Which brings us to Wednesday.
Same old drill. The four boys return home from their separate summer camps and convene at the in-law apartment. Today, Zebedee is first and claims prime real estate under an ancient window air conditioner as large, loud, and energy-efficient as a jet propulsion engine. Second is Dorian. Whose face, having taken a hit during a morning game of Bombardment, is in a fresh state of pain. Last comes Dean. Totally chonged, wearing a shirt with an iron-on marijuana leaf.
“Yo, Rastafari-mon,” Keenan says.
“Hello, mons.”
“In your honor,” Keenan says, “we play some Old Testament.” He scrolls on his handheld and switches to a song from the days before digital downloads: I shot the sher-riff, but I did not shoot the dep-yoo-tee.
“I bet your grandma listened to this,” Dorian says.
“So?”
“So play something that doesn’t suck.”
“Sure. As soon as you do something that doesn’t suck. Deal?”
“Do?” Plaxico says.
“Yeah, do, my Obama. About Saturday.”
“You have any sodas?” Dean asks.
“There’s juice boxes.”
The grandfather clock plays Westminster Chimes. Strikes the hour of five. There comes a knock on the sliding glass door. They can all see him: a guy much older than they. Probably a friend of the family, Dorian thinks; expecting, when Keenan lets him in, that he will shortcut without ceremony through the apartment. Instead, in a strangely official manner, he says: “Hello, gentlemen.” Older than their brothers though younger than their fathers. Blond hair so perfectly barbered it might be chipped from stone. In one hand, a tablet computer in a leather case.
“Let me guess,” he continues. “You’re Dorian.”
Dorian nods.
Then, in a tone somewhere between reassurance and disappointment: “You don’t look that severely fucked up.”
“You shoulda seen him on Saturday,” Keenan says.
The guy ignores this, and holds his hand out. “I’m Jon-David,” he says. And though some voice inside is saying Don’t take it, Dorian can’t see another choice. They shake. Awkwardly. Hands not quite locking together. Then he’s requesting some bottled water, sitting down on the couch, and saying: “Is there a smell in here?”
“Prune juice,” Dean says.
Keenan, returning with the water: “Used to be my grandma’s apartment.”
“You use this water exclusively?”
“Yes.”
“He bathes in it,” Dean says.
From the look on his face, it’s clear that Jon-David doesn’t find the comment very amusing. To Dean, he says: “You drink tap water?”
Dean shrugs.
“In this county alone, there are thousands of miles of unprotected pipeline. Any raghead with a bicycle pump and a grade-school understanding of hydraulics could introduce botulism, plague, you name it, into the distribution system. See, there’s this thing going on called World War III. Or have you not heard of it?”
“Sorry,” Dean says.
As Jon-David uncaps the water and takes a long drink, Dorian is thinking: I know who he is. I’ve seen people like him downtown, standing on corners, handing out flyers. One time, I accepted one, and my mother immediately took it out of my hands and crumpled it into a ball …
“But I shouldn’t have to tell you guys. A battle was fought here.” (Gesturing at the battered face.) “Guess who lost.”
“I wasn’t there,” Keenan says.
Dean: “Me neither.”
Jon-David nods, as if these qualifiers are perfectly understandable. Then, closing one eye, he says: “Well, where the fuck were you?”
Dorian waits for his friends to explain about the Calypso Fest and the fractured femur.
“Some people think the war is in the Middle East. But the real war is right here. In America. You have to remember that. In the schools and in the backyards. There are four of you. There were four of them, correct? If you’d all been there, it would’ve been a fair fight.” He takes the pad from the case. “Would could should. Let’s talk names.”
“Ab-Del-Karim,” Keenan says.
Jon-David, fingers darting around the keyboard: “Last name?”
“Hoo-sane,” Dean replies.
Keenan shakes his head. “No, Hassad.”
“This is the kid across the street,” Jon-David surmises. “Father’s name?”
“Banfelder.”
“House number.”
“Thirteen.”
“Okay,” says Jon-David. “The other three.”
Keenan gives Dorian a look.
“What?”
“He needs the names.”
“Can I ask a question,” Plaxico says.
“Shoot.”
“You take these names and then what?”
“Kidnap the suspect, tie him down on his back, and you get to pour water over his face and into the breathing passages.”
“Are you fuggin serious,” Keenan says.
“No.” Then, looking directly at Plaxico: “I’m with a watch group. We investigate incidents on a local level. I gather information, like names, and type it into a database. While we’re on the subject, what’s yours?”
“Zebedee.”
“Very unusual.”
Dean says: “One of his ancestors got lynched.”
“About a millennium ago,” adds Keenan.
When Jon-David asks Plaxico if this is true, Plaxico says not a thousand years ago, more like eighty. Then Jon-David, laying his tablet aside, asks in a very serious voice to hear the story. Which all the boys know. Mississippi Territory, 1959. Time of relatives they would never see except in the shifted hues of chromogenic photographs. Great-grandparents, great-uncles and great-aunts. Great-Uncle Zebedee, whose own great-grandfather (this was a whole other story) had sailed in chains from Africa to New Orleans. One afternoon, Zebedee runs out of gas on a dusty road and a group of white men in a pickup truck offer to drive him into town. But what they actually do is take him away from town. They tie one end of a rope to the hitch of the truck and the other around his two hands — and they drive. They drive to a meadow and with the same rope hang him from a tree until dead …
Thunder.
Far off, but louder than the drone of the air-conditioner. Dorian glances at the window. The sun is gone. Finally, it’s going to storm.
“That,” Jon-David said, “must have sucked … at least as much, possibly more, than getting abducted by Islamo-fascists and locked in a closet for several days, waiting to find out whether the United States government will agree to unconditionally surrender. And when it decides to not unconditionally surrender, you get your head cut off on videotape and your body gets chopped into ten pieces.”