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“Jerry’s apartment is on fire,” shouted Willie as he sprinted out the door. Someone had called and told him that one of the buildings at the Sojourner Truth housing complex for seniors on Martin Luther King was ablaze. Before I could respond, Willie was gone. 

I checked on Ralph. Andrea was on the phone, trying to call Omar, who lives down the hall from Jerry and lets him use his telephone. There was no answer. 

“I’ll drive up there and see what’s going on,” I said. “There’s three Sojourner Truth buildings. Maybe the fire is in one of the other apartments.” 

Dover Street, which runs in front of my house, is usually quiet, but it was obvious by the number of cars on the street that traffic was being rerouted. I turned left on 60th and left on MLK. I was one block above Jerry’s building. I could tell that his complex was okay. It was the building just south of his that was burning. 

I’d hoped to find Jerry and Willie outside the apartment, but traffic was blocked and I had to take a circuitous route behind the burning complex. I drove home and waited for news. 

About an hour later Willie and Jerry arrived. Jerry was dressed like he’d just gotten out of bed and put on the first thing he found on the floor. He had on an old t-shirt I recognized as once belonging to me, baggy jeans, and untied sneakers. He appeared shaken up.  

“You’re okay,” I shouted, giving him a hug. 

“Yeah boy, but other people ain’t. It’s not a good situation up there.” 

He came into the kitchen, sat on a stool and kicked off his shoes. “Like to scare me to death,” he said. “You never know what those old folks up there might do. Mixin’ cigarettes with oxygen tanks is what I heard. Damned near killed me.” 

This was, of course, an exaggeration as Jerry lives a block away from the burned building, but I understood his point. He was close enough to see the flames and smell smoke; close enough to want to be as far away from there as possible. At the moment, that was our house. 

We were quiet for a moment as we considered the gravity of the situation on MLK. Then I noticed that Jerry wasn’t wearing socks. “What’s wrong with your feet?” I asked, looking down at his toes. His heels were dry and cracked, but it was his digits that were alarming. They were black, as if he’d dipped them in ink or painted the nails with ebony polish.  

“You know I got athlete’s foot,” he said. “Had it all my life. Comes from wearin’ funky basketball shoes for the last 70 years. These toenails are about to fall off.” 

“I don’t like the idea of you walking around my house with diseased feet,” I said. “I might catch it.” 

“You’re not gonna catch this fungus from me, so don’t trip,” he said. Then he got serious. The fire had given him pause. “Some men are all ate up by cancer and others by V.D., but me, I’m full of foot fungus. When I go, it ain’t gonna be no fire, car wreck or heart attack. It’s this goddamn athlete foot thing that’s gonna bring me down.” 

“Is there anything you can do about it?” I asked. 

He shook his head slowly, and looked at his feet. “They got some medicine that you can take that’ll cure it. Flush it right outta your system. But you know what the side effects are, don’t you?  

“What?” I asked.  

“It’ll kill you!” he shouted. “Ain’t that somethin’? I could die of foot fungus or I could die from the medicine that’s supposed to fix it.” 

He looked at me for a moment so that the information could sink in. 

“Sometimes, girl,” he said, “You just can’t win.”ª