From Lowest White Boy, published in May by West Virginia University Press.
He lumbered around a friend’s neighborhood on the other side of the city, slow and friendly, a 250-pound innocent searching yard to yard for a companion. His name was Calvin. He was black, his dad was some kind of middle manager for a trucking company, he lived in one of the better blocks of a nearby black neighborhood, and he was almost always out playing with young white boys. My friends from this strange neighborhood—a more solidly middle-class place, with higher levels of education, professional-class folks, slightly…