“They cut the head off my penis,” the POW said.

“Don’t tell me about that.”

“I apologize,” he said. “Hey, could you spare anything?”

I handed him a dollar, because there was still no sign of the bus and I wanted him to move away. He took the dollar, opened his wallet, but before putting the bill in, he turned the wallet around, so that I would not see what other bills he had in there. It’s always this way. Crazy people only lose their cunning last, if they ever lose it.

The bus arrived. I sat in the back. The ghost of my childhood lives in the back of buses. It says, What’s up, juts its chin. The POW sat in the handicapped seats up front, struck up a conversation, bothered someone else. He got off at the Arco farther down Glendale, where heroin is bought and sold. I was watching him out the window. I craned my neck to see if he was scoring dope. But what gave me the goddamned right to take note of what he did and where he went? You can’t own someone for a dollar.