Ghost Town

I am wandering across wet fields. No one remains but me. It is December in a summer town, and everyone is in their winter mode, or Florida, anywhere but here. In my mind's eye I can see Uncle Charlie, big as life, fat, smiling. He shoots tin cans with a 30-06 that we, on the other side of the house are plinking at unsuccessfully. Charlie was the merry prankster. Until I figured out that he was shooting everytime we shot, I had no clue as to how we always managed to hit our target. I mean we were little kids; no way were we sharpshooters as he was, and it did not occur to me that we could miss. One time, when he was a boy, Charlie allegedly shot his big toe off in the dining room of Red Top. The story goes that they recovered it in the coal bin in the basement below, and there was a hole, or was it just a knot hole, in the floor. It never occured to me to examine Uncle Charlie's feet for proof. And then there is Helen Rand Sherer, his wife. She died so young, only in her 40s while taking a shower in Avon, Connecticut. Cerebral hemorrhage. Charlie had some serious cancer, but he died from an aortic aneurysm. And of course there's Joe, still around, the last of his tribe, spry at 85, still pulling his lobster pots for fun, and darned healthy, it would appear. And Aunt Mary, everyone's favorite, who must have died nearly twenty years ago. What was it that made us all adore her? She was funny, and she always seemed glad to see us. Back at my house, I see the shapes of Nina and Grandpa Dick and Susie and many assorted guests from the Whitin and the Burchard and the Shethar clans, and the Rockwood cousins, Court and Betty and their girls, more aunts and uncles and cousins and step-etceteras. I think of Nina reading me the story about Mr. Lobster, and of Grandpa Dick feeding the catbirds raisins at the cocktail hour. And Uncle Joe with his lolipop tree, or, now that I think of it, his father up at Red Top Farm, making packs of Beemans and Blackjack chewing gum appear magically out of the FM radio in the kitchen. that lollipop tree, a type of cedar or arbor vitae now towers above the Red Top camp. I think of Clayton, the caretaker at Stonepile, and his wife Adele who used to let me shoot her .22 when she babysat me in her house at the top of the lane. She was great, a favorite. And so, too, was Georgie, Susie and Dick's cook, babysitter and bottle washer. She would hang out in the kitchen, often sitting as she aged and her legs got bad. Georgie always had cookies for us in a large, round tin. The best ones were ginger and chocolate chip. We would come across the fields with the sole purpose of raiding the cookie tin. And then we, packs of cousins, or if it were just me, would go out with a few more in our pockets and walk down the trail to the beach, or find another house filled with relatives across another field. This was safe, unstructured fun. The only thing in jeopardy was a rabbit or a woodchuck when I happened to be on my own, hunting imaginary big game with my .22. It was a good thing to get out of my system at an early age. It is probably amazing that no one was ever hurt that way, come to think of it. And I have an indelible image I have is of my mother back at Stonepile with her cancer, knowing that she would not likely see the following spring. Knowing that as she drove up her driveway from the place she loved all her life, that she would never come that way again. She's there again, about a mile away as the crow flies, in the cemetary by the Commons. Why is it that these people have all vanished so young, so prematurely? Why are they not here to help us understand our lives, our selves, our worlds? Where are they, when we need them all so badly?