes met. They connected. But as quickly as the connection had appeared, it hid behind the reality of the moment. Yet somehow, Pookie knew in her heart that it was there.
    Leroy walked to the curb and knelt behind a parked car. Pookie lay facedown in the street. She knew they only had about ten seconds before the police arrived. And she knew that Leroy was her best and only chance of getting out of this thing alive. So no matter how crazy he sounded, she was going to listen to him. And if they ever got out of this thing alive and got their lives together, she would follow him to something better. Because anything was better than this.
    As soon as Pookie lay down, an elderly couple in a late-model Cadillac—church folk from the look of them—stopped. When the man started to get out of the car, Leroy walked up behind him, jammed a stick in his back, then directed him back to the car. Pookie, knowing full well that Leroy would just as soon leave her lying in the street as take her with him, got up and slid into the backseat behind him.
    “Just d-d-drive, man, nice and slow, that same thing you do every Sunday—holdin’ up traffic—just d-d-drive!” Leroy said.
    “Okay, son. Calm down,” the old man said, glancing at his wife. “Which way you—”
    “Nigger, j-just drive!” Leroy said. “I’ll tell you which way.”
    “All right, son,” the man said, taking in Leroy’s quick stutter and believing that he was just nervous and afraid enough to kill him and his wife. “The Lord—”
    “This nigger don’t understand English, do he, Pookie?” Leroy said, glancing at Pookie, then fixing his gaze on the old man. “Drive, man, the Lord ain’t got nothin’ to do with this here.”
    The man fell silent, just as two fire engines and a police car approached from the opposite direction, going toward the two car fires that burned within the next three blocks.
    “And don’t try to make no signals and signs to nobody,” Leroy said, indicating the police car and fire trucks. “ ’Cause I’ll blow so many feathers off your woman’s Sunday hat, you’ll think it was a chicken coop up in here.”
    The man drove on as if he hadn’t seen the police and fire engines. But when they