Song about Making a Flag, Part of the Refrain of Which is Lifted from an Unfinished Sailor's Song in Moby-Dick

I wanted to make me a flag from the first row of wagons,
to make me a flag from the line of a keel.
I cut Jefferson stars and started to hang them
in the dark of a night I thought we'd never fill.

So good night and farewell, ye sweet Tennessee ladies,
good night and farewell, ye sweet ladies of Maine.
We must do what we want while we can
so when morning comes down
we can do what we must once again.

But I made me a flag from the streaked cheeks of children,
I made me a flag from the welts off a slave,
I made stars from the eyes of the dead and the nights
of the men that killed them made thread black as the grave.

So good night and farewell...

Pour me a drink of the distance and silence
you find at first light on American roads.
Sit with me a while, 'cause this love and this violence
I cannot understand them and they're all I know.

My grandfather he made a flag out of Westward,
my father he made him a flag out of Stone,
and I don't have a flag, but I would leave my daughters
stars and stripes broad and bright enough to make a home.

So goodnight and farewell, ye sweet Tennessee ladies,
good night and farewell, ye sweet ladies of Maine.
We must do what we want while we can
so when morning comes down
we can do what we must once again.

Why All This Travelling?

My father-in-law has a colleague of many years named Kai Woehler, a German immigrant who came to the States in the early 60's and began to teach physics for the U.S. Navy in Monterey, California. He had been one of the last students of Heisenberg, and fallen heir to Heisenberg's dream of a unified field theory--which if I get it, is at once an understanding of the most fundamental particles (movements?) of Being and something like the meaning of Being. Something that you could point to and in some sense say, that's the gist of it, right there. Woehler is also a traveler to remote, dangerous places--through the Taklamakan Desert along the Silk Road, to Svalbard, to the Skeleton Coast in Namibia. The impulse to find the basic particle of Being--he himself capitalizes It--and the impulse to travel to places that are nearly unreachable and that mark the end of something, that cannot be gone beyond, seem related somehow. So, busy life. And he has lunch with my father-in-law, whom I adore, on the third Thursday of the month, I think it is.

Now presumably, if you saw the smallest possible particle it wouldn't look like much. The point, in fact, is to edge as near as possible to nothing, to approach the instant of Becoming. And maybe you would see how the finger print of Being is scrimshawed, how the iris and the vocal chords are tuned to the particular pitch of something unrepeatable. But there is a logical problem, or at least a sticking point, with looking for meaning in matter. Even the most fundamental stuff is just stuff, even if it is the stuff we're made of. There is a question for me of whether it's the answer or the question that we worship at the shrine of philosophy or science. I think I know the answer but I don't like it. I think maybe, looking at the fundamental particle or movement, what you would see, if you were a cosmologist and a searcher, would be as much as anything the road approaching this particle. The effort and tedium and longing, the dead ends at which beloved friends and revered elders had gotten stuck, the luck of arriving alive.

Lunch may hold as much transcendental meaning as anything else. Kai Woehler and my father-in-law were once discussing the moment of death. They were trying to imagine the fear and pain of death, and considering whether the moment of death were somehow the best seat in the House of Being or just the Edge of the Dumpster. And Kai said confidently that he would take his chances with the pain and disappointment, that he wanted no anaesthetics. That in some sense this was the great adventure and he wanted to arrive at the much anticipated destination with a clear head. I like this. Of course, again, it's just death. Not logically any more the source of religious meaning than my first cup of coffee this morning. And yet I suspect that somehow the end of my first cup of coffee, the firstness of the cup itself even, has to do with death. That death is the end towards which all Being and all consciousness of Being moves. And likewise, I can't help believing--even as I lose belief in nearly everything else--that the basic patterns of Being are the basic patterns of consciousness: planning and doing, waiting and missing, longing and relinquishment.

I need to think about death again. Not this time as the end of personality and personal accomplishments, of being seen and loved. Or, okay, maybe a bit. But more than that, I need to know whether I can believe that death is good. Walt Whitman, after seeing plenty of it in the Civil War hospitals of Washington D.C., summoned his clearest voice and called to it, sang to it:

Come, lovely and soothing Death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate Death.
Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;
And for love, sweet love—But praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee—I glorify thee above all;
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.

It is easy in dark, exhausted moods to--theoretically--welcome ones own death. It costs no more than the welcoming of other ultimates--Love or God or even Independent Wealth. Ones own death, or the thought of it anyway, wipes the board clean. Unless one has the bigness of heart to imagine leaving other people behind, leaving behind a world that continues to need and break. But the occasion of this hymn to death was the disastrous, faith-shaking loss of Lincoln, two years into an endless war that was killing not only brothers but belief. For Whitman, Lincoln was "the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands," as he says at the close of "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," his consideration of Lincoln's death and of his body's long recessional by train across the country back to the earth of Illinois.

So I'm wondering whether death is good, and I don't even know how to ask yet. But I'm thinking that in all sorts of ways that I'm only starting to see, mine is an American life. That is, I'm deeply situated in this land and this history, this particular love and violence. And so in some way mine will be an American death. And even the great American hymn of death, Whitman's great discursive twilit talk of death-longing, is a road story--a movie in which it feels like something worthwhile or real happens because of the sheer fact of movement towards a destination. Or is it just movement through the swamps and plains of the land? Or even awareness of the land spreading out around you? And if you're a Westerner then you have to add to catalog of the land deserts, forests and mountains, and the ever-present fact of distance, and the Pacific beyond them all. Clearly the land is itself a story. I get to be in it until I die and then, even, I suppose, all my tendencies will carry on in the land. It's after 4AM now, and I'm ending this not because I've gotten anywhere but just because I'm grateful to be tired. I'm going to practice believing that death is good.

Reasons to Keep the Barbie Dream House Packaging

It's 9:30 AM and the girls are still asleep. This has required years of work. They all drink coffee now, too. Again, on the MBA model this is my work. I have cultivated a workplace culture where the girls can think outside the box, effectively add value, etc. I go downstairs to make coffee. The cat, who is terrified to eat without company, is psyched to see me. I put water on to boil and we go to the bathroom so the cat can eat. Because I did this to the cat, somehow, I think. She peers uncertainly up at the top of the counter for several seconds, rearranging her undercarriage for the 40 inch spring. The little dance she does is unnerving. Or maybe it's just for my benefit? This is the only time she appears to have little cat feet. She arrives, scrambling slightly beyond her apex, hunkers there crunching. The kibble is eerie. Have I communicated this idea to the cat? I'm not full-on afraid of any foods, except maybe figs, now that JZ explained about the horrific life cycle of the fig wasp.

10:53. Hilde staggers out in her wildly mismatched underwear, abbreviated (the underwear) to the point of terseness. Laconic. I'll make her coffee for the silence.

There are two basic versions of the Barbie Dream House, and if you don't correctly identify the one you bought--or, as is more likely, the one you were given before you could choose--you may be living your life totally wrong and wondering why you don't feel completely located, successful and at peace. If you own the Romantic Aufhebung Barbie Dream House set-up, then yes you will have to constantly sum up and transcend all your earlier works. Your life will indeed need to unfold in some way that looks both monumental and organic, and you will require both heroic individuality and very deep communion with fellow RABDH Laborers. But the people at Mattel are no fools, and neither are they Sadists (although Google 'de Sade Dream House' for a good, if unnerving little chuckle). Your Barbie is hypersensitive to taste and touch. USE the amenities. One small representative example. Your Dream House is equipped with a large claw foot tub, which during the summer months, when surfing mainly replaces bathing, can be converted into a cannabis planter. But also take baths in it. You've got the sea, the sun, the wind, and endless amenities and small creature comforts. You'll also find all the scaffolding you'll need to erect the huge, cloudy forms that will express and guide your Soul, and keep you on the verge of transports and hysterics most of the time. The Romantic Aufhebung RV is a nuisance to park but really a load of fun. Get out, see stuff.

But there is some chance that you have Han Shan Barbie, as there was some chaos with the shipping department in the mid-Sixties that has regrettably had long term implications for a small number of Laborers. If you are frequently transcending your previous work and making handsome use of the RABDH amenities and you still do not feel completely located, successful and at peace, please find Ken and examine the small of his back. If he has a small tattoo that says either Big Stick or Pickup, and if you have repeatedly noticed his absence during parties only to find him huddled next to the convertible shivering and looking dreamily at the sky, then you should stop calling him 'Ken'. You probably have the Cold Mountain Barbie Dream House. The CMBDH is a totally different cup of tea.

Don't panic. Mattel has PDF files of the major Taoist literature available, and they'll even send out a representative if needed (although they smell odd and frighten children). The main thing you need to know if you have the CMBDH is that it actually is a dream, and should not be regarded as a set of objective facts. Learn to look at it in soft focus until your Dream House begins to resemble a cave with foliage hanging across the entrance. Allow rain and wind free access. Build a fire in the living room and keep it stoked up pretty good for a couple weeks. Squat more. So important, so important.

There are also a small number of Soviet Era Dream Houses still in circulation.

The Witness

He’s never going to get in shape. The Pilate's DVD is gummed over in dust. The elliptical next to his bed is falling over, the dislocated arms covered in laundry. The sea kayak he bought last Christmas is beached alongside the house, never launched, with veins of black fungus creeping across its yellow belly. How does he not see this?

This morning he’s rolling out his new mountain bike to ride along the commuter path that winds through our neighborhood. It’s a mountain bike--with recycled rubber handles and high impact shocks and knobby tires! A mountain bike to ride along a flat, cement biking path. Ridiculous! Look, look how his beer gut stretches the neon windbreaker, look at the expensive sunglasses, the obnoxious padded bike shorts and…look, look! He’s adjusting his padded shorts! Look at him glancing around to see if anyone’s watching! So stupid. He never thinks to look behind him, into the windows of his own house, and notice his own mortified son. What an idiot. Why must I be the witness?

He says all I do is play Xbox. He doesn’t even know what I do. He won’t let me drink soda or eat chips. “It’s bad for your body!” How does he know? He says we’re not buying paper towels to help the environment. Then when my sister spills something he grabs a shirt from the laundry to wipe it up. Now all my shirts have juice stains. That’s not going to save the earth, Dad. We’re not saving the earth. Like when mom got sick and he told us we were changing our diet and we couldn’t buy doughnuts, or anything with sugar, or white flour, and he stopped using his cell phone. She died anyway. And we still eat rotten stinking kale and fish oil gummy bears and bran--lots of dirt flavored bran. For what?

Last year, after I showed him the website that measures the melting ice caps, the one with the drowning polar bears video, you know what he did? He went out and got the Obama “hope” sticker. He stuck it to my bedroom mirror without asking. He tells me I need to stop focusing on the “negative.” He tells me, “It’s a new day!” He says Obama is going to save the bears and stop the ice caps from melting. He doesn’t get it. Obama is just a dad, like him, and his kids probably see him sneaking around the White House, smoking his secret cigarettes and think, “the poor sap.”

A few months ago Dad got all excited about the Nobel prize. “See?” he said. “Didn’t I tell you? He’s going to make things better. The whole world knows it’s true.” I was fooled for a minute, but then I asked him, “What do you mean ‘going to?’”

“Well,” Dad gave that same far away smile that my sister used to make when she crapped her diaper, “Well, the prize is because they know he is going to do good things.” Can you believe it? Going to do? I went out of my mind, “You don’t give a trophy to a team that’s going to win the World Series! Because sometimes they don’t. Their pitcher breaks his arm or their best player gets caught using drugs, and they lose. They lose Dad. And you shouldn’t have given the team the award because it got everyone’s hopes up and you just made it worse.”

But still he watches the news and calls me in every time there’s some sappy story of some school having a “car-free day.” He thinks it will inspire me to watch all these other middle school students walking to school with grinning faces that say, “We’re fixing the world!” He doesn’t even realize that I’ve been to “car-free” days and I know that half those kids are going to get rides home or to soccer practice and then that night their stupid father is going to forget something and drive across town to the grocery store and it’s all just so pathetic.

Why does everyone want to pretend? Like nobody even talks about the war in Iraq, but Connor’s dad is still in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever, and every morning he wears that sad American flag pin that his dad gave him and it makes me want to just hit him because he doesn’t even realize how stupid he looks. Wearing that flag is like showing off your burn scar from the time you put your hand on the stove, even though your mom told you a hundred times to be careful. Does he have any idea how exhausting it is to see that pin?

After the election Connor was all smiley and told me Obama was going to send his dad home. I said, “Good for you!” in kind of a snotty way, but I actually was kind of glad for him, because we used to be best friends, but of course he was wrong and his dad is still gone and I heard his mother say he might have to stay two more years, and now Connor pretty much doesn’t do anything anymore. He just sits and stares at the whiteboard and eats alone and gets yelled at by Mrs. Hotchkins to pay attention.

Dad says I make myself depressed. I’m not depressed, I tell him, I’m tired. I’m tired of pretending that things are going to get better. Like when mom got sick and dad made us get rid of all the plastic cups and Tupperware and we couldn’t eat real hamburgers. I hated all that, but Dad said it would make Mom better and so I didn’t complain and I actually felt good every time we ate the crappy food, because I thought it was helping. But after awhile I could tell that Mom was getting worse, and even though everyone was lying to me and telling me that my prayers were making a difference I knew it was all shit and that everyone was just too scared to say it.

So I asked her one night when she was sitting alone in the kitchen, “You aren’t getting better.” And her chest went flat and she just said, “No, I’m not.” And then I said, “You’re going to die.” And she looked right at me and cried. She cried without making any noise and said to me, “Yes, I am.” And then she hugged me, and I cried and tried not to make any noise, and my body went as weak as a beanie baby. Then she held me out so I could see her face and said, “Now let’s make the best of it.” And we walked out of the house without telling Dad, and left my sister alone playing with her polar bear, and went and got real hamburgers, and greasy French fries, and these huge-ounce cokes, and laughed a little bit.

That’s what I want. That’s what I want for dad. I just wish Obama would come on the television smoking a big fat cigarette. And I wish he would just look in the television, look at my father, and tell him, “I’m sorry folks. I really am sorry, but we’re all going to die. The polar bears, the owls, the Africans, the kids, the whole earth. The car free day isn’t helping. And the recycling is not helping. And the electric cars, well, it turns out they just make things worse…the extra battery acid and all that. And the Arabs and Jews, well I’ve been there, met with all of them, and I gotta tell you, it’s a huge fucking mess. Just a huge, fucking, knotted up mess. I’m sorry. I really am. There’s nothing I can do. I’m sending the prize back to Oslo. Sorry for blowing smoke up your ass.”

And then I want dad to just turn the damn thing off and just cry and let his snot run down over his mouth like I did at the funeral, and I want him to just yell and moan and smash his fist into the wall like some guys do when their girlfriends break up. And I just want him to go ape-shit until he scares the shit out of me and my sister and the whole neighborhood. I think if he did that I wouldn’t hate him so much. And when he finally got tired, I’d ask him to take us out and get steak sandwiches. At the same place mom and I went. And if he wasn’t sure if we should, I’d say, “Dad, when the earth floods I don’t want to be eating bean curds. I want real food Dad, and real Coke.”

And I think maybe he’d finally get it. He’d finally understand that when the first waves of the ocean start to breach the continent and come down our street and push through our door like New Orleans, I don’t want to be exercising or recycling or staring at my “hope” sticker. I want to be playing Xbox. Playing Xbox with Conner, just like we used to do when I first got that Star Wars game, before Mom died and Connor’s dad was shipped off. And it would be like it used to be, when we played for a whole day and ate chips and drank pop and got so far into it that we got mind fog where it felt real and we’re yelling at each other to “Watch out!” And it feels like all the Rebel forces are supporting us and we’re looking out for each other and our comrades’ voices don’t seem computer generated, but feel real and we’re trying to save the last hold-out of human beings, and together we’re blasting the white storm troopers and their mechanical droids.

That’s what I want. That’s how I want it to end. After all the bears are dead and the ocean is pouring over the tiles in our kitchen, creeping over the carpet, rising and covering our feet--but we don’t care because in our mind we‘re fighting the Empire, shooting and blasting and backing each other up, yelling “Reload!” even though the whole situation is hopeless. And my dad would sit next to us and drink beer without hiding it. He’d sit next to us with my sister on his lap eating chips or cookies or whatever she wanted. My dad and sister would sit and stare at the screen, and cheer us on, cheer Conner and me across the frozen tundra, through the waves of Imperial soldiers, on that faraway planet from the second movie, the one with endless glaciers and fields of frozen snow.

Beauty Where I Want Her

I've got Beauty where I want her but I think that every time.
If it's warrantied or monogrammed or framed it isn't mine.
When they reason closely in the stern, cry the distance from the bow:
it's not so easy breezy that way for them to see you, now.

You were wild, you were a bit too much. I couldn't get enough.
You were everything I loved about the things I could not love.
I dropped other destinations to get to you somehow.
It's not so easy breezy, it is, for you to please me now?

You said 'give a 20 to the gypsy, though she'll still just tell you what she will.
It may feel strange to pay to be deceived. Give her the 20, still.'
You said, 'You don't mind being lied to, if you can choose by whom and how.'
It's not so easy breezy, baby, to believe you now.

So I studied to tell your tarot cards, but I could never say for sure.
You said anything with hearts or swords or staves could not be yours.
So I made you your own tarot deck with stuff even gypsies don't allow
and it seems to work well but I can't tell a damned thing about you now.

My compass spins less frantically out here beyond the light.
Now that I cannot see it I feel sure it works alright,
although if I'm to be honest I trust the stars more anyhow.
It's not so easy breezy this way to deceive me now.

I've got Beauty where I want her but I still might take a dive
so the corpse is undisturbed and self-possessed when you arrive,
with the door key in its pocket and the floor plan on its brow.
And I hope it's easy breezy that way for you to read me now.

Girl and Bear Continued

They sat and watched the ducks until the ducks lost interest and returned to their nests. Then, unexpectedly, her father rose, wrapped her coat tightly around her, then cradled her in his arms and began to walk. It had been years since her father had held her like this, and even though she was six years old--too old to be cradled, it felt so warm in her father’s arms that she didn’t mind if people saw her being held like a baby. He looked down under his wide felt hat and smiled, and she smiled back and felt that something strange was taking place. She had been so sad for so long and it had been such a heavy sadness, like her heart covered in winter clouds, that she had forgotten what it was like to be happy or to play or to laugh. But now, on this morning, with the sun just cresting over a canopy of golden leaves, it felt like something was lifting, and it felt good to smile.

They spotted a quiver of fish along the creek and watched a woodpecker knocking against a sugar pine. Her father made two tiny schooners out of sticks and oak leaves and they raced them down the mill creek then tried to sink them with rocks. They came to a cluster of sycamores and suddenly father ran toward her and yelled, “You’d better run or I’ll eat you up.” It was so strange to see her father running that Gracie stayed still staring, until her father was almost upon her. She noticed the sparkle in his eye and let out a playful scream and ran out from beneath her heavy coat and hid behind the nearest tree. Her father slowed and stomped his big feet and said, “I’m a hungry grizzly bear and I eat little girls for breakfast.” Gracie felt deliciously terrified and quickly scanned the hillside for cover. She waited while her father thumped and growled, and then quickly darted uphill into a bushel of rhododendrons.

Her father soon followed, panting up the hill. He carefully reached within the dark green leaves and swept his hand back and forth, while Gracie crouched quiet and still, both hands covering her mouth. His arm finally withdrew and the park became very quiet. Gracie waited. And Gracie waited. It occurred to her that her father may have wandered off and left her. She stood and stepped from the bushes, when all of a sudden there was a loud growl and Gracie felt two hands grip her waist. Her father jerked her from the ground, turned her upside down, nuzzled his warm beard into her neck and growled.

“I’ve got you little girl. I’ve got you.” Gracie laughed and screamed at the brackish beard , but the father bear just placed her over his shoulders, like a sack of flour, and carried her down the bank singing, “I’ve got me a Gracie breakfast, a very fine Gracie breakfast….”

When they came to the edge of the dirt road that wound along the park, a black sedan puttered by and two boys in the back seat hung their heads out the window pointing and laughing. “Grrrr!” replied her father, and the boys quickly withdrew their heads while their mother shouted from the front passenger window, “Shame on you!”

The father laughed and sat down in the grass placing Gracie at his side. She wrapped her arms around his side and placed her cheek against his arm and for the first time that she could remember, it felt natural to be so affectionate. The father curled his arm around his daughter and drew her in close. He tilted his head toward her and said, “Things need to change Gracie. Things need to change. I know we both miss her…but, well, she’s not coming back and we’ve got to go on and make a different kind of life. We need….we need to be” He paused, trying to find the word. “We need to be happier.” He reached down and lifted his daughter’s chin. She looked up at him and nodded. She wanted to be happy.

They sat quiet for awhile, basking in the late morning glow of the autumn trees until the moment passed and he lifted her up to her feet. “Now,” he said, brushing off his backside, “let’s go find the real bear.” She held his hand and they walked up the park, leaving her mother’s jacket somewhere on the ground.

As they walked to the north end of the park they passed a sign that read, “Auto Camping.” Just past the sign the dirt road widened and the girl suddenly noticed the many cars parked within the trees. Most had canvas tents stretched along their sides with wooden packing boxes, and morning campfires weaving thin ribbons of smoke into the pine and cedar branches. She could hear children chasing one another and smelled bacon from all directions. Her father pointed to a wooden bridge. “That’s where we cross.” They walked the bridge over the creek and passed two women carrying cloth covered baskets, their hair loose and wiry. Then, in a clearing she spotted something in the shadow of a large cedar tree. It was a strange man. A sad man. Sitting in the dirt, his head dropped to his chest, his shoulders soft and rounded. Without taking her eyes away she whispered, “Daddy, who’s that?”

“That’s him. That’s who we came to see. That’s the bear.” She refocused her eyes, and then she saw it, the hands and feet were long, the head was like a boulder. She noticed the ears stood pointed and wide atop the rounded skull. It was a bear. Her father stopped and read a white painted sign with red lettering: “Danger. This bear is a wild animal. Do not feed. Do not touch. Do not pass the marked perimeter.” Her father set her down at the edge of a surprisingly thin rope staked in a circle around the bear and his tree. How could this rope protect anyone from a wild animal? Gracie wondered. She stood and placed her hands on the rope, tentatively, and took a good look at the wild beast. She had never been this close to a bear before. It looked more strange than dangerous.

Snow and Grief

A few years ago my three year old daughter and I were playing in the front yard. It had snowed the night before and the world was new. She laughed stepping in my footprints. She jumped down on her stomach and licked the flavorless ice cream. It was early in the morning and the roads were unplowed, icy and vacant. A delivery truck broke the silence and lumbered cautiously down our street. The driver was young, his head pushed over the steering wheel, straining to see the road. Grace stood next to me and watched the large animal creep across the ice. Then from stereo right we heard the high pitched whir of a Volkswagen. Chained with confidence, it ran up hill unhindered by the glassy blacktop. The truck driver was startled by the yellow VW and locked his brakes until the truck, like a speared elephant, keeled sideways, and slid slow and wounded toward our parked station wagon. Helpless, the driver frantically turned the wheel while the bumper dragged its wide overbite along the driver-side door. Gracie, standing next to me, reached for my leg. When the truck came to a stop she asked, “What happened Daddy?”

“The truck slipped.”

“Oh,” she replied, uncertain what to feel.

The driver stepped out from the truck. His face was shrouded in remorse. “I’m sorry,” he called eagerly over the idling engine. He went back inside and shut off the engine, then rolled the passenger window down and called out a second time, “I’m so sorry.” He shuffled through the glove box, then walked gingerly, respectfully, with long high steps across our snow covered lawn. He said to me, “They sent me out, but I should’ve just turned back. I shouldn’t have been driving in this weather.” He was a large man and his scuffed work boots left deep impressions in the snow. I felt sorry for the guy and said to him, “It’s O.K. It’s an old car.” He stood a few yards away, keeping a polite but awkward distance. He looked down and noticed Grace for the first time then shook his head mournfully. Still gazing at my daughter he said to himself, “They’ll put me back in the warehouse for sure now.”

I didn’t know what to say. Gracie was quiet, taking in the stranger’s face. Without turning her head she pulled on my pant leg to be lifted up. I reached down and hoisted her up with one arm. She gently laid her fluffy, pink jacketed body across my chest, pushed her cold nose against my neck. It took me a moment before I noticed her crying. Worried, I held her out so I could look her over, see if there was an injury. “Gracie? Did you get hurt?” She shook her head. “I’m just sad,” she said sadly. And then I realized what was happening. She was crying the tears of Chad the delivery truck driver. The driver who had spent five years working in a cold warehouse and now, having suffered his second accident, would be forced to go back to the warehouse job he’d spent five years hoping to leave.