Synopsis
Danny and Will run into each other at the local gin mill one night by chance. They haven’t seen one another for over twenty years, since their days as high school classmates. They have a few beers together, reminisce.
Danny tells Will he has some excellent weed back at his place, would Will like to partake? Will hesitates, but accepts the invitation.
They drive to a large brick mansion at the end of a long dark driveway. Danny gives Will a tour. And in one of the upstairs bedrooms, Danny shoves Will into a walk-in closet, slams the door, and throws the dead bolt.
So begins The Colored Kid, an allegory for four hundred years of racial tension between the Europeans who settled in North America and the Africans they dragged here in chains.
Will’s a privileged white kid from the burbs. Danny’s a biracial kid (white mother, black father) who moves to town in the sixth grade. Tensions exist between them from the get-go. There will be hell to pay before it’s all over.
The truth, as you will see, is a hard case. A tough nut to crack. Especially when history, ego, machismo, and most of all race are all at work inside that walk-in closet.
Race relations—America’s thorniest, and most explosive, social dilemma. The Colored Kid, using a very unique narrative construct, confronts our national disgrace head on.
Author’s View
The Colored Kid is a thriller, a sick and twisted little tale meant to be consumed, like the seafood paella at Fornos on Ferry Street in Newark, in one gluttonous sitting.
The two main characters are our narrator, Will, and his nemesis, Danny. They don’t see eye to eye on much, and neither can be trusted with the truth. Danny’s entirely loco and Will, well, he’s probably not your most reliable narrator. The truth is apparently something to be avoided at all costs.
Danny, for reasons that will be debated, revealed, and ultimately acknowledged, has kidnapped Will and locked him in a large walk-in closet in a remote mansion. Danny gives Will precisely 24 hours to confess his sins, in writing, and live up to the reality that he most certainly did somebody wrong.
Who exactly Will wronged Danny doesn’t say, and for quite a while Will acts like he doesn’t have a clue what Danny’s squawking about. But the fact is, Will knows exactly why he’s been locked in that closet, a metaphor, obviously, for the dungeons we all inhabit for deeds we shouldn’t have done.
All the wronging went down quite a few years back, twenty years and counting. Will definitely did somebody wrong and that somebody was Danny. And Danny’s family.
Danny and his brother and their black father and white mother moved to town when the boys were in middle school. Danny was a big, mouthy, athletic, aggressive kid. He stole some of Will’s thunder. A theft that didn’t sit well with Will. The boys went back and forth for years, sometimes friends, often enemies.
Bad blood coursed through their veins. Wounds festered. Threats occasionally turned violent. Until Will finally exacted revenge.
Revenge, however, rarely goes unpunished. It took over 20 years, but now Danny has returned, and he most definitely wants an eye for an eye.
A fast-paced, terrifying tale of revenge, toxic masculinity, and racial bias, The Colored Kid pulses with suspense as the two old adversaries grapple with the past, the truth, and a deadly house fire that may have been arson.
