In his bedroom, he put on fresh pajamas and lay down again, the bedsheet tucked under his chin, closing his eyes. The not-dream had left him for years, but Karak was dead now, and perhaps his mind needed to remember. In the not-dream, he and Karak are young men again, working in their old packing shed, building crates from wooden boards. In it, Ram is chasing Karak in the late afternoon sun, Karak is enraged, running with the axe. Ram is running to catch him, to stop him. The red pool forms and grows, reaching the shed wall, then the empty lettuce crates, finally the edge of the harvested field. Ram slips in the dark liquid. The slickness. The smell of wounded flesh. Is that how it happened? Hard to know now, through memory, dream, not-dream. He had not fallen in the blood. Had he? He hears Clive’s big, jovial voice from a full decade earlier, hoarse, as if he is suffering from a cold: “Nothing better than Mexicali whiskey and Mexicali women.” His laugh and Karak’s ring out together. In Ram’s not-dream he falls asleep and wakes, sleeps and wakes, sleeps, and hears Clive’s animal scream, the harbinger of death. Hitchcock, limping, pathetically trying for the motorcar, turning and turning the crank.

Ram woke with a start. He was crying. That surprised him. In recent years, he would meet Karak for lunch if he were asked, or Karak would come to Ram’s home for dinner, uninvited. Karak bore the burden of keeping the friendship, of needing it more. But now the thought loomed up before him. Ram had loved him too.

ON THE TELEVISION, a baseball game was running its course. The camera panned the stands, again and again, thousands of people with paint on their faces, smiling in the sunlight. Los Angeles newscasters were speaking on national television. His grandson, the one who did not know a zucchini from a cucumber, said a game like this had never before been played. Ram’s son, Dave, had turned up the volume. A record was about to be broken. Ram watched his family as his family watched the game: even little Anika, even the dog.

“I don’t see why make such a fuss if a Negro man hits a ball,” Ram said.

“Black, Bapu-ji,” cucumber grandson said. “We don’t say Negro anymore.”

“Why?” Ram asked.

His grandson ignored him.

Ram could not deny it, he enjoyed annoying the boy. “In my day, they called Hindus Hindus. They called Sikhs Hindus too.”

Dave gave him a look.

“Nobody minded what you called them,” Ram said.

Leave the boy alone, Dave’s look said.

“Oh yeah?” said the grandson. “Maybe if you Hindus played baseball, people would have cared.”

“Robert!” Dave said. “Mind yourself.”