Mr. Williams carries a wooden stick wherever he goes.

The stick is not those held in gangsters’ hands always detached from a piece of furniture, one (sometimes two, one in each hand) of the legs from a chair or a table. The stick Mr. Williams carries is one of a kind. First there is its texture. It is made from African red cedar. They say a strong logger has to chop six times before breaking the tree skin. Each cell in the wood clings tightly to each other. There is no where for bacteria to hide in. This comforts Mr. Williams. He seems to be able to transfuse his fear through his arm to his hand into this wooden stick, and the warmth of the stick mitigates his anxiety. The stick adapts to the temperature of the object. If it is lifted in snow, it would be as icy. If it is held by a woman, it would be warmer than a man’s body temperature, because a woman’s hand is usually warmer than a man’s. As to its look, where Mr. Williams holds on the stick is in a shape of a fist and the rest of the stick is as thick as putting index and middle fingers together. The surface is smooth. Its fiber pattern looks like the feathers on a phoenix’s wing. The dark-brown coating is evenly overall the stick. The stick has a quality to absorb and dissipate sound. No matter Mr. Williams walks with the stick through the hallway of the post office to visit his brother or on the busy Lexington Avenue on the way home, he is protected in an invisible shield. The tranquility passes from the stick on his hand through his arm to him. The stick diffuses its smell, and gradually, it has become an additional smell in Mr. William’s hand, other than the smell of cigarette. The most critical point for Mr. Williams is its length. It is fourteen inches long. That is the physical distance Mr. Williams keeps with others wherever he is.