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superstition?”
    â€œAll religions are, Roy. Sometimes it makes people feel better to believe in one, and that’s all right. It’s when religion makes people mean and provokes or emboldens them to use their religion as an excuse or reason to harm those who don’t believe as they do that it turns bad.”
    â€œIs that why the Nazis tried to kill all the Jews, because they had a different religion?”
    â€œThey did, but the Nazis thought the Jews were a tribe of troublemakers and wanted to get rid of them.”
    â€œEarl Borg, the one-armed guy who rents shoes at the bowling alley, says the Jews think they’re better than everybody else.”
    It began to rain and Roy’s grandfather said, “Come on, boy, let’s walk a little faster.”
    â€œThey’re not better than everybody else, are they?” asked Roy.
    â€œNo, the Jews are pretty much the same as everyone. They made a lot of enemies, though, by calling themselves the Chosen People.”
    â€œWho chose them?”
    â€œGod, they said.”
    â€œYou mean God spoke to them?”
    â€œAnything is possible, Roy. Ruth spoke to Daniel, didn’t she?”

 
    Haircut
    Roy overheard his mother telling her friend Kay that Rocco the barber, who lived next door, had molested her on the front steps of her house. Kay and his mother were sitting in the livingroom and Roy, who was nine years old, was standing in the front hallway where the women could not see him.
    â€œHe was very nice at first,” said Roy’s mother, “just making conversation, then all of a sudden he tried to kiss me on the mouth. I turned my head away but he kept trying, pushing himself at me and putting his hands on my breasts. I pushed him away and yelled, ‘Rape!’ I called him a whoremaster because his wife, Maria, told me he’d been a pimp in Naples during the war. She was probably one of his girls.”
    Kay was an on-and-off girlfriend of Roy’s Uncle Buck, his mother’s brother. She was a glamorous woman, a redhead who looked like Rita Hayworth and wore wonderful perfume. Roy was always glad to see her because Kay would kiss and hug him and he could smell her. She was married to a rich lawyer but she always went out with Buck when he visited Chicago. Once Roy had asked his uncle why he hadn’t married Kay and Buck said, “Well, Roy, there are some girls you marry and some you’re happy to see marry someone else, which doesn’t mean you can’t still see them sometimes.”
    â€œAre you going to tell Rudy?” Kay asked Roy’s mother.
    â€œI’m thinking about it. Rudy would have his legs broken.”
    Rudy was Roy’s father. He and Roy’s mother had divorced when Roy was five but they were very friendly and always spoke well of one another around Roy. Often when his mother needed a favor or money in a hurry she called Rudy.
    â€œHe deserves it, the pig,” said Kay. “Rudy’s had worse things done to guys.”
    Roy left the house quietly, closing the front door without letting the women hear him go. On his way to the park to play baseball, Roy could not help but picture in his mind Rocco the barber attacking his mother. He did not say anything about it to anyone at the park but later that afternoon, after his game had ended, Roy walked up to Ojibway Boulevard to where Rocco’s barber shop was and stood across the street.
    It was late August and the air was heavy. As the sky darkened, a few raindrops fell and a weak wind began to blow. Rocco’s dog, a three-legged Doberman pinscher named Smoky, was chained, as usual, to a pole in front of the barber shop. One story was that Smoky had lost his left rear leg in a fight to the death with a wolverine when Rocco had taken the dog with him on a hunting trip to Michigan or Wisconsin. Tommy Cunningham told Roy that Rocco’s son, Amelio, who was six years older than Roy and Tommy, said Smoky