‘The Man With the Beautiful Eyes’ recalls a gang of neighbourhood kids who wander around the yard of a mysterious, unkept house that their parents have warned them against visiting. One day, they briefly encounter the man living inside – an erratic alcoholic who moves through the world wholly unconcerned with social norms. They find themselves drawn to him. When they later discover the man’s house burning to the ground, they decide that their parents must be responsible, as the man who lived there had made them ashamed of their own respectable lives. It concludes with a jarring declaration: “we were afraid then that all throughout our lives things like that would happen, that nobody wanted anybody to be strong and beautiful like that, that others would never allow it, and that many people would have to die.”