He drove below the speedlimit the way to Upson and pulling up to the bungalow told him to tell Justine that he had an errand to run. The sun was up now and in its starkness he looked to be twenty years older, a middle-aged version of the boy that he knew. An augury of a life to come. A life already. His mouth slacked then clownlike. You hear what I’m tellin you Morris, he said.
He turned toward the backseat. I’ll see you around, Alicia, he said.
She nodded. Nice to meet you, she said.
Just say to Justine what I told you, Morris, alright.
Alright.
When he came onto the porch the dog lifted its head, letting out a low whine and it slowly began to move its tail and it turned to show its belly and he knelt and pet it for a long time. He sat down on the porchstep. The dog had righted itself and lay in the same spot as when he’d come up. He regarded now its burnt nape. The dog watched him for a moment, waiting on him to speak or to gesture but he did neither. He turned to see on the street a boy on a Flyer bicycle delivering papers and he watched him passing the house and the boy looked at him and then looked down at the stack he had corded to his wirebasket and kept on. It’s likely he’ll get away with what he’s done to you, Leroy, he said. The dog turned up its eyes. I’m a witness to it now. See if there’s no witness to something then there’s a chance that it never did happen. A likelihood even some say. The dog lowered its eyes. He kept sitting and looked out onto the bungalows across the street. The porches ran level as far as he could see and of what he couldn’t see he knew that the porch at house number thirty toward the far end of the block that had been driven up on one Friday night by a youngman’s Mercedes was razed in what looked like jaws of wood. Or so it was years since. He turned and looked ahead now to see in the window directly across an old lady watching him. She was in her housecoat and had on a hairbonnet and she waived at him with what seemed like recognition and then she pulled the curtains shut. When she opened them a moment later she was stark naked and she stood there in what one ought think all her wrinkled glory and he watched her intently as if she might have been a contemporary of his and his crotch swelled and he pulled at his shorts so to make room for his glands and then she disappeared behind the curtains once more. I guess she never quit doing that, Leroy, he said. The dog barely lifted its eyes. It began to snore. He reached into his pocket and took up the near empty baggie. He studied it for a second and flicked at it with his finger and then he pried open the seal and swiped his pinkie around in the residue and ran his pinkie against his gums and he swiped once more around with his wetted finger and licked the finger and turned the baggie inside out and licked the whole of it and pitched it down the sewer grate. He sat. His chin resting in his hands. His elbows on his knees. Already he was beginning to sweat in the early sun. He pushed his hair back and took up the fronttail of his tshirt and wiped his face. Two nightjars held over from the evening were taking flight from a cedar tree and he looked up at them and shielded his eyes with his hand and followed the divergent pattern they were taking before they came together again and were lost to him in the sun. He lowered his head into his hands again. At the time that he heard the yelp of the siren he could have been dozed off for a few minutes and he raised his head and saw the passenger window rolled down and the officer pointing at him and calling him over with his finger.
I aint gonna ask you again, son.