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now to do ‘Long Distance’ by Muddy Waters, real name McKinley Morganfield. Like me, he come up to Chicago from Miss’ippi make his bones. He the man invented rock an’ roll, you best believe.”
    Sam slipped the bottle back into his overcoat pocket and began to sing.
    â€œYou say you love me, darlin’, please call me on the phone sometime. You say you love me, darlin’, please call me on the phone sometime. Give me a call, ease my worried mind.”
    Roy listened closely as Sam breathed in and out on his harmonica. A couple of pedestrians pitched a dime or a quarter into the short brim.
    When Sam finished the song, Roy asked him, “Is it called the blues because you blew into the harmonica?”
    â€œWell, no. It’s all up in the feelin’, though you do got to blow to make it happen. Don’t need to be a reg’lar instrument you got to blow into, though. Can be hands beatin’ on a log, or dogs howlin’ with chains fix roun’ they neck. Men, too, you best believe.”
    Roy only had a nickel on him but he put it into Sam’s hat. Sam tooted twice on his harmonica, then chuckled and picked up the change he had earned. He was wearing red and green cotton gloves with the fingertips cut off. Sam rattled the coins in his left hand and grinned at Roy. Several of his teeth were missing and he had blood spots in the whites of his eyes.
    â€œYou got to listen, boy,” he said. “You got to study on what it is you hearin’ an’ maybe one time you begin to understand.”
    Sam stood up and dropped the coins into the left side pocket of his overcoat. He put the harmonica into the other pocket, then shook Roy’s right hand with his own.
    â€œThanks for talking to me,” said Roy.
    â€œI was a orphan,” Sam said. “You know what’s a orphan?”
    Roy nodded.
    â€œWas no good for me where I been put, so I was about your size I took out for my own self. And here now you askin’ me questions. Ain’t that good news.”
    The next morning Roy told the Viper about his conversation with Gin Bottle Sam. They were walking by the canal that cut through the neighborhood and the sky was already darker than it had been the previous afternoon. There had not yet been any precipitation but a heavy snow was predicted to arrive by evening.
    â€œWhat do you think Sam meant by beating on logs and dogs howling with chains around their necks?” asked Roy.
    â€œSlaves in the South would sing while they picked cotton and chopped wood,” said the Viper. “Makin’ music while they worked made ’em feel better.”
    â€œDo you know who Muddy Waters is?”
    â€œYeah, he worked on a plantation where he was discovered, then he came to Chicago to make records.”
    â€œSam says he’s the one who invented rock ’n’ roll.”
    The Viper laughed.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?”
    â€œWhenever I play a record by Little Richard or Elvis Presley,” said the Viper, “my mother shouts, ‘What’s all that poundin’ and howlin’ about?’”

 
    Infantry
    It was in his eighth grade history class that Roy learned the word infantry had originated in ancient Rome to describe the youngest soldiers in the Roman legions. These were infanteria , children no older than Roy and his friends, who were put at the front of the invading army, almost certainly to be sacrificed so that the following troops, comprised of older, veteran soldiers, would be preserved for the most serious, decisive parts of the battles.
    After school the day they’d learned about the infantry of ancient Rome, Roy said to the Viper, “I bet it was only the poorest families whose children were forced to fight. The rich people paid to keep their sons out of the army.”
    â€œProbably,” the Viper said, “but at least the kid soldiers didn’t have to go to school.”
    Roy thought a lot