That is the whole of the next twenty-three weeks and it was in the air at a graveside before anybody had got to their cars.

A man who believes a thing is worthless throws it away and does not look back at it.

He does not reach for it.

He does not then instruct anybody not to pick it up.

And the question was right there. Why do you care where it lands?

I had it in my mouth.

I was thirty-four and I had been to that cemetery nine times in my life and the man in front of me had just thrown his mother’s property onto her coffin, and I had the question in my mouth and I swallowed it, because the minister was still standing there and because Susan was watching me and because I have spent my entire adult life not being the one who starts something at a funeral.

At the cars, my father looked back at me from beside his truck and said: