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half-dressed, gather around the bin on the cement at the base of the flagpole where Ray stands. Subdued and gasping, we slip on scrubs to cover ourselves. Flip-flops for the ones transported without shoes and hopping from foot to foot on the hot cement.
    We were expected.
    This was.
    White scrubs. Like costumes, but for what? Shakespeare in the plaza or electroshock in some occult institution? The rectangle of white fa ç ades in the plaza looks fake, like the set for an opera that got too ambitious for any stage— which raises the question. If we are in some kind of production, what’s it about? Was it written for us? Why are we here?
    Then Father, my father, mounts the base to the flagpole and throws himself at the ropes, trying to stand higher than Ray. He scrambles on up the pole, hand-over-hand until his strength fails. In the seconds before Ray catches him, he bawls: “Why are you doing this to us?”
    Which begs the real questions. Where are we, anyway? Why?
    As it turns out, those aren’t the real questions either, but we don’t know that. All we know is that we’re the world’s greatest mystery, and we know this— how?
    Color blazes. On the biggest fa ç ade in the plaza, a great screen blooms like a tropical flower. We’re on TV! As though the Power, whatever it is, whatever they are— as though some mysterious entity heard my old man howling and flipped a switch.
    We stop what we were saying, doing, thinking, and face the screen like recruits lined up for the orientation film:
    Welcome to Wherever This Is.
    Wedged into the square like illegals waiting to be deported, we watch, waiting for the emcee, director, instructor, captors, the power behind our removal to step out and explain.
    Instead, the show begins. Island Inhabitants Vanish. Long shot of Kraven island. A banner zips across the bottom of the screen on a loop: Weekly World News . My heart lifts. We’re on the news. This means they’ll find us soon.
    But there’s a problem. The travelogue-perfect montage is too detailed to be shot and edited in a day, the interviews so slick that questions stir in my gut, gnawing their way out. No power could have processed all that material in the short time we’ve been gone, but like everybody else watching, I was mesmerized. Changed. For that moment, in the aftermath of our— disruption and removal, I bought it. We all did.
    Even Father goes quiet, fixed on the screen, but I know what he is thinking, standing there with his hands spread and his angry mouth ajar: civic leader, waiting for his cameo, while I speed-read the images; if Davy isn’t here, I’ll find him up there on the screen and find a way to let him know I’m here.
    Cameras pan the route from Charlton to Poynter’s island to our island. God, they’ve barricaded the causeway! It’s so weird, all those driverless cars stalled on the road out of Kraventown; I don’t see Davy’s, so, where! Bay Street is so still that even Ray groans. Buildings we go into every day stand empty; shops and guest houses, even the police station, clinic, the banks. All our favorite and our private places are laid open like corpses waiting to be autopsied, doors sagging like empty mouths and all our secret orifices gaping.
    On streets where we used to play, nothing moves but a stray cat slinking across the road with its ass tucked under in shame. Although we have audio there’s no sound on Kraven, really, except for Wade Tanner’s watchdogs snarling as the camera passes his jewelry store. It’s so quiet that even at that great, unspecified distance, I hear marsh beetles crackling in the sawgrass off Ray Powell’s dock. Then a news anchor reaches into one of the abandoned cars on the causeway and honks the horn, and all our dogs begin barking at once.
    In case we thought we were deluded or dreaming, a great late-breaking news banner replaces World News . Racing along below