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cutting mine. There wasn’t much to say about it. It was short, and I’d cut it with a mower, the kind of mower all my neighbors used: one of those self-powered, space-age things where you stood on a platform and steered with levers at the handles. The mower moved so fast that it seemed to hover and basically did all the work for you. But still, I managed to work up a sweat while riding it, which caused me to take off my shirt, which got me in some trouble with my neighbors, my male neighbors (no women mowed lawns in Camelot; in this we were like the Muslims), who all wore big, padded recording-studio-type headphones while they mowed, and also huge, floppy hats and safety goggles and heavy-duty gardening gloves and long-sleeved oxford shirts and paint-spattered khaki pants tucked into the top of work boots. Except for tiny swatches of upper cheek and neck, there was no skin visible on them at all. My barechestedness ran counter to some unwritten subdivision behavioral code and had earned me some hard, disgusted stares from my neighbors. Every Saturday I reminded myself to remain fully clothed, but once I started sweating I could never remember to keep my shirt on and in this way fell into my own little unintentional piece of rebellion. I was like the patriot who kept forgetting not to dump the king’s tea into the harbor. This is not to say that because I sweated and took off my shirt and unintentionally rebelled, I was better than my neighbors. I wasn’t. I can’t remember any of their names, but they were all good people. I hope they’re well.
    I was sitting on my front porch, which was really just a concrete slab that we called a porch because we liked to sit on it. I’d just turned off my mower, the roar of it still in my ears, and so I didn’t hear the son of my accidental victims drive up, park his Jeep on the street, then walk up the driveway, didn’t know he was there at all until he was right in front of me. His name was Thomas, Thomas Coleman, although I didn’t know this yet. I was looking down in thought when he came up to where I was sitting, and so I saw his feet before I saw the rest of him. He was wearing hiking boots, the waterproof kind.
    “Are you Sam Pulsifer?” he said. At the sound of the voice, a stillborn lump caught in my throat, because I thought I knew who this voice and those feet belonged to. I was sure it was a reporter. I hadn’t spoken to one in years, but I remembered the way they talked, always leading you away from your version of the truth and toward theirs; I remembered their tiny spiral-bound notebooks and the way they looked so eager to ask you their questions, to which they already knew the answers, and so disappointed in the way you answered them.
    “Yes, I’m Sam,” I said, then raised my eyes to look at the reporter and found that he wasn’t one, which I could tell at first glance. For one thing, no visible notebook. For another, no pen or pencil. And unlike the reporters I remembered, now that he’d asked his question and I’d answered it, he didn’t seem inclined to ask another one but instead just stood there and looked at me. I let him, and looked back, too. He was not so tall, but he was skinny, real skinny; I could tell this even under all his clothes. He was wearing lined jeans (I could see the red flannel peeking out from under the cuffs and over the hiking boots) and a flannel shirt over which he wore a corduroy shirt over which he wore a fleece vest, even though it was freakishly warm out for November, and if I’d known the guy better I would have told him that if he ate more he wouldn’t have to wear so many clothes. I was a walking, shirtless advertisement for that truth. And then there was his face, which was gaunt, and pale, so pale, and pockmarked, too; if my face was the flaming sun, then his was the cratered moon.
    “I’m Thomas Coleman,” he said.
    “OK, nice to meet you,” I said, and stuck out my hand, which Thomas didn’t take. His jaw