Dan Tells Dina He Saw It Happen

I saw it happen in a vacant lot behind a clapboard house. The white girl was a small painter of nude self-portraits and the black man had once sold magazines door to door. It was Wednesday, early in the morning. Over the roof I could see the sun tinting the sky variously, and underneath this, in the foreground, the little scene. In the middle parts of the country the landscape is divided into sections, one fenced in, the other open; but because the former area is, the latter seems likewise fenced in, though this is not necessarily the case. The areas are too general for case. The vacant lot behind the clapboard house is in what you would recognize as the middle of a fenced in field. Here, the night is never quiet, full of insects too small to pity, and men hurt one another without thinking. The black man comes towards me. His dusty chin quivers a little as he begins to cry. If you mention the President, a black man will invariably cry. The President is the President of all of us, I say. When I was a young man I wore a mask when I went out at night. I hid behind corners, waited for footsteps, went through pockets and took what I could before I ran off. I would do this until I tired, hearing nothing but the thump of my heart deep in my head. The white girl looks like a girl I may have known. I look at the black man’s face. He casts a faint gray shadow on the sidewalk. I tell him to run but he does not run.  Most of the time they just stand there. There is nothing to do now, I tell him. Most of the time there is nothing to do but wait. Even if you know what is going to happen, you still have to wait for that thing to happen. But there are ways to keep going. Sometimes you have to forgive. You remove your clothes and you remove his clothes and you offer yourself to the painter. You close your eyes. She undresses too. His back is already scarred, but he holds his arms out, like he’s praying, and waits.