We Cast a Shadow

In the morning, the narrator escapes the cavern and walks until he comes upon a small commune where people of all races are working the land together. The narrator approaches a woman to ask her about Nigel. The woman, called Doc by the other commune members, informs him that their community is called New Rosewood. She has never heard of a Nigel. The narrator realizes that everyone is using code names. A tall Black man in a yellow baseball cap, nicknamed Watchdog, inquires suspiciously about the narrator’s origins. When he says that he’s from the City, a blonde girl, Dopey, threatens him with a hoe, but Watchdog tells her to back off. Approaching the narrator, Watchdog places a hand on his shoulder and says, “I almost didn’t recognize you” (297). The narrator realizes that “under the cap, beard, and Black man’s skin [is his] boy” (297). “Watchdog” is Nigel.

The narrator is given a delousing bath by Dopey and Doc. Nigel is nowhere to be seen, and the narrator wonders if the other commune members are preventing his son from coming to him. He frantically plans to return Nigel to Dr. Nzinga to reverse the darkening of his skin. By now, Nigel is almost as dark-skinned as the narrator was before his demelanization. A heavily pregnant woman approaches him. He recognizes her as Araminta and realizes, surprised, that he has missed her. Araminta pulls him into a warm hug, remarking on the strangeness of his new look. The narrator reflects on his life changing after the surgery. He’s no longer ogled or feared but finally treated with common decency. A pickup truck pulls up. From the driver’s seat, Nigel tells the narrator that it’s time to go.

As Nigel approaches, the narrator again notes his dark skin and suddenly wonders where the gun is. He realizes that he lost it, or had it stolen, some time before his delousing. Nigel and Araminta begin arguing, and the narrator recognizes it as the argument between two people deeply in love. He sees that both have wooden wedding bands on their fingers, and he secretly hopes that his grandchild will “not take after [him] in any significant way” (302). Araminta finally relents, and the narrator gets into the truck beside Nigel. As they drive up a mountain road, the narrator asks Nigel to return home, but Nigel gently hushes him.

Nigel and the narrator arrive at a small cabin with a tower attached, Nigel’s current home. The narrator reclaims his gun from a stockpile of weapons in the living room. Nigel tells his father that he joined ADZE shortly after the attack at the mall. For a long time, he believed that everything his father was doing to him was for his own good, but Araminta helped him realize the harm the narrator was causing despite his good intentions. In fact, Araminta was there at the plantation visit the first time Nigel ever disappeared; she was the one who convinced him to sneak out to the river. The narrator demands to know who took his son from him, but Nigel responds that, as awful as membership in ADZE was, it was preferable to life with his father, whose paralyzing fear of Blackness ruled Nigel’s life. He reveals that Penny wanted out of the marriage for a long time before her death and had even hinted at the possibility of running away with Nigel. After the ADZE attack at the festival, the younger members of the group were abandoned outside of the city, and Nigel and a few others made their way to the commune.

When Nigel says that his father no longer holds power over his life, the narrator pulls the revolver, but Nigel just looks at him calmly and says, “you’re my father” (312). Changing tactics, the narrator drops to his knees, wrapping his arms around Nigel’s legs and begging him to come home. A motorcycle pulls up outside, carrying Doc and Araminta. Araminta’s water has broken, and she won’t make it back down the mountain before the baby comes. Everyone kicks into action to help. Araminta soon delivers a beautiful, dark-skinned baby girl, though the narrator wonders if “she might lighten with time” (315). Nigel asks the narrator if he can ever accept his granddaughter given her dark skin. When he hesitates, Nigel tells him that the new family doesn’t need that prejudice in their lives. He asks his father to go home and not “haunt [them] anymore” (315).

After leaving Nigel at the commune, the narrator writes that he has become “a shadowy simulacrum” (316). Without an identity or a family to anchor him, he took a leave of absence from Seasons to wander the world. After an attack by pirates left him with scars and a non-functional foot, he took up residence in a small town within a far-flung kingdom. The scars have healed in his original skin tone, and he now has “a slowly expanding brown crevasse” on his cheek (318). He has resigned himself to never seeing Nigel again, and never being forgiven, but he denies that his actions were wrong, because “[he] was no normal father, Nigel was no normal son, and America was no normal nation” (319). Although he once told himself he never meant to hurt Nigel, he now realizes that he meant to hurt him preventively—to protect him against the larger evils of the world. He emailed all his collected writings to Jo Jo, intending their forwarding to Nigel when the narrator is dead. He notes, however, that if a stranger is reading his writing, it means that both he and Nigel are gone. Addressing Nigel for the last time, the narrator tells him to be good to Araminta and to their daughter. He advises Nigel to keep the child out of the sun but more importantly to “teach her to think for herself” (320). His final request is that Nigel sometimes think of him, even after he dies and becomes nothing more than “the ghost of an angel in mossy chains,” forever haunting the world as he looks for a weapon “sharp enough to finally cut this knot” (320).