Summary

The narrator reads about Sonny’s arrest in the spring, and his daughter, Gracie, dies in the fall. Only after her death does the narrator write to Sonny. Gracie dies of polio at the age of two, after a great deal of suffering. The narrator’s wife, Isabel, has nightmares about her little girl’s screams.

One afternoon after Sonny is released from rehab, the narrator considers searching Sonny’s room for evidence of something. What, specifically, he does not want to admit. Through a window he sees and hears a revival taking place, near the entrance to a barbecue joint. The music seems, for a moment, to soothe the residents of Harlem, as if removing a poison from them. Sonny is there, watching and listening. When the music stops, Sonny walks toward home with a typical Harlem hipster walk, but with his own special half-beat...