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Although shoes were vital for this escape, the patient had none. Four a.m., before sunrise, he managed to loosen the canvas cuffs, unshackle himself, and rip off the hospital gown. He put on his army pants and jacket and crept shoeless down the hall. Except for the weeping from the room next to the fire exit, all was quiet—no squeak of an orderly’s shoes or smothered giggles, and no smell of
cigarette smoke. The hinges groaned when he opened the door and the cold hit him like a hammer.

The iced iron of the fire escape steps was so painful he jumped over the railing to sink his feet into the warmer snow on the ground. Maniac moonlight doing the work of absent stars matched his desperate frenzy, lighting his hunched shoulders and footprints left in the snow. He had his service medal in his pocket but no change, so it never occurred to him to look for a phone booth to call Lily. He wouldn’t have anyway, not only because of their chilly parting, but also because it would shame him to need her now—a barefoot escapee from the nuthouse. Holding his collar tight at his throat, avoiding shoveled pavement for curb snow, he ran the six blocks as quickly as hospital drug residue would let him to the parsonage of AME Zion, a small two-story clapboard. The steps to the porch were thoroughly cleared of snow, but the house was dark. He knocked—hard, he thought, considering how stiff his hands were, but not threatening like the
bam-bam
of a citizens’ group, or a mob or the police. Insistence paid off; a light came on and the door opened a slit, then wider, revealing a gray-haired man in a flannel robe, holding his glasses and frowning at the impudence of a pre-dawn visitor.

He wanted to say “Good morning,” or “Excuse me,” but his body shook violently like a victim of Saint Vitus’s dance and his teeth chattered so uncontrollably he could
not make a sound. The man at the door took in the full measure of his shaking visitor, then stepped back to let him in.

“Jean! Jean!” He turned to direct his voice up the stairs before motioning the visitor inside. “Good Lord,” he mumbled, pushing the door closed. “You a mess.”

He tried to smile and failed.

“My name is Locke, Reverend John Locke. Yours?”

“Frank, sir. Frank Money.”

“You from down the street? At that hospital?”

Frank nodded while stamping his feet and trying to rub life back into his fingers.

Reverend Locke grunted. “Have a seat,” he said, then, shaking his head, added, “You lucky, Mr. Money. They sell a lot of bodies out of there.”

“Bodies?” Frank sank down on the sofa, only vaguely caring or wondering what the man was talking about.

“Uh-huh. To the medical school.”

“They sell dead bodies? What for?”

“Well, you know, doctors need to work on the dead poor so they can help the live rich.”

“John, stop.” Jean Locke came down the stairs, tightening the belt of her robe. “That’s just foolishness.”

“This is my wife,” said Locke. “And while she’s sweet as honey, she’s often wrong.”

“Hello, ma’am. I’m sorry to …” Still shivering, Frank stood.

She cut him off. “No need for that. Keep your seat,” she said and disappeared into the kitchen.

Frank did as told. Except for the absence of wind, the house was hardly less chilly than outside, and the plastic slipcovers stretched taut over the sofa did not help.

“Sorry if the house is too cold for you.” Locke noticed Frank’s trembling lips. “We accustomed to rain around here, not snow. Where you from, anyway?”

“Central City.”

Locke groaned as though that explained everything. “You looking to get back there?”

“No, sir. I’m on my way south.”

“Well how’d you end up in the hospital ’stead of jail? That’s where most barefoot, half-dressed folks go.”

“The blood, I guess. A lot of it running down my face.”

“How’d it get there?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No. Just the noise. Loud. Real loud.” Frank rubbed his forehead. “Maybe I was in a fight?” He put the question as though the Reverend might know why he had been bound and sedated for two days.

Reverend Locke gave him a worried glance. Not nervous, just worried. “They must have thought you was dangerous. If you was just sick they’d never let you in. Where exactly you headed, brother?” He was still standing with his hands behind his back.

“Georgia, sir. If I can make it.”

“You don’t say. That’s quite a ways. Does Brother Money have any?” Locke smiled at his own wit.

“Had some when they picked me up,” Frank answered. There was nothing in his pants pocket now but his army medal. And he could not remember how much Lily had handed him. Just her turned-down lips and unforgiving eyes.

“But it’s gone now, right?” Locke squinted. “Police looking for you?”

“No,” said Frank. “No, sir. They just hustled me up and put me in the crazy ward.” He cupped his hands before his mouth and breathed on them. “I don’t think they brought any charges.”

“You wouldn’t know it if they did.”

Jean Locke returned with a basin of cold water. “Put your feet in here, son. It’s cold but you don’t want them to heat up too fast.”

Frank sank his feet into the water, sighing. “Thanks.”

“What’d they pull him in for? The police, I mean.” Jean put the question to her husband, who shrugged.

What indeed. Other than that B-29 roar, exactly what he was doing to attract police attention was long gone. He couldn’t explain it to himself, let alone to a gentle couple offering help. If he wasn’t in a fight was he peeing on the sidewalk? Hollering curses at some passerby, some
schoolchildren? Was he banging his head on a wall or hiding behind bushes in somebody’s backyard?

“I must have been acting up,” he said. “Something like that.” He truly could not remember. Had he thrown himself on the ground at the sudden sound of backfire? Perhaps he started a fight with a stranger or started weeping before trees—apologizing to them for acts he had never committed. What he did remember was that as soon as Lily shut the door behind him, in spite of the seriousness of his mission his anxiety became unmanageable. He bought a few shots to steady himself for the long trip. When he left the bar, anxiety did leave but so did sanity. Back was the free-floating rage, the self-loathing disguised as somebody else’s fault. And the memories that had ripened at Fort Lawton, from where, no sooner than discharged, he had begun to wander. When he disembarked, he thought to send a telegram home, since no one in Lotus owned a telephone. But along with the telephone operators’ strike the telegraph people were striking too. On a two-cent postcard, he wrote, “I am back safe. See you all soon.” “Soon” never arrived because he didn’t want to go home without his “homeboys.” He was far too alive to stand before Mike’s folks or Stuff’s. His easy breath and unscathed self would be an insult to them. And whatever lie he cooked up about how bravely they died, he could not blame their resentment. Besides, he
hated Lotus. Its unforgiving population, its isolation, and especially its indifference to the future were tolerable only if his buddies were there with him.

“How long you been back?” Reverend Locke was still standing. His face softened.

Frank raised his head. “A year about.”

Locke scratched his chin and was about to speak when Jean came back with a cup and a plate of soda crackers. “It’s just hot water with lots of salt in it,” she said. “Drink it up, but slowly. I’ll get you a blanket.”

Frank sipped twice and then gulped down the rest. When Jean brought more, she said, “Son, dip the crackers in the liquid. They’ll go down better.”

“Jean,” said Locke, “look and see what’s in the poor box.”

“He needs shoes too, John.”

There were none to spare, so they put four pair of socks and some ripped galoshes next to the sofa.

“Get some sleep, brother. You got a rocky journey ahead and I don’t just mean Georgia.”

Frank fell asleep between a wool blanket and plastic slipcovers and dreamed a dream dappled with body parts. He woke in militant sunlight to the smell of toast. It took a while, longer than it should have, to register where he was. The residue of two days’ hospital drugging was leaving, but slowly. Wherever he was, he was grateful the
sun’s dazzle did not hurt his head. He sat up and noticed socks folded neatly on the rug like broken feet. Then he heard murmurs from another room. As he stared at the socks, the immediate past came into focus: the hospital escape, the freezing run, finally Reverend Locke and his wife. So he was back in the real world when Locke came in and asked how three hours of sleep felt.

“Good. I feel fine,” said Frank.

Locke showed him to the bathroom and placed shaving kit and hairbrush on the sink’s ledge. Shod and cleaned up, he rummaged in his pants pockets to see if the orderlies had missed anything, a quarter, a dime, but his CIB medal was the only thing they had left him. The money Lily had given him, of course, was gone as well. Frank sat down at the enamel-topped table and ate a breakfast of oatmeal and over-buttered toast. In the center of the table lay eight one-dollar bills and a wash of coins. It could have been a poker pot, except it was surely far more hard-won: dimes slipped from small coin purses; nickels reluctantly given up by children who had other (sweeter) plans for them; the dollar bills representing the generosity of a whole family.

“Seventeen dollars,” said Locke. “That’s more than enough for a bus ticket to Portland and then on to somewhere near Chicago. Still it sure won’t get you to Georgia, but when you get to Portland, here’s what you do.”

He instructed Frank to get in touch with a Reverend Jessie Maynard, pastor of a Baptist church, and that he would call ahead and tell him to look out for another one.

“Another one?”

“Well, you not the first by a long shot. An integrated army is integrated misery. You all go fight, come back, they treat you like dogs. Change that. They treat dogs better.”

Frank stared at him, but didn’t say anything. The army hadn’t treated him so bad. It wasn’t their fault he went ape every now and then. As a matter of fact the discharge doctors had been thoughtful and kind, telling him the craziness would leave in time. They knew all about it, but assured him it would pass. Just stay away from alcohol, they said. Which he didn’t. Couldn’t. Until he met Lily.

Locke handed Frank a flap torn from an envelope with Maynard’s address and told him that Maynard had a big congregation and could offer more help than his own small flock.

Jean had packed six sandwiches, some cheese, some bologna, and three oranges into a grocery bag. She handed it to him along with a watch cap. Frank put on the cap, thanked her and, peering into the bag, asked, “How long a trip is it?”

“Don’t matter,” said Locke. “You’ll be grateful for every bite since you won’t be able to sit down at any bus
stop counter. Listen here, you from Georgia and you been in a desegregated army and maybe you think up North is way different from down South. Don’t believe it and don’t count on it. Custom is just as real as law and can be just as dangerous. Come on, now. I’ll drive you.”

Frank stood at the door, while the Reverend retrieved his coat and car keys.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Locke. I do thank you.”

“Stay safe, son,” she answered, patting his shoulder.

At the ticket window, Locke converted the coins into paper money and bought Frank’s ticket. Before joining the line at the Greyhound door, Frank noticed a police car cruising by. He knelt as though buckling his galoshes. When the danger passed he stood, then turned to Reverend Locke and held out his hand. As the men shook hands they held each other’s eyes, saying nothing and everything, as though “good-bye” meant what it once did: God be with you.

There were very few passengers, yet Frank dutifully sat in the last seat, trying to shrink his six-foot-three-inch body and holding the sandwich bag close. From the windows, through the fur of snow, the landscape became more melancholy when the sun successfully brightened the quiet trees, unable to speak without their leaves. The lonesome-looking houses reshaped the snow, while a child’s wagon here and there held mounds of it. Only the trucks stuck in driveways looked alive. As he mused
about what it might be like in those houses, he could imagine nothing at all. So, as was often the case when he was alone and sober, whatever the surroundings, he saw a boy pushing his entrails back in, holding them in his palms like a fortune-teller’s globe shattering with bad news; or he heard a boy with only the bottom half of his face intact, the lips calling mama. And he was stepping over them, around them, to stay alive, to keep his own face from dissolving, his own colorful guts under that oh-so-thin sheet of flesh. Against the black and white of that winter landscape, blood red took center stage. They never went away, these pictures. Except with Lily. He chose not to think of this trip as a breakup. A pause, he hoped. Yet it was hard to ignore what living with her had become: a tired cruelty laced her voice and the buzz of her disappointment defined the silence. Sometimes Lily’s face seemed to morph into the front of a jeep—relentless headlight eyes, a bright scouring above a grill-like smile. Strange, how she had changed. Remembering what he loved about her, the slight paunch, the backs of her knees, and her knockout beautiful face, it was as though someone had redrawn her as a cartoon. It couldn’t all be his fault, could it? Didn’t he smoke outside the apartment building? Put more than half his pay on the dresser for her to spend any way she wanted? Do her the courtesy of raising the toilet seat—which she took as an insult. And although he was amazed and amused by the female paraphernalia
that hung from the bathroom door or cluttered cabinets, sink ledges, and every available space—douche bags, enema attachments, bottles of Massingill, Lydia Pinkham, Kotex, Neet hair removal, facial creams, mud-packs, curlers, lotions, deodorants—he never touched or questioned them. Yes, he sat on occasion for hours in the quiet—numb, unwilling to talk. Yes, he regularly lost the few odd jobs he’d managed to secure. And while sometimes being near her made it hard to breathe, he was not at all sure he could live without her. It wasn’t just the lovemaking, entering what he called the kingdom between her legs. When he lay with the girl-weight of her arm on his chest, the nightmares folded away and he could sleep. When he woke up with her, his first thought was not the welcome sting of whiskey. Most important, he was no longer attracted to other women—whether they were openly flirting or on display for their own private pleasure. He didn’t rank them against Lily; he simply saw them as people. Only with Lily did the pictures fade, move behind a screen in his brain, pale but waiting, waiting and accusing. Why didn’t you hurry? If you had gotten there sooner you could have helped him. You could have pulled him behind the hill the way you did Mike. And all of that killing you did afterward? Women running, dragging children along. And that old one-legged man on a crutch hobbling at the edge of the road so as not to slow down the other, swifter ones? You blew a hole in his head
because you believed it would make up for the frosted urine on Mike’s pants and avenge the lips calling mama. Did it? Did it work? And the girl. What did she ever do to deserve what happened to her? All unasked questions multiplying like mold in the shadows of the photographs he saw. Before Lily. Before seeing her stand on a chair, stretch, reach up to a high shelf in her cupboard to get the can of Calumet she needed for the meal she was preparing for him. Their first. He should have jumped up, pulled the tin from the shelf. But he did not. He could not take his eyes away from the backs of her knees. As she stretched, her dress of a soft cottony flowered fabric rose up, exposing that seldom noticed, ooo-so-vulnerable flesh. And for a reason he still did not understand, he began to cry. Love plain, simple, and so fast it shattered him.