Depot

Summers, we’d run barefoot down the hill from our house, watch ice blocks unloaded

from boxcars. Sawdust. Wagons.

Hiss of pistons, the throttle nudged another notch. Pennies on the track.

Run until we were outrun. Farms and more farms and berry fields. Milkweed and bluestem oceans.

The only way in and the only way out. Platform of sending off and welcoming home.

The shriek climbing frigid nights, and the plunge back into darkness. Ghost faces.

Before you could even turn around, the frames of the film are gone.

Even if there is no one left to tell our stories. A dusty box of photographs passed down and down. Maybe there is that.

Have faith, pray Darling, things will have a way of working themselves out.

Because everything arrives and everything leaves.

The Jewelers

William Fink was revered as the best jeweler in Ripley County, despite the fact that he was the only jeweler this side of Versailles. Mother said that the Finks had more money than the whole town of Osgood put together. I envied their daughter Millicent who on Saturdays, lollygagged in the shop with her mother while I cleaned the chicken coop. I’d have given my eye teeth to sit on that velvet-plush stool working the cash register.

At least that’s what I thought until the day of the robbery. One Saturday, Mr. Fink had gone fishing with the men from the Angler’s Club, when a stranger flew through the shop’s door yelling this is a hold up, and fired two shots, one of which hit Millicent in the knee.

The Ellinghaus twins claimed to have witnessed a man with a dark moustache racing across the street pushing a baby carriage. They said he was the spitting image of John Dillinger but turned out it was the preacher’s nephew escaped from the asylum. And the headless baby, just a doll with a removable head, perfect for stuffing jewels in.

The whole experience took a toll on Millicent who from then on was confined to a wicker wheelchair. Mr. Fink took to liquor and soon after, Millicent’s mother died of consumption.

Satan preys upon the vulnerable, my mother declared, and he always leaves behind a sign.

And then I remembered the headless baby.

The Neighbors Across the Way

Sometimes they stood on the peak, staring out. Sometimes they sat on the gable, feet dangling. People had different theories as to the reason. Our teacher said we had overactive imaginations and that no one in their sound mind would recite scripture or fly kites from their roof tops.

My mother thought the man meant well and was merely teaching his children bravery. After all, she said, they don’t have a mother. My grandfather speculated that not only were they closer to the breath of God, but they could also spot the wall clouds and green sky of a tornado.

The day I summoned enough courage to cross the road and ask the man myself, I pulled the bell and waited. Through the peep hole, an empty room—except for a ladder and three sets of wings collapsed on the floor like fallen doves. Come spring, we heard from the postman

that the family had moved into the widow’s cottage on Barnum Pond. The boy developed such a fear of heights, he had stopped growing. And his sister, with her luminous hair, claimed her name was no longer Luella, but Seraphina.

We all prayed that by living closer to the ground, the children might have a chance at reaching full potential. When I got older and couldn’t sleep, I would gaze out my dormer window looking, waiting for something, but not sure what—only that it was possible.

The Twins

Whenever there was trouble in Osgood, Ed and Cecil were there along with Dolly, their beloved

chestnut. Whether it was the day the horse trolly ran offtrack and crashed into the drug store and

they risked their lives pulling out the injured, or the day Nikanor got lost in Manly’s orchard, the

twins appeared like two rumpled angels.

If you asked where they lived, you never got a straight answer. Ed would point east. Cecil would

say just north of here. If you tried to follow them like my little brother often did, Dolly would

refuse to take another step and you would be kindly told to go home. Once, just after a new

snow, my brother was bound and determined to track them as they headed home through the

forest. As it was getting darker and colder, out of breath and caked in snow, he banged through

the kitchen door. I saw them he wheezed, I saw Ed and Cecil change into two white eagles, and

Dolly turned so white, she even had wings. My mother sent him to bed with a cup of Ovaltine

and a ham sandwich. The next morning at breakfast we asked him what happened in the woods.

I was almost frozen to death, I don’t remember a cotton-picking thing.