As he stepped into the street he heard the bar door close again and then came Orlin’s voice, “Luther, let us give you a lift. It’s about to rain.”

He looked up and did see some storm clouds to the south, and then felt Josh’s big hand on his shoulder. What was worse was the ache coming in his belly, the liquor messing him up. Getting up in the morning would be hell. He turned and looked up at Josh. Josh and Orlin were mean and known to fight and made racial jokes, but had never seriously threatened him. So, oddly as it seemed, he felt no fear.

“Okay, I am a might unsteady on my feet,” he slurred, drunkenly.

Luther walked through the alley to the lot behind the bar, past the dumpster where they had found Old Sam, with nary a fear. Josh steadied him and pushed him up into the cab of Orlin’s giant pickup, and they all rumbled off the lot, him sandwiched between two boys half his age and twice his size.

As Orlin turned up Wisteria he began to talk, while Josh patted his leg. “You know, Luther I think we need to have a talk about your friend.”

Somehow, he still was not nervous, even as Orlin turned the wrong way off of Wisteria toward the cemetery, instead of toward the big old house where he rented an apartment from Mister Wilkens off of Mace. Josh then held up a business card, with a woman’s fine writing on it, ‘call me Luther,’ it said, with a phone number.

All of a sudden Luther thought he was going to get lynched for messing with a white woman, then the boys smiled good-naturedly, and he realized that he was not in danger.

Josh chuckled, “Here, Luth, your lady friend asked us to drive you home and give you her card.”

He reached for the card and Josh let it drop. He then reached for it and doubled over horribly from the spastic late-night pains he would get when he stayed out too long. These were particularly bad, perhaps exasperated by the drinking. Josh patted him on the back as Orlin ranted and raved about this and that—politics, and what have you. And they drove on into the night, down Wisteria to the cemetery, where the old winding city road dead-ended at the spooky old place where the Jewish people used to be buried—a graveyard that got little traffic anymore, full to the stone walls as it was.

His mind kept telling him he was in trouble, but there was no fear. These boys weren’t going to hurt him, were just doing the lady’s bidding and having some fun with him—felt that in his bones, he did. His belly hurt like the dickens for sure. Eventually the truck stopped and they all sat upright, Josh having pulled him back from between his knees.

“Tanks Josh, my belly be crampin’ somethin’ fierce.”

He cringed to hear himself speak like an uneducated black person. This was a big reason why he always secluded himself and lay down to sleep when he got the belly cramps. Not only did he look like he had to use the bathroom, but he spoke poorly, to the point of embarrassment. His head was now pounding and something smelled bad, like he had already thrown up.

“What dat smell y’all?”

Josh, tossed his big head of curly blonde hair and snorted, “Smells like wet dog, like a big soaking wet German Shepherd.”

Orlin rolled down his window and sniffed. “Could I have hit a dog? It smells like a dead dog around here!”

Then a terrible chill streaked down Luther’s spine from his head as he heard the howl of some big, terrible dog that dissolved into a slathering snarling mess of sound. His stomach seemed to expand like a balloon and vomit coursed out through his mouth and nose. He panicked and tried to cover his mouth with his hands so that he would not fowl up Orlin’s truck so bad and turn some simple whooping into a stomping. But his hands had grown numb and had swelled up. And his feet! His feet hurt like the dickens and he cried out, “Oh, Gawd no!”

Luther emerged from his sick spell into a nightmare sleep. The same nightmares that had ever plagued him, when he lay down late or drank too much, savaged him with their terrors. He sensed absently that he was being beaten and kicked and dragged by Orlin and Josh. It was so dream-like though he could not really tell. And he so feared opening his eyes, of even emerging into a semi-conscious sleep, not wanting to even have the choice of waking, lest he be tempted to. He did not even hazard a dream prayer but just bounced along on the wisps of misery.