Before he became a barber, Larron was a student at an old University in an old town. In the center of that town were a few lush acres of grass and trees. "The Square" was a haven for itchy college kids.

Larron often made way to the outside bench, under an elderly Magnolia tree that everyone agreed was the biggest they'd ever seen. There were fresh scratches beneath the lowest of the fat, droopy limbs. Young people liked to climb and swing and beat the tree as far as they were willing to reach. Under and around those scratches were faded marks a generation older. Larron both hated and loved the scars—they were evidence of happy times for anonymous authors, but also vestiges of abuse and apathy toward a beautiful, living thing.

And this was his problem. He saw the good and bad in all. He could not decide the right or wrong of a thing, he strained to locate both, and any ambiguities. He found the dual morality in his friends, family, government, grocers, mailmen, and, of course, his most taxing subject, himself. He could not be wholly good if his mother's life somehow suddenly depended on it. Larron constantly imagined such rough wagers in his head. If only a prophet or a martyr would put a gun to his temple and propose such a thing. Maybe he would try harder. Maybe his problem was simply a struggle of will.

In any event, Larron thought about things too much, and he knew he did. A solution still eludes him. And he has never stopped thinking about the tree, or the bench on which he always sat. Before he left that old town, Larron found a deep appreciation for those two wooden bulks. He missed them more than anything he had seen or heard, or any person he had met in those four years. He misses them like a first love. What makes him even sadder, though, are the marks on the old Magnolia. Not because they exist, but his everlasting indecision about their worth.