The boys have a superstition with the lawn jockey. Every time they cross to the Banfelder property, they slap him five. He’s one of the old ones with skin painted the color of a charcoal briquette and big red lips. The Negro, they call him. To slap The Negro five is cool. To not do so is to dis The Negro. Dorian walks right by the statue and Plaxico says: “Bro, you dissed The Negro.” He doesn’t give a shit. His mind is otherwise engaged by the idea of walking right up to this kid and clocking him without saying a word. The feeling is terrible. He knows nothing about him yet. Nonetheless, Dorian’s body is cramping with anger. Hating … not him exactly, but the idea of him, or the idea of people like him — and though he has been taught to not believe in the sameness of all such persons, a logic as inborn as the structure of his DNA connects each and every one of them …
Mr. B says: “Whazzup, boyz?”
“Hey.”
“Someone I’d like you to meet. This is Karim. Karim, this is Dean, Plaxico — I mean, Zebedee — Keenan, and Dorian.”
“What does that mean?” Keenan asks.
“It’s called an introduction, pal.”
“No, that.” He points to the rear of the Argo Electric. The bumper sticker says: WHERE THE HECK IS WALL DRUG.
“Wall Drug,” Dean says. “Must be a hash bar.”
“Good guess. But no. It’s a tourist trap in the Dakota Territory.”
“Dakota,” Dorian says.
“Which is where we just came from.”
Dorian looks at the kid and speaks to him directly: “That’s where you live …”
“Sort of,” Karim says.
“Used to live,” Mr. B specifies.
“Used to.”
“Where does he live now?” Keenan asks.
“You’re lookin at it. Thirteen Poospatuck Circle. Christ, it’s hot out here. And these bugs, it’s a like a goddamn Bible plague.”
“I don’t get it,” Keenan says.
“Don’t get what.”
“Thirteen is your house.”
“Correctamundo,” says Mr. B. “Thirteen is my house. It’s now also Karim’s house. That’s why I called you guys over. Introduce you. Let you know there’s gonna be a new kid in the hood.”
“For how long?” Keenan says.
“Indefinitely, son.”
All at once, everything freezes like streaming video when there’s a dearth of bandwidth at the point of reception.
Finally, Dorian says: “You’re from the camps.”
“No,” the kid says.
“Where, then.”
“I’m from the Jamestown Colony.”
“What Karim means,” Mr. B says, “is that before his family was interned, they lived in Jamestown.”
“And where’s his family now?” Dean asks.
“They’re deceased.”
While Keenan answers his ringing phone and wanders off, talking and glancing back as if someone might be sneaking up on him with a lead pipe, Dorian thinks (flash of cicadas dead on corkboard): I’m sorry about your family. It sucks and I can relate. Can even imagine, What if I was you. Reverse everything. This is an empathy exercise I learned at schooclass="underline" Imagine I’m the orphan and some old guy in a turban adopts me and makes me meet a bunch of camel-fucker kids who clearly hate my guts, of whom you are one. I’d be looking at you, wanting to stomp your goddamn brains into the ground. And like you wouldn’t be wondering what the hell your old neighbor is thinking, bringing someone like me into your sandbox. Indefinitely. Because let me tell you about this street. There’s Black, White, Vietnamese, Indian from India, Catholic, Unitarian, African Methodist, Jewish, Hindu, Free Will Baptist, and Agnostic. Notice what’s missing? Over on Mohegan and Onondaga, there are some of you, and there’s exactly one day out of the year they come over here, and that’s Halloween … Such is the path of his thoughts as the pow-wow awkwardly breaks up. Pretty phased, Mr. B is saying. Long-ass drive. Et cetera. Keenan still standing a good thirty feet away, with zero intention of rejoining the group. “See you around,” Plaxico says. But the new kid already has his back turned. In some kind of pain, judging from the weird twist in his spine. Maybe holding a shit since Ohio, Dorian thinks as he walks down the driveway. By the road, The Negro, in his white shirt and pants, red vest, and red-and-white cap, is bent forward (he doesn’t look so comfortable either), one hand pocketed, the other thrust forth for a reason long forgotten. Slap him five. The summer of your eleventh year is in motion.
4
They can’t understand where the idea could have come from. A sister. Eighteen years old at the time the bomb exploded, or the meteor hit, or whatever happened happened. Kathryn and Mitch have spent hundreds of hours, literally hundreds in the past six months, trying to figure out a source. A story he read, a movie. They started seeing a psychologist (the two of them with Dorian, then Dorian alone, then all four of them), a man who talked in private with Kathryn and Mitch about paracosms. Imaginary worlds created in childhood. The doctor made the phenomenon sound harmless, even propitious. A phase of intellectually gifted children. But at the worst point, in the icebound days of January, with their son shouting at them almost daily, accusing them of familial conspiracy (some of the episodes so irrational and paranoid, they thought with terror of schizophrenia), Mitch had said: “We need to be completely honest and consider every possibility.”
“I know.”
“Well, think. According to Dorian’s story, she would’ve been born in, what … ’09. So, ’09. The summer of ’09.”
“What about it.”
“Don’t act stupid, Kate. Please. This is too serious.”
“I know what you’re talking about,” she said, making a great effort to keep her voice steady. “But I can’t imagine why you’d bring it up.”
“Look—”
“Now of all times. Like we don’t have enough going on here.”