2

IX. Small Changes

In the fall of 1959, I had been officially liberated from the old Hatburg Fortress. That fall took me to the modern regional Junior-Senior High School that had recently been erected not far from downtown Elmwood. For once, I made a transition with something resembling aplomb, even though the change of schools brought new students, teachers, buses and schedules into my maladaptive little life.

After the debacle on the dance floor, I had abandoned any hope of winning Flora's heart, and so had settled for looking at her, and listening to her, from discreet distances. Still, just to listen to her brought me enormous secret pleasure. With time Flora's always honeyed voice had become a remarkable instrument that delighted me with its range. Her voice thrilled me, much as Bacall's must have thrilled Bogart. Though Flora never spoke to me of whistling, much less puckering.

In class, Flora often responded to questions curtly, phlegmatically, disinterestedly. Yet there were times she could not repress her vocal instrument. In early Seventh Grade it shrieked with an almost orgasmic sexual energy in a homeroom study hall when Flora, enrapt in reading Poe's The Black Cat, read that the evil presence of the cat caused an axe to be brought by a young husband into the skull of his young wife."Eeeeeeewwwwww!!" "Eeeeeyowww!!" Flora howled like Liza Doolittle, but this was no cockney exclamation of angst, this was a primal scream that commingled fear, ecstasy and, perhaps, sexuality.

While this voice was seldom heard within the classroom, as soon as classes ended, as soon as boys and girls yeastily mingled in the school corridors and conversations turned from academics to parties and dances and dates, Flora's voice was transmuted to some exotic metal: it whispered seductively, giggled delightedly, laughed wildly. In the schoolyard, away from the repressive eyes and attentive ears of teachers, it screamed with the same frenzied enthusiasm that Poe had evoked, but now at the sight of a long touchdown pass or hard-hit home run, feats routinely accomplished by Buddy Braun.

It was that same year, in Seventh Grade, that the wheel of fortune took some unexpected turns.

The fall had started ignominiously. During one unsupervised gym class, it had been decided that the boys and girls would compete against each other in a short softball game. For once, I was not fearing competition. In a self-imposed attempt at metamorphosis, I had worked hard to improve my feeble athletic abilities. Despite my many limitations, one thing I had managed to learn was to hit a pitched baseball.

Buddy Braun had become too frustrated to make any further efforts to mentor me in anything. Ironically, I had managed to learn hitting fairly easily with the help of Gus, who to my surprise had once played on a Rockford adult softball team. After just a few pointers tips from, and a little practice with Gus, in the comfort of our side yard, I miraculously had become a dependable contact hitter, with gradually improving power. Certainly, I was no match for Buddy, who regularly crashed towering fly balls over the outfielders. Still, the other boys had noticed my improvement, and when teams were chosen I was no longer selected last, but was actually a popular, if middle-of-the-pack, choice.

Fate and personal determination put Flora on the mound for the girls' team in this rare inter-sex competition. Flora, though small in stature, was known as a fierce competitor in all matters. But could she hold her own against her male opponents in this arena?

Flora began shakily. She surrendered two sharp ground singles, then walked a batter. The bases were loaded, no one out.

Buddy, our clean-up hitter, came to the plate, grinning at the thought of clearing the bases. Flora bestowed her sweetest, most angelic, smile upon him, then wound up energetically, then took something off the ball. Buddy swung at Flora's first offering, gave it his best home run swing, hit the ball with his usual tremendous power. But Buddy got just under it, powered it straight up. Though homely Thelma Lewis at second base staggered under it, then almost dropped it, she managed to glove it, held on gamely, and Buddy was out. On a single pitch. Buddy, never having considered the possibility of this indignity, glowered.

The next batter was Dick Miles, a thin but thoroughly muscular youth, the shortstop of the junior high team. Miles swaggered to the plate, rubbed his hands, confidently wagged his thin bat and pointed it the direction of the far reaches of centerfield. Flora glowered at him. On Flora's first two pitches, Miles hit consecutive long drives, but each hooked sharply foul. Then, unwilling to take a pitch, he lunged for a low outside pitch, trying to drive it to right field. He missed badly. Flora clapped her mitt, waved her fist, gloated.

Now it was my turn.

All the time I had been turning over in my mind exactly what to do. Would it be better for me to try to gain favor with Flora by deliberately making an out? If I were somehow to drive in a run, would I end all chances I might ever have with her? I considered the alternatives, but realized that Flora was attracted only to strength, not weakness. I had to show my stuff, if indeed I had any.

Flora smiled at me, though differently than at Buddy. She smirked malevolently in my direction. I had to uphold the honor of the boys; she of the girls. I was all that stood between her and a triumphal inning. Flora, thinking me to be an easy mark for her strong though feminine arm, delivered a fast pitch, as hard as she could throw, straight down the middle of the plate. Although it was delivered hard, and fast, it seemed to come at me in slow motion, growing larger, larger. Here was my chance to demonstrate my power for the girl I adored above everything. I swung at the ball, swung from my heels, as hard as I possibly could. And I connected, hit the ball squarely on the fattest part of the bat. Hit it harder than I had ever before or would ever afterwards hit any pitch. The fat softball shot from my bat like a mighty rocket to the moon.

The trouble was that the ball shot not high into the air, not deep into the outfield, but on a low line, straight at Flora. Almost instantaneously, before Flora could even realize what was happening, the softball crashed into her flesh. Struck her high on her left inner thigh, just above a birthmark I had often voyeuristically noted, close to her groin. Flora fell fast, like a small tree, felled by the swing of a cruel woodsman's axe. And screamed as she did so. "Eeeeeeeeyow!!" "Eeeeeeeeyow!!"

As sympathetic girls flocked to Flora's rescue, they paid no attention to the ball, which had caromed off Flora's thigh into foul territory near third base. Our brutish, insensitive male runners mercilessly continued to circle the bases. Two runs scored before someone picked up the ball, managed somehow to tag out an over-greedy runner trying to make it three.

Standing just past second base, I was relieved to see Flora lift herself to her feet. But then I could see her staring at me with eyes that could have killed. I could only shrug my shoulders, raise my hands in inarticulate apology.

When the game ended, eventually a rout in favor of the boys, I approached Flora to apologize for injuring her. All Flora would say, glaring at me as she said it, was "Forget it, Harold. Things happen. You got lucky. I should have caught the fucking ball." As she spoke, I could not help but steal a glance at her leg. Just below the line of her gym shorts was part of a dark purple bruise, a bruise that obviously extended upward toward points I would now surely never see. Thereafter for nights my dreams were filled with visions of the dark purple bruise that I had raised on the sweet curve of Flora's white inner thigh, dangerously near Flora's forbidden parts. The bruise at times became a dancing butterfly, other times an exotic tropical flower. Gentle reader, if you take time to watch the opening to Vertigo you may be able to visualize my dreams.

Unwilling to surrender voluntarily the sight of this vision, for weeks I went to sleep deliberately focusing my thoughts on Flora's bruise, imagining myself kissing, caressing it, easing Flora's pain. As well as my own pain, and growing lust. In the ensuing days I felt a deep sense of mortification and guilt, both at the incident and at my prurient nocturnal visions. And so for weeks I steered as wide of Flora's path as even she could have desired.

Six weeks later, Elmwood Regional Junior High School students began discussions of the following year's national Presidential Election. I had unusual interest in this topic, for one interest which Leda and Gus had successfully passed on to me was a fierce attachment to the Democratic Party. For me, born after World War II, largely ignorant of history, Ike was not a Great War hero, just an odd-looking, bald, golf-playing old dodderer, whose weak voice circled haltingly in confused verbal entanglements. He was to me as much the enemy as Santa Ana, as Captain Hook. And Nixon, that dour, self-evidently evil man with the gravelly, insufferable voice, this man had to be kept from gaining power. He would surely, inexorably abuse it.

I don't know the exact source from whence these thoughts ultimately flowed. I think Gus had become an unswerving devotee of Roosevelt less because his parents were poor farmers than because his smug oldest brother had elected to become a Republican councilman in a self-satisfied Buckington County town. Leda seemed to have gone went along for the political ride, through the victorious Roosevelt and Truman years. Now that Eisenhower had turned the tide, Leda spoke little of ideology, but stood firmly behind Gus, typed his brochures and lettered his signs, when he would time to time, always unsuccessfully, seek local office pursuant to the Plan she had formed over a decade before.

Despite the setbacks of the Eisenhower years, both Gus and Leda fancied themselves intensely loyal New Deal Democrats. They unanimously had found Dewey an annoyingly pompous little aristocrat, had cheered Truman's populist vitriol. They had lashed themselves to the Democratic mast, had inured themselves to the siren call of Ike's wartime heroism. They had detested Nixon long before that became popular. And they had even managed to champion Stevenson's weak patrician liberalism.

Even Lilly, generally the most apolitical human being imaginable, echoed their sentiments. She apparently saw all Democrats as the embodiment of the little man, saw in all Republicans the condescension of a privileged upper class. He probably saw in them, for inexplicable reasons, the greasy owners of dress factories who would presume to suggest that it was she who had "Fucked up." In actuality, the underpinnings of Lilly's politics seemed shaky, as she chose to skip the headlines, read first the obituary pages, then the comic pages, before concluding her review of the daily newspaper with her turn at the daily puzzles. Though she never admitted it, I think she affected Democratic politics because, for her eleven weeks of cutting patterns, Papa Roosevelt's New Deal Social Security problem had bestowed upon her a lifetime income, now almost $40 per month, more annually than she had ever actually earned.

Rational or not, based in reality or flimsy ideological foundations, the bottom line in the Griffin household by 1960 was that Republican politicians in general, and most certainly Richard Nixon in particular, were to be regarded not as the loyal opposition but as a near-demonic enemy.

My family's politics was just one more factor isolating me from my solid classmates, most of whose parents liked Ike, and Dewey, and probably Hoover, Coolidge and even wretched Warren G. Harding before them. Four years before, knowing little but my parents' choice of candidate, I had foolishly lost two weeks' lunch money wagering that Stevenson would upset Eisenhower, then been the subject of more ridicule than Adlai himself when the man from Libertyville went down to the most crushing of defeats.

One afternoon in October 1959, just before Social Studies class, I saw Flora by her locker, surrounded by a group of her friends, yet looking uncharacteristically angry and flustered. To my surprise, I overheard Flora sputtering loudly that she was a Democrat, not a stupid conformist like the rest of them. They were what Flora referred to as "Jean Shepherd's creeping meatballs" for thinking differently. Flora did not care what those around her might think, but she was sick and tired of boring old Dwight Eisenhower and that awful Tricky Dick Nixon.

Flora's views were bringing upon her considerable scorn, as one would well have expected in our staunch, monotheistic Republican community. Some of the boys around her were shaking their heads in haughty rejection of Flora's words. Her girlfriends edged uneasily away, moved on, shaking their heads in disbelief at Flora's defiant unorthodoxy. Buddy Braun -- whose realtor father Nestor, running as a Republican, had two years before gained landslide reelection to the Hatburg School Board -- walked into class with beside Flora, but was visibly annoyed with her. Buddy for once did not hold her hand.

In the ensuing class, we were expected to explain favorites among the candidates who had announced that they would run for the Presidency. We had been given a packet of written materials regarding their backgrounds, their platforms. We were each to make a short oral presentation explaining our party preference, then our preference among candidates.

This project was in truth grossly unfair, a penalty for lack of conformity. It was hardly a challenge for the children of the Republican families that dominated town and classroom, since there were few candidates: Nixon, Lodge, and Rockefeller, with Nixon the odds'-on favorite. Most of the class took the easy route, mumbled platitudes about support for Nixon, cited his experience as Vice president, his war record, his unwavering campaigns against Communists and other enemies of America. A few, generally from more affluent homes, spoke of Henry Cabot Lodge and his intelligent and moderate positions. None among the Hatburg or Elmwood Republicans was liberal enough to embrace Nelson Rockefeller.

For the few Democrats -- Flora, me, and a handful of others -- the assignment was extremely difficult, if you thought about it, took it seriously. The Democrat array of candidates included Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, John Kennedy, and Stuart Symington. We young Democrats had to do some serious homework to sort these out, make an informed and wise choice.

After a half-dozen boring, near-identical presentations for Nixon, Flora was up. Based on my past experience, my past knowledge of Flora, I was skeptical as to what would unfold. I expected Flora to pirouette, to opportunistically abandon her hallway position, announce that she in fact favored the Republicans, and Nixon, get it over with easily, reclaim her soiled popularity.

Flora Jones astonished me, as she was later to do time and again. She left no doubt that politics were a matter taken seriously in the Jones home that her family always had been and always would be Democratic because that party had protected the common man, the worker, the salt of America. Democrats did not represent the people who had everything, but those who had nothing. Flora said that she detested Richard Nixon, who despite his professed American values, his war on supposed Communists, was a man who could never be trusted. He both seemed and was dishonest, had richly earned only one thing: his nickname as Tricky Dick. She said that she admired, and unquestioningly supported, John Fitzgerald Kennedy -- she rolled his full name lyrically off her sweet pink tongue -- who would bring youth to the office, who was a brave Naval hero, and whose ideas and rhetoric were powerful, capable of transforming our generation, our nation. Of taking us away from the dusty present to the shining future. To the bright sunshine of the vigorous New Frontier.

I sat back, more than a little stunned, but pleasantly so, at the force of Flora's powerful if slightly overwrought words. Others in the class glared at her, until Flora, herself a natural politician, ended her peroration by flashing her biggest smile and adding: "You know, JFK's also so handsome. I think I just love him." At that the tension melted slightly, certainly everyone laughed. As did Flora. Who could be seen, if only by me, whose desk was to the immediate left of hers, replacing a wad of chewing gum in her mouth from a silver wrapper inside her school desk. What a wonder: Lora was simultaneously a Democrat, a Demosthenes and a candy counter mermaid!

Well, my turn would soon some, after that annoying Thelma Lewis, the class feminist -- although we didn't use that term in those days. Thelma, also from a Democratic family, had embarked on a carefully prepared, oh painfully so, dissertation on how she favored Adlai Stevenson, despite his string of thundering defeats, because that great American Eleanor Roosevelt was supporting him. My mind was not focused on Thelma's speech. As she droned away, as she turned a few short minutes into a seeming eternity, all I could think was that someday Thelma, who was no prize to look at then, would make the prudish Eleanor Roosevelt look like one of my candy counter girls by comparison.

It had in this moment of truth occurred to me that if Flora could shed some of her opportunism, maybe I could for once put some on. Here was a rare chance to travel a little closer to the sun that heated my planet, redeem myself for the physical pain I had inflicted on Flora just weeks before. I decided to join Flora in supporting Kennedy.

This position did not represent a major political transformation for me, but it certainly represented a little one. I had thought long and hard about this assignment, decided that Kennedy was too youthful, too slick for me, even if old Mrs. Penny had found him a suitable dinner companion. I had even discussed the assignment with Gus. In one of the rare moments in which he actually expounded for me his serious views on anything, Gus had just two days before detailed for me why he considered Missouri Senator Stuart Symington the best Democratic candidate. Gus explained quietly why Kennedy, though a superficially attractive candidate, lacked a substantial Senate record. Gus explained in detail the history of the Kennedy family, admitted his own aversion to Kennedy's father, recalled Old Joe Kennedy's dismal failure as Ambassador to Britain, the charges of bootlegging and philandering with Gloria Swanson. Gus ended up by pointing out that Kennedy was, whatever his merits, likely to be unelectable, due to anti-Catholic prejudice that had doomed Al Smith. He confided in me, not for repetition, that neither Lilly nor Mickey had been willing to vote for Smith because of his religion.

After my discussion with Gus, I had spent hours preparing note cards outlining Symington's favorable experience and his moderate sensible positions. Now I shoved those cards to the back of the book hole in my desk. Like the American electorate the following spring, I turned my faithless back on the Missouri Senator, delivered my loyalty to JFK. I became officially dedicated to "Leadership for the 60's." I was in actuality announcing dedication to Flora not only for the 1960s, but, I thought then, forever.

In class, I vaguely echoed but was careful not to plagiarize Flora's words, extemporizing instead a few details that I had managed to pick up in my Symington research, about Kennedy's stance on national defense, on the missile gap, the defense of Quemoy and Matsu. I blathered about Kennedy's plans for education. No one much listened or cared. Except maybe Flora, who after class said nothing, but definitely smiled at me, this time not malevolently.

After that, eager to keep momentum in my favor, I sought to become an expert on John Kennedy. Pouring all my energy into the subject, I was able quickly to become a competent young Kennedy authority. By the spring of 1960, as JFK triumphed in most of the primaries, I had absorbed everything I possibly could about him: the complete story of his family, the details of his war exploits, the nuances of his platform. I successfully wrote Senator Kennedy's office for photographs of JFK, and after receiving two bestowed one on Flora. She began to steer less wide of me, sometimes let me exchange small talk with her, more frequently smiled in my direction.

Soon after JFK won the Democratic nomination the next summer, I obtained copies of PT 109 and Profiles in Courage, and a large collection of buttons and bumper stickers. I followed the campaign daily, watched every minute of the televised debates. When JFK was scheduled to make a personal appearance at a fund raising dinner in Appletown, I persuaded Gus to get two tickets to the event. To my disappointment, JFK delivered an uninteresting speech on water desalinization. But even as JFK was speaking, I noticed on the walls a series of large red-white-and blue posters that bore his smiling visage, proclaiming, "Kennedy for President. Leadership for the 60's." As soon as the room emptied, I took possession of two of these, scaling two wall side ladders more quickly than Stanley McDevitt could ever have demanded of me. I kept one for myself, gave one to Flora, along with a wide array of buttons and bumper stickers. Flora beamed almost as broadly as I had ever seen, then told me -- I recall the exact words -- that I was "just wonderful." I wrote them down on a note card and dated them.

Still, Flora went to the Harvest Dance a week later with Buddy Braun, then was rumored to have gotten into some undefined trouble with him in a dark corner of the gymnasium. I believe that I heard the word "indiscretion" used.

Earlier in the fall of 1960, I had volunteered to become one of the three students who would speak on behalf of JFK's candidacy in a student assembly preceding our mock Presidential election. And so, the day of the mock election, I took my first plunge into the waters of public speaking. Amazingly, I neither choked nor drowned, but floated. I rendered a speech replete with high flights of cheap rhetoric and bottomless depths of sophistic argumentation. I extolled the heroism, virtue, morality, and vision of JFK. Playing to Flora's ear, I unleashed torrents of rhetorical venom at Nixon.

I had long since come to believe every word that I uttered, and the power of sincere expression should never be underestimated. Not only did my speech receive an unexpectedly warm reception from the audience at large, but it seemed to win something resembling astonished admiration from Flora. After JFK lost our little mock election, but only by the slimmest of margins, Flora caught my arm in the hallway, to announce, "Why, Harold, you just amazed me!"

"Thanks, Flora," I murmured, no doubt blushing, "but what exactly are you talking about? You know, we did lose." "Well, you know, Harold, that doesn't mean anything. We almost won. No Democrat has ever won around here, among these conforming cattle. And before your speech yesterday I never noticed just how good looking you've become recently. And I never realized just how well you could express yourself! And your voice -- it was not only so pleasant, but so confident, so powerful! You know, Harold, I think I may have underestimated you! We'll just have to see!"

And with those odd words Flora amazed me. She bestowed a small kiss on my cheek, then quickly ran down the corridor and out of the building. And I watched though the window as she ran up to Buddy, by then our junior high football captain, and wrapped her arms around his as she piled into the back seat of a convertible driven by Buddy's older brother.

Within months Flora had diverted her attentions affections from Buddy Braun. Of course, she did not direct them to me, but to Dick Miles. In addition to playing shortstop for the junior high varsity, Miles played a mean saxophone for the junior high school concert band.

My only consolation was that I contemporaneously seemed to have moved into at least an outer circle of Flora's friends. In this matter, I played my little hand with some prowess.

In those days, students who were buses to the Elmwood School were required to wait until an 8:20 buzzer in the school cafeteria. Though Flora lived just blocks away from me, we rode different buses to school. Mine arrived just before Flora's, so I parked myself near, but not too near, the cafeteria seat in which I knew from observation she was likely to take. I became a restrained predator, invisibly circling its prey. With time I was noticed, then invited to sit with Flora, then asked to help her with unfinished homework that Flora could not handle, or which she was simply unwilling to waste her time upon. As Flora came to depend upon my help, the pile of unfinished homework grew day by day.

As Flora exploited my dependable academics, little by little she began to share small intimacies with me. She revealed her popular tastes: "cute" little red Italian sports cars, like the one Martin Milner and George Maharis had been driving on 'Route 66.' White tee shirts, and blue jeans, and leather jackets. And, musically, above all else, Elvis Presley. His voice was "so smooth, so beautiful." He was so "perfectly handsome."

I should tell you that back in Elementary school, when Elvis had become an immediate sensation to others, I had largely ignored him. It was simply not in my nature to be a fan. Then the Hatburg school had held an assembly in which Elvis was essentially ridiculed, by having him imitated by a guitar-thumping imbecile who bore no resemblance to the King, young or old, except that his hair was longer than most, conspicuously dirty and unkempt at this caricature. I unashamedly chuckled. Later, I heard Lilly revile Elvis time after time, without her ever having listened to him or watched him. I had no reason to much care, or to pay any attention to this Southerner and his new music. My own musical taste was stuck decades back in the past.

I must even confess to you, painful as this is, because it is the truth, that when television brought the likes of Sing Along With Mitch and The Lawrence Welk Show into our Orvilla living room, I did not laugh, or recoil, or even turn the dial. (There! I have finally admitted it!) Instead, I had found myself powerfully attracted to the old music, no matter how it was performed, no matter who performed it. I sang along with Leslie Uggams, even Bob McGrath, as best I could, to charming tunes I had never before heard. Because I was a visual learner, never an oral one, it took me time to master the lyrics to ballads of the past. So I religiously watched the televised schmaltz. To speed up my mastery of the lyrics, I even used my allowance to buy Mitch Miller record albums, after I learned that they came with the full lyrics to each song imprinted on their cardboard jackets.

Truth be told, I was in love with the sweet, hopeful tunes of the 1920s and 1930s. Elvis, Rock and Roll, rhythm and blues, the music of Negroes, the music of the present and perhaps the future, well, they were all right. I did not hate such music, certainly I could listen to it, but most of it left me totally indifferent. I could enjoy a few of Elvis' ballads -- Love me Tender, for one -- but Elvis was not, in my mind, of my era.

Of course, once I knew that Flora felt otherwise, I immediately camouflaged my own tastes, tried my best to adapt to hers. Soon my visible allegiance was shifted to Philadelphia's WIBG, and the top 99 hits that it incessantly aired. Lilly's eyebrows arched and her nose turned conspicuously upward as these sounds, played on a transistor radio that I acquired, stole me away from the soap operas and game shows to which Lilly was now hopelessly addicted. Still I forged on, let the music play, let my hair grow longer, combed it back. Even bought a black leather jacket for special occasions, though I later found myself unable ever to actually wear it.

Gradually, as I disguised my true, eccentric, outmoded, tastes, as I attempted to go with the flow, as it would be later be phrased, Flora began to open up more to me. Day after day, she would reveal to me some small secrets of her wildly conflicted heart: conflicted between Buddy, and Dick Miles, and whatever handsome and athletic older man might come along, now or in the future. Yet, she eventually confided to me, despite all the time that she and Buddy had spent together, she did not think Buddy was the man for her future. Buddy's plans were not professional, and even worse he did not truly have a Plan at all. And the man she loved had to have one of those. I winced, for my only Plan had been to win Flora, who as she was nearer and nearer to me physically seemed more and more unattainable.

But I was not ready to give up hope of Flora. A dance was to be held at the Junior High School in April of 1961. I decided that the time had come for me to roll the universe into a ball, ask an overwhelming question, ask Flora to attend it with me. The very morning I intended to raise the question, however, Flora rushed into homeroom late, red-eyed, holding hands with Buddy, who seemed flushed. And then Flora announced that her father had just been offered and accepted a job in Sulfur Springs, Texas -- a remote suburb of Dallas -- and that she would within six weeks be leaving the school forever. Moving deep into the heart of Texas. It was no consolation that by having listened to Mitch Miller albums I had already learned the words to that song, as well as three verses to the Yellow Rose of Texas. I was shattered, and my overwhelming question remained unspoken.

From the time Flora announced her departure to the time she left, she seemed to spend the entire time locked arm in arm with Buddy. The dance fell just one week to the day before her departure West. I had no desire to dance with, much less take, anyone else, but wanted desperately to see Flora as much as I could before she left. So I volunteered to play the records and announce the dances. I watched forlornly from the sidelines as Buddy and Flora demonstrated their twist technique, then slow-danced to modern versions of "Blue Moon" and "I Only Have Eyes for You." Watching her move slowly, I thought Flora was a dream walking, in a filmy pink dress.

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself when, ten minutes before the dance was to end, Flora approached. "Why, Harold, have you been avoiding me?" "Me avoid you, Flora? Never. Can I do something for you? Is there something you'd like to hear me play?"

"Harold, the truth is that you can do something for me. But I don't care what you play. I'd just like you to have one dance with me."

I panicked. Not only did the sight of Flora excite me, but as she neared I was overtaken by a rush of delicious perfume. I could barely breathe or speak. "Flora," I stammered, I'm truly honored, but don't you remember Mr. Clapp's class? I don't think you want to do that. I don't want you to remember me forever as the boy who tromped on your toes, bruised and probably deformed your ankles. Almost broke them." Flora smiled, obviously remembering the dancing class debacle just as keenly as I did, but seized my wrists and tugged me towards the dance floor.

I didn't resist. I fixed the next record on the record changer, took a deep breath, and followed Flora onto the dance floor. Beneath flimsy construction paper planets and crepe paper streamers, we danced awkwardly to "Stardust." I was trying my best to keep my body away from Flora's, fearing all the while that I might brush her with an unintended but inevitable stiffening of the adolescent flesh. Flora did not seem to care, seemed occasionally, when away from the eyes of the chaperones, to tease me by pressing her body into mine, as if by accident. I was mesmerized, inhaled the perfume which brought back for the first time in years the visions of the candy counter.

When our dance had ended, I was in a fog, did not know how to separate. Flora gave my hands a little squeeze, gave me the slightest touch of her lips on my cheek, and from nowhere, perhaps a fold of her dress, handed me a small scented pink envelope. Then she headed back to Buddy. There was time for another three slow dances, and Flora and Buddy danced them all, at times interlocked so tightly that they received reprimands from the chaperones.

I waited until I was home, alone, to open the envelope. In it Flora had written, in marvelously

perfect handwriting, her new address in Sulphur Springs. Beneath it she added the note:

Harold,

I'd like it if you would sometimes write to me. I wish that I had gotten to know you better.

You were so much different than the other boys.

Flora

The following Monday I found myself ill. Whether this was real or imagined or affected, Nurse Lovely would have had no way of knowing, and even I have no way of knowing now. But I think it was real. All I know is that I didn't return to school before Flora had headed West. I wanted something to remember forever, and the little kiss, now frozen in my memory, and was too precious to sully with everyday reality.

X.Obsession

After Flora took the trail West to Sulphur Springs, the slight sounds of my constrained life quieted down almost to total inaudibility.

The years that followed were at first strangely normal for me, at least on the exterior. My persistent pursuit of the vision of Flora had forced me to join in much of the communal life of the school, and I found after Flora's departure that I was thoroughly capable of becoming a solid citizen within the little school community. But although I was relatively free of phobias and obvious eccentricities, actually as well equipped as anyone to function in the outer world, I for the most part preferred not to. For I preferred not to forget, but to pursue, my vision of Flora.

Emboldened by Flora's invitation, I wrote to her. I wrote, ostensibly to keep her up to date on the events of her old friends, to keep her from feeling homesick. Soon I was keeping Flora's mailbox regularly supplied with long, elaborately detailed letters. My yearning heart was both astonished and delighted that Flora responded, matching my letters with substantial letters of her own.

In the beginning, my letters, however effusive in length, were cringingly cautious in substance. By careful calculation on my part they were little more than friendly, informative, only occasionally filled with pre-sophomoric ruminations upon life. As time passed, however, my letters eased gingerly into more intimate exchanges of thought, more affectionate expressions of friendship. Then they came to be signed, mutually, with that most potentially dangerous of all ambiguities, "Love." And, to my astonishment, Flora's letters also came to be increasingly intimate, and were signed at the end with the same four letter word. Did this mean anything? Or nothing?

Our lives began to become linked, bizarrely, tenuously, by ephemeral, sometimes delayed, letters made up of words, words comprised of letters, abstract symbols floating through the ether. Words that might be completely true, heartfelt, sincere, or that might be entirely false, sarcastic, even malicious. One thing was sure: we pursued entirely separate, never intersecting lives. We did not speak by telephone. And our "love" -- if that is what it was, such as it was, if indeed the use of that all-purpose word ever meant the same thing to both of us at the same time we expressed it -- existed not in reality but on pieces of paper passing through the miles. Perhaps even the thought of "love" could never have existed except for the vast separation that freed us to exchange thoughts without consequences.

As I embraced the ritual of writing copiously, religiously, obsessively, to Flora, I became the object of pointed barbs from Leda. Although Leda had never met Flora, she understood the true intensity of my interest in her from the instant that I had been foolish enough to point out Flora's yearbook photograph. Leda instantly detected that I was deeply infatuated with Flora. And from the instant she realized that, Leda tried to discourage me. She claimed to have knowledge of Flora's family, claimed that they were "Roman Catholics," a fact that was completely untrue, a fact directly contradicted by information Flora had furnished, but a fact that Leda would never fail to assert, as if it should have meaning to me, as if it should somehow diminish my affection for Flora.

Although she was careful to say absolutely nothing on the subject, Leda had obviously been elated when Flora's family departed for Texas. Her elation visibly dissipated when she became aware of my letter-writing efforts, and worse yet found letters with a Sulfur Springs return address arriving in the Griffin mailbox. Leda clearly regarded my continued communication with Flora, far away, "halfway across the country," not just as a communing with a Satanic being, but as a pointless waste of my time and affections, which she quite obviously accounted more precious than I did. When I seemed to withhold my affections from real world girls around me in favor of the strange correspondent miles away, Leda assured me that my Flora was not in reality wasting her time, repining for me. I forced this thought out of my mind.

But it soon seemed clear that in no time I was the only person at Elmwood who remembered Flora, much less adored her. Buddy Braun had quickly found himself new female companionship and seemed to have developed total amnesia as to Flora's very existence. When I worked up the nerve to ask Buddy directly whether he missed Flora, he hesitated for a second, before stammering, "Why wouldn't I?", quickly amending his answer to "Why, of course I do, Harry." Later I would come to realize that answering a question with a question was the hallmark of a habitual liar. Even then, from the blank look on Buddy's face it was obvious that it took him awhile to remember who I was talking about. I was sure that he had in the short time since Flora had departed forgotten most everything about Flora, things that I perpetuated in my devotion to the past. At night I would sit outdoors, sometimes for hours, staring at the moon, seeing Flora's face in it, excited at the thought that Flora might be looking skyward at the same instant.

Continuingly obsessed with thoughts of Flora, I remained out of the flow of sublunary events in Elmwood. I had nothing to do but to hit the books harder than ever. During the years that Flora had been near me at school, my mind was always diverted with thoughts of what I might say to her before school, or if she spoke to me. Now, with Flora more than a thousand miles away, vanished from my quotidian life, like those bubbles of which Leda had always sung, my mind better focused on academic pursuits. I was able to concentrate intensely on mathematical axioms, scientific formulae, and foreign language declensions and conjugations. I mastered intricacies of grammar and rhetoric, crafted thoughtful and persuasive compositions, absorbed and organized minute historical facts. I eagerly read multi-volume anthologies containing excerpts from great literature, bits of great poetry. I even wrote some bad but very sincere poems.

I ascended easily to the top of my 500-member high school class, but still found myself with time on my hands. I found myself reverting to my childhood habit of collecting, a former obsession I had ignored during my period of near-normalcy. In the old days, with no money to fund collections, I had contented myself with amassing, for the most part, the little ephemeral things that surrounded me. Now, thanks to a part time job delivering newspapers up and down Orvilla Road and its byways, I was able to start collecting more valuable things. I started with upgrading my collections of stamps and coins. Then I began to amass an eclectic collection of great books, in good bindings.

Shortly after my fifteenth birthday, Leda, Lilly and Gus had a surprise weekend visit from George Gordon Griffin, Leda's brother. Dear Uncle George: though I have barely mentioned him, he was one of the brightest spots of my often dark childhood. In my earliest youth George had been a frequent visitor, always a source of good company and sound advice. Uncle George had a deep, sonorous voice, and clearly qualified as the family wit. It seemed evident that he was a man of the world, undoubtedly the most visionary member of his generation. His pleasant voice and amusing words had always impressed me; they sharply contrasted with what I heard when I ventured into the Store.

Unfortunately, Uncle George's worldliness had not been without cost. After fleeing from North Cambria, after relocating in Greenville, Uncle George seemed to have engaged in some further shadowy indiscretions of his own. These were never delineated, never spoken of except in euphemisms. All that was clear was that Uncle George had failed in some business venture, and would have been sued but for his lack of personal assets. He also had, in indiscreet matters of the heart and glands, brought upon himself an array of marital woes, followed by even worse woes with a paramour. As a result, George was now living in solitary exile in a shabby two-room arrangement connected to Greenville's "Regal Theatre."

On this visit, while Leda and Gus were otherwise diverted, Uncle George crooked a finger my way and confidentially beckoned me into the room in which he was staying for the weekend. "Harold," he asked, in the most somber of tones I had heard from my uncle, "I've been meaning to ask you something. What exactly are your plans for the future? You know, my boy, I expect only the greatest of things of you." Uncle George arched his eyebrows questioningly.

Now, had Flora been around, I would most probably have had a plan, with a capital "P.". Flora would have required that of me. But with her gone I had not been in the habit of thinking past the end of my current homework assignment or my next letter to Flora. Nonetheless, I knew that Uncle George would be disappointed in me, would think much the worse of me, if I did not have some plausible answer ready for him.

I had often thought about studying literature, trying to become a teacher or writer, but though I loved the voices of literature, Leda and Gus had made grim faces whenever I expressed this thought. The two of them made perfectly clear without ever saying it that I should be thinking about something more practical than stories and poems. Something that would put "bread on the table."

I had to stall for a few seconds, then extemporized. "Uncle George, I've been thinking that I should become a Judge." "A Judge," beamed George. "Now that would be marvelous. Yes, marvelous. Of course, you know, you would have to become a lawyer first." "Oh yes, of course, Uncle George," I retorted quickly, "that certainly goes without saying," realizing that I had almost no idea how anyone became a judge or a lawyer or what either actually did. But of course the fleeting thought is father to the anchored deed, and that conversation with Uncle George set me down a long inexorable path to the Law, for to have changed course would have been to break faith with faithful Uncle George, my trusted mentor.

Life within my old Orvilla home was completely uneventful for awhile after that. For the most part, I stayed in my room studying, listening to the radio and to old records, now using my spare time to read Niger’s My Life In Court and other tales of The Law, allowing my collection of fiction and poetry to sit on my shelves untouched. I reread all of Flora's letters, and worked on drafts of letters to Flora. I gazed more times than I would have liked upon dust motes framed in the sunbeams that entered my room, particularly in winter mornings. I gazed at nights at the bright moon in the night sky. I gazed occasionally, I must to my embarrassment admit, at the photographs of smiling underwear models in the Sears and Roebuck catalog, speculating that some of these models might have once worked behind a Woolworth's candy counter.

And from time to time, as you, perspicacious reader, will have guessed, I dropped into the local Woolworth's to purchase candies from the local girls who sometimes manned the counter. But, intently faithful to Flora, I merely purchased their sugary wares and contented myself with my memories of their faces and forms and the faces and forms of the exotic city girls who had innocently introduced me to the wonders of imagined sex. To have met these mermaids, to have attempted to know them, perhaps to have dated them, even kissed them, would have only invited disappointment. I had a sustaining vision of Flora. That was enough.

XI. The Road To Dispossession

Lilly had reached her eighties in the early 1960's, and remained unchanged, almost unaged, though she repeatedly made clear on a daily basis that she considered herself at death's very doorstep. Her pure devotion to radio soap operas had given way to abject slavery to television versions of that art form. Her routine from the early 1950's otherwise remained much unchanged, consisting mostly of watering house plants, sitting in an armchair which gave her equal access to television and radio and the sights of Orvilla Road, while working the crossword and cryptograms, while waiting patiently for death to knock at her door and escort her to her next destination. And, not infrequently, telling me tales of her Bill and the lessons I should learn from what happened to him. About not thinking carelessly, about never taking facts for granted.

The closing of the Store in the late 1950's had not resulted in Leda or Gus becoming a much larger or more intimate part in my life. Leda returned to work at her pre-marital employer, Marvel Publishing. Leda rose before the dawn each morning, which was apparent to all in the house because her intensifying smoking caused her to hack away for five or ten minutes upon rising, sparing me the need to set an alarm clock. Leda would return shortly after 6 P.M. each day, quickly prepare a meal. After the evening meal, dishes would be washed. Then Leda would don a flowered robe, park herself upon a sofa, and gobble up the thin contents of the latest Book-of-the-Month Club offering or woman's magazine, occasionally watch a little TV or chat on the phone to some of the same neighbors who had once interminably gabbed at the Store. Then she would head off to bed at an early hour to be able to rise with the dawn.

Gus was also no more present than before. Following the closure of the Store, Gus had taken on a job with the State Highway Department, in which he supervised teams of social misfits who ostensibly labored on paving state highways, though many performed no visible function and seemed actually on the public dole. Gus's new job came with a car and car radio, and had the precious benefit for him of placing him on call for all types of minor emergencies, to which he happily rushed at any hour to escape Orvilla domesticity. Gus' main activity in Orvilla, other than circling our field with a small tractor armed with a grass-cutting attachment, was in occasionally descending the steps of the vacant Store. There he sat alone, in darkness, suppressing a disturbingly growing cough by swigging surreptitiously from small bottles of liquor, a fact that went unnoticed until after his death. Then a cache of empty bottles was detected in a hole Gus had dug near the cellar steps.

And then it was 1963. That year was not kind to Gus. He had wheezed persistently through a bitter winter, then was in physical pain continuously from Memorial Day through early August. He had agonized with acute indigestion on Memorial Day, indigestion he blamed on his habit of eating the hamburgers he cooked with heavy doses of seasoning and diced onions. Soon he was hospitalized for a prostate condition, after which he uncharacteristically opened himself to me, confiding how unpleasant had been the tiny "Roto-Rooter" that the doctors had driven through his penis. And then, three on a match, Gus had been detected with diabetes, had to subject himself to a horrifyingly strict, sugarless diet that seemed to melt flesh off his bones all too successfully. Gus now confided in me that "a life without sugar was not worth living." Was Gus being metaphoric? Philosophic? Or just literal?

The first Sunday in August of 1963 seemed to find Gus on the road to recovery. In a rare act of togetherness, we walked together back past the rear limits of our field, far from Orvilla Road. We went further, through the tangle of overgrowth that surrounded the old abandoned Cackle farm, which by now been abandoned by tenants for over five years. Despite its close propinquity, I had never set foot upon, much less explored, this place.

With the protective barrier of mysterious cornstalks now long gone, Gus and I were easily able to pick our way back to the Cackle buildings despite the weeds and thorns that grew riotously, which seemed to grow ever denser as we neared the house and barn. Gus was unusually voluble, talked strangely not only of the present, but also of the past and future. Soon we stood, in a moment of perfect harmony, by a decrepit fence near the old farmhouse and barn, which was washed with the bright, dustless sunlight of a perfect summer's day. We marveled at the strange beauty of this moment, sensed God's grace in the sky. The moment was broken when Gus inexplicably cringed.

Then, true to the patterns of our lives, we went separate directions. Gus explored what was left of the moldering farmhouse. He entered it through an opening once sealed by a front door, long ago torn off its hinges by vandals. I chose to peruse the Barn, the boards of which by now seemed so close to disintegration that the building lacked a solid silhouette, was a mere skeleton pierced at will by wide beams of sunlight.

To my absolute delight, there were treasures within this abandoned place. I found old newspapers, most dating to August 1945, the very time when Leda and Gus had claimed Orvilla for the center of their universe. I gathered up these papers, which chronicled the dropping of bombs, the surrender of the Emperor, the ensuing celebrations. I also scavenged a small collection of Sunday comics, which contained episodes of Li'l Abner, Tales of Uncle Remus, Dick Tracy, some even more ancient than the headlines, some even dating to the hopeful era of the late 1930's. All of these historical annals had been basely deployed by the Cackles and their followers to line ancient chicken roosts, long unoccupied. Despite the elapse of time, most remained intact, completely readable. They would be Rosetta stones to bygone days.

While I pondered these humble artifacts, Gus slowly meandered the overgrown vegetation of the Cackle homestead, smirking at the eccentricity of domestic plantings gone to wild profusion. At length he headed for a bush of wild blueberries. With his sharp farmboy's eye, he carefully filled his fedora-style straw hat with choice fruit plucked from this bush. When he had finished, we started to walk back home. Just before we left, just as all seemed serene and sunlit, a storm cloud blew up, momentarily obscured the sun. And at the precise same moment, a grey mourning dove emerged, from somewhere in the decayed farmhouse, perched itself in plain view on the sill of an open second story window, and emitted a sad, strangely disturbing song. It was a song I had heard many times before, elsewhere in Orvilla, but that day it frightened me. Chilled despite the day's heat, Gus and I walked back together, quickly, our eyes to the ground. We did not speak, either of the bird or of anything else.

That same August night the Griffin family went through its one customary ritual of togetherness, watching Bonanza, trying to take inspiration from the Cartwright family as it managed and overcame sundry devils surrounding and threatening their Nevada ranch house. But this time, well before the show was over, before the clock had reached even 9:30, Gus left the room, literally shuffled off to bed. Gus had never looked so old or so tired.

I didn't think much of it. I finished watching the predictable happy ending of Bonanza -- Hoss repelling a handful of armed intruders, saving the Ponderosa from attack -- then stayed up for the 11:00 news before falling into bed and instantly asleep. The next thing I knew I heard unexpected noises, floated up chokingly through sleep's confusing waters to the surface of consciousness. Once there, I sluggishly grasped that the Volunteer Medical Corps -- Hatburg's first responders -- had arrived across the hallway, had strapped Gus to a canvas stretcher, were about to transport him to the Elmwood General Hospital. Too groggy to react quickly, and with the self-consciousness of a fifteen-year-old, I was too embarrassed to rush to his side in the underwear in which I had slept, or to get dressed and ride with Gus and Leda to the hospital. I thought that I could always see Gus in the hospital, or better yet at home, the next day. So as Gus was removed from our Orvilla home, I waved at him, casually uttering, "See you later, Pop."

But I did not. Gus did not survive that August night. When Leda returned from the hospital, at 5 A.M., I was sitting in a chair in the front room, watching the Road. From the moment Leda had left, fears for Gus had slowly begun to rise, accelerated geometrically with each hour's passing. Before I saw Leda, Lilly's scream from the kitchen told me immediately all that I didn't want to know, that what I had come to fear had come true. Gus's heart had given out. Gus had sunk beneath life's surface, just as Bill had sunk in death's muddy waters. And it was obviously all because I had not been vigilant, had not watched over him dutifully.

With Gus gone, Orvilla fell into rapid disrepair. The grape arbor collapsed that winter. And then Leda started to fall apart. Leda had been a heavy smoker all her life. But once Gus departed, her habit accelerated geometrically. Her behavior became erratic in other ways: never visibly close to Gus, frequently contemptuous of his rough practicality, his lack of Vision, suddenly Leda adored his memory. She wept profusely at every sentimental tune: Lover Come Back to Me; the Man I Love. Songs she had never before seemed aware of. You could never tell when Leda's floodgates would break.

After the death of Gus, Leda continued commuting daily to Marvel Publishing. But now she would stay up well after midnight every night, drinking many cups of coffee and smoking many Kent cigarettes. Then she would rise the next morning at half past five, sometimes even earlier, only to drink more coffee, inhale smoke in lieu of breakfast, then board the first commuter train to Philadelphia. I went to bed before midnight each night and did not know what she did to fill this time. But many mornings I would see the writing surface of the Leda's roll-top desk cluttered by a tangled array of papers, envelopes, folders.

Leda became increasingly angry at me. She let me know in no uncertain terms that I was wasting my life in pursuit of a will-of-the wisp like Flora, who was long gone from me. I ignored her advice to pursue real, home-grown local girls. But in truth I could not have done otherwise. As time had proceeded, the dry soils of Texas had proven to be fertile ground for the cultivation of Flora's soul. Her life there must have been joyous, for clearly Flora was becoming a changed creature, a mature woman, free in speech, free in thought, maybe, though I wasn't sure and certainly never wanted to know, free in matters of love. Although the existence of loved ones, maybe lovers, might have been clear to an objective reader of Flora's correspondence, I chose to read the literal text, which did not contain any clear mention of these things. I preferred to believe that Flora was as devoted to my memory as I was to hers.

And, after she learned that Gus had died, Flora had consoled me, with eloquence and poetry. A few months later, not fifty miles from her home, President Kennedy had been shot, and it was my turn to try to console Flora. And once death had intervened in our lives, our correspondence turned more philosophic. Flora wrote me of her diverse literary interests, reciting for me favored excerpts of Song of Myself, Howl, introducing me to diverse names that I had not encountered within the narrow and archaic Central Elmwood curriculum, like Hesse, Kerouac, Ginsburg. Flora had also reported on her evolving musical tastes, introduced me to the likes of Dylan, Baez, Seeger, Guthrie, annotated her thoughts with lyrics from poems about little suburban boxes. And she regaled me with her evolving thoughts of political issues: the Great Society; the War on Poverty; Vietnam, all issues that I had heretofore only shallowly considered. I realized that this fickle soul, this once superficial but beautiful animal, was in fact not only more wonderful but wiser, deeper than any other person on earth.

By the summer of 1965 I was making preparations for college, readying myself to attend the University of Virginia, where, I had earned a scholarship, and where, to the inestimable pride of Uncle George, I planned to pursue a pre-law curriculum. Uncle George in fact took full credit for giving direction to my life. Leda once confided in me that he had told her that he knew when we had the conversation about the future that "poor Harold hadn't a clue" as to what he wanted to do, and that he had correctly surmised that he could "focus" me and "make a man out of me" just by asking the right question.

It seemed to me only natural that Leda should have been happy, but she clearly was not. She seldom spoke either to Lilly or to me. When she and I spoke, we could seldom agree on anything. Nothing I did met with her approval.

Then, either overwrought by an irrational fear of impoverishment or perhaps just determined to punish me by giving away things with which I could not bear to part, Leda did the unspeakable. She sold off the side lot to our home. This was the very space on earth where I had often seen God in the sky, where I had once been in harmony with nature, where Gus had taught me to hit a baseball. Leda not only sold the lot, but did so for grossly inadequate consideration, to Jennie Knudsen, a former neighbor's daughter. Jennie, newly married, inexplicably, stupidly, yearned to move back to the Orvilla neighborhood of her childhood. Leda's real estate transaction, for the small gain of just $1,000, not only deprived us forever of an Edenic patch of ground, but removed a buffer from our home, placed an unwanted view of the side of a small house and its back yard immediately beneath my own bedroom window. I was appalled, but Leda would not be reasoned with.

As the weeks progressed Leda raged more and more incessantly at the folly of my pursuit of Flora, of my use of time. Sometimes during Leda's lectures on time I recalled the great hourglass of time that I had envisioned years before, the one through which the finest grains of sand had once refused to pass. Leda seemed to feel that boulders of sand were uncontrollably forcing their way through the neck of my small hourglass. And Leda seem to covet even the tiniest grain of time, to fear that even one would carelessly spill away, be lost for eternity.

Ironically, Leda's greatest unhappiness with me came in the summer of 1965, when I finally had taken her advice, and had despite my unceasing spiritual devotion to Flora, in fact begun to go on occasional dates with live girls in Pennsylvania, always Protestants at that. Leda made it clear without ever letting the words form on her lips that she liked none of the ones I had chosen, whether they came from Hatburg, Elmwood, or even her sacred ancestral village of North Cambria. And even when I occasionally went bowling or miniature golfing with Buddy -- who true to expectations had become the class football hero, not to mention the class president -- she whined that I was frittering away my time, spending too much of it away from home, using home only as a place to "hang my hat." Lilly as usual in these matters was silently on my side, said nothing, occasionally shrugged her shoulders, patted me gently on the back.

Sometimes in quiet desperation, to accede to Leda's desires, to go along with her Plan, whatever it was, I did stay home. But when I did, Leda would shut both me and Lilly out. I would sit in the living room, watching television programs which I knew that Leda had once enjoyed, or in my bedroom, door wide open, listening to the radio. Leda would perversely stay in her room, the door closed, listening to old 1940's ballads to which I did not know the words. Neither of us would budge and join the other.

All through the summer following my graduation from Elmwood Regional, it seemed that whenever I saw Leda, whatever the hour of the day or night, Leda was enthusiastically drawing mysterious charts, energetically scribbling cryptic notations on the backs of faded photographs, arranging and rearranging these photographs in envelopes and folders, then rearranging these and envelopes and filing and refiling them in several flat, two foot-by three foot Unity Frankford cardboard tomato boxes.

The lids of these boxes showed faint circular traces of the damp, ripe fruit which had once filled them. These lids were decorated with an orange outline of tomatoes, and the proud name of the Unity-Frankford Grocery Stores chain. But I never had a chance to study their contents, for Leda never left the odd boxes downstairs. She treated these boxes as if they were safety deposit boxes crammed with precious contents. She would each day or evening remove them from, then later fastidiously replace them in, a space beneat19 April 2007h the flooring, in a remote corner of the unfinished attic room at the top of our back stairs.

I let this bizarre behavior go on for some time without comment. Finally my resentment boiled over and confronted Leda directly, burst out: "Mom, why in Hell are you wasting all your time with all this stupid, dusty paper?" Leda surprisingly didn't rise to the bait, did not take umbrage at my rude words. "I'm just working out our family history," was her curt reply. I took a peek over Leda's shoulder, and what she said seemed true. She seemed to be doing something genealogical, trying to arrange the history of Griffins of whom I had never known anything and was certainly never going to want to know anything know, great grandfathers and great-great grandmothers and cousins once, twice or even three times removed (whatever "removed" may have meant) about whom I cared absolutely nothing.

It galled me that Leda, Leda who had chided me for my own use of time, was engaging in all this time-wasting tedium, all while avoiding any meaningful conversation with me, virtually freezing me out of her own life, as though what she was doing was more important than her own life, her life with me. Even though I was about to depart her life. Who knew how often, if ever, I would choose to return to her little Orvilla universe once I walked out the back door and caught a bus or train heading South?

I guessed that Leda was just engaging in mindless repetition of a pattern she had followed all my life. Putting mundane paperwork, store receipts and orders, tax returns, above my life. Or reserving her life for those others who had populated the store or the opposite ends of her phone lines. I could not fathom this mad waste of time and health, not on the verge of my going away to college, and I let her know so.

"Well, maybe you'll understand someday, Harry," is all she ever said on the subject. And Leda smiled and went on persistently scribbling and filing, sometimes spending hours on the telephone, comparing notes with one of her distant nephews, or cousins, once-removed, who was reportedly engaging in similar family studies. One time I was disgusted to answer the phone at 8:30 and hear the voice of John Weisheit, who said he was returning Leda's call. I was even more disgusted when Leda did not hang up the phone until after I had gone to bed.

Days after my eighteenth birthday, without having meaningfully spoken with Leda for months, I headed South for Charlottesville, Virginia and the University of Virginia. Three weeks later, Leda casually informed me in a letter that she was about to have a procedure to eliminate a small growth. She said that she was sure that there was nothing to worry about, that the procedure would be simple.

I called home. Lilly answered. Once sharp-tongued, in recent years Lilly had developed the habit of holding her tongue, saying little in the presence of Leda. But Leda was out, already hospitalized, and Lilly was not about to hold her tongue further. Before I asked, she informed me that the procedure that Leda had undergone was not at all simple, was in fact an operation to remove a very large ovarian tumor, the size of a grapefruit. Lilly was furious that Leda had delayed going to the doctor; she was sure that Leda had known since early in the year, if not longer, that something was seriously wrong. She was even more furious that after talking to the doctor earlier in the year Leda had twice postponed a visit, and thus delayed detection of the tumor.

When I reached Leda at the hospital, she seemed furious that the details of her condition had been revealed. She maintained that her cancer was insignificant, that anything malignant had been fully removed, that she would undoubtedly enjoy a complete recovery. That I should look on the bright side, walk only on the sunny side of the street. But when I came home the following weekend, I noticed that Leda had left on her desk, in a small book of family history, published by a maiden aunt in the early 1940's, a protruding bookmark. When I flipped the book open, I found that on the page of paper marking the book Leda had doodled a picture of a tombstone, with her initials on it, on tops of a conversation with her doctor about her cancer.

By the next summer it was clear that Leda's time was growing short. In the months following her operation, procedure after procedure proved necessary to drain Leda of noxious fluids which persistently filled her body cavities, pressured her organs, suffused her with excruciating pain. Her death followed on January 6, 1967. On that date, which I later learned was celebrated as Epiphany on church calendars, I sat by Leda's bedside as she spent her last hours in a coma. I saw her last breath expire, as faint traces of black fluids spilled from the corners of her sagging mouth.

I had never thought of leaving Orvilla before I finished college, but abruptly I was forced not only to contemplate it but to do it. For this I had Uncle George to thank. Leda had appointed George both Executor of her Estate and my personal legal Guardian. Leda's will instructed that her assets be sold, her debts satisfied and the remainder be placed in trust for her son Harold G. Griffin until he should attain the age of 21. Uncle George saw this as a mandate that permitted no common-sense exception. By then George was almost 70, and I found there were two things in life he most definitely did not want. One was to spend much of his time in administering an estate that was located 150 miles from the small apartment in which he was then living. The other was to have a teenage ward living with him.

George's solution was to list our Orvilla property at a bargain price, to sell it to the first bidder who presented a respectable offer. In little more than a year, he assured me, I would have the sale proceeds, which, though perhaps not very large (the property remained heavily mortgaged and Leda had almost no savings) would be far more than he had saved in all his own considerable lifetime.

In the meantime, said Uncle George, I was old enough to fend for myself. I could get through college on the scholarship that I had earned, the Social Security payments that were already coming to me thanks to Gus's death, plus whatever summer earnings I could make. George was sure that I could find some place to live, that I could handle the rent out of whatever summer job I found. He would take care of finding new quarters for Lilly, for she and he were not a package deal. He had explored this with his mother, and Lilly had agreed. George's Plan -- made clear to me the night of Leda's funeral -- was clear, and I was in no position to argue.

Thus, in the spring of my second year at college, 724 Orvilla Road was listed for sale, sold, scheduled for a June closing. George made arrangements to move Lilly into a nursing home in Appletown. Lilly's new residence was a room in an turreted building on West Portulaca Street, one that once been the residence of a great Appletown brewer, one that had a huge porch fronting the busy street, very like the porch from which Lilly had overseen the traffic of Orvilla.

Then, while I was back at college, George, no sentimentalist, began clearing the place. He seemed intent to strip the place, either through donation to the local Goodwill outlet or by a cleansing backyard fire, of all traces of the past. Unaware that this was going on, I arrived home from spring break, expecting to find my home intact, only to find Uncle George's car in the driveway. George was standing beside a huge backyard trash fire. Beside the fire, which blazed in an old metal drum, George had piled up the cracked beams and supports, the mortal remains of our old grape arbor. From a giant cardboard box George was indifferently tossing boxes full of random things into the fire: old books, games, toys. My newspaper and comic book collections.

I recall that George and I had words that day about George's disposition of these things, but for years I repressed what was said. All I could recall was George making clear that if I did not succeed in emptying the place soon, he would be returning to empty out the rest of it, and that more and wider fires would follow. When I entered the house I saw that even Leda's J.C. Campbell piano was no longer in the living room -- George had left a note that he had hired a muscular local boy to break it up, had had it hauled away in thoroughly unmusical shards.

I moved quickly to hoard and store whatever miscellany of Orvilla treasures remained within the house: books, photographs, knickknacks, holiday decorations. I saved as much as I could from the raging fire, managed to store old furniture and old collections temporarily in the attics and basements of friends. But I could do little, had to return to school shortly. The time to the closing moved relentlessly, as did George's cleansing fires.

I spent the first two weeks of June in Orvilla. On June 12, the day before the property was to change hands, I found myself alone in the old house. I surveyed the remains of my past: a backyard with no grape arbor. Not just the outbuildings were empty, but so were the Store, the house. When I left I left only two things left in the house. First was a large box cardboard of assorted trash, into which I had thrown everything worthless to me that I had not had time to dispose of properly: old glassware, old magazines, odds and ends of bizarre description. With them I mingled dirt swept from the dusty floors of the house, trash, garbage, all the detritus of Orvilla. I left this box as a gift for the new tenants.

Second, I left Leda's damnable tomato boxes, which my inspection revealed had somehow gone undetected by the vigilant Uncle George and his destroying scythe, and which thus remained in Leda's attic hiding place. As a token of protest against Leda's latter-day madness, and against my dispossession from her and from this place, I shoved them rudely beneath the weak pine flooring in our attic room. They could stay there until the end of time, for all I cared.

And I then toasted my departure with a final drink of a strange elixir that I had savored for all my life -- the water which flowed through the pipes of Orvilla -- a strange tasting but sweet species of local water, probably lead-laden, toxic. I saluted the memories of Gus and Leda, and Lilly, and of my nineteen years in Orvilla. Then I slammed the door behind me, not bothering to lock it, and without looking back headed out onto the Road.

For this occasion I had parked the car which I had inherited from Leda -- a 1958 Chevrolet -- a little more than a half-mile away, on one of the side streets that formed Orvilla Gardens, more precisely in view of Flora's old home.

I strode defiantly out the doorway to my own home and slammed it behind. Once I reached Orvilla Road, my stride slowed, for I wanted to savor these last minutes. As I turned off the Road, up the side street to Orvilla Gardens, I passed the Kelpius house, saw old Herman, now thin and frail, rocking gently on a porch swing. I thought he waved at me, called out something about keeping my head up. Defiantly, I looked down, did not respond.

I had never been invited to visit Flora's home, and had scarcely ever seen it before Flora departed for Sulphur Springs. But once she was gone I felt free to walk her old neighborhood, and had tried to memorize every detail in the construction of her objectively unremarkable modern home. Now I took a final glance, before easing into my automobile. The next thing I remember was driving out of Orvilla, past the old Schmid Barn, by now devoid of all traces of human life. Though I did not see the invisible mourning doves, I could hear a faint strain of their dirge. I would not listen: I closed the car windows tightly, turned up the radio. Once I bumped over the train tracks that constituted Orvilla's true Eastern boundary, I opened the windows, clicked off the radio, and began to allow other sounds and sensations to rush randomly into my life.

Like Satan tumbling out of heaven, like Adam and Eve fleeing from Eden, like Lot fleeing Sodom, I fled from Orvilla. Not because I wanted to leave but because the brute force of external necessity had mandated it.

My sadness at leaving was overwhelmed by feelings of anger, for I considered myself the victim of dispossession. No matter how much or how little you love them, to be prematurely dispossessed of family and home is a cruel fate. To force anyone from his rooted place, the seeds from which he has surveyed and measured the world, is a thing that touches of evil. Every man must realize early in his life that someday he must leave home. Indeed, from the first moment I focused on the dust motes hanging in the sunlight that streamed through my Orvilla windows, I yearned for the day when I could leave my home. And I knew that someday I would. But every human being expects to, and ought to, be able to leave home on his own terms, and my terms were dictated to me.

The moment I crossed the boundaries that marked Orvilla, I thought that to ever set foot

again in Orvilla would turn me into a thief of spy, an unwanted trespasser on ancestral lands that were no

longer rightfully mine. So I made two resolutions as I left: I would continue to pursue Flora until she was

mine. And I would never, ever return to Orvilla.

(End of Part I)

Donald B. Lewis

Copyright 2007