The man had lost his son and wanted to get him back. He was troubled because he wasn’t sure exactly when he had lost him. This morning he had been fertilizing the azaleas and realized he didn’t have him anymore. He pinched a few aphids and went inside.

He looked in all the closets, under the bed in the guest room, and in the kitchen drawer where he kept the rubber bands from bunches of broccoli, old birthday cake candles, and packets of ketchup from Burger King. His son wasn’t there.

Next, he looked in the old record albums in the living room cabinet. For a moment, he thought he found his son in the gatefold cover of a Beach Boys double album, but it was just an old piece of his first marriage.

His son wasn’t in the house. The man pushed past a clutch of withered apologies to the back door and scuffed down the unpainted stairs. His son had never liked the garden—he said it was hot and dirty and didn’t grow anything useful like chocolate bars, dirt bikes, or a way out of this town.

–From Blackbird