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Summary
212. A Stranger – 249. Frick Had
A stranger gets on the elevator. No one acknowledges him, and he doesn’t acknowledge anyone else. Will thinks that this means the man is real and not a ghost like the others. He’s embarrassed that he’s covered in pee but relieved to feel a little more sane, to see a living person. As the man is staring at his reflection in the door, Buck tries to get the man’s attention. The man doesn’t respond. Buck tells the man that he knows him. Buck says the man is named Frick. They greet each other like distant relatives. Frick asks Buck what’s good. Buck says nothing at all. Buck introduces everyone to Frick as the man who murdered him.
Frick says his real name is Frank, but Frick was a childhood nickname that stuck. Buck says that the only reason people know his government name, James, was because of Frick, because his name was on his tombstone. Will discusses Buck’s background, saying he had two sides. He was raised by his stepdad who was a preacher and devoted to helping others. His biological father was a bank robber. It's as though Buck was taught to do good but doing bad was in his blood. Buck was just a small-time drug dealer until Will’s father was killed. Then, he became a big brother to Shawn and a more successful robber.
Will remembers when the cops came to the house to ask Shawn who might have killed Buck. Shawn didn’t say anything to the police, but Will found him in the bedroom loading his gun.
Buck describes hanging out with Shawn, who got into a small argument with someone on the way to get lotion for his mother’s eczema. Shawn was really emotional about the argument, so Buck gave him the gold chain he stole off of a kid, who essentially gave it to him, in order to make Shawn feel better. Right after Buck gave Shawn the chain and Shawn left, Frick came to the basketball court. Frick was being initiated into the Dark Suns and was tasked with doing a Dark Deed: robbing someone, beating someone, or killing someone. Frick pulled a gun on Buck on the basketball court to rob him. He wanted to take down Buck because he was a skilled robber. Buck, though, was offended to be robbed by someone as weak as Frick and fought back even though Frick had a gun. Frick shot him.
Shawn, following The Rules, got revenge for Buck’s death, and killed Frick. Shawn knew who had killed Buck because his friend Tony was shooting hoops there and witnessed the murder. Will realizes that that’s why there’s only fifteen bullets in the gun. Frick shows Will the wound in his chest, which is bloody but not bleeding. Frick says it has his brother’s fingerprints in it. Dani asks Frick if he knows anyone named Riggs. Frick is confused and asks who Riggs is. Will wishes he knew an anagram for poser. Frick lights a cigarette, and the elevator comes to a stop.
Analysis
This section explores the theme of the pain of toxic masculinity through Shawn’s emotionality and his quick decision to turn to violence in the wake of Buck’s death. Buck describes how Shawn is an extremely emotional person, noting that he was emotional all the time. Shawn struggles to let go of his emotions because they don’t have a proper outlet, suggesting that the imperative to suppress his emotions has a corrosive effect on Shawn’s well-being. Similarly, Buck refuses to back down, even though Frick is threatening him with a gun, suggesting that Buck also is at the mercy of his own emotions, no matter how vehemently he tries to suppress them. This illustrates that, though the men try as hard as they can to be stoic and tough, their emotions still dictate their actions and still find modes of expression, often at the expense of their own rationality and even their lives. This illustrates that, not only does the ethos of emotional suppression lead to acts of violence, but the men are also still dictated by their emotions in ways that are below their own awareness. As a result, they act out their emotions at their own and others’ peril.
This section explores how masculinity is passed along through families, especially through fathers. When examining Buck’s character, Will describes how Buck is essentially an amalgam of two warring visions of masculinity. One, his good-doing preacher stepfather who taught him to protect others and look out for people. Two, his biological father who was committed to committing crime and hurting other people, implying that he was much more dictated by The Rules than Buck’s stepfather. Buck has a choice, then, as to which kind of masculinity he wants to emulate. The pull of the criminal life is strong in Buck’s community, given the realities of systemic oppression, an untrustworthy police force, and the weight of poverty. In this way, the deck is stacked against Buck, as it is against all those in Will’s community, and the temptation towards the gang life proves difficult to resist.
This section explores that part of the danger of the cycle of violence is that, in the heat of strong emotions like grief, people can make unwise decisions with dire consequences. Will has just learned that his father killed the wrong person; overwhelmed by the incomprehensibility of grief, Pops was sure that he had the right person in his sites. However, he was fatally mistaken, an error which cost an innocent life and lead to his own death. Similarly, in this section, Will learns that the man who killed Shawn didn’t have any connection to Riggs. When he learns this, he wishes he could find an anagram for poser, suggesting that he feels like a fraud, filled with false bravado. He’s disappointed in himself much in the same way he was disappointed in his father when he learned the truth of his failed vengeance. Compelled by the gospel of The Rules, both Pops and Will attempt to make life-changing decisions in the immediate aftermath of losing their beloved brothers. Their grief clouds their vision, illustrating that they are too overcome with emotions to make clear decisions.
