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The chicken got an immediate dental and proctologic exam from the losers. "Look," Joe laughed, "leave that chicken alone. If I said God gave it to me.." "We'd check His holy assiduity too! Come on Joe, where you hiding the cards?" This was a place of many echoes. It would be hard to not smile on hearing them reverberate from caverns of past memories, but only as echoes. The North Ward, let alone, Patterstown, was not what it had been. White was now black. Who spoke Italian in the North Ward nowadays? Anybody? The most probable last name of a kid named Mario would now be Jones, not Gianetti or Della'Rosso. The truck passed a young black child running with a toy shovel in his hand as his mother called after him, " Darius." He wondered what the little fellow's last name was. With a twinkle in his eye, he hadn't yet been tainted by the awfulness of this place. He did know just how far he could go before his momma would be all over him. Smart. You could tell at a glance. But no matter how smart or what label he went by, he sure as hell didn't know his ancient surname, the real one. In all probability, did anybody in Darius's family know who their ancestors were? That's why there are shovels. If you want at the past, at the truth, you need them. Sometimes you have to dig. And sometimes you have to whack somebody across the head. Shovels work both ways. What sort of shovel would this little Darius eventually wield? But his head was not yet there, as he quickly became just another shrinking reflection in the Piper's mirror, one with a pointing finger and big eyes drawn to a passing truck posted with large pictures of ice cream. Ahead, the rise of North Mountain sporting the 'horns' as the projects were called by the Italians of the transition. The old restaurant was still here, at the other end of town. Jazz Man was still here. Joey the card cheat was now Monsignor of the North Ward Church of The Sacred Heart which is how it got the nickname the Church of the