Free A Good Dude by Keith Thomas Walker

night over here.”
    “Thanks,” Candace said, realizing what a good friend Trisha was. “I really appreciate that.”
    “Maybe he didn’t have nothing on him,” Trisha said. “They would have let him out by now if he didn’t, wouldn’t they?”
    “Maybe,” Trisha said. “When they do raids like that, they take everybody who’s around there. If you don’t have no drugs or a pistol, they’ll take you for whatever tickets you got. Damn near every nigga in the hood got a warrant for something. Maybe they just holding him on tickets again.”
    That was Candace’s secret prayer. “I hope so.”
    “What you gon’ do if it is drugs?” Trisha asked.
    Candace shook her head. She didn’t want to cry again. She thought she had run out of tears, but her vision grew blurry anyway. “I don’t know,” she said, and tried to force the pain away.
    “You thinking about calling your parents yet?”
    Again, Candace’s eyes twitched. She looked up at the ceiling this time to keep the moisture in. “I called them,” she said. “I talked to them. They know what’s going on.”
    “What’d they say?”
    “It didn’t go well,” Candace said. She looked her friend in the eyes and allowed herself to weep. “They know I’m pregnant, but I’m not going home anytime soon. I don’t want to talk about that anymore.”
    Trisha was usually unrelenting, but she let it go with that.
    The front door swung open, and in stepped the only woman in the city who could make Candace feel ugly simply by walking into the room. Delia wore a sleeveless V-neck catsuit that evening. The material was dark blue and stretchy; it fit her like a rubber glove—except down past the knees, where it flared out into bell bottoms.
    Delia had her hair down. It was jet black and shiny, straight and flowing. Candace wiped the tears from her face, all of a sudden aware of her fat stomach, swollen feet, and puffy cheeks.
    “What’s up, bitches!”
    “Oh, God, it’s Foxy Brown,” Trisha said. “Girl, how you keep them titties from falling out?”
    Candace wondered that, too.
    “The same way Jennifer Lopez did when she wore that green Versace,” Delia explained. She strutted like a model, bringing in the smell of Christian Dior perfume with her.
    “Hell, I don’t know how she did it, either,” Trisha said.
    “It’s an industry secret,” Delia informed her. “Don’t hate.” She walked right up to Candace and put a hand on her hip. Candace looked up at her and her heart stopped. The dreaded moment of truth had finally arrived. Candace steeled herself for the accusations:
    Bitch, why you sleep with my man?
    Speculations would follow:
    I heard that ain’t even Rilla’s baby. Bitch, you got pregnant with CC?
    Then would come the hair pulling and rolling around on the floor, the slaps and the scratches. In a way, Candace was ready to get it all over with. It would be a perfect way to end this awful day. Waiting for this confrontation was probably harder than the actual incident would be.
    But Delia still didn’t know about CC and Candace. She came to talk about something moderately worse.
    “Why you ain’t at the house?” she asked. “Rilla’s been trying to call. CC’s been calling, too.”
    “I have my cell phone with me,” Candace said. “Them jailhouse phones can’t call to some cell phones,” Delia said.
    “Why not?”
    “Hell, I don’t know why, but they can’t.”
    “How do you know Rilla called me?” Candace asked. “You talked to CC?”
    Delia gave her a dumb look. “Girl, CC at the house. I just left from over there.”
    Candace’s jaw dropped. “They let him out?”
    “What are you talking about? He wasn’t never arrested.”
    “He wasn’t?”
    “Naw, fool. Who told you CC was in jail?”
    “I saw the police there,” Candace said. “I saw Rilla. The police had him handcuffed.”
    “Bet you didn’t see CC in no handcuffs,” Delia said, and that was true.
    “He got away?”
    “The police can’t