Junior Brown [the protagonist of "The Planet of Junior Brown"] is a fat, black, hopeless boy, a 300-pound musical prodigy whose mother has untied the wires of the family piano. He sweats profusely, talks to himself, reaches out on the street to touch the faces of passing strangers and beats out his music lesson on the back of a chair. He looks like Buddha and eats like Paul Bunyan.

Into his miserable life come two friends: the janitor, Mr. Pool, once a teacher but now custodian of the high-school broom closet, and Buddy Clark, a tall, quiet, Robin Hood type. Buddy is the surrogate parent of a "planet" of homeless children, a "Tomorrow Billy" (because he always returns "tomorrow" with the food and clothing his dependents desperately need), and much of the story focuses on his attempt to be responsible for all the lost and unloved people he...