Around 1970, my maternal grandparents bought 5 acres of overgrown land off a rutted dirt road so remote that Lewis and Clark would refuse to explore it. They divided the land into three parcels, aiming that my mother and her half-brother each would build a home on their respective lots and everyone would live dustily ever after.
I entered the picture shortly thereafter, and my parents built an olive green Masonite-sided house on the acre farthest from my grandparents. My uncle was 12 years younger than my mother and, by her account, completely wild. As soon as he was able, he revved his Harley Davidson and blared Creedence Clearwater Revival all the way to the Florida coastline, abandoning the untamed brush that lay between his kinfolk.
My parents cut a narrow path through the middle acre, allowing me to walk between the homesteads. Mama would call ahead to say she was sending me down, then release me into the wilderness. Crows, skunks, snakes and deer cawed, stank, slithered and snorted until I emerged wide-eyed at the edge of Gram's garden. It was horrific.
One day, my grandparents were no longer at the end of the trail. I was told they were divorcing and each was moving away. They'd rent the little house out until things were final.
A young couple soon moved in, and we went down to make introductions. They said they'd be out of town for a little while, and a friend would house sit.
My father was outside that autumn morning when he spotted a man next door. The falling leaves made the houses visible. He waved. The man waved back.
The following morning, a deputy sheriff came to our door. He and my father talked outside in hushed tones, impeding the auditory efforts of a 6-year-old girl. Mama went outside, then briskly came back in, grabbed the receiver of the powder blue rotary wall phone and dialed my grandmother's new number.
Stay put, I was told. Don't go next door. Stay out of Middle Acre.
Mama tested the limits of the phone cord as she rounded the corner to talk to Gram. The man next door ... dead ... hanged himself ... picnic table ... oak tree ... not cut down ... awaiting coroner.
I peered through the sheers, but my view was blocked by the deputy's ample belly. I watched as a black hearse came and left, and that was it. No lights, no sirens, nothing on the news. We never learned the man's name. No report or obituary seems ever to have been made. The house sat vacant for a long time, and the narrow path disappeared.
A couple years later, my parents divorced, and Mama and I lived alone on the dirt road, until a middle-aged couple finally bought Gram's house. After I left for college, Mama said my beloved cat, Pepper, had kittens in the old barn next door and died on the way back home ... trying to cut through Middle Acre.
I sold my childhood home, and a young couple with a little girl lives there once again. Our elderly neighbor lady, now widowed, still lives next door. To this day, middle acre remains wild.
From an upstairs window, the little girl can look across the wilderness and watch the leaves fall on remnants of a red picnic table decaying beneath an old oak tree.
Maybe Uncle Cliff was the fortunate son who didn't want to run through the jungle lookin' out his back door. Maybe he sensed there was a bad moon rising ...
NAN Our Town on 10/04/2018