Greg Hrbek - Not on Fire, but Burning

“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.”

Another rumble, closer this time.

“Let me ask you something. You’re at the mall. You’re gonna throw a penny in the fountain and make a wish, and when you step up to the railing there’s a pink backpack there, just sitting there, unattended. What do you do?”

“Blue phone,” Keenan says.

Jon-David (nodding): “It could be some girl’s schoolbooks. Or it could be a remote-control bomb laced with radioactive medical waste. No responsible citizen turns away. Same thing here. Muslims being violent. You don’t just turn away from that. The other day, it was a bloody nose and a black eye. Tomorrow, a knife, a gun, or worse. The other day, Dorian. Tomorrow, maybe you, Zebedee. Because this isn’t about white or black. We’re equal now. We’re truly equal. Because there’s an evil out there and it wants every single one of us.”

He reaches for his tablet.

“Now how about we get down to business and you give me the rest of the goddamn names.”

When Jaddi had spoken of therapy and serious issues requiring professional help, Karim hadn’t been sure what he meant. Therapy, the old guy explained, was merely talking. Talking about what, Karim had asked. And the old guy took a deep breath and started to respond, but then seemed to forget; and then said, in a voice that was gentle in a strange way: “Anything, bud. Anything that’s on your mind.” Karim nodded. Then said: “Did you ever do it?” “Do what?” “Therapy.” “ Me ,” Jaddi said. “Yeah, I did — a long time ago.” “So you had serious issues, too?” And then the old guy breathed another breath. He seemed to be going deep inside himself for an answer, which turned out to be: “I’d say everyone does, at one time or another.” Again, Karim could not quite find the meaning. Yet there was something clear about the vagueness, a comforting blur of sense.

So, on Monday morning, he did not resist getting into the Argo Electric for the drive across town to the appointment with the psychologist. In fact, as he sat in the passenger seat, securely strapped (thinking about the night before, of going outside and speaking to the boy next door, whom he could now, in a way, call a friend), Karim’s heart was seeping a feeling so long unfelt that, if asked to name it, he would have hesitated, unsure, before saying:

Hope.

They arrived ten minutes early at a small white building on a residential street. A sign by the door read: THE PLACE WITHIN — PEDIATRIC WELLNESS. Jaddi opened the door. They spoke to someone at a desk. Then paged through magazines until a door opened and a woman (not old, not young; in a dress not bright but colorful) introduced herself as Dr. Khaled, and guided Karim, hand on shoulder, into a room that was windowless and dimly lit, and furnished with a couch, two chairs, a low table, and a small machine emitting a constant shushing sound, like an urging of secrecy. At first, it was just as the old guy said it would be. A simple conversation (in a weave of English and Arabic) about what was on his mind. Her told her, for instance, that he now had five friends on Lifebook. The fifth he had made just last night. And he told her willingly about the party — what he had done to the boy who was now his friend, and why he thought he’d done it: because of the drugs he used to take, which led him to the subject of his other friends, his old friends from the camp, their names were Hazem and Yassim … All of this spoken of his own free will — and as the words came out of him, that long unfelt emotion flowed more freely from his heart. More than confident, he felt certain, as if life were a math problem with only one possible answer, that everything was only going to get better from here on. Then Dr. Khaled said she wanted him to try something.

“I want you to think,” she said, “of a favorite place.”

“Where,” he said.

“Anywhere.”

“I haven’t been any place.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be somewhere you’ve really been. It can be a place you imagine.”

He sat on the couch, listening to the meaningless whir of the noise machine.

“Have you thought of a place?”

He shook his head.

“Karim.” The doctor leaned forward. “I want you to think of somewhere you wish you could be. The best place you can think of.”

The next instant, it came to him. The answer was obvious now that he understood the question. Karim thought the doctor would want to know what place he’d chosen. But she only asked him to hold a coin, an old silver dollar with the head of a president he didn’t recognize, between his thumb and first finger — and to look at it, just keep looking at it. “That’s good. After a while, your fingers will begin to get a little tired of holding it, that’s all right, and the coin can fall down to the floor. It will be safe there. You can get it later. When it falls, that is your signal to yourself to let those eyes close by themselves. That’s right. Now I would like you to see yourself, feel yourself in that favorite place. Look around and see the shapes and colors, hear the sounds …”

Strange.

How a moment ago, he was in the room holding the coin, but he doesn’t seem to be holding the coin anymore — and he doesn’t seem to be in the room either. He knows he is, but it’s like the room has crawled out of itself like one of those crazy insects, left itself behind like an old skin, and now he’s in a completely different place, though one that was in the room all along and in a way still is the room … What do you see, Karim? Green. Green hills . What else? A lake, a really big one, with mountains on the other side, and down at the end of the lake, there’s a fountain . A lake with a fountain . Yeah . Tell me about the fountain . It goes high up, really high, so high that it’s making a rain . So a wind is blowing? Yeah . Strong or gentle? Gentle . That’s nice. Warm or cool? Both . Can you feel the rain? Yeah . How is it, touching your skin? Really soft . Good. Are you comfortable? Yeah . You feel good? Mm-hm . When you feel comfortable, let me know by lifting a finger . (Lifting a finger.) Good. Now I want you to really be there, on one of those green hills feeling that gentle rain, because you really are there in your daydreaming . (Being there, really being there.) Now, while you’re feeling very comfortable, very good, with the gentle rain falling softly on your skin, I want you to look all around and tell me if you see anyone else. Is anyone else there, in the place where you are? (Looking, through the mist, the myriad droplets of which are reflecting and refracting light and causing a rainbow to appear before his eyes, through the colors of which he sees them: his mother first, then his father, then his sister; and he walking now in his daydreaming toward them and they seeing him, too, and smiling, and now opening their arms.) Those are pretty, sparkling tears, Karim. Can you cry some more of them?