“During the course of his year from one birthday to the next, the man would shorten the rope. He would swat the knot away, and from there, whenever he was the reason for the bruise, for the wound, for the shivering terror, he would take the ax and chop off a piece of the rope. He swore that if ever his evil lunged so far and for so long, making the rope short enough to make a noose, he would hang himself, knowing he had put the sun under the wheel and run over the light one too many times. “The wife and child thought well of the man’s purpose with the rope. That he documented his sins by it
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