When I thought of their home life, I pictured them hunched beside flame, firelight bringing out grime on their faces.
Between my mother and grandmother, Mrs. Hufferman is always referred to as Lilly.
I remember crossing a river, picking my way from one knob of wet, black stone to another.
Although she had lived in the area for years, May no longer felt safe, especially with her daughter’s boy in the house.
Sally does not want to keep undressing. I can see this on her face, but we cannot allow her to stop. It is part of the game to stay cruel.
A white clapboard house sits in an open space.
“You know him, he won’t do anything, not anything.”
My grandfather brought them tomatoes and never expected a thank you.
Everyone in the area has had items go missing.
They came and went through passages I could not comprehend. But, then, they never went anywhere you would want to follow.
My hands will not operate and my eyes are stinging.
My first observations of the poverty around us were limited to two early and unreliable memories.
It’s a mile from the railroad bridge to May's house, and we watch the plumes of smoke the whole way.
May had always said what a shrewd businessman my grandfather was. He would have got the place for a song.
The only words for mental illness were rude, and so nothing was said.
Everyone in the area has had items go missing.
Sally Hufferman was the only daughter.
A man living in a shack on a day toward the end of a life about which I could know nothing, and there I was waving to him.
It’s part of the game to stay cruel.
They might spend an hour looking for the perfect stone.
She had grown up in the company of such people and knew the subtleties of their disapproval.
Did I ever hear the mother speak a single word?
There had been a hearing, and people said John was out on bail.
“Used to be their land,” Uncle Liam told us.
The house itself was built by William Schellsford, a man who struck me as similar to my own grandfather. He, too, had been an outsider, an urbanite who moved up from Philadelphia between the wars.
Years later, John Hufferman would be accused, but there was no proof.
Why do Sally Hufferman’s lips stay with me after all these years?
It’s a mile from the railroad bridge to May’s house, and we watch the plumes of smoke the whole way.
“We must believe there is always hope.”
Mrs. Delvardos attends a township meeting and petitions for the Huffermans to be moved into the abandoned Schellsford house.
That summer the range of my wandering widens.
For weeks afterward, the smell of carbon is in the air, and every time the wind blows a cloud of smoke rises higher than the poplars in the Delvardos yard.
The rapids patter and glisten.
When I thought of their home life, I pictured them hunched beside flame, firelight bringing out grime on their faces.
“Sally was home alone, and she rung the fire department. Thinks it’s a big joke.”
I remember squares of white. These may have been hanging laundry or the open windows where the sun shone through or maybe unplugged holes in the walls.
My mother is in brown or yellow polyester pants with a matching shirt and a lightweight scarf, her makeup melting as she stands in the driveway.
Charity was like kindness, but you could spot the difference.
Did I ever hear the mother speak a single word?
The only neighbors were the residents of the two other houses, both white clapboard, built, along with ours, as a military training camp.
The moment it’s gone, I doubt I’ve seen it.
Her shoulders were two jutting points, sticks propped up under a threadbare sweater.
You could fit two fingers in the hollows of her cheeks. Who now remembers that people once looked this way?
By the following spring, there have been a few false alarms at the Schellsford property.
Everyone knows.
She does not have it in her to demean or rebuke, but does this prevent her from humbly despising?
“How cold that places must get in winter.”
This house was built too close to the tributary, and it flooded often.
I start out at knee-depth, but within a few steps the cords of water run cold and strong at my chest.
I remember a man in bed under a sheet—this was him, of course.
My grandfather might have been doing the family a favor.
A log breaks the surface, and I follow it, pulling myself, finding my way to waist-high water again.
“It’s called a second chance.”
A township truck comes and loads the Hufferman possessions and drives away with a blue tarp hiding it all.
For years, I believed Mrs. Delvardos was a witch.
“Like a cornered animal.”
The road branches by the tributary, and a small crowd has gathered there in the orchard.
Everyone in the area has had items go missing.
Her grin is reckless.
They came and went through passages I could not comprehend. But, then, they never went anywhere you would want to follow.
I remember rabbits leaping in front of the headlights. Sometimes I wished my mother would run them down.
I asked May about the man living in the shack at the end of the road.
If the fire police had not told us it was the Hufferman place, I would have thought it was our house burning.
Purple, papery mounds of hydrangea.
My mother is in amber or brown or yellow polyester pants with a matching shirt and a lightweight scarf, her makeup melting as she stands in the driveway.
The brush of stone, my knee knocks, my hand catches hold, and I clench tight.
Her prepubescent body exposed in the daylight of summer.
My grandfather might have been doing the family a favor.
For years after it was bulldozed, Jean found pieces of lumber and nails and bricks on the bank below where the cabin had stood.
I would prefer not to be holding a stone.
Upstairs, the hallway is wide, and the doors are large and white. I push one open and find an enormous room where moonlight falls on bare floorboards.
In the presence of the river my head longs to break the dark and seemingly hard surface.
Did I ever hear the mother speak a single word?