62 THENEWYORKER,M AY16, 2022
their faces, to let his gaze linger in ways
that could be misconstrued.
Almost as disturbing as seeing some-
one he recognized was the feeling of
being recognized by someone he did not
himself recognize, someone dark, wait-
ing at a bus stop or wielding a mop or
sitting in a group at the back of a pickup
truck, sitting in a group that was, he
could not help it, that was like a group
of animals, not humans, being trans-
ported from one task, one site, to the
next, and actually this was more disturb-
ing, the moment when one dark man
would look at him, look at Anders as
though he saw him, their eyes meeting
for an instant, not in friendliness or hos-
tility but just as people’s eyes meet, as
people, and when this happened Anders
would look quickly away.
Anders put off telling his father, why
he was not sure, maybe because his fa-
ther had always seemed a little disap-
pointed in him, and this would add to
his disappointment, or maybe because
his father had enough on his plate, and
Anders did not want to increase his bur-
den, or maybe because until his father
was told it would not really have hap-
pened, Anders would still be Anders,
there in the house where he grew up,
and the telling would undo that, and
make everything different, irrevocably
different, but whatever the reason he
waited, he waited and then he told.
He did it over the phone, which was
a cowardly thing to do, and his father
hung up the first time, and the second
time asked him if he was high, if he
thought this was a joke, and when An-
ders said no to both things his father
asked, with steel in his voice, a steel fa-
miliar to Anders, if his son was trying
to call him a racist, to which Anders re-
plied he most definitely was not, and so
his father said, show me, smart guy, come
here and show me if you can.
Anders’s father had beaten him prop-
erly only once, he had hit him more
than a few times, but a solid beating,
that was only once, for his mother had
long forbidden it, and the time he had
beaten Anders it was because Anders
had been negligent with a loaded rifle,
discharging it by mistake, negligent
after repeatedly being warned, and backthen Anders was two heads shorter
than his father, and his father, Anders
thought, had been right to beat him,
but it had been a beating Anders would
never forget, not the beating or the les-
son, and that was the point, a gun was
a marker on the journey of death, and
was to be respected as such, like a cof-
fin or a grave or a meal in winter, and
as he drove to his father now, though
Anders was the taller, heavier man, for
some reason that beating found its way
right into the front of Anders’s mind.
Anders’s father was a construction
foreman, gaunt and ill to his core, ill in
his guts, but he did not trust doctors and
refused to see them, and his pale eyes
burned like he had a fever, or like he was
praying for a murder, they had been that
way since Anders’s mother died, or since
she had gotten sick and it became clear
she would not get better, or maybe since
before that, Anders was not sure, but for
all his gauntness his back was erect and
his forearms were like corded ropes, and
he could walk carrying an improbable
load and barely sway, with the kind of
strength that just got things done, a fear-
some strength, if Anders was honest,
and his father was waiting for him on
the stoop of his house, and he was look-
ing at his son, the son who had reminded
him of his wife, the boy’s mother, not
that the boy was soft, but he was gen-
tler than was good for him, and he was
lost in dreams too easily, and he had her
fine stamp on him, a boy in his moth-
er’s mold, and as he saw his boy now, as
he watched Anders approach, that was
all gone, she was gone, and this boy, who
made easy things hard, who had not yet
found his way, this boy, Anders’s father
could see, was going to suffer, and his
mother had vanished, she was nowhere
to be glimpsed in him, and he stood
there, Anders’s father, a cigarette in his
mouth, one hand holding on to the fab-
ric of his son’s sleeve, the other rigid at
his side, and he wept, he wept like a
shudder, like an endless cough, without
a sound, staring at the man who had
been Anders, until his son took him in-
side, and they both at last sat down.R
eports began to emerge from around
the country of people changing,
reports at first utterly disreputable, and
easily disregarded, and roundly mocked,
but later picked up by reliable voices,