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Henry, too kind.”
    How in the days the front page headline contained what house burned or what barn or what city was now razed or being razed. If not the marching of armies then the marching of time, if not the will of God then the hand of roving bands of firebugs. These roving bands and how we knew them by their handkerchiefs, the man said. We knew them by their black hands, their gasoline canisters .
    How the boy prodded the shadows of cars and bulges of tar in the long, quiet road, how he believed these were the half-consumed bodies of goats and deer. How his—
    In those days we knew our neighbors by the way they coughed, and the names they forgot. How they watched their children, growing and wandering through our yards, their bandanas and gasmasks, loose and heavy .
    How the daughter was slender in ways the mother was not slender. How her long arms were not covered in the same flesh as the mother was covered, clear of ruin, and how she seemed of polished ivory, save for bursts of freckles. Now the boy stood in his apron, watching how the sun lit her neck, the few wisps of hair and how they glowed. How the daughter played tennis in a white skirt and white visor. Her white stockings pulled to the nubs of her knees, and how she waited, pacing and bouncing a tennis ball against the back porch, and how she giggled and waved when her friends arrived in their tennis whites, jammed and piled into the back of a convertible car. How the boy watched in his apron through the fogged glass of the kitchen. How she knew the names of her friends and how she recited these names and how her thin hands moved as she spoke and how he saw them each as the words became skin and hair. The clothing they took on. The sneers. How the boy stood in his apron watching her and how the mother watched the boy as his eyes glazed to something dull and remote.
    How the man said, In those days, these sisters, my mother, and how their dresses caught fire, how we learned that cotton burns as if soaked with gasoline. Yes, how I often found them as if tarred, sprawled in their panties, on front lawns .
    How in the silence of a small town all sounds carry. How the mother found the boy and the daughter on the back steps of the tavern. How this girl and her legs, bare and white, and how natural the boy’s hand seemed on her knee. How she heard him say words like “love” and “diphtheria.” How these words worked, awkward upon his lips, and how the mother knew he had never said them before.
    The man gestured to the forest where the edge of your creation moaned and seethed. There you built the factory to raise our fires and disease .
    How the woman invited the boy into her home for lemonade and fig cookies, the glass half-filled with vodka, and how the boy’s face numbed. How she sat alongside him on the davenport and in her hands, the wedding album. How she flipped through the pages murmuring, “The spitting image.” How young the woman was, in white lace, and the husband, bearded and tall. How they wore black bandanas over their faces while the wedding party wore gasmasks. How the ring bearer and flower girl, in gasmasks, and later in the album, “So many children,” the woman said, of these children in caskets, in lace gowns, their wispy white hairs, eyes open, soft pink lips slightly parted—
    How these hallways and the huddling of children, their blood spattered handkerchiefs, their skin cracked and blackened. How the sky blazed and opened into an enormous eye and those almost dead were lit into nothing. How new colors were born in the flash of the final moment. How this light was the most beautiful light we had ever seen .
    Now the pink granite tombstone and how it was chiseled “Henry Filmount: Beloved Father, Sturdy Husband.” How he died at twenty eight and how they found him naked and bloated and choking in the street. How the girl snapped her gum and said “Daddy, let me clean these weeds for