The Killing Circle

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I didn’t know my son could tell directions from the stars.

Сorona Austrina. Lyra. Delphinus.

Sam leaves noseprints on the passenger window as we highway out of the city, reciting the constellations and whispering "South” and "East” and "North” with each turn I make.

"Where’d you learn that?"

He gives me the same look as when I came into his room a couple nights ago and found him slingshooting a platoon of plastic Marines, one by one, on to the neighbour’s roof. "I’m a terrorist,” he had answered when asked what he thought he was doing.

"Learn what?"

"The stars."

"Books."

"Which books?"

"Just books."

With Sam I know I’ll get no further than this. It’s because both of us are readers. Not by passion necessarily, but by character. Observers. Critics. Interpreters. Readers of books (most recently the later, furious Philip Roth for me, and Robinson Crusoe, told in bedtime snippets, for Sam). But also comics, travel brochures, bathroom-stall graffiti, owner’s manuals, cereal-box recipes. The material doesn’t matter. Reading is how we translate the world into a language we can at least partly understand.

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