NACH.COM

It was Halloween morning, and two boys on their way to school, one older than the other, attacked each other with sabers that from our window looked every bit real. The older boy chopped viciously at the younger, who leapt to the right and then to the left like Errol Flynn. The young boy defended himself with his lunch box and avoided the deadly arc of steel, and then the younger boy swung at the older, who also jumped away unscathed. The weather had turned cold and they were bundled up in parkas. The older boy’s parka had a hairy collar that even from our third floor window on Sixth Street I could see was fake fur. The younger boy wore a New York Jets hat that he pulled down over his ears. From up above they appeared Hispanic, but who could tell. Maybe they were Filipino, Chicano, Cuban, Indian, or more Russian Jews. In college they might have changed from Indians into Native Americans or into Canadian aboriginal people. Inuits or Eskimos. Perhaps they were part African American or African African, Caribbean African or African-Argentinian. Blacks or whites or browns or yellows or grays: they could have been any.

They galloped like little boys and turned the corner before my girlfriend emerged from the bathroom. I sketched the boys, and everyone loved the sketch. They always asked what inspired me to paint two young dark-skinned boys hacking at each other with sabers. What had driven such a horrible notion into my mind? So many people asked. Most often I shrugged and said I wasn’t sure. Occasionally I explained that my inspiration was two little boys who had hacked at each other with sabers one morning while my girlfriend was in the bathroom on the toilet. But no one believed me.