5.30: DAWN The boy with the body of a man lies inert. Lips that habitually crack a smile, now still. Chest barely moving. Long legs bare, thin, immobile. The police officer gestures to the door.

I never intended to be a tree. Like so much in life, it just sort of happened. I suppose the first sign was the stiffness and pain in my joints, although at the time, I didn’t know what it meant. My knees and elbows tightened, so they were hard to bend and soon it became difficult to move around.

It weighs as much as a grown man’s leg. Its shape, a torpedo. Imagine hauling a torpedo behind you on a stick with wheels, and with a swath of heat or hit of pressure, it can explode and destroy everything.

Two of our votaries perched like hawks on the walkway, thirty feet above the driveway, in front of a limestone building constructed in 1868. Obadiah, the senior votary, impeccably attired in a dark blue suit, silk tie – the color of which befitted our calendar – and sunglasses, rested his hands on the polished railing.

When Ba built the garage floor, no walls, no roof existed. White, large men drove in with a truck that housed a sideways rolling barrel; it churned liquid cement into a square, thin pool. The men and Ba settled the grey gruel, swept and spread it out with their metal-bladed, long brooms.