Me?

We yoke you for thinking that we might: in your eyes we see that you come pre-yoked.

Your fear makes it our duty to prove you right.

He was caged on street corners, stranded anywhere. A pair of kids made a human jail, a box of disaster waiting on the innocent sunlit pavement, as though he'd climbed into the legendary abandoned refrigerator.

Two voices made paradoxical, unanswerable music. Their performance for one another's sakes, not his. The pleasure was in counterpoint, no place for a third voice.

"Who you looking for? Ain't nobody gonna help you, man."

"Nah, man, chill out. This white boy's all right, he's cool. You don't got to fuck with him."

"Fuck he starin' at me for, then? Yo, man, you a racist motherfucker? I might have to fuck up your stupid ass, just for that."

"Nah, man, shut up, he's cool. You cool, right man? Hey, you got a dollar you could loan me?"

The distillation, the question at the core of the puzzle, asked a million times, a million ways: "What you lookin' at?"

"Fuck you lookin' at, man?" you lookin' at, man?"

"Don't look at me, white boy. I'll slap you, motherfucker."

Here was what Robert Woolfolk had prepared him for. He'd awarded Dylan the gift of his own shame, his mummy's silence, for use on a daily basis. Each encounter bore Robert's signature-glancing pain and tilted logic, interrogations spinning nowhere. Ritual assurance that nothing had actually happened. And the guilt of Dylan's whiteness excusing everything, covering it all.

What the fuck am I.

looking at?

If mole-boy ever lifted his darty eyes from the pavement he might have been casting around for a grownup, or maybe some older kid he knew, someone to bail him out. Mingus Rude, say, not that he was clear he'd want Mingus to see him this way, cowering at the prospect of a yoke, white boy with cheeks hate-red. Hey, I'm not racist, my best friend is black! Hey, I'm not racist, my best friend is black! This wasn't halfway sayable. Nobody had ever said who was whose best friend. Mingus Rude likely had a million of them, seventh graders, black, white, who knew. And the mole-boy could have said This wasn't halfway sayable. Nobody had ever said who was whose best friend. Mingus Rude likely had a million of them, seventh graders, black, white, who knew. And the mole-boy could have said black black aloud about as easily as aloud about as easily as Fucking looking at motherfucking YOU, man! Fucking looking at motherfucking YOU, man! Anyway, Mingus Rude was nowhere near. The seventh and eighth graders were housed in the main building on Court Street, while Dylan was alone in the annex, one block and a million years, a million terrified footsteps, and one million-dollar kid away. Anyway, Mingus Rude was nowhere near. The seventh and eighth graders were housed in the main building on Court Street, while Dylan was alone in the annex, one block and a million years, a million terrified footsteps, and one million-dollar kid away.

Abraham Ebdus handled the stack of postcards just as he had the slices of burned toast, loosely, nearly dropping them, and frowning as though they had ruined something or were ruined themselves. He stared at his fingers after he'd scattered them on the breakfast table. Perhaps the postcards had left a scent or a smudge of something on his fingertips. Maybe they'd be improved by being scraped clean, or smeared with butter and orange jelly. Really they wanted to be tossed out. He let the kid have them instead.

"Someone you know in Indiana?"

The boy had come to breakfast with his backpack on, running late, as always. They were like old men at the YMCA, the two of them waking to their two alarm clocks in their two bedrooms and meeting for breakfast. Dylan's a clock radio tuned to an all-news station which leaked through Abraham's wall a blaring theme of trumpets and teletype sound effects, a voice boasting "The newswatch never stops," like being driven out of sleep by a newsreel headache. The kid lived in an anxious world. His nervous system seemed tuned like a robot's. Now he edged up to the table with the backpack humped up onto the back of his chair and blinked at the postcards while he gulped orange juice.

"The first one came a month ago," said Abraham. "The one with the crab."

Abraham Ebdus saw the kid needed new shoes. Dylan crushed his shoe backs by cramming into them with the laces tied, and carved away the inner rim of the heels with his pigeon-toed walk which corrective soles left uncorrected. He wanted to wear sneakers every day, certain sneakers which every kid desired. He'd spoken angrily and Abraham had understood that at stake was less status than a certain bottom line of humiliation, the survival of the kid's willingness to even keep braving school every day. He'd bought him the sneakers but still insisted on the brown corrective shoes which looked like 1950s boaters. Sneakers two days out of five was the rule.

The boy fingered the postcards but didn't comment. "Toast is burned," he said instead, head ducked down. He turned the postcard with the picture of the crab over twice, reading the lines, then scowling again at the Technicolor-hued photograph of the red crab on tan sand. His glasses slipped downward and he shoved them back quickly with his thumb, an occult gesture performed with a fugitive's deftness. The kid was a hider.

"Give me your glasses," said Abraham.

Dylan didn't speak, just handed them over. Abraham fished out of a kitchen drawer a tiny screwdriver and cinched the hinge screws on the kid's plastic frames. The glasses were shit, made of shit, part of the contemporary ocean of plastic. Abraham frowned at them and did what he could, tightened the screws, doing his miniaturist's work. This was the level at which things could be improved. He wished now he'd taken the strange, inadequate postcards to his studio and altered them, forged the typist's Courier font with his delicate brushes, fixed the stupid, enigmatic words to make them mean something more than they did, repainted the fire-engine-red crabshell a natural green and brown. As though crabs were bright red before you cooked them, idiots.

Abraham Ebdus had studied the crab postcard for an hour the day it arrived, five weeks ago, in fact. Dylan's name was typed in full on the back, the address was typed, the message too, all with a manual typewriter that had a misaligned ribbon which ornamented each of the wobbly-struck letters with a faint under-halo of red. Close inspection revealed too a miniature trail of oily gear marks made by the grinding of the postcard along the typewriter barrel's right edge. The postage stamp was a reproduction of LOVE LOVE by Robert Indiana-that charlatan-and the message, which included no capitals or punctuation, read: by Robert Indiana-that charlatan-and the message, which included no capitals or punctuation, read:

this crab runs sideways west out of the pot out of the pot but not out of potluck but not out of potluck pacific ocean mermaid dreams pacific ocean mermaid dreams be good d and you'll see one be good d and you'll see one

Unsigned. Postmarked Bloomington, Indiana, which to Abraham could hardly mean less. Three more postcards came in the following weeks. The second showed the same Indiana postmark, followed by two boasting an erratic trail west, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Phoenix, Arizona. All stamped with LOVE LOVE and all equally gnomic, only now the typist had given attribution, still in type, at the foot of the flighty poems, capitalized to show it was the author's name: and all equally gnomic, only now the typist had given attribution, still in type, at the foot of the flighty poems, capitalized to show it was the author's name: Running Crab Running Crab. Abraham Ebdus had read Running Crab's subsequent messages with a fury that blurred the dopey words so they swam in his vision. Anyhow, they weren't addressed to him.

Now he again asked his son, "Got a friend in Indiana?" He was fishing, couldn't help himself.

Dylan didn't reply, just scooped the postcards together like a deck of cards and shoved them into his backpack without reading them. Saving them for later. He seemed quite unsurprised.

"I should have given them to you when they came," said Abraham. "I will from now on. If more come."

Dylan stared up at him for an instant, adjusting the placement of his tightened frames on his nose.

"I already got two," Dylan said. "They came on Saturday."

Now Abraham was silenced.

Outside, at the bottom step of his stoop, the boy looked back to be sure Abraham wasn't watching through the parlor window, then slung his knapsack off his shoulders and unsnapped the top. Inside were his sneakers, Pro Ked 69ers in navy blue canvas, with the red-and-blue rubber stripes on the sole as thick and satisfying badges of legitimacy. Under the prodding of a fingernail the rubber stripes had the chewy, resistant texture of a fresh spaldeen. Today nobody would hound him singing Rejects, they make your feet feel fine, rejects, they cost a dollar ninety-nine Rejects, they make your feet feel fine, rejects, they cost a dollar ninety-nine, because these sneakers indisputably weren't rejects. Few things were as clear. While the knapsack was open the boy stashed his glasses, pushing them into the corner beside the six Running Crab postcards, the two he'd retrieved from the mail himself, the four new ones, three unread, which he'd study later. His interest in the postcards was clinical. The missives from Running Crab were amusing but had nothing to do with his life, like a dated and essentially forgettable television show you watched a lot anyway, but disdainfully, priding yourself on how seldom you laughed or even cracked a smile, Gilligan's Island Gilligan's Island or or Mister Ed Mister Ed.

He changed his brown corrective shoes for the Pro Keds, but the shoes didn't go in the knapsack. They didn't go anywhere near school, not anymore. The shoes had a place under Rachel Ebdus's overgrown forsythia plot in the yard to the left of the stoop, a cranny the boy had scooped out where they could nest with the earth and the bugs and the twigs until the boy came home from school and retrieved them. The shoes were an artifact from the fitful past, fossil shoes, and they belonged in the ground. Everyone knew to call them roachstompers because they associated them, properly, with their ancient cousins. That their survival into the present was uncanny didn't make it any less embarrassing. The shoes ought to adapt, grow wings and disguise themselves as present-day birds, like the dinosaurs had. Or return to the ocean, become turtles. Until they burrowed back into the past where they belonged they could live in the earth, nestled in the cool forsythia roots which would never again be thinned or trimmed, and there they would be denied the sunlight which embarrassed them. It was for their own good. If Running Crab sent a postcard with a return address maybe he'd send her the shoes in the mail. Crab and shoes could run together, could scuttle into the sea. Dylan, he'd stick with Pro Keds.

Near the finish of that desultory sixth-grade spring they found each other again, like it was the most normal thing in the world, like they hadn't missed half a year of afternoons. Mingus wore a military-green jacket though it was too warm for a jacket, and the jacket clanked, full of some metallic something which had been pushed through torn pockets to nestle in the lining. The jacket's back panel bore Mingus's tag, DOSE DOSE , elaborately surrounded by asterisklike stars and swooping punctuation. All went unremarked. Dylan pushed his schoolbag just inside Mingus's basement door and they slouched their way together down Dean Street, the block which had become so useless now, no skully, no ball games, any kid you could think of off in some cluster or gang, like survivalist cells. Just Marilla and La-La, but they didn't even seem to recognize you now as they sang to each other , elaborately surrounded by asterisklike stars and swooping punctuation. All went unremarked. Dylan pushed his schoolbag just inside Mingus's basement door and they slouched their way together down Dean Street, the block which had become so useless now, no skully, no ball games, any kid you could think of off in some cluster or gang, like survivalist cells. Just Marilla and La-La, but they didn't even seem to recognize you now as they sang to each other I'm eightee-een with a bullet, got my finger on the trigger, I'm gonna pull it, yeah I'm eightee-een with a bullet, got my finger on the trigger, I'm gonna pull it, yeah - - They crept wordlessly into Brooklyn Heights, away from Dean Street, putting the Gowanus Houses and the Wyckoff Gardens at their backs, leaving Court Street and I.S. 293 skirted entirely. By way of Schermerhorn Street they slipped past the shadow of the Brooklyn House of Detention into the preserve of the Heights. There they fell with relief to perfect invisibility on the silent, shady streets-Remsen and Henry and Joralemon-ancient brownstone blocks like placid opening shots, scenes never to be disturbed by any action. Remsen in particular resembled an arboretum, a diorama of perfect row houses beneath a canopy of trees, their underlit parlor ceilings glowing through curtains like sculpted butter, brass doorknockers and doorknobs like the features of gleaming masks, street numbers etched in silver and gold leaf on beveled-glass transoms. Here was Brooklyn prime Brooklyn prime, the condition to which Boerum Hill lamely aspired. Here, stoops were castle stairs. No one went in or out that Dylan saw.

They were pretty much invisible too in the throngs on Montague Street, the three o'clock flood of private-school kids from Packer Institute and Saint Ann's and Brooklyn Friends. The Heights kids clustered around the Burger King and the Baskin-Robbins in giddy crowds, boys mixed with girls, all in Lacoste shirts and corduroys, suede jacket sleeves knotted at their waists, flutes and clarinets in leather cases heaped carelessly with backpacks at their feet, senses so bound up in a private cosmos of flirtation that Dylan and Mingus passed through them like an X ray.

Then a blond girl with an intricate mouthful of braces stepped out of her gaggle of look-alikes and called them over. Eyes wild with her own daring, she showed a cigarette.

"Got a light?"

Her friends busted up at the self-conscious comedy of it, but apparently Mingus didn't care, could live inside the quote, make it real. He dug in his jacket lining and pulled out a bright blue lighter, like a PEZ container that blurted a curl of fire. How she'd known he'd have it Dylan couldn't fathom. The tone of the scene switched again, the girl leaned in, eyes narrowed ferally now, thrilled and wary, tilted her head, scooped her hair around her ear to protect it from the flame. She turned her back the moment the cigarette was lit and Dylan and Mingus moved on, dismissed.

The Heights kids were rich most of all with each other.

The Heights Promenade was a rim of park cantilevered over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the shipyards, Brooklyn's sulky lip. Old men and women pecked forward like pigeons on cobblestone, or sat arrayed, frozen with clutched newspapers on benches in the face of Manhattan's tedious spires, the skyline a channel no one watched that played anyway, like an anthem, like famous static. Beyond it spilled the garbagey bay, yellow Jersey smoke clung over inching ferries, over the trinketlike Statue. Dylan and Mingus were detectives, not really here. They followed clues. The trail was legible in gushy, streaked font on lamppost bases and mail deposit boxes, fire-alarm poles, garage doors, finger-traced in dust on the panels of trucks.

ROTO I, BEL I BEL I , , DEAL DEAL , , BUSTER NSA BUSTER NSA , , SUPER STRUT SUPER STRUT , , FMD FMD . .

"Non-Stop Action," translated Mingus. He was hushed by the knowledge, his eyes unfocused. "Flow Master Dancers." Tags were no different from anything else: codes in layers, ready to be peeled away or overwritten.

Roto and Bel and Deal were in DMD Crew, a new outfit, jokers from Atlantic Terminals, a housing project across Flatbush Avenue.

Super Strut was old school, he went way back. The style might look funny now, but you wouldn't disrespect it.

The syllable TOY TOY was written in mockery over certain tags, disrespect for a writer who was a toy. was written in mockery over certain tags, disrespect for a writer who was a toy.

Write TOY TOY on a on a DMD DMD tag, get your tag, get your ass kicked ass kicked.

Mingus fished in his lining for his El Marko, a Magic Marker consisting of a puglike glass bottle stoppered with a fat wick of felt. Purple ink sloshed inside the tiny screw-top bottle, staining the glass in curtains of color. Mingus drew out a safety pin and stuck the felt in a dozen places, pinning it out pinning it out he called it, until the ink bled so freely it stained the light skin at his palm, then the green cuff of his oversize jacket. Dylan felt a quiver of the pleasure he associated with his father's tiny brushes, with Spirograph cogs and skully caps. he called it, until the ink bled so freely it stained the light skin at his palm, then the green cuff of his oversize jacket. Dylan felt a quiver of the pleasure he associated with his father's tiny brushes, with Spirograph cogs and skully caps.

DOSEwent up on a lamppost, Mingus's hand moving in studied arcs.

A tag was a reply, a call to those who heard, like a dog's bark understood across fences. A reply in moist purple. The letters dripped and stunk thrillingly. Every time they went up Mingus hustled Dylan away, the El Marko clanking back in his jacket lining against the blue lighter and whatever else. Mingus pushing at Dylan's elbow, the two boys crossed the street diagonally, ducking pursuers who weren't necessarily real. Their path was a zigzag sentence consisting of a single word, DOSE DOSE , written in blank spots found everywhere. , written in blank spots found everywhere.

Under oblivious eyes, the invisible autographed the world.

The long path of the Promenade curled at the end in a small abandoned playground, two swings, a slide. Mingus took a minute to tag DOSE DOSE on the heel-dented mercury sheen of the slide, a particularly juicy rendition with a dripping halo. on the heel-dented mercury sheen of the slide, a particularly juicy rendition with a dripping halo.

He offered Dylan the El Marko. The purple-fingerprinted bottle rolled like something ripe in Mingus's stained palm, a plum.

"Go ahead," he said. "Tag up. Hurry."

"How do I know what to write?"

"Don't you got a tag yet? Make one up."

Vendlemachine, Will-Fuck Will-Fuck, Dose Dose. Marvel Comics had it right, the world was all secret names, you only needed to uncover your own.

White Boy ? ?

Omega the Unknown ? ?

"Dillinger," Dylan said. He stared, not quite reaching for the El Marko.

"Too long, man. Something like Dill Three, D-Lone."

A Filipino baby-sitter creaked a stroller into the playground. Mingus slipped the marker into his jacket, tilted his head.

"Let's go."

You could flee a woman who was four feet tall and a baby lashed into a stroller, scramble away giddy and hysterical. It was only real threat that froze you where you stood, your feet like bricks, to dig in your pocket and offer up your bills and change. Go figure.

Mingus hoisted onto the fence surrounding the playground, swung a leg, dropped. Dylan, trying to follow, doubled himself on the fence. Mingus braced under Dylan's arms while Dylan scrabbled with his foot. They fell together like cartoon cats in a sack on the other side.

"Dang, son, get off me!"

Dylan found his glasses where they'd tumbled in the grass. Mingus brushed at his pants, his jacket, like James Brown checking his suit for imaginary lint. He was grinning, lit up. A shard of leaf in the coils of his hair.

"Get up, son, you're on the ground!" Mingus at his happiest called Dylan son son in a booming voice, another quotation, half Redd Foxx, half Foghorn Leghorn. in a booming voice, another quotation, half Redd Foxx, half Foghorn Leghorn.

He offered his hand, yanked Dylan to his feet.

There was something about a physical collision, a moment when fond irritation found an outlet. It wasn't sexual, more just the routine annoyance of what you were supposed to be doing with your time being answered by the occasional pratfall.

You felt its use. The Italian kids on Court Street knocked each other down at regular intervals.

Dylan wanted to clear the leaf from Mingus's hair but left it alone.

They trudged down a grade to a hidden patch of land, a tilted triangle of desolate ailanthus and weeds, choked in exhaust at the edge of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, cars whirring indifferently below. The patch was littered with cigarette butts, forty-ounce bottles, shreds of tires. It formed another oasis of neglect, with all the secret authority of the abandoned house. Even the Heights was shored with wreckage, the characteristic crap that underpinned everything.

Again they'd traveled in famous traces, like pilgrims. The stone wall that rose up to the Promenade was covered with six-foot letters, patient graffiti masterpieces to be viewed by the passing drivers. They backed toward the traffic to view the art, Dylan adjusting his glasses on his nose. MONO MONO and and LEE LEE : the Dynamic Duo had struck here too. : the Dynamic Duo had struck here too.

In Dylan's mind Mono was black and Lee was white.

Mingus leaned against the painted wall, shaded by a canopy of ailanthus, and thumbed the blue lighter, held it sideways to the tip of a small, faucetlike chrome pipe, another surprise product of the green jacket's lining. Head tilted, eyes squeezed in concentration, Mingus sipped at smoke, held it in with thin-pressed lips. Fumes leaked from his nose. He nodded his chin at Dylan, finally exhaled.

"You want some weed?"

"Nah." Dylan tried to keep it breezy, an incidental turndown that could have gone either way.

Below, trucks roared past, a wall in motion. They bore their own graffiti markings from other parts of the city, alien communication spread by an indifferent carrier, like a virus.

"I took it from Barrett. He keeps it in the freezer."

These days Mingus called his father Barrett. To Dylan it was probably the key to everything, a crucial stance. Alone, he'd rehearse the possibility under his breath: Abraham Abraham, Abraham Abraham, Abraham Abraham.

"Does he know?" Dylan asked.

Mingus shook his head. "He got so much, he won't even notice." He flicked the lighter again, the bowl of the pipe flaring orange, crackling faintly. Dylan worked not to tip his fascination.

"You ever smoke weed?"

"Sure," Dylan lied.

"It's no big thing."

"I know."

"Everybody gets theyselves high on something-that's what Barrett says." Every-body gets they-selves high on some-thing Every-body gets they-selves high on some-thing carried like musical DNA a trace of carried like musical DNA a trace of Mu-tha's gone but the boy is keeping it together Mu-tha's gone but the boy is keeping it together.

"It's okay, I did it before, I just don't want to right now."

"Before?" Mingus tested him gently.

"Sure," said Dylan. "My mom's mom's a pothead." As it came from his mouth Dylan knew he'd betrayed Rachel, tossed her out like a skully cap you played indifferently, didn't mind losing. a pothead." As it came from his mouth Dylan knew he'd betrayed Rachel, tossed her out like a skully cap you played indifferently, didn't mind losing.

Shrugging around in your own language, falsely casual, you discovered what you already knew. The stories embedded in the words like puns, waiting.

Running Crab not out of potluck not out of potluck.

"Yeah, well, speaking of which, my moms kicked Barrett out for smoking drugs," said Mingus. He was compelled to chip in his own disaster, then went mute. Possibly mentioning anyone's moms out loud, even your own, was miscalculation enough to blow an afternoon.

You were never ineligible for a screwup like that-say the unsayable word and watch it foul the sky. Dodging any mention of Intermediate School 293 or the terms white white or or black black you might think you were in the clear, but you'd be wrong. you might think you were in the clear, but you'd be wrong.

There ought to be a whole other language. As it was, talk of Rachel pointed like a sundial shadow to situations like Robert Woolfolk, stuff you'd worked to leave obscure. Then you were right back where you didn't want to be. Pinned to the grid.

A white boy in sixth grade, squirming in the glare.