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had killed the wolverine by biting it in the throat but that the wolverine had attacked Smoky first and torn off the dog’s leg. Another story was that Smoky had been hit by a bus and run over on Ojibway Boulevard while he was chasing a kid and trying to bite him, which is the one Roy believed because Smoky tried to bite any kid who came close to him.
    Roy took out his Davy Crockett pocket knife and opened it. He crossed the street and waited until there were no passersby watching. Just at a moment when Smoky had his big dark brown head turned to lick the stub of his missing leg, Roy darted at the dog and plunged the blade into Smoky’s right eye. The animal howled and whipped his head around, dislodging the knife, which clattered to the sidewalk. Roy quickly picked it up and ran. He did not wait to see Rocco and other men come out of the barber shop to see what Smoky was howling and whimpering about.
    When Roy got home, his mother and Kay were not there. He rinsed the blood off his knife at the kitchen sink, wiped it clean with a dish towel, then went into his room and buried it at the bottom of his toy chest. He went back into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of chocolate milk, carried it onto the back porch and sat down on the top step. The rain started coming down harder.
    The next time Roy passed Rocco’s barber shop, Smoky was not chained in front. Roy would go to Arturo’s Barber College to get his hair cut, even though it was farther from his house. The guys learning to cut hair there were butchers but they only charged a quarter. Roy hated to go to the barber’s anyway. He wished he never had to get a haircut again.

 
    The Invention of Rock ’n’ Roll
    The first record Roy ever bought was a 45 rpm single of Little Richard singing “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” when he was nine years old. Later the same year, 1956, he bought his first LP, the soundtrack album of the movie The Man with the Golden Arm , which featured Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne, Conte and Pete Candoli, and other jazz musicians. Neither of these recordings were examples of the kind of music his mother and grandmother played on the piano and often sang; those tunes were standards and popular songs like “La vie en rose,” “Satan Takes a Holiday” and “It Had to Be You.” Roy liked those songs but as soon as he heard Little Richard banging out on the piano the first few chords of “Lucille” and screeching the lyrics, followed by “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” “Tutti Frutti” and “Slippin’ and Slidin’,” he knew there was another world beyond “Autumn Leaves” or “If I Didn’t Care” and he was crazy to find out about it.
    There was a guy named Gin Bottle Sam who showed up now and again on Blackhawk Avenue sitting on a metal milk bottle crate playing his harmonica for change, which appreciative passersby tossed into an upside down short-brimmed hat Sam kept by his feet on the sidewalk in front of him. Roy had stopped to listen to Sam a couple of times and the next time he saw him Roy asked Sam what kind of music it was that he was playing.
    â€œBlues, mostly,” he said. “Might put a little pep into a pop’lar tune peoples knowin’, somethin’ more famil’ar make ’em give up a few extry pennies.”
    It was an afternoon in mid-November when Roy asked Gin Bottle Sam about his music. The sky was gray-brown and full of black specks, so Roy knew it was about to snow. Sam warmed himself with a swig from a half-pint bottle he kept in a side pocket of his long blue overcoat. Roy’s friend the Viper, who was two years older, had told him Sam’s name, but Roy noticed that the liquid in the bottle Sam was sipping from on this particular day was dark brown, not clear like gin.
    â€œFo’ zample, tune I just been playin’s ‘Sportin’ Life,’ wrote by Brownie McGhee. Fixin’