The trucks rolled up shortly before 9, the rising sun slowly pulling the chill of night-rain from the damp earth. The crew made their way into the neighbor’s backyard and by 10 one brave climber was digging spurs into bark. The gas-powered thieving had a strange elegance to it, slow and strategic limbing all the way up, the most unwieldy branches hastily knotted and threaded to the ground, the process moving higher and higher, then a climactic reversal of direction as sections from the top half of the now bare trunk were lopped off to fall in huge concussive blasts that shook our windows. These pieces — and their impact — grew larger during the slow descent of the climber as his saw was forced to make increasingly deeper radial forays through the wooden spacetime of the trunk. The air was heavy with the cloying smell of fresh cuts. A secret, concentric history undone and scattered as sawdust shimmered everywhere, spell-like, as it drifted though blades of light. …

A brief afternoon shower, not even enough to cool the air, and after it passes Spenser is struck by the way the summer light clings to everything. As if some cloudborne tide had washed over the earth, and in receding, stirred up primal brightness and life, spangling every treetop and rockface and rooftop in a slimy glaze. Pavement, lamp posts, windows— all cast in an unnameable sheen of purple and orange. It’s impossible to imagine a colour that nature can’t produce. The air itself is infused as the sun sinks low, flaring hard.

The air is warm and sticky with droplets of postdiluvial birdsong. Spenser walks his neighbourhood and inhales deeply through his nose. His lungs fill with lilac hues. …

I awoke last Sunday with a heaviness in my chest. This is not a metaphor. My first conscious sensation was of a subtle yet undeniable weight right where I imagine my heart to be. The sensation was difficult to articulate. Not quite a tightness or pinching, nothing, in fact, that I would describe as in any way painful. This was . . . …

As a child I feared you, fear as cold and hard as a stone from the river. I imagined your frailty as something monstrous, something otherworldly. All rotten gums and cavernous wrinkles, you were ruin and disaster, the vandal from the gloomy future come to slowly leech my essence, the horrible witch already haunting the bright red alleys of my young body.

I saw you on your deathbed. The bed was always white as mountain snow and I was always somehow looking down on you — myself — from above. …

Longshadows in the slow fade of a late summer afternoon. Tristan’s body in the dirt. Memories. Brainshapes. Apparitions.

They awake together, bleary eyes meeting across the space between their beds as the window begins to glow. Stretching. Blinking. No words. Old bones of the house beginning to flex and creak as they warm in the sun’s rise. …

I know the call by heart. I’ve known it for almost as long as I can remember.

Little roller up along first. Behind the bag, it gets through Buckner! Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it!

I know these words and I can hear them in my head in the honeyed, steady cadence of Vin Scully. Long before I ever came to know who Vin Scully was, the words have been there.

Little roller up along first. Behind the bag, it gets through Buckner! Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it!

For some, the story is a tragic one, which means it is well-told. In the fall of 1986, the hard luck (and potentially cursed) Boston Red Sox were a strike away from their first World Series title in over seven decades, but ended up blowing a 5–3 lead to the New York Mets in the bottom of the 10th inning. The winning run in Game 6 came on a horrific error by Buckner, who failed to field an agonizingly playable ball at first base. …

The day before they left, my wife and I found a brief, quiet moment to share an embrace in the kitchen. I told her how much I would miss her and miss the kids, how sorry I was that my work schedule meant I couldn’t accompany them on their spring break vacation, how lonely I would be without them around. Ten days. Ten long days. What would I do with myself? My wife said, “You’ll be fine. You’ll be happy being alone. Alone with your thoughts.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t try to counter what she was saying or feign a halfhearted denial. Instead I just hugged her body against mine, tight, tighter still, as if I could press her into me and through me. …