Free Everyday People by Stewart O’Nan Page B

ready for bed and then lay there trying to sleep. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him, that wasn’t it. She didn’t know what it was.
    In his crib Rashaan hiccupped and woke up and called out for her, not quite a cry. She lay there a minute, hoping he’d go back to sleep. When it was clear he wouldn’t, she got up and picked him up and sat down in the rocker.
    â€œHush now,” she said, “hush,” and rocked him against her.
    Outside, the streetlight burned in the trees, the shadows of leaves shifting on the wall. Rashaan was quiet, only the swishing of the wind. She thought of tomorrow and the park, of her father sitting on the porch in Miss Fisk’s memory. She thought of how little she knew about anyone. What could she honestly tell Rashaan about the people he’d come from? That was the lesson class had taught her. Which professor didn’t matter. Tony, Miss Fisk. She would have to learn her own history first, she thought, ask questions, find the truth out for herself.
    She caught herself rocking and stopped, but in a minute she was doing it again. She put Rashaan down and got in bed and listened to her heart throb in her ears. She wasn’t going to sleep, she decided, and clicked on her bedside light. She found her backpack and the book inside it and sat there tailorseat on her bed reading, leaning in to circle an idea, to underline a sentence, to puzzle over a word. Suddenly she needed to know everything.

THE HAWK
    ON THE SIDEWALK in front of Miss Fisk’s, Harold Tolbert stopped and took the cigar out of his mouth and looked up at the moon, then stood there a while as if searching its face for answers. “Hunh,” he said, remarking on a crater round and sharp as a smallpox scar. The moon itself was nearly full, just a lip missing. It seemed too close to Harold, a fat gold coin in the cold night air, peeking over the row of town houses across the street, painting the leaves of Miss Fisk’s hedges silver, throwing his shadow halfway to her porch. Hunter’s moon, his father would have said. He’d have to wait a day to wish on it proper.
    And what would he wish for, for Chris to get his legs back? For Eugene to stop acting all God-struck? For that mouthy little fool Bean to come back from the dead? Or—honest now—would he betray all of them just to be with Dre again?
    He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. For now he was relieved to be alone, out of the house. Hewas even glad, for the moment, not to be there yet, faced with Dre.
    He breathed out a blue cloud. Around him, Spofford was dark and quiet, a few upstairs windows filled with a cozy yellow light. He liked the night, and finally being away from the brightness of the living room, the stupidity of the TV. He’d waited till Jackie left for choir practice, Eugene for his meeting, then told Chris he was going for a walk. Stretch his legs, he said, maybe pump an Iron at the Liberty. Now ain’t that a bitch, a grown man needing an excuse to leave his own home. He was like a prisoner, he’d have said, if his own son hadn’t just been released. No, it was like Dre was always saying—he was a free man, no one was forcing him to stay.
    And what could he say to that? They both knew Dre was right, that it was up to him to pick up and leave, and they both knew he wouldn’t do it. After the thrill of finding each other, after the stolen days off spent in Dre’s bed, everything came down to the one decision he didn’t want to make.
    Not, as Dre accused him, because he was afraid of admitting what he was. No, Harold Tolbert had always loved men. He thought it was from his mother, her harshness, and from boxing, all those winters spent in steamy gyms admiring the courage and physiques of other boys and then young men like himself. The sleek, hard muscle. The agility and will. Behind the locker-room ass grabbing and towel snapping, there was something