Three years ago I was folding clothes in my bedroom when this young boy’s voice came to me. It was not the voice of any of my sons. I had five sons at the time. This boy was older than my oldest, who was then five. This boy, it seemed, was around eleven. The only thing he said to me was, “I heard the gunshot from nine miles away.”

It was an odd phrase. I’ve never heard a gunshot from nine miles away. I don’t know anybody who has. But I wrote the phrase down in my notebook and thought that was...