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He walked the soles of his feet across the bottom of the mattress that sagged from above. “Ma.” The fork clinked against the bank. “You call Dad?”
    “Yes. I called your father.”
    “Dag, I was just asking.” He dropped his legs down hard and the bunk ladder creaked. “Can’t say nothing around here.”
    “I’ve been calling him all night,” Zala said. “He’s probably on the road.…” Her voice thinned, for try as she might she couldn’t remember whether Spence was still driving for Mercer, showing houses for his sister and her husband, or peddling insurance again. “I spoke to Bestor Brooks, though, and he was supposed to meet Sonny and Cousin Bobby at the Boys’ Club.” She drifted over to the bunks.
    “I know, you told us. Two times you told us. ‘Bestor’s under punishment,’ ” Kofi mimicked, making a face, “so he couldn’t go.”
    “Sonny was under punishment, wasn’t he, Mama? And he went, hunh?”
    “Yeah, but he all the time do like he want.” Kofi punched his pillow and flounced down in the hollow. And when Zala leaned in to draw the covers up over his shoulders, he shrugged her hand off. “He always do what he wants. And you let him. You don’t never say nothing to him. You jump on me all the time, though.”
    Zala sighed and moved toward the door, but Kenti grabbed a fistful of her skirt and tugged her back.
    “Don’t forget,” Kenti said, while Kofi mumbled a list of complaints that threatened to drown her out. “Pancakes and bacon ’cause it’s Sunday.”
    “Keep creeping in here waking us up, asking me the same things all over again, like I know. He don’t tell me nothing. He just go on and do like he wanna onnaconna you ain’t gonna do nuttin’ about it.”
    “Enough, Kofi.” She could hear that he was reaching for dems, dats, and doses just to annoy her. “Enough.”
    “Enuf. You doan tell Sonny enuf when he say sump’n. Just get on my case alla time.”
    “Enough. I mean it now.”
    Kofi rolled to the wall and socked it. Kenti yanked on Zala’s skirt and whispered the Sunday menu again.
    “He could be in trouble, ya know.” Kofi bolted upright in the bed,talking loud. “Maybe the cops got’m. Betcha they beating him up. And you just walking around and everything while he in trouble.”
    “So what should I do, Kofi?”
    “ ‘What should I do, Kofi?’ ”
    “You taking Mama to the bridge,” Kenti warned, releasing Zala’s skirt.
    “Well, Sonny is in trouble all right. He’s in deep trouble. With me.” She thumped her chest, but the feebleness of the gesture made her flush, and she couldn’t meet her almost nine-year-old’s eyes. He saw that, and now she had to go because he was calling up the same pictures that had driven her up and down Thurmond last night, too keyed up to stay home, too embarrassed to knock on doors, her gas tank empty from shuffling back and forth to the Boys’ Club, no one in sight, not even directions to the campgrounds posted on the door.
    “Would you quit it!” Kenti was tumbling things out of the bookcase, looking for something to throw at her brother.
    “He could be already dead, ya know, out in the woods. Could be a bear got’m, or a moose. Or the Klu Klux Klan!” Kofi shouted, falling forward on his knees to make sure she heard it before she closed the door.
    Sonny hit by a truck. Sonny hitching a ride with a lunatic. Sonny ducking in an abandoned building to pee, crazy junkies jumping him. Sonny missing the van and striking out on his own, a branch felling him in the woods. The woods booby-trapped, people said, by ’Nam vets who lived wild on patrol. Zala felt the stitching in her pockets give. She was grinding her teeth. He played her. He depended on her fear being stronger than anger. So he could come home when he got good and ready, saunter in, the crooked grin, that chipped tooth in front a prize he would flash. And she, relieved, would let him outtalk her. But she was not going for it, not