Greg Hrbek - Not on Fire, but Burning

“Jesus H.”

“We didn’t start it.”

“Start what,” he says, kneeling down. “Dorian, you all right?”

“I dunno.”

“Bonk in the nose. Jesus, though. I hope it’s not a posterior bleed.”

“Sir …”

It’s the girl speaking: she looks terrified.

“He hit him.”

“Hit?”

She points to Karim. A few feet away. For some reason, phone in hand.

Zebedee says: “It’s true, Mr. B.”

“We didn’t start it.”

“Start what, goddamn it.”

Dorian sits up, touching the teeth in his mouth; all are firmly rooted. He spits into the grass. Blood still draining from his nostrils. He stands and starts walking. Behind him, he can hear them arguing: “He used a racial slur … They used one first.” On the front lawn he is safely out of sight. A sob and then the tears come. Swallows. Clot of blood down the throat and a nauseated shudder. He leans over. A few feet ahead, The Negro hunched and proffering his open palm. Approaching from behind, his best friend. Saying: “Bro, lemme help.” But Dorian doesn’t want help. Needs help, but doesn’t want it. And won’t accept it. So walks off at a rate of speed and with a bearing of body that says don’t fuck with me —and, to punctuate the message, gives the lawn jockey statue a vicious karate kick to the head.

You never hit anyone before this. Not in the face. One time in the camp, you punched Hazem in the stomach; and when your friend crumpled to his knees, you kicked him, kicked him hard in the arm and the ribcage in a furious panic because he had used up — all by himself, in violation of the pact made by the three of you — the last of the opium. But you have never hit anyone in the face. Until now. And you wouldn’t have thought, had you ever given thought to the idea, that hurting someone else could cause so much pain to your own self: your right hand feels cracked and sprained. You never made another person bleed until today — and because you hit him (at least once, maybe more) after the blood had started, some of the boy’s blood is on your hand, smeared and starting to dry.

“Go to your room.”

The man who wants to be your father says this in Arabic. In a tone of anger being used for the first time. Go. Do as he says and don’t waste time. Because soon he will come and demand an explanation for your behavior, at which time he may take away the phone. So what you must do quickly is send the pictures to the sheikh. Run. Across the lawn. You didn’t think this far ahead. You have never sent a photo. But you will find that you, like all children of your time, are instinctively inclined toward basic technological operations. When you reach the room, close the door. In the photo album are three pictures. The first is no good. The boy had moved and the camera captured only grass and a clump of yellow dandelions. But the second one is clear. A bloody face fills the frame and the blood looks very dark on the white skin. Tap this image with your fingertip. Symbols will appear at the bottom of the screen. The leftmost one (an arrow in a square) makes a kind of sense. Touch it. Yes: a menu of commands. Choose the one on top. The picture is now a message. But a message with no destination. You don’t know what to type — and for a moment you think there is no way to know. But notice. Another symbol: red circle with a plus sign. Touch it and the number of the phone he called from will be revealed to you. Touching that number will cause it to be pasted into the address line. Just one last thing to do now. But before you tap the green button, touch the subject line. You will see the letters of the alphabet in random order. Search through and press one at a time until you have spelled out: I DID THIS.

As soon as I kicked the statue over, I felt guilty about it. I actually stopped and looked back. Plaxico was fixing it. For some reason that made me feel worse. But I kept walking. Where Poospatuck intersected with Onondaga, there was a culvert, a big concrete pipe underlying the road. When we were little, we’d pretend we were caving or traveling through a wormhole to another universe. I had outgrown those games, but it was still a good place to disappear into. I crawled in a ways. Dipped my hands into the trickle of water and dabbed at my face. Fat lip, one eye swollen nearly shut. The kid had gone completely ape shit on me — and I had done nothing , said nothing to him. I sat there listening to the water falling from the culvert into a little stream that went through the woods and I started thinking of my grandma’s house in the Oregon Territory. Because I guess that’s where I wished I could be. In that house that wasn’t much more than a cabin on the shore of a lake, so far away from everything and so alone in the mountains. I was always the first one awake there. Before the sunrise, I would go down to the dock and look into the fog and sometimes a loon would call out from the heart of the lake, and something about that haunted sound made the world I had come from — the real one with all of its problems — seem like a dream …

When I opened the sliding glass door of Keenan’s in-law apartment, I found him on the carpet with his girlfriend, Amber Kakizaki, both of them fully clothed but attached to each other like mating insects.

“Got any ice,” I said.

Amber saw me and started going, “Oh, Oh.” Keenan said nothing. Just walked calmly into the kitchen while I sat on the couch. The apartment, even after several months, still had the smell of his grandmother: baby powder and prune juice.

“You talk to Plaxico?” I said.

“Yep.”

He handed me the freezer pack and I held it to my face. Again, he walked off. Returned with a tin of breath mints and said: “Have a synthetic opiate.”

I shook my head.

“Look. Don’t be such a pussy. Your goddamn nose is broken, you’re blind in one eye, and have you looked at your shirt?”

“You could be nicer,” Amber said.

“I agree,” I said.

“Nicer. That’ll work. Let’s everybody be a little bit nicer. The real point is, what are we going to do about this.”

Do , I thought.

“There’s four of them, right? Jig-Abdul from across the street and the other three go to Crescent.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what are we going to do , Dorian. I mean, Arabs come into your neighborhood and beat the crap out of you. Now what do you do.”

Silence.

Then the grandfather clock played Westminster Chimes.

Then I said: “I gotta pee.”

In my friend’s grandmother’s bathroom mirror, I finally saw my face. Pocked purple, smeared with blood. I ran the water and cupped my hands. Once I’d cleaned up, I could see the damage wasn’t so bad. Four times he’d hit me, maybe only three. And he was not a strong kid, not a big kid. Now, what do you do?

Around three o’clock, Mitch gets a text from his younger son. Wants to know if he can spend the night at Keenan’s house. Mitch does not like the kid. Likes his parents less. And Kathryn likes all of them even less than Mitch. The kid, as he understands it, has been allowed to move from his bedroom into the in-law apartment recently vacated by his grandmother. The scenario would be funny if it wasn’t so poorly supervised. He imagines … what? Chill out, man. They’re only eleven years old. And even if eleven is the new thirteen. So they’re playing video games and smoking some greens maybe. And maybe some girls arrive at some point and they pair up and turn off the lights and make out. Like you did at their age if you correct for inflation . He tells him all right.

As he sets the phone down, Mitch sees the time. He has been at this computer, manipulating the picture in PhotoWizard, for nearly three hours. At one point, he had heard footsteps in the hall outside (and felt, as they faded, a needless relief, as if he were about some business both secret and forbidden). Now, without warning, a key is being inserted into the lock and the door is opening.