Chapter One

blue lightening

At first he thought the trill and bleating note was part of a dream. A sweet note so high it had to be the angel that Aunt Bellandra said the blue god sent, "to save the black mens from fallin' out the world complete. He got a real high voice like a trumpet an' he always come at the last second, after a fool done lost his job, his money, his wife, his self-respect and just about everything else he got. Just about dead," Bellandra proclaimed, clapping her hands together loudly, "an' that's when the angel sing."

Back when he was a little boy, Socrates feared his tall and severe auntie. But he was also enthralled by her stories about the black race in a white world under a blue god who barely noticed man.

"When he almost gone that angel just might make his move," she'd say. "And when a black man hear that honied voice all the terrible loss an' pain fall right away an' the man look up an' see that he always knew the right road but he never made the move."

Again the high note. This time strained a bit. This time a little warble in Socrates' sleep.

"But not everybody could hear it. Some dope fiends too high an' some mens hatin' too hard. Sometimes the angel is that much too late and his song becomes a funeral hymn."

Socrates jerked himself upright in the bed, opening his eyes as wide as he could. He was afraid that the music he heard in his dream was really the dirge of that tardy angel—that he'd died in the night and it was too late for him to make up for all the suffering he'd caused in his evil years.

He sat up on his fold-out sofa bed. There was a slight whistle in his throat at the tail end of eac