..... For awhile, Sky and Collin just crouched in the overgrown yard. They passed the plastic square of cocaine in the package back and forth, careful as they would their child. Under the tough bend of the bushes, the sweltering sky felt like a shelter around them.
..... It felt like a shrine. Collin and Sky were shiny with sobriety.
..... "You scared?" Sky asked. As always, her question sounded soft and unassuming, like a gift left on a doorstep. Collin had to look into the blue eyes that smoldered in her dark face to find the hope reaching for him.
..... "No," he lied.
..... "I'd be scared," Sky said and then laid her head on his shoulder.
..... "You got every right," Collin answered. His hand lifted toward the black artwork of her braids. "This is a scary place-all the fiends and the killers and the liars-and you're just a little girl."
..... "Mhm." Sky nodded against him, and Collin could feel her relieved smile.
..... "Your daddy keeps you safe." And his fingers felt a sigh of their own move through the hardness in them as he touched her hair.
..... "He didn't keep my mama safe."
..... "No," Collin said. He recalled Sky saying her father, Parnell, had left her murdered mother behind in Philadelphia. In the Upper Ninth of New Orleans, he built a fortress for his family from ski masks and banana clips and duct tape. His failure to protect Sky's mother remained in its core and in the core of his daughter's heart. "I'm keeping my mama safe, though."
..... "You going to keep me safe?" The smile withheld itself against Collin's skin.
..... "Yes."
..... "Forever?"
..... "Yes," Collin said, and he hastened to do it-to take the next step. He opened the flap on the plastic and hooked out a small pile of cocaine.
..... Collin and Sky looked at the white pile. It was so fragile. Fragile and powerful beyond measure. Fatal as a bullet.
..... He lifted it to his nose.
..... "You don't have to," Sky said, breathless. Collin's heart was way beyond breath. It was all steam, just boiling, cleansing him of his life before.
..... "I want to," Collin said.
..... "Because my daddy does it?"
..... Collin looked at the coke. So fragile, so small, and yet the little pile would release him-unlock the cells his teachers' looks put him in; undo God's plan; unleash the giant he could be. It would liberate Collin from everything before. Ever after, he could be as big as he wanted.
..... "Because it's what men do."
..... Collin inhaled. He scooped another bump and took it into his other nostril.
..... Nothing changed. There was just a subtle numbing in his skull's center. It made the summer no cooler, the air no lighter. Life seeped on.
..... Then everything changed. Collin's heart began to pump sweet electricity.
..... Everything began to glow with it.
..... Car tires whispered to a stop on the Parkway as a Pontiac Firebird arrived. Collin's mind registered each bit of gravel. He could hear Sky's clothes creasing and settling as she rose. He heard everything, and everything was exact with purpose.
..... "That's my daddy," Sky said. She dipped and put a kiss on Collin's head. He had never felt something so significant. His skin memorized its poem.
..... Collin smiled up at her. His smile was matched by the man in the waiting Pontiac Firebird. Parnell nodded at Collin, a priceless look of recognition polished by his thick Buddy Holly glasses.
..... "Hurry on up now, Sky," Parnell said, voice like fresh tar on a bad road. "Dinner bell's ringing, baby girl."
..... Sky kept Collin central in her eyes. "You going to see me after you done?"
..... "For sure," Collin said and he meant it. The promise was bright and hard, and for the first time, Collin didn't feel it was made just to be shattered by life in Desire.
..... He saw Parnell looking at him-glass on his stare hard as Collin's promise-and felt secure.
..... "See you after you're done with my errand, boy," Parnell said.
..... Collin grinned. His father had only given demands. His mother only begged. Now he was given purpose.
..... "Yes, sir."
..... Sky left him with a smile. Collin waited until Parnell and she had pulled away before seating the package in his back pocket. He listened to the buzz and throb of the wild yard. Listening put everything-everything in the Desire District-in its place.
..... Then he rose up with the tether of Sky's kiss on his brow and went to deliver.

..... The Missionary Baptist Church hallway's paint was cocaine-white and Collin ran his fingers along it. The texture was spongy and it made the concrete below feel so fragile. His senses soaked up the friction.
..... Collin turned the corner toward the back offices with his brain a creature of wild appetite, eating up delights from his memory: The taste of his mother's meatloaf with its too-many onions. The feel of his baby blanket, stitched from old skirts. The way her breath brushed his ear, first teaching him what a poem felt like.
..... Collin grinned as he made for the second office on the left. He didn't usually grin when thinking of his mother. It felt good to be able to-to be free to.
..... Mama taught him other things, after all-she told Collin, "Don't you be letting this crack demon into you," before she lit her pipe. Mama told Collin, "You only deserve peace and love in this life, baby," before tucking him in and waiting only half an hour before opening their front door for the first man of the night. "You my little man, my little king," Mama would giggle, and then would hide him behind the McDonald's dumpster before pandering in the parking lot for his Happy Meal.
..... Collin giggled in memory as he pushed open the office door. Humor kept the darkness at bay. And he could see now-the cocaine let him see-that the world was so very full of light. Everything had a diamond in it if you just looked hard enough.
..... Even the bad things.
..... Reverend Watson looked up from his computer as Collin entered, one hand on the package in his back pocket.
..... "Collin, you came." Watson's voice trembled, rich with hope. "You ready to put the demons behind you?"
..... Collin drew the pistol from his pocket and began squeezing the trigger. He didn't bother aiming. He left that to the cocaine and walked forward with the bullets.
..... Collin squeezed until the gun's slide stuck on empty. With that halt, guilt slammed into Collin like a sledgehammer to his center. His sternum and stomach felt caved in and quaking with fits of sickness. That didn't matter, though. The cocaine dissolved him into pure light.
..... "Yeah, Preach," Collin said to the ripped chunks that remained of Reverend Watson. "I'm done with demons."
..... Collin glowed. Tears failed to form, evaporated by the light within him. He turned his eyes from the wreck of the Reverend, up to the wall behind him. Blood speckled there in marvelous blossoms-a gleaming deep red, full of vitality and beauty. It gave Collin an idea.
..... He felt full of ideas. Ideas and purpose.

..... "They're for me?" Sky chimed as she gathered the red roses Collin brought her to her chest. Collin stepped toward her, into her house.
..... "It's all for you," Collin said, his smile sure and wide. All his love would be for her and for Mama. No one else mattered. Only his family.
..... Even with the cocaine's luster fading, Collin felt his love could shine enough for all of them.
..... Collin breathed lightly, but the smell of Sky's den invaded. It was a weave of burning smells-smoke both fresh and from stains on the walls and furniture. There was a clotted quality to the air and to the rich colors of the furnishings, their mahogany and velvet. Collin figured he would have to get used to it.
..... Places like this were now his home. He figured they always were. Only now, he was brave enough to live in them as a man.
..... Collin took Sky's hand, and with the rose thorns writing on his skin and hers, she led him into the kitchen.
..... Parnell was cooking in there, hunkered at the formica dining table. He tended a lab kit, its burner fluttering below refining crack, that rose from a spill of fast food wrappers. The smile he gave Collin had diamonds in its teeth.
..... "My little man. You done what I told?"
..... "You know it, dog," Collin answered like a soldier.
..... Parnell nodded. He flung a baggie of crack Collin caught.
..... "No hard feelings about your old man, then," Parnell grunted.
..... "I understand."
..... "He had to go down, coming at me like that. Same as Watson did."
..... "Yeah," Collin said, but for the first time since the cocaine, he felt a hollowness that stuck. It sucked at him. He wanted another chance to speak, to prove its void false.
..... Parnell filled it with his next words. "Welcome to your real family, C-Murder."
..... Sky's lips found Collin's cheek, and all was light again-light and promises made to be kept.