ABSTRACT
The man sitting across the room from me is casually dressed in jeans and a carefully pressed plaid shirt. He is in his late 40s. He looks a bit like a cross between a scholar and a farmer, with his horn-rimmed glasses and scuffed work boots. He speaks quietly, haltingly, in a way that makes me feel like the words have to push through to get out, as if at any moment his throat might close and the words would be trapped. He tells me, “My son died … in an accident … his car went off the road … there was a downpour after a long dry spell, the road must have been slick … there were no witnesses … they found his car partly hidden in a ditch beneath the underbrush … the police called me at seven in the morning … I was making coffee … I fell over, onto the floor.” The man, I will call him Jim, swallows hard and his face flushes. I feel my own throat constrict, my
own breath grow shallow, and a dull pain blossoms in my chest as I watch him fight the tears that threaten to come but cannot or will not be seen.
