On a Thursday in November, Leon picked Jayden up from school. He was there at three-fifteen, a full fifteen minutes before the bell, parked directly in front of the steps, and when the doors opened and the children poured out, his grandson came down those steps two at a time in his red hoodie, and Leon saw him look—just once, quick—at the curb, and see the Buick, and his whole small body let go of something.
At the shop Jayden swept hair. It was his job on Thursdays now, at a dollar a sweep, and he took it seriously, pushing the wide broom in long strokes across the black-and-white tile and ferrying the piles to the dustpan while Odell Pettiford supervised from the second chair and offered unsolicited commentary on his technique.
When the shop was quiet, between customers, Jayden leaned on the broom and said, “Grandpa, is Dad bad?”
Leon was stropping a razor. He did not stop.
“No,” he said. “Your daddy’s sick with something. It makes people do things they wouldn’t do. It makes them forget things they’d never forget.”
“Like me.”