Next, readers hear the voice of Dene Oxendene. He looks at his reflection in the dark TV and sees himself as a dancer. Tony goes home and puts on his old regalia. Octavio tells Tony that his job is to buy the bullets and go to the Powwow wearing his old Indian headdress. They sold it to those boys and their friends for the whole summer, until Octavio came up with a plan to make up a debt he owed: they would rob the Oakland Powwow with white 3D-printed guns. A very drunk Octavio confided in Tony about his love for his grandmother and gave him coke to sell. Tony didn’t have it, so he asked Carlos, who told him to visit someone named Octavio. The trouble began when a few white boys asked Tony for coke.
Maxine knows him better than anyone and helps him makes sense of the world around him. He has difficulty reading, but sometimes the words move him, like when Maxine has him read something by her favorite author, Louise Erdrich. He also reads to her before she goes to sleep. He takes care of her, especially since she's broken her hip. He doesn’t need more money he gives most of what he makes to Maxine. Tony has been selling weed since he was thirteen. Maybe one day, he thinks, he will be known for something bad he has done.
People are afraid of him, and he wonders if Maxine is wrong about him being a medicine man. Growing up, he moved from school to school, always getting suspended after yet another fight. Tony is big, strong, and prone to fits of anger. Tony blames her for this, and for the Drome. She tells him that his father lives in New Mexico and doesn’t know he exists. Sometimes, he rides his bike through all the neighborhoods just to see them, listening to the rapper MF Doom, whose music he likes for lines such as, “Got more soul than a sock with a hole.” He occasionally speaks with his mother, who is in jail, on the phone. Tony sympathizes with his ancestors’ plight he would hate to have to leave Oakland. Maxine says he is a medicine man, deserving of respect, and she tells him the history of colonization. Tony's IQ percentile is the lowest possible, but his psychologist, Karen, affirms his intelligence. Although he is 21 years old now, he doesn’t drink-he figures he got enough as a baby from his mom. He thinks of it as a reminder of his history. At the time, he misheard the name of the syndrome, and it became known to him as the Drone. Tony recalls when his guardian, Maxine, told him he had fetal alcohol syndrome.
The first chapter opens with a series of memories and thoughts from Tony Loneman.
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