“Genealogy is the indigenous history of the Self,” I told that jerk in passing.

To Virgil, though I know he has no particular interest in ancient heraldic artworks, I confided in a whisper, “Remind me to show you an amazing picture I found of a fourteenth-century boar couchant with wattled neck and the hind legs of a goat. It’s Walter exactly.”

“At least you don’t have to sit next to the guy at dinner,” said Virgil, huffy.

Fielding, meanwhile, crept backward as he filmed, establishing an enlarged perspective—the cinematic space dramatically unfolding, and so forth—squeezing more Max in the frame. Back Fielding went, three feet, five feet, ten, fifteen, steadily across the frayed carpet and onto hardwood floor, as if riding a dolly. I suppose it is inevitable that some youthful humorist would be unable to forgo crouching on all fours in Fielding’s unwitting path.

The prankster this time was Jeremy. I could see it coming because of course I was squinting directly at Fielding retreating across the room and could make out, behind him, the small figure tiptoeing the long way around the ratty wicker chaise and the drop-leaf table holding the cannon glass paperweight collection. Virgil saw, too. It happened fast. Jeremy knelt on the cold floor. Snickering arose from various corners but no one said a word.

Fielding was absorbed in cinematography and wouldn’t have heard anyway.

He panned onto Max. He raised a hand to calibrate focus. Max’s eyes were shut but his mouth was open and his hands by his sides were clenched. Fielding focused on him. He stepped back. Stepped back again. Suddenly Fielding was going down over Jeremy and the camera’s blinding light was zooming upward and away to spray whiteness across ceiling, a wall, the floor.

Equipment crashed and the camera light died. The room seemed to fall momentarily dark. From the darkness came a sound of wrestling and the ominous shouts of the night’s first of three fights.

“You fucker!”

“Take it easy, man!”

“I’m going to strangle you!”

“It was a joke!”

“Are you mindless? Do you have any idea what you have done? Do you?”

“Don’t push me.”

“I’ll push you. I’ll push you if I want to push you, you unimportant fuck.”

“Don’t get mad!” Jeremy cried in a voice that sounded strangled. Then there was a noise: cloth ripping. Something weighty fell and the Doberman commenced barking insanely as Fielding harangued:

“How often do you think a shot like that comes along? How often?”

“I don’t know! I’m sorry. Let go!”

“Never! That’s how often a shot like that comes along. Never!”

Other brothers converged in a circle ringing the fighters. No one was butting in, yet; experience has proved that it is best to let physical disputes resolve themselves on the spot, rather than interrupt and create additional frustration and the lasting grudges that accompany smoldering tensions—unless there is peril of injury.

Fielding held Jeremy in a classic under-the-arm headlock. Close by the two men’s feet lay that camera, irritant to all of us and a heap of parts now. Fielding, seeing it busted, went red in the brain. “You shit!” he yelled while dancing up and down with Jeremy’s smothered head bobbing.