Harry Dellums and Jason Chadwick had been friends for years.  They’d grown up in the same neighborhood, their homes separated only by a white picket fence that leaned precariously in the direction of the Dellums’ colonial style brick house, a clone of the Chadwick’s home except for the green trim on the windows; Jason’s father preferred the black trim.

The Chadwicks were the only black family in the neighborhood, and until Jason was twelve, none of the other white families would associate much with him and his family; none that is except the Dellums, a white family that had moved to Rockville, Maryland from Biloxi, Mississippi when Jason was six.  They immediately made friends with their next door neighbors, and, to the shock of others in the area, spent most of their time socializing with them.  The Chadwicks were natives of Maryland, and had moved to Rockville from Baltimore when Jason’s father was hired by the Defense Department as a computer analyst.

But, that is ancient history.  Times changed, and by the time Jason and Harry, who had become the closest of friends during their childhood, graduated from high school and went off together to the University of Maryland, where Jason got a degree in business administration and Harry studied education, the two were inseparable.  They bought adjacent houses in the neighborhood where they grew up, just blocks from their parents’ homes – the Dellums and the Chadwicks were of a mind about adult sons living with their parents, but did enjoy having them nearby.  Neither had married, preferring to establish their careers first; Harry as a teacher at Wooten High School in Rockville, and Jason as a claims adjuster for the Social Security Administration office in nearby Gaithersburg.

Jason and Harry spent most of their free time sitting on one or the other’s backyard, discussing weighty philosophical issues, drinking beer, and generally bemoaning the sorry state of the economy.

One Saturday afternoon, on a sunny April day, they sat in Jason’s backyard, lolling back in the new set of lawn chairs he’d purchased at the local hardware store and sipping Corona that Harry brought over; he leaned forward, a curious expression on his freckled face, and pushed back a lock of his bright red hair.

“Jace,” he said, using the nickname for his friend that he’d been using since they first met.  “You won’t believe a conversation I had in the teacher’s lounge yesterday.”