The burned man came one night as I was reading to the baby in the living room. We sat tucked into the overstuffed chair and the baby’s body warmed the crack between my chest and arm. Lisa lay on the couch and read with a plaid throw blanket over her legs.

I thought I saw a face through the curtain, but discounted it as a mind trick. I hadn’t slept in a long time. Then came a knock on the front door.

We all sat up stiff and looked at each other, even the baby.

I wrapped up the baby and handed her to Lisa and went to the door.

I turned on the porch light then peaked through the side curtain in the living room.

The burned man must have seen the curtain move because he waved at me.

I walked to the door and opened it, leaving the glass door closed. I glanced at the handle and noticed it was unlocked. I felt like it was too late or too rude to lock it now.

The burned man smiled at me. His teeth were pointy and he had a beautifully round head. His ears were gone and his nose was little more than a lump with two holes. He was completely hairless and his skin shone glossy under the porch light. A pair of moths fluttered near his face but he paid them no mind.

“Howdy,” he said.

“Yes?” I said. “Can I help you?”

“Seems I’m a little down on my luck, friend. My car broke down a few miles back and I don’t have a phone to call a tow. I was wondering if I could use yours.”

I tried to read his eyes. They were clear blue and I wondered if he was attractive before being burned. I pictured him wearing a tailored blue suit and a full head of blonde hair, walking confidently through an office building.

I said, “I can bring you my phone. You can use it right here.”

“Thank you, my friend,” he said. “I mean no harm. I’m just looking for a little hand, that’s all.”

I closed the door and felt bad about it then grabbed my phone off the kitchen island. Lisa looked up and said, “What does he want? What are you doing?”

“I’m going to let him use the phone to call a tow truck. It’s fine.” I said.

“You think this is a good idea? Hurry up and get it over with,” she said, bouncing the baby close to her chest.

I held out my phone and he snatched my wrist with a wrinkled hand.

I jumped back and he laughed. “Just joking,” he said. “You should have seen your face.”

I forced a chuckle and felt the surge of non-emergency chemicals flood my brain.

He winked at me and held the phone to his ear hole.

I paced around the living room and waited.

Some time later he knocked on the glass door and his knuckles left damp spots. I walked up and he said, “No luck. Closest wrecker has two trucks and they’re both out cleaning up a big wreck on the interstate. Looks like I’ll have to wait till morning.”

He held out my phone and I took it and said, “Oh, well, sorry to hear that. I hope you get things worked out. Take care. Thanks.”

He gave me a salute then turned on his heel. He looked out into the darkness and let out a howl that rattled the pane of the glass door. Then he jumped off of the porch and walked up the street with great strides.

In bed I pictured him sitting in his car waiting, burned and laughing.

I saved up my box tops for months. We mostly got government cereal in big bags, but I convinced Mom to let me buy real cereal every now and then when I made enough from mowing.

I packed the ten tops neatly into an envelope scrawled with my own handwriting. Mom made sure everything was right since it was official business.

A bigger envelope came three weeks later. It was addressed to Mr. Jesse Ketchum, courtesy of Creek Mills Cereals, Inc. Inside I found a clear package containing a pair of grey plastic handcuffs, a set of plastic keys, and three rings of caps. I didn’t have a cap gun, but still saved the caps.

The cuffs were what I really wanted anyway.

I cuffed Jeanie right away and she swooned and said, “Oh, save me, save me” as she put a forearm across her head.

Next I cuffed Mom to the kitchen drawer and she said, “Jeanie, help me! He cuffed me, Jeanie!” But there was a flatness in her voice as she kept an eye on Dad in the living room.

It was risky for us being so loud.

A bottle clanked and I heard him mumble “Damn noise,” so I uncuffed Mom and went to my room before anything could happen.

The next day I wore my cuffs on my belt and Jeanie and I walked to Ronnie’s where we played jail until the sun got low.

When we came home, Dad was under the carport working on a transmission. Jeanine and I usually kept a wide berth. But sometimes when Dad was feeling good he wasn’t all that bad. Like for my birthday when he spent the whole day showing me how to make rabbit snares.

He said, “What y’all doing there? What you got on your pants?”

I said, “I got some handcuffs, Pa.”

He said, “Oh yeah? Let me see if you can work ’em.”

He stuck out his greasy arms.

I carefully clicked one cuff around his wrist and the other around the rusty white pole holding up our carport.

I squealed, “Ha! Now what are you gonna to do? See if you can get out!”

He looked at me then pulled his wrist away from the pole in a snap, and the cuff on the pole slid down to the concrete. He grabbed the cuff on his wrist and backed the gears out with a crunch and dropped it next to the other one. We stared at each other for a minute. Then he turned and walked away.

Mid-jump I was deciding whether that running start was a good idea. My foot did sink in the muck quite a bit when I pushed off, making me think that I should have just stuck to the broad jump like Sam and Pete. But I figured I’d have a better shot at getting across with a running start given my more substantial frame. It’s not that I’m fat; the lady in the husky section told me that I look like a strong young man as she pinned my school pants. And you’d think that being strong would help you jump farther, but I’ve really never found that to be the case. That goes for running too. Last summer Sheri Sandelson beat me in the beanbag relay and would always tag me first in freeze tag. I spent a lot of time frozen. But I think it’s because Sheri’s uncle was a baseball player or something and because Mom made me an extra stack of hot cakes and three extra sausages that morning. Mom had been making sure I had enough to eat since Dad died, so she always saw that I ate my normal share plus some. She’d feed me two fried chops instead of one, three scoops of mac and cheese on chicken night, and would sometimes come into my room with more bread pudding saying that I should eat it because it was the corner piece. My stomach hurt often and sometimes I told her, but most of the time I didn’t want to upset her. She’d say that she wanted to make sure I grew up to be a big man like my dad and then she’d stay at the table watching me until I swallowed every last bite of extra mashed potato. Once, after my shower, I let a whole dinner of meatloaf and peas go into the toilet. I tried to be quiet, but Mom heard me and walked in as I retched. She cried herself to sleep that night. Since then she started calling me in from playing earlier and earlier and I always came home and ate for her. But today I decided I couldn’t hear her, and I followed Pete and Sam into the field. A clear sky above, I looked down and saw plenty muddy water still ahead of me. I flopped down as gracefully as possible and sent water spraying into the cattails where a red-winged blackbird took flight. Sam and Pete doubled over with laughter. Then they jumped in and we splashed each other under the setting sun.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman stuck in my gut as a young boy and never left. It was the first story to shake me up, to move me in a lasting way. Gilman’s story pulled the glaze from my eyes and revealed elements of society and existence that I hadn’t yet appreciated - crushing inequalities regarding gender, the fragility of mental health, futility, outrage, and of course beauty. It felt like I was being let into the protagonist’s secret world - I could feel her suffering and madness. But while these revelations were not the norm in my life at the time, (emphasis: at the time), I strongly identified with the character. So there I was, a boy in south Louisiana in the 1990s identifying with an oppressed and mentally ill woman from the late 19th century. And when the issues in the story appeared in my own life in one form or another, the story was there. That’s when writing goes beyond.

Through the example above, and through many other stories - both brutal and beautiful - reading has given me insight into the worlds of others at times when I wouldn’t have otherwise had access. Bullfighting in Pamplona, playing the execution lottery, the Salinas Valley, an act of chivalry at the A & P - reading brought these places and the experiences of the characters therein to life. And those experiences never leave me. In the best of contexts, the identification with character, like in The Yellow Wallpaper, drives compassion and reminds us that we are the same at the core. Human. When emotional identification rings true within a story and changes the way you see fellow humans and also sticks with you, the writing has done something special. Today, as ever, we need to identify with each other. Story can help us get there.