I drove forty miles across Texas and counted flags. Sixty-one. I counted again on the way back and got sixty-three, because two had gone up while I was gone. A car dealership had one the size of a house. A plumber's truck had one on each door. A porch. A bikini, at the lake. A mailbox. A coffin, being carried into a church, and then, at the gas station across the street, a hat. In my country the flag belongs to the state. It flies on government buildings on holidays and is put away by a man with a key. Here I could not find the man with the key. The salesman at the dealership said the flag was theirs. The plumber said his was his. A woman on her porch said, "Honey, it's mine," in a tone that closed the subject. Nobody had been issued one. Everybody had bought their own. I bought one. A neighbor showed me the rules, which nobody had ever written down for him either. Up at dawn. Down at dusk, or lit. Never the ground. Folded thirteen times into a triangle. He did the folds with me four times until my hands knew them. He said, "There you go," and did not say why he knew. I have folded it four hundred times since. There is a light I could buy. I have not bought the light. In my country the flag belongs to the state. In Texas it belongs to a plumber named Ray, and to the dealership, and to the woman on the porch, and to a bikini at the lake, and on holidays the state has to ask to borrow it. They lend it gladly. They have sixty-three.