said Mack.
"He cares about you, boy," said Miz Dellar. "That's worth more than a day's pay in this day and age."
"Day's pay for me is the same as a week's pay," said Mack. "Nothing."
"That's cause you lazy," said Tashawn. She liked Mack fine, but she always said things like that, dissing him and only pretending it was a joke.
"He can't be lazy," said Miz Dellar, "cause he stinks like a sick skunk."
"That means he's dead," said Tashawn.
"Do we have to have a conversation like this while people are trying to eat?" said Mrs. Wallace, Tashawn's mother.
"Mack's lazy," said Tashawn. "He doesn't do any work."
"I do homework," said Mack.
"Not so anybody'd ever know it," said Tashawn. "He always says he forgot to do it."
"No, I forget to bring it. I did it, I just didn't have it at school."
"Tashawn, let up on the boy," said Mrs. Wallace.
"Oh, that's just how Tashawn shows love," said Miz Dellar.
Tashawn made gagging noises and bent over her plate.
"Thanks for supper," said Mack. "It was delicious but I got to go or Ceese will think I died."
"If he smells you he'll know you died," said Tashawn.
"I wish you hadn't mentioned his smell," said Mrs. Wallace to Miz Dellar.
Mack stood in the doorway, listening to them for a moment. To him, conversation like that sounded like home.
But then, all the conversations in all the houses sounded like home to him. There was hardly a door within three blocks of Miz Smitcher's house that Mack hadn't passed through, and hardly a table he hadn't sat down at, if not for supper then at least for milk or even for a chewing out because he did something that annoyed some grownup. Some of those houses, he wasn't welcome at first, being, as they said, "fatherless" or "that bastard" or "a son of a grocery bag." But as time went on, there were fewer and fewer doors closed to him. He belonged everywhere in the neighborhood. Everybody working in their yard greeted him, even the Mexicans who did the gardening for the really rich people up on the higher reaches of Cloverdale and Punta Alta and Terraza. They'd call out to him in Spanish and he'd answer with the words he'd picked up and come and work beside them for a while.
Cause Tashawn was wrong. Mack worked hard at whatever task anyone set him. If a Mexican was trimming a hedge, Mack would pick up the clippings and put them in a pile. If one of his friends had to stay in and do chores, Mack would work alongside without even being asked, and when his friend got lazy and wanted to play, it was Mack who kept working till the job was finished.
At home, too, whatever Ceese or Miz Smitcher asked him to do, he did it, and kept right at it till it was done. Same with his homework - when somebody reminded him to do it.
That was the problem. Mack didn't think of any of the work he did as his work, just as he didn't think of any of the houses he went to as his house or any of the friends he played with as his friends.
If there was a job and someone asked him to do it, he did it, but he never remembered to do any of the chores Miz Smitcher or Ceese assigned to him. They had to remind him every time. Had to remind him to do his homework, and then in the morning had to remind him to take his homework, and if they didn't remind him to take his lunch he'd leave that behind in the fridge, too.
He just wasn't much for finding patterns in his life and holding on to them. He never thought: It's nearly seven-thirty, time to grab my lunch and my homework and head for the bus stop. He never thought: It's getting late, Ceese will be looking for me.
If Ceese didn't call him home, Mack would stay wherever he was till they kicked him out or reminded him to go home, and if they didn't ever do those things, well then he was likely to spend the night, lying down wherever he got tired and sleeping there until he woke up. That happened most often when he was playing up in Hahn Park, which crowned the heights above Baldwin Hills. The park employees were used to finding him when they came to work in the morning, and one of the gardeners warned him, "You