My daddy was in the army, and he disappeared when I was three or four. They weren't ever really married, anyway. Then, when I was seven, my momma died. Heart trouble, they told us, but I never really knew. Just one day she was having trouble breathing and she walked herself down to the clinic and that was all we ever saw of her. I was sent down to Pachoula to live with my grandmother. You have no idea what that was like for a little kid. Getting out of that ghetto to where there were trees and rivers and clean air. I thought I was in paradise, even if we didn't have indoor plumbing. They were the best years of my life. I would walk to the school. Read at night by candlelight. We ate the fish I caught in the streams. It was like being in some other century. I thought I'd never leave, until my grandmother got sick. She was scared she couldn't watch over me, and so it was arranged I would be sent back to Newark to live with my aunt and her new husband. That's where I finished high school, got into college. But I used to love coming down to visit my grandmother. Vacations, I would take the all-night bus from Newark down to Atlanta, change there for Mobile, get the local to Pachoula. I had no use for the city. I thought of myself as a country boy, I guess. I didn't like Newark much.'

Ferguson shook his head and a small smile creased his face. 'Those damn bus rides,' he said softly. 'They were the start of all my troubles.'

'What do you mean?'

Ferguson continued shaking his head but answered, 'By the time I got finished riding, it was nearly thirty hours. Humming along the freeway, then right through every country town and back road. Bouncing along, a little carsick, needing to use the can, filled up with folks that needed to bathe. Poor folks who couldn't afford the plane fare. I didn't like it much. That's why I bought the car, you see. A secondhand Ford Granada. Dark green. Cost me twelve hundred bucks from another student. Only had sixty-six thousand miles on it. Cherry. Sheeit! I loved cruising in that car…'