THENEWYORKER,M AY16, 2022 63
as a question to be confirmed, being
confirmed, apparently happening. It
was on the television. Anders watched
as on the news a reporter interviewed
someone who had stopped being white.
To his boss, Anders explained his
situation, which was not unique, or con-
tagious, as far as anyone knew, and re-
turned to the gym after a week off, and
his boss was waiting for him at the en-
trance, bigger than Anders remembered
him, though obviously the same size,
and his boss looked him over and said,
I would have killed myself. Anders
shrugged, unsure how to reply, and his
boss added, if it was me. Though it
smelled of sweat, the gym was empty,
it being early, the steel racks and wood-
f loored platforms and benches with
duct-taped tears in their upholstery
all unoccupied, and the two of them
worked out separately before the gym’s
members showed up, Anders’s boss
clanging through monster sets on the
squat, thick, his elbows like knees, his
knees like heads, his face red with rage,
as it was whenever he lifted heavy.
A
nders’s boss had said he would have
killed himself, and the following
week a man in town did just that, his
story followed by Anders in the local
press, or rather online in the regional
section of a large publication, the local
paper having shut down long ago, this
man shooting himself in front of his
own house, a shooting heard but not
seen by a neighbor, and called in, and
assumed to be an act of home defense,
the dark body lying there that of an in-
truder, shot with his own gun after a
struggle, but the homeowner was not
present, and was nowhere to be found,
and then the wedding ring and the wal-
let and the phone on the dead man were
all tallied up, and the messages that had
been sent, and the experts weighed in,
and the sum of it all was clear, in other
words, that a white man had indeed
shot a dark man, but also that the dark
man and the white man were the same.
The mood in town was changing,
more rapidly than its complexion, for
Anders could not as yet perceive any
real shift in the number of dark people
on the streets, or, if he could, he could
not be sure of it, those who had changed
still being, by all accounts, few and far
between, but the mood, yes, the mood
was changing, and the shelves of the
stores were more bare, and at night the
roads were more abandoned, and even
the days were shorter and cooler than
they had been recently, the leaves no
longer as confident in their green, and
while these seasonal shifts were per-
haps only the course of things, the course
of things felt to Anders more fraught.
There were flare-ups of violence in
town, a brawl here, a shooting there,
and the mayor repeatedly called for calm,
but militants had begun to appear on
the streets, pale-skinned militants, some
dressed almost like soldiers in combat
uniform, or halfway like soldiers, with
military-style trousers and civilian jack-
ets, and others dressed like hunters, in
woodland colors, or in jeans and am-
munition vests, but all the militants,
whatever their attire, visibly armed, and
as for the police, the police made no
real effort to stop them.
The next time Anders went to see
his father was on a day with some chill
in it. He used the back roads, proceed-
ing hesitantly, pausing and observing
at intersections, like a herbivore, out of
an instinct for self-preservation, ascer-
taining what was ahead before he moved,
and he had gloves on his hands and a
hoodie over his head and sunglasses
over his eyes, ineffectual concealment,
but perhaps enough, from a distance,
and it was not that he had been threat-
ened, for he had not been, not yet, butjust that he felt threatened, and so he
was taking no chances, or none that he
could avoid.
His father was slow to answer when
Anders knocked on his door, and An-
ders was struck by how much his father
had deteriorated in the weeks since An-
ders had last seen him, and the son knew
for certain that the father was leaving
now, knew that this mighty, skinny man
was on his way out, nearly gone, and
Anders was glad for his sunglasses, so
that his father would not have to seethe knowledge enter Anders’s eyes, and
his father was bent over, just a bit, he
who had always stood so straight, bent
as though his illness had punched him
in the stomach that morning and he
did not want to show that the blow con-
tinued to hurt, but when something so
straight and so important is bent, even
just a bit, it is remarkable to behold, and
Anders beheld it, and they shook hands,
their grips firm, firmer than usual, to
compensate for the infirmity, and An-
ders’s father did not like to look at An-
ders, at what his son had become, and
he did not like that he did not like it,
and so he forced himself to look at his
son, to hold on to his son’s hand even
longer, the brown skin against his pale
skin, and he clapped Anders on the
shoulder and squeezed him there, for
Anders’s father an expressive gesture,
and he inclined his head in welcome
and took his darkened son back home.
Inside the house, the furnishings were
dated, and did not match Anders’s fa-
ther, what he would have bought for
himself, for they had been bought by
Anders’s mother, and reminded Anders
of her, the little frills on the sofa covers,
the lace coasters on the side tables, and
in the living room the photos were of
all of them, of Anders’s parents as young
people, of Anders as a baby and as a boy,
of the family together, none more re-
cent than about a decade ago, photos
already aged by the passage of time.
Anders’s father listened as his son
told him of his unease, and he watched
his son drink a beer while he let his own
sit, barely sipped, his beer there out of
habit and propriety, because Anders’s
father could no longer manage the
drinking of it, and he fetched the metal
flask with his cash in it and gave money
to his son, over his son’s objections, and
he went through his cupboards and
helped his son load some essential sup-
plies into his car, or handed them to his
son, anyway, the boy would have to do
the work, standing was hard enough,
and he ignored his pain, for it was part
of him now, constant, not remotely bear-
able, but also not avoidable, and so put
up with, like a nasty sibling, and he re-
trieved a rifle and a box of shells, and
he outlasted his boy’s reluctance, saying
take it and waiting, and he witnessed
his boy do what his boy needed to do,
which was to stop pretending and to