delaware. first in the nation, he’ll tell you, leaning into his gold embroidered chair. a gentle but discernible irritation rolls like waves through his crimpled body. he is a #10 white envelope. he is your morning misto, heavy cream. he is buttered toast. and when he speaks, he sounds like your grandad if your grandad were carved from blood and ironstone.

in 1787 delaware led the nation to ratify the american constitution. long time ago, he laughs, embarrassed to be so dated. but there’s no hiding it: he has become an old man since then, and the country, he trails, has gone through many changes. people were different back then, he notes, tapping his lips with a crooked finger, suddenly lost for words. something (a bird?) catches his eye out the window, and we sit silently in that dusty old room for what feels like days. can’t put a finger on just how, he finally says, at least not today.

recall that in the early twentieth-century, delaware transformed itself into a corporate haven, though the term "haven" is deeply misleading. in its original sense, a "haven" was a sheltered body of water along a coast or shoreline where ships could drop anchor. its sense broadened in time to mean any safe space or respite from a storm. but a corporate haven is neither of those things, and the shores of the delaware bay are nothing but salt marshes and mudflats.

we built things, didn’t have a choice, he insists. he sees where our particular line of inquiry is trending, but he’s not interested in our challenging him: he’s an old man now. came washing up off the boat and there’s nothing here, he grimes, nothing but the sands and the woods and the natives. long before he arrived with the dutch settlers, the land was already home to the eastern algonquian tribes of the lenape, also known as the delaware. we took it, he says, in tribute. the name, that is.

his wrinkly face sours, and his eyes retreat into the skull. they look like two tiny kalmata olives bobbing along at the bottom of two very dry martinis. in his left hand he holds the banks, in his right hand, the prisons. he squeezes them from time to time like stress relief balls. helps with the arthritis, he claims: good to work the joints.

he goes on: when i was a boy, this was all a vast wilderness. my family and i, we stayed close to the swedish forts. but the bolder men among us said the rivers went inland for untold miles. they spoke of the deep silence of the woods, of the frost that hung like a spider’s thread, winding its way among the cattails, leading the nation onward.

he rests his feet upon the skulls of the lenape and settles into his chair: odd to say it now, but we did not intend to capitalize on the land. to those of us who as boys first paddled the river inland, it was a new eden, untouched. both full and empty, a bountiful void.

he is exhausted from his own overreach. he yawns and waves us away. it is time for his nap. the country has gone through many changes, he says. but a certain something out the window reappears again, and he is gone.

i think to wonder what it is, but the whistle of an american robin cracks the silence: cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up.