Joe and I were on the construction site when a man in a black car stopped to rage at us. “It ain’t fair for white men to come into this neighborhood and get jobs working on our people’s houses,” he said—a reasonable charge. He asked how much the homes we’d built were renting for, and when we told him they were for sale, not rent, he called Joe an ugly name. “What did you say?” Joe asked. “I ain’t afraid of you,” the man said. He drove away, and I thought of him all afternoon until a bee flew into my eye.
