“Teddy Odett down at Odett Realty said that you had a basement where a man could stand fully erect, one that has electricity and running water.” “Yes,” I said to the small, bald-headed white man in the dark-green suit. If somebody stole something from me, I’d have known who it was, what kind of car he drove, and the numbers on his license plate before he was halfway to Southampton. Everybody knows everybody in my neighborhood, so strangers don’t go unnoticed. I never locked the door because we lived in a secluded colored neighborhood way back from the highway. “My house is your house,” I always said to Clarance and Ricky. We’d been friends since childhood, since my grandparents owned the house. I was surprised even to hear the doorbell because it was too early for my friends to have made it home from work and neither one of them would have rung the bell anyway. The three of us had a standing date to play cards on Thursday nights. I had answered the door expecting big Clarance Mayhew and his cousin Ricky.
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