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Show <u Helen in the Past Present Red was the Mayor of the neighborhood and Karl and Funster the police, not officially, just by some xxx process of spontaneous generation. Big black Mr. Dean Danger lived across the street tr*»o story in the bottom half of the*flat, Xaxaxxaaxxxx under the Puerto Ricans. He owned the house. He owned the bar on the corner of 2^-th and Celebration Avenue, Dean Danger's Grill, the hottest black bar in town, and xaXax nobody white ever xx went in their except Raxxxxxxix Red or Karl. Red always said you could get anything money could buy down at Dean Danger's Grill, as long as it was illegal. Or booze. Dean Danger was the Ambassador of the neighborhood, and some of us just called him Mr. Ambassador, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxaxx Red liked to sit on the front porch of our house and watch the traffic. He did it from the day he moved in and he still did it twenty-five years later, except when he first moved in Helen sat on the porch with him and all the n - ghbors yacked from porch to porch or went porch visiting, one porch to the other, having a beer and bragging and bitching about each axkaxx other's kids. That didn't happen anymore. Helen didn't come out because a she K^xxxxx^xiaxHxxxxxxxikixxjx was afraid of everything; Karl's guns, Funster's guns, Karl's kids, and most everybody who paraded up and down the street between the Variety Store on German Avenue and Dean Danger's on Celebration. Most people didn't use the sidewalks because they never knew whose dog would be out, ax except on Sundays till it got dark, when everybody kept their dogs in the yard. On Sunday everybody looked like a pimp or a dealer or a whore and we were all too civilized to want our dogs to bite somebody who just came from church, no matter what they did any other time. But Helen was afraid of them all and Red knew them all by name, kids, pimps, whores, dealers, adults. They said hi and he said hi. Nobody threw litter on his walk and nobody's dog pissed on his lawn. Sisters, white Catholic and black Baptist, xxxxxxx came and read him the bible, it was all the same Bible to him. He gave them beer or Kool-Aid, the beverage axxxxxxxxxxxxxxkaxxx of their choice, while Helen Xx£ huddled up in the bedroom in front ^-hrr-T^fffrH^a V Y y*5,??m x g w a x m g a c x g i t o c i ± k g 2 C f c kg |