The Changeling. Victor LaValle

      “You were never near Fallujah,” Apollo said.

      Patrice shrugged. “Closer than you ever got.”

      Apollo raised his diaper bag. “Now I’m in my own dirty war.”

      Patrice Green had never fought in Fallujah, but he did serve in the army from 2003 to 2004, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, in the 62nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment. He’d spent much of his time doing counter-IED operations along a supply route in Iskandariyah, Iraq, a city twenty-five miles south of Baghdad, not far from the Euphrates River. He’d done that work and then returned to the United States. He’d been the manager of an AMC movie theater on 34th Street. He’d been a graduate student at Queens College, in library studies, for five months. And eventually he became a used and rare bookseller.

      The garage behind Patrice looked bigger than Apollo and Emma’s apartment, filled now with fifty cardboard boxes of books. The top flaps of every box lay open, a treasure room already plundered.

      “Grandmother,” Patrice said. “She died four months ago. Family finally got all the old lady’s books into boxes and put out the ad. Son-in-law let me into the garage. Other than that, he’s stayed out of my way.”

      “He’s cool?” Apollo said, bouncing in place lightly, for Brian’s benefit.

      “I asked to use their bathroom, and the dude wouldn’t let me in the house. Motherfucker said they didn’t have a bathroom.” Patrice gestured at the two-story structure. “Four-bedroom home but no bathrooms. Imagine that.”

      “You’d think they would’ve checked before buying the place.”

      Apollo laughed with Patrice just to keep from crying. Now Apollo looked inside the garage, scanning the open boxes as Brian wriggled against his chest. If Patrice had already been through all these, then he’d found everything worth anything.

      “Grandma liked books,” Apollo said. “She have good taste?”

      “I found a few winners,” Patrice said.

      No doubt he’d already set those books aside, but look how full the boxes in the garage remained. That meant most of them were nearly worthless, the kind of stuff that would turn a profit only on the shipping. He’d rented the minivan to keep his son safe, but at least it had plenty of storage space.

      “There’s a few more in the basement,” Patrice said, pointing to a door, slightly open, near the back of the main house.

      “You haven’t been down there yet,” Apollo said.

      For the first time since he’d stepped out of the garage Patrice Green shrank. “Nah. Thought I’d leave something for you.”

      Patrice Green, big man and expert bookseller, counter-IED specialist and child raised in the roughest part of Roxbury, did not like basements. He’d returned from Iskandariyah uninjured but not unharmed. He had never explained his fear, but Apollo intuited it and, most importantly, never asked about it directly. A fair number of estate sales in New York City took place in the basements of various apartment buildings, and Patrice Green never set foot in one of them.

      “You hear that, Brian?” Apollo said as he let the front flap of the Baby-Björn fall loose and pulled his son free, turned him around. “Uncle Patrice is letting us take point.”

      “But we split whatever you find,” Patrice said, looking over the baby’s head. “Sixty-forty. That’s the deal.”

      Apollo lifted the boy higher. He’d expected Patrice to say something about the baby from the moment he’d shown up, but instead they’d gone on about the books. This was the first time his best friend had met his child—shouldn’t that merit at least one comment? Apollo felt surprised by how much this moment bothered him.

      “Look into his eyes,” Apollo said, trying to act playful.

      “What am I supposed to say to him?” Patrice asked.

      Apollo raised his voice to a child’s register. “Tell me what happened in Iskandariyah, Uncle Patrice.”

      Patrice leaned close to the baby. “Tell your daddy I said, Fuck you.”

      “I haven’t mastered language yet.”

      Patrice grinned. “I’ll teach you the gesture.”

      Now Apollo had to smile. “You’re going to be a bad influence on me.”

      “No worse than your daddy’s going to be.”

      Apollo smooshed Brian right up against Patrice’s face. “Can you spell PTSD?”

      Then Apollo turned and moved to the basement door with the baby.

      Patrice shouted after him. “I understand why your pops abandoned you!”

      THE BASEMENT FELT warmer than the garage. Down the Kagwa boys went. The basement sat as one grand open plane. In the far corner stood the boiler—a large white cylinder with a blue control panel, copper pipes running up into the ceiling and a silver tube running outside through the wall. It looked like something from the set of James Whale’s Frankenstein. The boiler rumbled now as if reanimating life.

      In the opposite corner sat the washing machine and the dryer, and beside the two machines lay cleaning materials, shovels and rakes, and paint cans showing rust. The third corner of the basement was cluttered with children’s toys that had been sitting down here for a decade or four. Plastic dolls gone nearly gray and their dresses threadbare. Toy trucks overturned or dismantled. Teddy Ruxpin looked like he’d died in hibernation.

      In the corner closest to the basement steps lay seven cardboard boxes. Maybe the garage had been too full to accommodate them. Apollo went down on one knee. He sniffed his son’s head. Didn’t even realize he’d done it until the smell made him smile. A moment later Brian wriggled and squirmed.

      The fluffy blanket came out of the diaper bag. Apollo spread it out right beside the boxes of books. He set Brian down on his stomach, and the boy lay there, eyes wide, opening and closing his mouth, small gasps trickling out. Brian’s feet wriggled, and his hands swam over the blanket. In a moment he set his hands out flat and with a push he raised his head.

      “Tummy time!” Apollo shouted, as if Brian had just successfully piloted an airplane.

      A moment later Brian dropped his head back down onto the blanket. Apollo rolled him onto his back, and the baby looked up at the boards of the ceiling. Apollo left him to it and scooted forward to the first of the cardboard boxes. As he opened the flaps, he looked back at Brian.

      “My father, your grandfather, disappeared when I was four years old. I used to have a nightmare about him leaving. His name was Brian West. We named you after him.”

      Brian wriggled his head from side to side and threw his hands out wide.

      “I didn’t hear anything about him, nothing from him, until I turned twelve years old. Then, out of nowhere, he left a box at my front door. It had the tickets to the movie he and Grandma saw on their first date. The headshot of the woman who testified against the shady businessman Grandma worked for. The thing was like a time capsule.”

      Brian lifted his chubby legs, then dropped them back down. He rocked his body slightly and looked like that turtle once more, trapped on its back and trying to turn over.

      “I always wondered why he did it. Why’d he leave the box and then disappear again?”

      Apollo helped roll Brian back onto his belly.

      “Now that you’re in my life, I understand. He wanted me to know how much I’d meant to him. He didn’t want me to go my whole life thinking I just didn’t matter. I don’t know what kind of situation he was in at the time, I don’t even know if the man is still alive, but I don’t think he could have been all that