bare feet in the leaves
The trees along our street would turn colors and there he would be, walking past my house, kicking up small clouds of red and yellow with his bare feet, smiling a little to himself. Or he would show up on my back porch and just sit there, not wanting to talk. He’d have his head back and be looking up at the sky, the sunlight reflecting off his dark glasses. Sometimes, he was genuinely happy. We met during orientation in fall 2005, when I cheerfully greeted all my new advisees and forced them to go around the room, saying their names and majors and other mundane facts about themselves—where they were from, what they liked to do for fun. Murdock refused to participate. He pulled his black fingernails through his long hair and looked at me through those signature dark glasses. When I asked his name, he refused to tell me. Eventually, I of course figured out, by process of elimination, who he was. Somehow, I got him to come to my office. By then, I thought I’d figured him out. I told him b...