Saturday night in early August, while it was still light out and Michael was riding his bike around the neighborhood, I sat on the porch and sunk myself into Steinbeck, that great apostle of the human condition. The lawn was mowed and the driveway was swept and the lawn mower was put away in its shed. I gulped a bottle of water left over from mowing duty and let the sweat dry on my skin. Michael—our eight year old—was returning from Jack’s on his bike. He rode with a big kid