Ceese wanted to say, Only way you be the daddy is if the mama be an old sock you hide under your bed. But he didn't say it; Raymo didn't like getting teased. He could dish it, but he couldn't take it.

"I don't want nobody asking me questions, I got a bag of weed on me," said Raymo.

"It's probably nothing but parsley and broccoli or something anyway," said Ceese. "Nobody gives you good weed for free." Ceese leaned down and picked up the grocery bag by the handles.

"What you going to do with that thing?"

"Take it to Mama," said Ceese. "She know about babies."

The baby was lighter than Ceese expected. But it still felt wrong to hold it by the handles of the sack. What was he going to do, walk along swinging it like a dead squirrel?

He lifted it higher, to cradle it in his arms. That's when he saw that the baby was covered with ants inside the sack. And the outside of the sack was swarming with them. A lot of them were already racing up his arm.

Ceese set down the sack and started brushing the ants off his arms.

"What you doing, you dumbass?" said Raymo. "You doing some kind of wacko I-got-a-baby dance? Or you got to pee?"

"Baby's got ants all over it."

"I heard babies sometimes eat ants cause they need it in their diet."

"Was that on Discovery Channel or Animal Planet?" asked Ceese. The last of the ants was off him. He peeled back the sack and lifted the baby in his hands, holding it far away from his body.

"Come here and brush the ants off this baby."

"Don't go telling me what to do," said Raymo. "You don't tell me what to do."

"We got to get the ants off this baby. You want to hold it while I brush, that's just fine with me."

"I ain't holding no baby. Get my fingerprints on it? No way."

"Then brush off the ants." And then, in deference to Raymo's superiority, Ceese turned it from a demand into a request. "Puh-leeeeeeze."