The Horror

1.

She angled the camera for what she called the money shot: two attic eyebrow windows and a nose-shaped balcony off the second-floor master. If we squinted from the driveway, we could make out the mouth, the Dutch breakfast door that cut you in half at the stomach. The face of evil, the mother said, laughing, rubbing her hands together. Think the Penguin; think Simon Bar Sinister. Joe suggested the bushes on either side of the front steps could look like muttonchops if we fluffed them with the leaf blower. Leave it to you to use the word muttonchops, Enrique said. Enrique was pissed. Not because of Joe but because all morning he’d been planting impatiens along the driveway as a surprise for the mother, but then she came out with the Yashica and trampled everything. This here’s gonna make me rich, she said. This gonna set things right! We nodded. We usually nodded when we couldn’t follow. We knew the mother was thinking about the Pennysaver. We also knew there was no possibility that any cash money would be coming our way, seeing as how we were mere yardeners (the mother’s term) and had had other obligations foisted upon us.

It could happen, Joe whispered to me. We could make some real Benjamins cause you know how sometimes truth is stranger than fiction? Joe’s eyes were shiny. He was probably picturing Scrooge’s sideburns when he woke up a new man on Christmas morning, poor guy.

2.

None of us had started out thinking we would be working this summer. We were only a few weeks out of high school, and Joe, Enrique, and I had big, relaxing dreams of playing Tired of Being Left For Dead I & II and Grand Theft Vehicle while basking on Enrique’s aunt’s basement couch. We envisioned mountains of Lay’s potato chips and rivers of Gatorade, imagined random Nassau Community College girls stopping by and asking us to parties. We watched cartoons and remembered how smart we used to be in elementary school. We passed around an unlit joint and took turns with the toenail clipper.

It didn’t take long, though, for the litanies to begin: 1. the lack of chore completion, 2. the copious amounts of junk food consumed, 3. the frightening basement bathroom. Why didn’t we at least try college, Joe’s sister asked; we might actually discover we had brains! My mother balked at the fact that the high school fees from Our Lady of Perpetual Help were still due and owing—she wasn’t made out of money. Enrique’s aunt stood at the top of the stairs and shouted: Couldn’t you boys at least try to contribute something?

Our counterarguments had no weight. We had no training, we said. Roosevelt Field Mall wasn’t hiring. Plus, we didn’t want to come home smelling like Burger King and stink up the house. We did agree to clean Enrique’s aunt’s basement bathroom at least once every other week, no problem. But where was the father or uncle or guardian we could’ve followed, from whom we could’ve learned the ropes of life? We said all this with joystick in hand.

If we got jobs and saved, we could actually buy the real Left 4 Dead instead of the bootleg version, Joe observed one day. Missing the point as usual.

Good things come to those who wait, Enrique answered, grabbing the controls from me as a gang of zombies chomped my skull. Though he had graduated with us, Joe and I suspected Enrique had spent more than nine years at Our Lady of Perpetual Help High School and was, therefore, an actual man.

I always thought you wanted to be a writer, Joe said, slapping me on the shoulder. You used to do those poems so nice, Tenny.

I’m gonna study something useful, I answered, thinking of the last normal conversation I’d had with my father. He wanted me to become an accountant, earn a decent living, settle down in a three-bed, two-bath Cape over near Eisenhower Park. My mother thought I’d be a good school teacher—she herself taught second grade—but my father waved his hands in cancer-weak fury, pulling off the oxygen tubes and declaring that a horrible idea. Men weren’t cut out to settle, he gasped; then, to the Good Sam nurses: Do you know how smart this boy is at equations? Never less than an eighty on his junior high math tests. A whiz kid, a regular Benjamin Banneker! Hush now, Harry, my mother chimed, rearranging his spider legs under the hospital blankets. Drool everywhere, a smell like sewer alligators, blood. My father winked at the nurses, who did not wink back. Outside the Good Sam windows, the sun had browned itself into evening. My father grabbed my arm just as my mother and I got ready to leave. A life in numbers is a noble thing, he said. When I’m gone, I need you to step up, Tenny. Numbers even out the world, numbers will set you free! He let my arm go, smiling as the morphine squeezed his face like a kitchen sponge.

3.

Phalangida

AKA Daddy longlegs.

You will be surprised

to know

that this beast is carnivorous, eating other bugs

including mites and fleas

And is scary as all get-out,

actually harmless, though.

Habitat:

every goddamn place you look.

Some say it is a soul that departs, others

claim it is a spirit, or nothing at all:

what I am certain of is a

rage

that leads me to that place that others mistakenly

call God.

4.

One day, the mother knocked on Enrique’s aunt’s front door and asked, in a loud voice, if she knew of any able-bodied young men who wished to make a couple bucks this summer instead of loafing around. Enrique’s aunt didn’t skip a beat. Miss Harriet is my best friend from the secretarial pool at Perpetual Help, she explained as she poked us up the stairs with a broomstick. Don’t you boys go and make me ashamed!

We showed up at 112 Oceania Avenue with kitchen gloves and canisters of Comet under our arms—Enrique’s aunt’s idea. Well, well, well, the mother said. Just what am I supposed to do with you knuckleheads? She narrowed her eyes in the kind of joke that is dead serious. From now on, she said, you three have to stand on business, you hear? Her skin was brown and white and pink at the same time. Our mouths slowly dropped to our chins; we thought of the zombies, good and bad, who’d occupied us since ninth grade: Timmy Tibbs Senior, a kindly member of the undead, or the Splitters, the Bloomers, the fearsome Shunters. Had we ever grown up? The mother planted her hands on her hips. First name’s Harriet, like the slave. You’re gonna do things my way. No meddling, no snooping. I don’t need you to be boys, I need you to be men.

We could not stop staring. (Vitiligo, her daughter, LaDonn, would later tell us. It’s the second worst kind of thing that could happen to a Black woman who’s witnessed her loved ones burned at the stake.)

5.

WERE YOU LIVING IN THE HEMPSTEAD-VALLEY STREAM-MINEOLA AREA IN THE LATE 70s AND YOUR LAST NAME IS COCHRAM? OR COCHRAN? COCKRELL? If so, we could be kin. Serious inquiries only. DISTANT RELATIVE HAS PASSED AND LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT TO BE READ SHORTLY. Call Harriet at (516) … PLEASE SEE ATTACHED PHOTO OF HOUSE. DOES THIS LOOK FAMILIAR? Email fine. FORTUNEHUNTERS UNWELCOME.

6.

She remembered the name started with a C and an O. COLON was a Spanish name, and CONNELLY belonged to the white people on the block who were nice. It was impossible to remember every last detail but, as the mother later told us, she just understood certain things in her blood.

7.

After the money shot, we watered the hedges, just in case the Homeowner’s Association decided to (in the mother’s words) pay us a little visit, but then Joe somehow broke the garden hose, so Enrique said we had to pull weeds from the driveway cracks instead. Dandelion and purslane. Stubborn chickweed, tough at the root. Let’s surprise this poor lady with beauty, Enrique said, making Joe and me raise our eyebrows. In the two weeks we’d been working at 112 Oceania Avenue, the Homeowner’s Association had sent letters that began, dear miss harriet, we are concerned … but we did as we were told; we didn’t ask questions. They’ll never understand how I have their best interests at heart, the mother explained, tearing the letters in half and tossing them into the hedges. Just a damn bunch of biddies worried about uplift. Well, I can tell you right now: uplift ain’t ever got anybody anywhere but down.

The sun was out but wasn’t looking at us. We trimmed the branches that hung over the fence and left them in piles. We poured Raid into the cracks of the patio and watched carpenter ants meet their Cretacean maker. We pushed around the old lawn mower and made the air smell like a nuclear bomb. We were professionals because the mother had told us to be so. Think knights in shining armor; think sword in the stone. We sprayed the front yard with Raid Ant and Wasp. We pulled ivy. Stinging nettles caught us off guard every now and then, but in the end, we made the house just like the mother asked. She had her own dream. Think Dr. Strangelove; think Martin Luther King. One time, we heard her crying behind the door to the second-floor master and thought maybe her dream had ended. Myrtle, she cried, James. Myrtle, James. Myrtle, James. Miraculously, she kept us working. She paid us in ten-dollar bills and collard green sandwiches. She said she’d vouch for us if Nassau Community College ever asked, would suggest our name for scholarships from the NAACP. Onward, she told us every morning, to which Joe, Enrique, and I simply nodded.

8.

VALLEY STREAM, LI, 1979. “A crude wooden cross was set afire last night on the front lawn of a house that a black family moved into here last week. The three-foot burning cross was discovered at 10:15 p.m. by […], who had moved into the two-story, four-bedroom colonial house from Rego Park, Queens, according to the Nassau County police.

“They said the family had received obscene telephone calls and that windows had been broken while they were moving into the house, at [—] Avenue, in this South Shore village that neighbors said was predominantly white.” — the New York Times

9.

The Pennysaver ad with the money shot appeared on a Monday; Mr. Cornelius showed up a week later, totally out of the blue, the way most evil characters do. Norman Cornelius, he said, like Planet of the Apes. He wore a trench coat and carried a briefcase. His face skin was saggy and yellow. Your house looks so much better in person than in the picture, he said. The mother, standing at the Dutch breakfast door, grunted. Your sunglasses might put Isaac Hayes to shame, she said by way of greeting. I’m not familiar with that gentleman, Mr. Cornelius answered, laughing, revealing a few yellow dominoes. He could have been seventy or eighty or ninety; we had no way of gauging white men back then. Mr. Cornelius spread open his arms and said, I can’t tell you how I’ve longed for this day. He laughed again. The mother looked him up and down and told him to meet her at the patio table round back. She slammed the front door; we could hear the chains locking.

10.

In one of the New York Times articles she’d read at the Mineola Memorial Library, the mother found mention of a white man with a name containing the letters C and O. The microfiche was murky. The librarians were useless. This man was, at the time of the crime, quite young, training to be a carpenter. In subsequent reports, the mother learned that he’d done early time for robbery at a youth offenders joint upstate, but vowed, upon release, to be a better person in life.

11.

At the patio table, Mr. Cornelius called us over and showed us his embossed card, which bore the name Paranormal Enginuity Enterprises; he told us it was a production company specializing in local slasher flicks as well as historical documentary. Sometimes, it was a combination of the two, he explained, as in 2001’s Robert Moses, Lycanthrope Lover or 2004’s Hamptons Apocalypse. Masterpieces, both, Mr. Cornelius added, fiddling with the buttons on his coat. His pet project—one that hadn’t yet gotten off the ground due to lack of funds—was a movie called The Horror. It was an investigation into school busing in Nassau County—what he called “the end to all calm on the island.” I hope to get it up and running again, Mr. Cornelius said, because I am a man who knows when his voice must be heard. We nodded.

LaDonn came out with a pitcher of ice water. She wore a tube top and a pair of delicious shorts with a copy of Rise, Blacula, Rise in the back pocket. My dear girl, Mr. Cornelius said softly, his eyes rolling back in his head as if he were searching for something. His neck was worse than a turkey’s. I knew from the moment I set foot in this place, he then said, that I was among my people. LaDonn frowned. It’s never not gonna be a mystery, she said, winking at me and going back inside.

Soon, the mother came out with the plastic tumblers that usually held our Kool-Aid. She told Joe, Enrique, and me to go back out front and keep an eye out for the elderly nuisances. We had a sixth sense, though, and hid by the backyard gate. Part of a soldier’s job—as we remembered from Tired of Being Left for Dead—was to always be at the ready. To not shirk. To have and to hold eager arms. We heard Mr. Cornelius say that he’d driven past the mother’s house a few times since the Pennysaver ad but always lacked the courage to knock on the door. This day, he found that courage. Something within—maybe the voice of their dearly departed ancestor—forced him to confront his past with open arms. How’d the dear relative pass, he asked, but then interrupted that thought by declaring, Please don’t think I’m here for monetary gain! Families are in the blood forever, are they not?

Joe thought Mr. Cornelius resembled a white man posing as a Black man posing as a white man. Passing used to be a thing, Joe added, still could be. We got to keep our eyes open! Problem is, Enrique snarled, your eyes are in the clouds.

Mr. Cornelius leaned in close to the mother: Had she always hailed from Long Island? Who were her exact people? Was she possibly the Harriet-Ann belonging to the Lambert and Nelly Corneliuses of Westbury? Or the Hattie-Ann belonging to the Bertram Cochram-Corneliuses of Levittown? He’d always known his family to have tawny forebears; had an aunt or uncle on Harriet-Ann’s side, perhaps, descended from the Spaniard classes? The Conquistadors, or maybe even further back: the Spanish Crusades? He was no historian. Dates and figures meant nothing, but perhaps she, Harriet, could trace her lineage to the ancients—Italians, for example—who were known for their deeply olive complexions? Or the Galician-Portuguese? There was no shame in the mixing of royal heritages, now was there?

The mother narrowed her eyes. My people mostly came from Freeport, Valley Stream. Some folks in Roosevelt. No Spanish unless you count my cousin, who married a guy from PR. Mr. Cornelius smiled widely, so much so that his face nearly stretched off its canvas. LaDonn came back with an ice cube tray. I think I see the resemblance more and more, he said, cocking his head at her. The mother lit a cigarette. Here’s a question, she said: Did he, Mr. Cornelius, remember the cross burning in East Meadow, allegedly the last one to happen on the island?

Never heard of such a thing, he answered, placing a hand over his heart. He hadn’t taken off his trench coat. I do hope that no one we knew was affected!

Happened right around here somewhere, the mother continued. Good goddamn. I thought we had it bad after Dr. King and Malcolm was killed. But then this cross burning in 1979, scared the bejesus—

Doesn’t ring a bell, he said. Yes, I hated it that those two great men passed. So sad, really. I was so impressed as to how they believed in non-violence as a way to improve their lot. Fine gentlemen, them.

I was hoping to find someone who would remember that event in 1979, the mother said. Two cigarettes were already in the ashtray on the patio table. I need some answers.

I myself am Binnie Cornelius’s boy, he continued. Born and raised in Garden City. Worshipped at St. Agnes in Rockville Centre. Altar boy set on becoming a man of the cloth, but things tilted in another direction.

I’ve been needing answers a whole long while. My girl is off to college, and I’ll be alone. I figured now was a good time as any to get those answers. Need to know the roots to my questions.

I think we maybe might have some kin in New England, Mr. Cornelius said, clearing his throat. We could see his head shining. He did, in fact, look a little bit like LaDonn.

You got any kids, Mr. Cornelius?

If I do, I don’t know of their official existence, he laughed. And please—it’s Norman.

I mean, did you have any kids? Did those boys have any friends? Did you have brothers? Did you have uncles? Was any one of them extra mean?

Nothing rings any bells, I’m afraid. He waited a beat. I’m from good stock, Mr. Cornelius said. Whatever bad might’ve been done, it’s not on my conscience. He twirled the ends of his faint mustache (villain behavior 101, Joe later observed).

So am I, the mother said. She got up to collect the glasses and ice tray. She called for LaDonn to bring out some collard green sandwiches.

Joe, Enrique, and I moved from the gate to the green water swimming pool and began scooping out dragonflies. Mr. Cornelius said he had a dentist appointment in a bit but looked forward to continuing their reunion. Maybe learn a little about the deceased relative? What exactly might be in her will? Why don’t you come back tomorrow for supper, the mother asked, to which Mr. Cornelius nodded like his head would pop off.

Joe, meanwhile, asked me, Do you think when he said New England, he meant Salem? Another reminder that most of the time, there was no one upstairs.

12.

My father had always wished for a life in newsprint, beginning when he was a boy in East Pomegranate, riding his bike and tossing papers onto front lawns. In high school, he and a few other kids on the student newspaper were invited to tag along with a Newsday reporter who was following up on a story about a suspected arson in Wyandanch, just a few towns over. They all traveled out to find an apartment building in flames; people held banners out front that read LONG HOT SUMMER and screamed and hollered and fought. A little baby wrapped in a blanket was thrown from one of the windows. It landed on the sidewalk, according to my father, like a small bag of onions. A group of white people standing on the sidewalk started a fight with a group of Black people. Is she dead? my father asked, pulling the arm of the Newsday reporter. Is she really dead?

My father quit the school newspaper after that and grew up and out into the world and never allowed my mother or me to set foot in that part of Long Island. Numbers never lie, he said. Numbers tell the truth. Look out for the numbers, boy, and they will look out for you. Probably his last real day at Good Sam.

13.

“A real‐estate agent who had an exclusive listing on the house for several months but did not sell it to […], said today that he had been receiving obscene and threatening phone calls since Aug. 1, when the sale, reported at ‘upward of $70,000,’ was closed.

“Few of the neighbors gathered near the house today expressed sympathy for […]. And some of them said there had been neighborhood speculation that the sale was an attempt at blockbusting—that is, inducing homeowners to sell quickly by creating the fear that purchases of homes by members of a minority group will cause a loss in value.” — the New York Times

14.

She ordered us all to get in the station wagon because she suddenly needed inspiration. This was ten minutes after Mr. Cornelius left, when the mother’s breathing started to calm in puffs of three. LaDonn crushed herself into me, taking my seat belt and strapping herself into it as well. Joe and Enrique smirked. Think Romeo; think Juliet.

The mother drove us along Sunrise Highway to Amityville, right up to the horror house—the one they made the movie about. To us, it seemed plain, even pedestrian. We sat in the car and yawned. Don’t touch anything, the mother said, even though we hadn’t moved, even though there was nothing to touch. Her eyes were shiny. The Great South Bay wafted in through the vents; outside, gulls flitted over telephone wires. We watched orange white people walk down the street and let their dogs poo in front of the haunted house without a second thought. Kids rode on bikes and cursed each other out. A bevy of what looked like Nassau Community College girls walked toward the water at the end of the block wearing nothing but cover-ups. Joe, Enrique, and I felt ourselves melt into piles.

The mother pulled out the Yashica and took numerous pictures of the house, then sat back and shook her head. No way had this place been taken over by the evil spirit of a Vietnam vet who just happened to be crazy and murder his entire family. No effin way. The shutters were bright, the garden dainty. Who would believe that evil spirits lurked in the basement? Demons in the attic? Everything looked perfectly normal, even the window boxes. And all that talk about a haunted pig with red eyes? No way in hell would a haunted pig have red eyes, the mother said. The family that made that movie was a bunch of goddamn liars.

Enrique reached up front, into the mother’s pocketbook, and grabbed her cigarettes. Take one, he said softly. LaDonn was breathing into my ear. Her perfume was the exact one worn by one of the nurses at Good Sam.

You all never knew horror, the mother added. We were quiet. We didn’t nod.

The mother let Enrique give her a light. His hand around the Bic was smoother than I’d ever seen before. Think alabaster heart; think Moby Dick. White people, the mother sighed. They think they can lay claim to every damn thing.

15.

There was the official story and the unofficial story. The mother had expected to see something in the library microfiche, but everything was blurry. The librarians seemed to speak a language she couldn’t understand.

1. An aunt and uncle moved up north to the projects in Brooklyn. They’d heard about the colored developments on Long Island but never ventured that far east. One day, though, on the drive back from Belmont Lake—a family gathering—they got lost on one of the exits off the Meadowbrook Parkway. They spotted a for-sale sign in front of a small Cape; the aunt swooned. Three baths, one bedroom, a basement, no attic. The uncle was able to make the purchase, mainly because the realtor thought he was a white man who’d simply spent too much time taking the air at Jones Beach. No one figured him for a tobacco Negro from North Carolina. The aunt and uncle moved into the place with their adopted niece, a girl who was the first to integrate Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the 1970s. Though a smart student, she got in the family way, disappointed her kin, and eventually disappeared.
2. There were grumblings from the white neighbors. Pamphlets, anonymous letters. Were the Blacks taking over? The white people claimed they were pure as the driven snow; but then, one night, after four years, the aunt and uncle and adopted niece were attacked by a band of ghosts. A police investigation yielded nothing. Two white detectives had advised them to find lodgings elsewhere, where they might belong better. The family wound up spending the night in the Nassau County Jail, supposedly for their own safety. By and by, the aunt and uncle also disappeared, without a trace. Maybe back down south. Their house remained vacant for years. People swore they heard horrific sounds coming from the place. Demons, witches, and whatnot. Devilish undertakers hanging nooses from the tree limbs, skeletal gravediggers placing live humans into the earth for no good reason. Blood dripping everywhere. Screams for mercy.

That is, until you moved back here? Mr. Cornelius asked at the backyard patio table the following day. He laughed. Dinner was yams, collard greens, and prime rib, which Mr. Cornelius had some trouble eating due to his dental implants. He did say the yams were a new adventure; his family were strict fondant potato lovers. Hasselback or gratin, if absolutely necessary.

I’m not the girl in the story, if that’s what you’re thinking, Harriet said. Please, have some more of my wine.

16.

Ilex Glabra

AKA Inkweed.

Found in beach forests along the Long Island coast.

Susceptible to embers and general

flame-roguishness.

Leaves, when oven-dried, can be used for stay-awake teas

and salves.

Berries can be bitter and can cause

death in extreme circumstances,

inadvertently causing emotional bitterness

as well, when consumed in direct sunlight and honesty.

17.

Old Man Wiggins from the Homeowners Association walked up the front path and said, Boys, we see you out here trying to make this place look good, but it ain’t working. Old Lady Pettiford chimed in with, Is she treating you good? Working out here in this heat and such? Old Mrs. Hornsby said nothing, only handed over a piece of paper that began, dear miss harriet, we are concerned … They looked good and hard at the house, then trudged back down the sidewalk. Joe and I sighed in relief, knowing we would not have to karate-chop these crones into submission. We stood on business. Enrique, though.

the leaves are a danger and an eyesore … Enrique ground his teeth. He could not put the letter down. Joe and I saw stripes flashing at the back of his neck. we ask for your consideration of your neighbors who try their best … Fireproof claws sprouted out the end of his flaming fingers, which reeked of peat moss. we are a good neighborhood. we must set an example. we always must set an example. These people need to leave her alone, Enrique mumbled, turning away. He was growing fangs but trying not to scare us. He was a new person. His skin tore away from his bones. His innards fell to the dry grass. A new man. A creature. Enrique waved the letter and began to cry. Why can’t they see she’s just doing her best?

18.

There was also C:

She was alone, standing outside the house, watching the flames that danced not fifteen feet away from her. No one came to the rescue. No one came and asked, Why are you here, little girl? Curtains were drawn and reopened and drawn again. No one asked, Where are your people, little girl? She opened her mouth and swallowed sulfur and pine; she imagined she was feeling the flames the way the old Pilgrim girls had done. Or were they Puritans? She couldn’t remember. A siren blew in the distance, probably over by the Meadowbrook Parkway. The air thickened into grease. She cast a few glances at the houses around her, Christian all. St. Agnes of Rockville Center, not too far away. Our Lady of Perpetual Help around the corner, masses at 5:30 a.m., the time when the Lord was too sleepy to grasp any real heaviness. She shuddered. Her mother had always taught her: if you don’t have nothing nice to say. But what? What was the rest of that line?

She inhaled as much of the cross as she could, then nestled into the grass like a small goat. The blades had turned to hay. The sidewalk and front path were lava. She closed her eyes and dreamt of the nasty looks, the bus trouble, the neighbors constantly suggesting that she and her aunt and uncle find a home more welcoming to their needs—how about that colored development over in Amityville? We hear great things about that place!

She faded and woke in a hospital room. No, it was actually a small cubicle, where she lay propped in an office chair, swaddled in a blanket. The hospital was full, the police explained. She and her aunt and uncle could rest here for the night. The police would make it as comfortable as humanly possible.

19.

A man at the scene of the crime looked and called me nigger, my father told me. Me, a little boy who was only interested in the five questions of who, what, when, where, and why? I was a wee boy, Tenny. I was wee. Nothing added up.

20.

VALLEY STREAM, LI. “A few days after the cross‐burning, the Nassau County Human Rights Commission sent twenty-two letters to […] neighbors, asking them to join in an effort to welcome the black family, but the commission received no response to the invitation.

“‘I’m a busy woman, and I didn’t have time, and I didn’t want to get involved,’ said one neighbor, who acknowledged receiving one of the letters and added that she was an educator.

“The women who were chatting at curbside the other day said that, as far as the people on the block were concerned, the matter was over.” — the New York Times

21.

The mother fed him pork chops and grits smothered in a berry sauce. Mr. Cornelius praised the meal, though we saw he had balled-up many napkins at the side of his plate. Soon he began saying he felt woozy, and no, he wouldn’t have any more wine. Ditto for any more tea, tasty and unusual as it was. Three cups of anything was his limit. Mr. Cornelius said his head was a balloon.

You going to be traveling upwards soon, the mother murmured. It was past ten, full moon, natch. She turned and saw our figures standing at the gate. Enrique had made us stay. Why you knuckleheads still here? Ain’t y’all got a home to go to?

What are you planning to do, Enrique asked, gripping the gatepost.

Thank you, boys, for all you’ve done, the mother said. She turned away from us, but through the darkness, I could make out her silhouette. You’ve stood on business long enough, she added. Let me handle things from here.

The mother went into the house and came back with three hundred-dollar bills, one for each of us. She told us the season was over, that we didn’t have to come back. We weren’t to ask questions. We weren’t to remember. In the background, Mr. Cornelius vomited all over the patio table. He fell to the ground. We weren’t to make a scene. We were only to stand on business. Think James Bond. Think Superman.

22.

Shortly afterward, Joe’s sister moved him to Newark, New Jersey, where they had people. Joe’s sister felt Long Island was holding him back, that his innocence would simply rot away in a world of people out to take advantage. In other words, he wasn’t destined to be anybody’s yardener. Plus, she thought he was smoking way too much weed.

Enrique emailed me the following week to tell me that he and the mother were moving to Montauk, the easternmost part of the island. The insurance money would cover their new start. And no, it wasn’t some fantasy; he was ready to take this next step in his life. There was nothing left for them in Nassau County. There were no good libraries there, though there were still questions. Plus, LaDonn was already nineteen; she no longer needed figureheads.

The mother’s way too old for you, I observed.

It’s not what you think, Enrique said. I have so many lessons to learn from her. She’s my father, don’t you get it? She’s all our fathers. And giving up is not an option.

23.

When I pressed him, Enrique said he had no idea what happened to Mr. Cornelius. Criminals are a dime a dozen, he said. And crime does not pay.

24.

Hedeoma pulegioides

AKA American false pennyroyal.

To be planted around the driveway of 112 Oceania Avenue and NOT

on the curb, as it might

interfere with dogs and their idiotic appetites.

Aromatic in quality, beauteous in appearance, this innocent weed

has been known to bring about excess perspiration,

organ failure and even death.

Inviting yet devilish.

The Ancients used pennyroyal to get rid of fleas.

When you return to us once more,

we’ll crown you with its sweet, effervescent flowers.

25.

The fire at 112 Oceania Avenue was considered, from the start, suspicious, but the cops were lazy and left it at faulty wiring. Possibly a gas explosion, though no one else on the block had smelled anything. Bottom line, the house was gone: there were no joists left over, no hinges, no cement steps, no banisters, no screen doors. No sign of a face. The char was felt for miles. Newsday reported that no firetrucks could make it to the house in time; the engines had all mysteriously cut off on the Meadowbrook Parkway. Some witnesses spotted a large, male figure standing in the top half of the Dutch front door. He seemed actually larger than the threshold, his arms spreading themselves out among the muttonchop hedges. He had no bottom half. The witnesses claimed that his skin was peeling off in strips of black, red, and green, that the man’s eyes shot flames from the sockets. On the sidewalk, pigs walked by without a care in the world.

Luckily, a river suddenly overtook everything, and extinguished the earth. Newsday surmised that a water main had erupted, washing the last evidence of the house to the shores of Jones Beach.

No one ever found out what happened to the male figure in the doorway of 112 Oceania Avenue. Forensic detectives claimed to have found no evidence of human remains. Enrique emailed me from Montauk: How are we supposed to survive if we don’t believe?