Magic Street Page 0,7

the baby? Why did he go into that fenced-off park?

And when did they put a gate in the fence? There was no gate in the fence.

Wait a minute. There's no fence. There is no damn fence around that park.

"Really, By, are you sure you shouldn't just go to bed? You look pretty awful."

"I suppose I just need a shower, too."

"Well, right after dinner, and I'll give you a neck rub to wipe out all that tension, see if I don't."

"I sure hope you can," said Byron.

"Of course I can, darling," she said primly. "A woman like me, I can do anything."

"She is woman!" intoned Word. "She rocks!"

"Now that," said Nadine, "is one well-raised boy."

"Well-raised man," said Word.

"I'm ten," said Word.

"Don't go calling yourself a man, then," said Nadine. "Man's not a man till he earns money."

"Or drives a car," said Danielle.

What a thing to teach the children. That a man's not a man if he isn't making money. Does that mean that the more you earn, the more of a man you are? Does that mean if you get fired, you've been emasculated?

But there was no point arguing the point. Word wasn't a man yet, and when he was, Byron would make sure he got a man's respect from his father, and then it wouldn't matter what the boy's mother said. That was a power a father had that no woman could take away.

While the rest of the family bantered, Byron's thoughts turned again to that baby. If it was real, was it a child of Nadine's, or some kind of magical changeling? If it was her child, then who was the father? Byron? Was it our son that freak toted out of our bedroom in a grocery sack? Word's little brother, now bound for some miserable grave in a dumpster somewhere?

Is he really dead? Or will the old man's magic find some spark of life inside him? And if he does, could I find him? Claim him? Bring him home to raise?

And now Byron realized why Bag Man hadn't given Nadine a choice about whether to remember or not. If the mother didn't believe she had given birth, then how could the father go claiming paternity? Nobody gave maternity tests to mothers.

If that's our baby, that old man stole it from us.

I should have told him to let me forget.

But that was wrong, too, and Byron knew it. It was important for him to know - and remember

- that such a thing as this was possible in the world. That his life could be taken over so easily, that such a terrible thing could happen and then be forgotten.

And now this man knows where we live. This man can do whatever he wants in our neighborhood.

Well, if magic like this is real, then I sure as hell hope that God is also real. Because as long as Bag Man is walking around in Baldwin Hills with dead babies in his grocery sacks, then God help us all.

Please.

Chapter 2

URA LEE'S WINDOW Ura Lee Smitcher looked out the window of her house on the corner of Burnside and Sanchez as two boys walked by on the other side of the street, carrying skateboards. "There's your son with that Raymond boy from out on Coliseum."

Madeline Tucker sat on Ura Lee's couch, drinking coffee. She didn't even look up from People Magazine. "I know all about Raymo Vine."

"I hope what you know is he's heading for jail, because he is."

"That's exactly what I know," said Madeline. "But what can I do? I forbid Cecil to see him, and that just guarantees he'll sneak off. Right now Ceese got no habit of lying to me."

Ura Lee almost said something.

Madeline Tucker didn't miss much. "I know what you going to say."

"I ain't going to say a thing," said Ura Lee, putting on her silkiest, southernest voice.

"You going to say, What good if he tell you the truth, if what's true is he's going to hell in a wheelbarrow?"

She was dead on, but Ura Lee wasn't about to say it in so many words. "I likely would have said 'handbasket,' " said Ura Lee. "Though truth to tell, I don't know what the hell a handbasket is."

And now it was Madeline's turn to hesitate and refrain from saying what she was thinking.

"Oh, you don't have to say it," said Ura Lee. "Women who never had a child, they all expert on raising other women's children."

"I was not going to say that," said Madeline.

"Good thing,"