A slender, bare chested adolescent strolled the waterfront. Golden down feathered his spine and disappeared into the waist of his jeans. He was Roy Plemmons from Landsford, South Carolina, a tiny cotton town trapped like a piece of lint in the rolling red piedmont, and he gleamed in the opalescent sunset like a pearl in an oyster.

He’d been shaking his booty for the queers who hung out near the Battery since he’d made it to the coast. It was fishing without a pole and he was the bait; it was how he ate. Charleston teetered on the edge of the known universe in more ways than one. He was on the run.
Waves lapped the stone breakwater fronting the harbor. Roy tried to imagine the big guns that had once boomed like the end of the world. The odor of brine was overpowering, like cheap per¬fume.
You can catch more flies with honey.

That was one of Grandma Fant’s favorite sayings. Roy frowned and swung his hips. A nagging memory inside his head, she’d declare that was exactly where she should be.
Water and sky merged into a solid gray; the harbor emptied of light. First dark falling on this city always felt like someone walking on his grave.
He banished the grim notion with a toss of his head. Hair the color of ripe wheat flashed in the dusk, a bright flag.

Grandma Fant faded; a homo was headed his way. The magic had worked, again. Roy knew something about high hopes and wouldn’t return the man’s bold stare. A boy who knew how to act coy, he remembered Pink’s advice.

“Go slow, now. You don’t want to scare ‘em off. We’ll be out of sight, waiting. Just remember, it’s all in the timing.”
Pink and the others were up ahead, hunkered down behind the garbage bins in the cobblestone alley bordering the church. That was part of the plan.
With a calculated twitch of his butt Roy was sitting by a pond, cane pole bobbing in black water.
Come here, little fishie.

The church door was padlocked. Not even a crumb of light escaped the painted over windows. Pink must have been counting on that.
Now that Roy thought about it, Wednesdays would be bad; Sundays, too, naturally. He’d read somewhere the Jews worshipped on Saturday. Somebody was always going to church.
But there were no witnesses for Jesus here. Not tonight.
The handmade sign declared Church of God of the First Born. The lettering had dribbled like it was announcing something scary and had him puzzled. Granddaddy Fant was a Baptist preacher and Roy had studied scripture. He knew who the First Born was. Saying it like that, though, made it seem like there should be a long line of the Born. The first, the second, and so on.

He had no idea who they might be and cocked his head to one side like a bird.
The man was like a dog on a scent. Dressed in chino slacks and a white short sleeved cotton shirt, deck shoes on his feet, his hair cut close to his scalp, he didn’t look like a homo.
The alley was a black maw ahead.

Pink, James, Johnny and Sam were there, waiting. When Roy walked by, that was their cue. The queer would be right behind him.
“Like Mary had a little lamb.”

He’d kept quiet when James taunted him. No sense in starting something. Then Pink said, “We couldn’t do it without Roy,” and glared until the smart mouth turned away.
Roy shut his eyes and saw the man etched in pale light at the end of the dark alley; it was like looking down the barrel of a gun. A terrible secret that had nothing to do with him was about to be revealed. He only had to keep walking.
Bam. They were on him.

Usually, it didn’t take long before a guy was blubbering and handing over his wallet. Watches, rings, necklaces, bracelets, too. Queers wore more jewelry than whores.
Not this one.

“You shits. Get your fucking hands off me.”

Roy twisted around to look, but kept moving.
The odds were all wrong. Four against one.

The blows sounded like clods of dirt falling from a shovel. Roy didn’t like the sound.
At all.

“Plemmons, when you gonna learn to go ‘long with the program, son?”

When folks asked Roy that question, he never knew the answer, but he was certain Pink and the others had better finish this fast.
Before, what happened was, they’d grab the loot and scatter, then meet up later. Pink took the haul to a pawnshop. When they divvied up the cash, he got the biggest share; the rest was split four ways.

Roy always figured, no harm done, he had to eat.

Not this time.

The fag was on the sidewalk, groaning; blood stained his shirt. Pink was saying something. Roy couldn’t make out the words and peered into the indigo darkness like an owl.

It looked like the queer had won something for the team - a goal, a point, a base, a game - and Pink and the rest were hoisting him up and congratulating him, like he was their hero. Roy watched them stagger as if they were suddenly drunk. On blood, or something. He didn’t want to know what.

They moved in unison, as if this, too, was part of the plan, but Roy knew they were making it up as they went along.

The queer got the old heave ho over the sea wall, and hit the water with a loud splash, a fucked up, twisted baptism.

For a second, Roy thought he heard Grandpa Fant intoning, Like a lamb to the slaughter, but it was only the wind whistling in his ear as he ran.