“Cute,” Lawrence said. “What do you think you’d have to do to dogs to make them this mean?”

“Let’s walk back,” I said.

The dogs remained in their frenzied state until we’d disappeared behind the trees. “Think they could eat someone?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Lawrence. “But then, so could a bear. Actually, those dogs could probably eat a bear.”

We headed down to the lake and perched ourselves on a large rock at the water’s edge, upwind from the fish bucket.

“What should I do, Lawrence?” I asked.

“About your dad, or about everything else?”

“My dad is my problem. How about everything else?”

“Well, even if there really is a bear, and Morton Dewart was killed by one and not by Satan’s puppies up there, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve still got a bunch of McVeigh worshippers living on your dad’s property. You’ve got another dead guy and a shitload of missing fertilizer that’s ideal for making things blow up good, your mayor’s getting death threats, and you’ve got a public event coming up, what, tomorrow, that has a lot of people riled.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like when they issue a tornado watch. It’s not a warning. There’s no tornado on the horizon. But all the conditions are right for one.”

“You think there might be a tornado coming.”

“The conditions are right.”

“So, what next?”

“I guess we start doing a little surveillance, talk to the people involved. I need to get to know these Wickenses a little better.”

I heard a plop in the water, and craned my neck around to look farther up the shore. It was ten-year-old Jeffrey Wickens, his jeans rolled up, standing in six inches of water, tossing stones.

“I guess we could start right now,” I said. “Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

We got off the rock and ambled along the shoreline. Jeffrey was hunting around in the water, looking for flat stones, then attempting to skip them. He got his index finger wrapped around the edge of a stone, then flicked it out across the water, but he couldn’t seem to manage more than a single skip.

“Maybe the water needs to be a little calmer,” I said, and Jeffrey whirled around. He smiled warmly enough at me, but as soon as he noticed Lawrence, his expression turned wary.

“Hi, Mr. Walker,” he said.

“Hope you’re not still in trouble about going to play video games,” I said, thinking back to when I was having the coffee with his mother.

“Grandpa was mad for a while, but not anymore,” he said. His eyes kept darting to Lawrence.

“I’d like you to meet my friend,” I said. “Lawrence Jones.”

“Hi,” Lawrence said, and extended a hand out over the water. Tentatively, Jeffrey took a couple of steps and shook it, then withdrew his hand quickly, like he might lose it if he didn’t act quickly enough. I saw him glance at Lawrence’s light-colored palm.

To Lawrence, he said, “Do you know about Lando Calrissian?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I think. From Star Wars, right?”

“I don’t have him anymore,” Jeffrey said. “How about Mace Windu?”

Lawrence looked doubtful. “You got me there.”

I stepped in. “The new crop of Star Wars movies. Starting with Phantom Menace. Played by Samuel L. Jackson.”

Lawrence nodded, getting it now. The black contingent from Star Wars.

“Would those be real Negroes?” Jeffrey asked. “I mean, because it’s another galaxy, and there’s no Earth there, if there are Negroes, are they really the same as Negroes here on this planet? Because they’d have different origins, right? And blood? And wouldn’t they have different DNA and stuff?”

Lawrence looked at me, but I figured he could handle this one, even if he wasn’t as well versed in science fiction lore.

“Those are actors,” Lawrence told Jeffrey. “Black actors.”

Jeffrey rolled his eyes. “I know that. But if they’re playing people from other planets, are they still Negroes in the movie?”

Lawrence paused. “What makes you ask?”

“Well, if I could explain to my grandpa that they’re not really colored people, because they’re from another planet, then maybe he would let me have their figures.”

“Figures?”

“Action figures,” I told Lawrence. “They’re very collectible.” I paused. “I have a number of them.”

“Okay,” he said. “Jeffrey, why wouldn’t your grandpa want you to have those figures, regardless of whether they’re…Negroes or not?”

“Because they’re an inferior race,” he said innocently. He added, with the utmost politeness, “I don’t mean that personally.”

“Of course not,” Lawrence said.

“I mean, you might be the exception,” Jeffrey said.

“You never know,” Lawrence said.

“I’m really lucky,” Jeffrey said, shifting gears, “because I don’t have to go to school. I go to school at home. I’m kind of on a recess break now, but I have to go back soon. I love to skip stones.”

“Do you learn about these things at home?” Lawrence asked. “About which races are inferior, and which ones are superior?”

Jeffrey nodded. “My grandpa helps my mom figure out what to teach. My mom mostly does the spelling and arithmetic and geography, and my grandpa does a lot of the other stuff. Like how a lot of stuff they teach in history class in regular schools is wrong or never even happened. He gets really upset about that. One time I was telling him about my friend Richard? When I still went to regular school? And Richard’s grandfather, or his great-grandfather, I don’t remember, but when he was a kid he was in this huge prison camp where they put people in ovens and burned them all up. It was called Awwshits.”

“Close enough,” Lawrence said.

“So I told my grandpa, and he made me go to bed without any supper and when I snuck down later? To the kitchen to make a sandwich? He caught me and gave me a whooping.”

He said this without an ounce of malice or sorrow. He was just making conversation.

“So that’s why he helps me with history, because he knows that a lot of stuff that some people say happened never did.”

“Well,” Lawrence said, glancing at me. “Aren’t you lucky that he takes such an interest. So, Jeffrey, you got any friends up here?”

“Not so much,” he said. “I used to, before Mom and I moved up here, when I went to that real school. But up here, there aren’t even any neighbors. But Grandpa says that’s okay, because it reduces the number of bad influences.” As he said it, he blinked, suddenly realizing that he might be talking to one. “There are bad influences all over the place, even in Braynor.”

Lawrence reached down and ran his fingers through the wet stones. He found a smooth, flat one. “Try this,” he said, handing it to Jeffrey. “But when you throw it, try to tip it up a bit, so you can skip it right over the waves.”

Jeffrey took the stone and looked back out to the lake. He took a moment to get his grasp right, leaned into it, then snapped his arm.

The stone hit the water, skipped once, skipped twice, then disappeared under the water.

“Not bad,” Lawrence said. “Not bad at all.”

“Thanks,” Jeffrey said. He looked at me. “I didn’t know you had any Negro friends.”

“I got all kinds of friends,” I said.

“Well,” he said, stepping out of the water and finding a pair of shoes that he’d left behind a tree, “I better get back. Mom’ll get mad if I’m late for my lesson. If I’m late, Grandpa might take the strap to both of us, and I always feel bad if Mom gets it because of me.”

I thought of the red welt I’d seen on May Wickens’s arm as she was leaving the coffee shop. “Sure,” I said.

“Nice to meet you,” Lawrence said.

Jeffrey slipped on his shoes. “Bye!” he said, and ran back up the road to the Wickens place.

Lawrence watched him run off, and I looked for a trace of anger in his eyes, but all I saw was sadness.