THE STORY: The scene is a pool hall, where Earl Davis, a man in his mid-forties, plays a solitary game. He is joined by Eddie Green, a young college student, who watches the older man in silence, and then challenges him to a game. Their conversation, casual at first, soon makes it clear that these two men, who have never met before, do, in fact recognize each other; are, in truth, father and son. In the end this truth is conceded—but so is the fact that the years of neglect that separate them are too great a gulf to be bridged, and the past must, indeed, remain the past.
An immensely moving but subtly written study of a first encounter between a young black man and the father who deserted him years before.
Included in the collection
The Past is the Past and Gettin’ It Together.
