Following when Dylan obtains the flying man’s ring, he offers to introduce Arthur Lomb to Mingus. Arthur is strangely excited about this, and when he does meet Mingus, he is uncharacteristically shy and awkward around him. Arthur is a bragger and a gloater, trying to impress everybody, and it’s interesting that now he should feel humbled, though perhaps it’s the fact that as a white boy, he was always terrorized by black kids. To meet one in peace would be to obtain some mark on himself that would show others that he was cool with black people and they were cool with him, or so he seemed to think, though it never worked that way for Dylan.
They start to play stoopball, and it’s apparent that Arthur is not athletic in the slightest. He keeps getting yelled at, and every time he acts sheepish and apologizes.
Important in this is that during the game, when Dylan jumps to catches the ball, he jumps higher than normal, lands gracefully, and it is described as “flying”, to the awe of the other kids on the block. Arthur is sour at this attention, having wanted it for himself, but it is clear to the reader that Dylan got something from that ring, that he was able to do more than ever, and suddenly the book has a very strange supernatural feel, although up to this point it had been, for the most part, realistic.
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