I have a friend who is 73 years old. He told me that his grandmother ran away from home when she was 16. She walked down a country lane in Tennessee. There was a black car, she later said. A man got out and raped her in the bushes by the side of the road. She stumbled home and told no one for fear that she would get in trouble. But months later her belly began to swell. She told the truth when she had to. Some people believed her. Others didn’t. Nine months later his father was born.

“That was in the year 19 and 8,” he said.

I thought about this for a few moments and felt pretty overwhelmed by the revelation. His life, it seemed, was held together by a ragged thread of evil wound through a series of long shots. Like rolling snake eyes 6 times in a row. Why did she choose that day to leave? Why that hour? Why that lane and not another?

“If she hadn’t run away from home and had that happen, you wouldn’t have been born.”

He snapped his chin down to his chest and bounced it quickly up again. It’s a gesture I’ve seen old men make when something is said that is surely true.

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s exactly right. Not me, not my children, not my 12 grandchildren, nor the 5 great-grand-babies.”

“So...” I left a long pause to soften the question that was coming. “Would you say that you’re glad it happened? I mean, surely you’re glad to be alive.”

“I don’t rightly think it’s a fair question,” he said. “The past is dead and gone and all that pain with it. A pile of manure might be lucky enough to have a flower grow out of it, but that doesn’t change its basic nature.”

I ran the tops of two fingers underneath my chin against the grain of my whiskers. I felt the stubble grab at my skin and heard the rasping sound. It’s something I do when I’m thinking.