My fence needed paint. I did not know the English word for the color I wanted. I stood at the paint counter of the hardware store for some time, rehearsing. The man behind it waited. His name tag said Dale. There was paint on his forearms older than the shirt he was wearing. Finally I said, "I need the gray of a sword that has been left out in the rain." I heard myself say it. I wanted to leave the state. Dale did not laugh. He did not correct me. He looked at the ceiling for a moment, the way a man looks when he is doing arithmetic he does not need paper for, and he said, "Yeah. I know exactly what you mean." He pulled four cards from the rack, held them under the light, and chose one without asking my opinion. Then he mixed it. The machine shook the can so hard the counter buzzed, and a woman two aisles away said "Lord" without looking up from the light bulbs. He pried the lid, stirred it with a flat wooden stick, wiped the stick on the rim, and turned the can toward me. It was the gray of a sword that has been left out in the rain. He wrote on the lid with a marker and turned it so I could read it. OLD SWORD GRAY I asked if that was the official name of the color. He said, "It is now." I have returned eleven times. Twelve. I am not going to pretend I don't know the number. Not always for paint. Once for screws I already had. Every time, Dale says the same three words when the door chimes. "Old Sword Gray." Like a rank. Like a man being announced. There is a mailbox on Route 9 painted Old Sword Gray. I did not do it. Last month I had a week that took something out of me. I won't go into it. I went to the hardware store because it was the only place I could think of where no one would ask me anything. Dale looked at my face. He did not ask. He went to the computer, typed for a while, and came back with a small printed sticker covered in numbers, and put it in my hand. He said, "That's your formula. It's in there under your name. Ten years from now you walk in that door, that exact color comes back. Don't matter who's working the counter. Don't matter if I'm dead." He said this the way other men say the weather is turning. In my country we give a sword a name, because a thing with a name does not get thrown away. Here they take the name and put a color under it, and keep it in a machine, at a store that sells screws, for as long as the store stands. I have painted three sides of the fence. I am in no hurry about the fourth. The sticker is in my wallet, behind my license.

In Japan, if you use a word wrong, someone will quietly teach you the correct one. In Texas, I thanked a mechanic by saying "you are a good man of the trucks." He did not correct me. He put it on his voicemail. "You've reached Ray. Good man of the trucks." His son answers the phone that way now.