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horses and children spun round and round, unaware that I had become their guardian.
    Or at least that was what I told myself.

Chapter
4
    I N THE EARLY A.M. I found myself by a phone booth under a streetlight ringed with humidity somewhere in North Houston. I had fifteen cents in my pocket and no bills in my wallet. The air smelled of sewer gas and dead beetles in the gutters and a coulee where the owners of a filling station had poured fifty-gallon barrels of oil. I dropped a nickel into the pay phone and woke up Saber. “I need a ride.”
    â€œWhere are you?” he said.
    I looked through the window of the booth at the street signs and gave him their names. “I think I’m not far from North Shepherd. I’ve got some blank spaces in my head.”
    â€œYou had one of your spells?” he said.
    â€œAbout three hours’ worth.”
    â€œMy folks are going to brown their pants.”
    â€œI can walk.”
    â€œStay where you’re at. The Army of Bledsoe does not leave its wounded on the field. Did you do anything we need to worry about?”
    I reached into my back pocket. The knife was still there. I removed it and pressed the release button. The blade leaped into the air, clean and glazed with a clear lubricant, the way I bought it. “Everything is copacetic.”
    â€œKeep a cool stool. I’m on my way.”
    M Y PARENTS WERE furious.I told them I fell asleep in the hammock in Saber’s backyard and that he and his parents thought I’d gone home until I knocked on the screen door, confused and mosquito-bitten.
    â€œWhy didn’t you tell anyone you were going to Saber’s?” my father asked. He was wearing his pajamas; the lights were on all over the house.
    â€œI’m sorry I made y’all worry,” I said.
    â€œWe’ll talk about this later,” he said, his mouth bitter.
    My mother’s eyes were full of tears, her nails hooked into the heels of her hands. “You’re going to give me a nervous breakdown. I’ve had a lifetime of your father’s drinking, and now this. I can smell it on you. Where did you go?”
    â€œYou saw Saber drive me home,” I replied.
    â€œDon’t lie,” she said.
    My father went into his office and turned on the desk lamp and stared at the manuscript pages on the desk blotter. He picked up a page and read it, then sat down at the desk and looked out the window into the darkness, like a man for whom a black box was a way of life.
    T HE NEXT MORNING I missed the first three periods at school and barely made metal shop before the bell rang. I dropped my book bag on my worktable. With luck, Mr. Krauser would give me a hall pass to the restroom so I could wash my face and sit on the toilet and deliberately turn my head into an ice cube. But hall pass or not, I was safe from my parents and the consequences of my actions, whatever they were, until three P.M. I sat at my worktable and lowered my eyes and tried to doze. The windows in the shop were ajar, and I could smell mowed grass on the wind, like a pastoral hint of summer vacation and release from all my problems at school. When I opened my eyes, I saw Mr. Krauser framed against the open door of his office, his finger pointed at me. “Inside, Broussard,” he said.
    He closed the door behind me and turned the key in the lock. There were streaks of color in his face and perspiration on his upper lip, as though he had been standing over the foundry.
    â€œI do something wrong, sir?” I asked.
    â€œI want to get something straight before I walk you across the street to the River Oaks substation.”
    â€œThe police station?”
    â€œYou guys aren’t dragging me into your shit, you got that?”
    â€œI don’t know what we’re talking about, sir.”
    â€œA plainclothes cop was just here. He called your house, and your mother said you overslept and were on your way to school. I told him I’d