There is a River

By Jacquelyn Hartland

Callie Clemmens, ten, felt herself being pulled by an invisible canvas belt to the dreaded Watford Shoe, where all her relatives ended up as gray ghosts for life. Callie, in her desperation not to attend, found answers when her family moved to a tiny cottage on the Monocacy river, where gay vacationers in ten cottages around hers brought joy and tragedy into her life but erased the conveyor belt forever by what happened in a quiet meadow, a thing Callie thought would never happen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662479373

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There is a River

Jacquelyn Hartland

Copyright © 2022 Jacquelyn Hartland

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-7936-6 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-7937-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

About the Author

Prologue

Gray ghosts stalked the dark corridors of the Watford Shoe Factory, its grim edifice clouding the skies of Newark Street, smokestacks belching their white smoke, mingling with the inevitable hustle and bustle, reminding workers, This is it! You belong here.

Those entrenched there, not knowing they were gray ghosts at first, worked on valiantly, but in time the Watford gobbled them up, and they began to realize they belonged to the typical factory crowd, which was circling around, pounding the dusty macadam streets, never too far from their livelihood; and dreams were fashioned in the stifling drabness from the darkness inside the factory, wistful dreams of getting out somewhere, somewhere in the sunshine and in the clean air.

If you got up early enough in the morning, you could get a glimpse of them sauntering in, hear the sharp ding as they punched in their time cards identifying them as belonging to Watford, maker of fine women's shoes, in the little town of Hardesty, Maryland, ten miles from the Pennsylvania line. This was Watford, home of many sorrowful and destitute men who once had dreams of a better life but were realizing numbly now that this was to be their life. It was the home of many tired, colorless women with trademark bunions that gnawed and hurt, with holes cut in their leather shoes for relief, shoes that were the only proud possessions of the Watford ghosts who were given one damaged pair a year.

In spite of all this, those shuffling in had a certain pride that they had a job at all; they had nothing else in life, nothing better, but they had this job, and they clung to it with both hands, hard. At least they were in it together, a real sort of camaraderie. And the gray ghosts clung together and somehow made it through each day while the Watford belched its white smoke into Hardesty.

Every Friday afternoon they reached eagerly for the yellow envelope and their money that they pool, husband and wife, for it took two paychecks to survive if there's as much as one child, paychecks that together would pay the gas bill, the electricity, fuel, phone, clothes, food, and if they were lucky, it would cover the rent. And if by some chance there's anything left over, which happened rarely, they envisioned an orange, juicy and succulent, or a bright, shiny Wine-Sap or a Milky Way from the factory candy machine over against the wall to take home to slice and divide a tidbit among each kid that almost never tasted candy.

But there was a thing called incidentals that ate into any leftover (such as, always there was something broken that needed a costly repair, or the dog was dying and needed a vet), and the gray ghosts could only hope for the next paycheck to increase. There's also always a doctor bill pending, which out of necessity never quite got paid, and kindly Dr. Warenheimer looked at them and didn't say anything. No one seemed to be paying him. There would be another paycheck. And a thing called hope, and Dr. Warenheimer would wait for / must wait for that hope too.

Nelson Clemmens and Portia Hastings met and were married in 1932. The Great Depression that had tainted their lives as children was pretty much over, and the paychecks they got at Watford Shoe were now adequate somewhat, if stretched, as long as there were only the two. But what happened was that they had this one child, and their income was tautly stretched, but then as they were struggling, they went on to quickly have four more, impossible! Impossible, but it was not just them. It was happening all around them. They were all kindred spirits turned swiftly into the gray ghosts they were truly now. What happened then was what happened to all the gray ghosts at Watford Shoe eventually.

In a few years, they found they could not leave the factory. It was as though they were stamped there. They'd both only had elementary-grade education, and this was the only job they were suited for and that, with too many children much too soon, Nelson and Portia realized that this finally was to be their lives.

They had thought if they worked real hard, a miracle of money would happen, but it never even came close. They were stuck there, and in time all dreams fled, and they succumbed to the mighty Watford, living from Friday to Friday and the insoluble never-ending of debts.

With Portia trying to raise their five children at home when living on one paycheck, life became one routine of living for bare essentials, plus food and clothing for five kids, and realization set in that there was to be no more money coming in, and they had to simply, without preamble, live or die somehow, whichever happened first.

It was hard; there was no other life then, and eventually they stopped dreaming. The only joy in life then became the joy in the bedroom each night, not caring if there were another baby, because that was what life became all about to them.

Shortly after each baby, their housekeeper stepped in. She set them back $3 each week but was needed after each baby was born until Mama could swiftly get back to the Watford. After their fifth baby, their last, for some reason unknown, she returned to the Watford and never again left; and by some miracle, as happened sometimes, there were no more babies. Thus, their lives went on in misery and abject poverty, and their present babies grew up a little too much so to be Portia and Nelson's pride and joy anymore.

And then there was nothing but the little yellow paycheck.

Chapter 1

When we lived in Andover, 714 York Street, we stoned Davy's gang every day in the back alley behind our garage. It's just something you did, and of course, we got stoned back. When we got hit, we just wiped the blood away and told Mama we fell on a nail or something. The name Davy was a bad name, synonymous with evil, and we lived in the horror of our battles.

The amazing thing was, we got together as friends once in a while in a bunch sans stones, and William was there. He was in Davy's gang, but I felt abnormal because I was only five, and I got a passion for him. I didn't know why because he was just ordinary, but I got real excited when I knew I was going to kiss him, and when I grabbed him one afternoon and I did it, he looked real piqued and rubbed his cheek off, and I quickly realized you couldn't go around kissing anybody you want.

I remembered William I, though, because much later there would be a William II. And this time I would know to keep the kisses on the back burner.

So I never kissed another boy at age five. Mama said I was touchy, but she didn't know about the kiss or the battles, and Daddy never had any opinion of me but just sat there in his cracked red leather chair, smoking his cigar, stinking up the living room and wondering why nobody ever did anything about Hitler.

We kids learned fast to do nothing wrong around our father because if we did something, we swiftly got a beating. It was the only way, it seemed, for Daddy to keep up with his growing brood. He didn't seem to know any other way. None of us loved him as you're supposed to love your dad; it was hard to feel one crumb of love, and you develop a tremendous fear and an anonymity around that huge man who meted out the beatings unsparingly.

Nobody ever knew (thank heavens not Daddy) what went on in the back alley behind our garage. Mother, home on leave at that time from the latest baby, sent us out to play and said, Don't come back till I call you,' and she never really bothered to check on us.

And when we moved to the river, there was no one there to stone. So the stoning stopped in time, out of necessity, as we finally left, mostly with Daddy never the wiser and Mama never caring, and peace prevailed somewhat eventually along the Monocacy.

The day we packed up and left Pennsylvania and went to Maryland to live at the river in June of 1944 when I was ten and almost eleven, we kids thought that heaven had just dumped everything in our lap, and my love affair with the river began.

As we prepared to leave, the scruffy alley boys (still there, five years older now) crowded around to see if we were really going somewhere.

Mama dropped her usual stony silence, looked out of the car, and said, Look! Your nice friends have come to say goodbye!

I took a quick look and saw the alley gang grouped right behind our car, somewhat cleaned up. They all had clenched fists that I knew meant stones in their hands. They peered in the window.

Say goodbye to your nice friends, kids, Mama said with a smile.

They're not nice friends, Freddie began. He had a nasty, still-bloody scar on his forehead from a recent skirmish with our friends, which Mama was told happened when Freddie slammed into a wall (complete with nail; we always said it was a nail that did it, and Mama never seemed to wonder how that many nails were around).

They're the alley gang we— Freddie was sitting on my lap, and I gave him a sharp jab in the groin, and he shut up fast. We must never, never let it leak that we had slammed stones, rocks, anything gripable, anything throwable, into the face, head, legs, and viscera of those nice kids in the alley, who always had their barrages ready for us. But it was all over but goodbye.

We're going to a vast river that has no end, and there are snakes and sharks and, for all we know, a whale. That's what I'd told them. It wasn't really a lie because I didn't know yet what was waiting there for us.

No river has snakes and sharks and whales, and besides, you'll either be back or be drowned. I didn't really hate them, but I didn't particularly like them, and I never saw them again, my nice friends.

As Daddy pulled out of the drive, a barrage of pellets hit the back of the car with force that said the alley bunch's goodbye to us, the river people with snakes and sharks and whales. And my goodbye was to not even acknowledge they were there. We were going to the river!

Mama and Daddy both thought it was cute and that the car was backfiring, and they just smiled as we pulled away. And they didn't know they had in their tow a bunch of monsters who were about to be tamed into just hooligans by the river.

The road to the river was winding and bumpy. We didn't mind it, though tightly stuffed in back. We were Nellie, two years older than me, and my kid brothers, Freddie, Ronnie, and Bubby, each respectively two years younger; and I, Callie, was ten. We were all like stairsteps.

Mama and Daddy sat in front with Cherry, who was to be our new housekeeper, between them. Cherry was new; she took the place of Hepsibah, who Mama hadn't liked because as she shrieked at Daddy, You're looking at her legs, Nelson Clemmens! Daddy said he didn't even look at Hepsibah, much less her legs, and somehow Mama wouldn't believe him, and she shrieked at him awhile.

And then she turned on Hepsibah, then hollered, Man chaser, husband snatcher! really loud over and over, so we got the idea Hepsibah had done something. Still, we kids were terribly embarrassed, and in no time, Hepsibah began turning yellow right in front of our eyes, came down with the whole bit—yellow jaundice, complicated with something like cholera or thereabouts—and went into the Andover General, and Mama fired her just before she died. Mama never said what it was.

We had to take Cherry because we were ready to go to the river, and Cherry was the only one who showed up. Mama didn't like her either, but she didn't say anything. Cherry wore short shorts (above her knees), and her whole conversation was Whee! She said she went to fifth grade in Andover Elementary and put on airs, and Mama said she should be saying more than just Whee! She didn't like it either that the fee had gone up to $3.25, but she had no choice.

Daddy made sure he didn't look Cherry's legs over. There wasn't any trouble here because nothing bad happened; not up to that time, that was. But I, for one, was learning that anything at all could happen with my mama and daddy, and it did soon enough.

Bogged down with various bundles of clothes and implements, the wind whipping our faces, we watched expectantly for our new home.

I didn't hear a word from the front seat; the little group was quiet most of the way. Even the whees died down. I knew Mama didn't talk much, but Cherry, without encouragement, turned out finally to be as quiet as Mama. Cherry would be our housekeeper every day except at night. She kept out of it and left us to Mama, which wasn't long because she would shortly be destined to be parachuted out to parts unknown.

We knew there would be a river. There was a promise of one, but we'd never seen one and really didn't know what to expect, but it added to the excitement. Mama and Daddy, who had been very quiet, began just whispering once in a while, so we knew something real was hatching up front. We could pick up some of the excitement because this would be our new home that Daddy was somehow proud as he had taken up two jobs for almost a year to buy this cottage we were heading for. Mama said it would be her dream cottage, and it would pull us out of the quagmire we'd been living in because we were to no longer rent.

No one said much; we were all taken up with the ride. I did hear Cherry say one thing in a real sweet-sounding voice, Oh, Nel, I'm so excited. I never saw a riv—

His name's Nelson Clemmens, and you may call him Mr. Clemmens, Mama said in her waspiest voice. You didn't hear a peep out of Cherry after that. Mama, in her waspy voice, could dry up all the wildflowers along the winding road to Maryland.

The road narrowed as we headed south, with patches of tiger lilies along with the wildflowers aligning it and large tufts of weeds growing tightly everywhere you looked, and forevermore, I would think wistfully of the tiger lilies. I did not know that Maryland, for us, would wield only wildflowers from that point on.

Stop, Nelson, I want to get a bunch, Mama said on an impulse. I want some of those [the flowers]. We stopped while Mama jumped out and ran to the side bank, and she grabbed up a bunch of the tiger lilies. It would be the first thing to grace our new home. Everything seemed to take on new brightness, new significance as we sped on to find our new home with the river.

Finally, there was a bent-over blue sign saying simply in huge letters Maryland, with tall weeds almost obscuring it, and forever after, after miles and miles, I began to think we had crossed the whole world, and we might come to the end.

Nothing at all reminded you of Andover, the only other place we'd ever known, where we did see movies through my first two years, the kiddie shows that cost a nickel on Saturday afternoons with football games highlighted at the Majestic and June Allison, Cary Grant, everyone in the movie house yelling bloody murder when the camera broke and cut us off always at the best part when Daffy Duck was ready to be eaten savagely by—we never knew. The camera broke.

That all faded into the background gradually as now we had the river, and my whole excitement turned away from Andover with its movies and the short walks to Brookside Elementary and of a hovering war forever threatening shown to us in the movie news but which did not ever bother us kids much.

Yeah, the river! Later, up in the woods that I would discover that became part of my paradise, when I was very hungry, I would remember the smell of popcorn.

Comforted that we were at last in Maryland, after forever, with Freddie heavy on my lap, as miles and miles passed and as I began to think we were across the world, Daddy swerved sharply, and we were bumping along on a dirt road, and there was the river!

It smacked us right in the eyes, huge, blue, placid, winking millions of blinding, sparkling ripples at us in the sun. It was like the car was going to run right into it, but Daddy kept up the dirt road a way, and there were cottages!

The cottage (right alongside the dirt road and by the river) that was all ours jutted up from a hill of sorts, they all did, and it was freshly painted white with red trim at the windows. The other cottages, ten in all, dotted across the periphery, fanned out from ours; we were central.

Mama hadn't seen her dream cottage yet. Daddy had done all the arranging; he wanted to surprise her and said she would love it, and here we were!

Right from the start, we kids put our new home second. We hardly looked at it; our eyes were all for the river. We stood enthralled, planting ourselves on the pier, marveling at this huge river that we'd been brought to. We could feel the permeating coolness that was new and sweet to us, a coolness emanating from the river that would be ours to live with from now on.

We kids by now were pale with excitement. It was very exhilarating. This would come to be a whole new way of life for me, and I was never to return to city ways nor would I ever want to, if you don't count the disasters we did not know then we would find at the river.

What do we do now? I asked, looking at the sparkling river.

You swim, dummy. That was Nellie, my twelve-year-old sister, who did not yet become a monster, but she soon would. Nellie was not just my disagreeable older sister, but she was a nightmare in process, and I should have shoved her in to drown when I had a chance, but I didn't hate her enough then. I wondered how much time I would get. No idea. Remember, I was just a kid. Ten.

The idea would play around in my mind later to get her into the real deep water and leave her there because she hadn't learned to swim, but I hadn't either, not well enough to drown a sister. In the end, I let her live to spread her horror rampantly, innocent looking, but hurting me and the boys, who were too young to protest. I was not the type to kill. I was just a lot of talk.

I didn't really hate Nellie enough yet, but I was leaning irrevocably toward that…I hated Daddy. That's all. It's enough to hate only one person when you're only ten; there's always room for more when you're older. I'd known of people who hated a whole town!

You jump in, I said to Nellie, who was paramountly unaware of her planned possible demise. In another year, if she didn't drown all by herself, maybe I'd jump in and do it. But we were like babies, both of us afraid of the water. And the boys were waiting to see what we would do. This thing really called for courage. I summoned mine up, and I still hesitated. I knew I had to jump in sometime, and it called for courage. I would wait for Nellie…

On a lighter note, Mama's love affair with the river never happened to begin with (she remembered our big rented house in Andover that we'd just left), and from the first moment she saw our cottage, which was to have been her fairy-tale dream house, she shrieked, Nelson! It's just a shell! It's just a shell!

And as we listened from the pier, our future with the river was threatened because Daddy looked scared, and he was sweating a lot as he said, But it's ours, Portia, no rent ever again.

Cherry hung back and didn't say anything but Whee! And she stood way away from Daddy.

"A shell! Four walls and a roof! A tin roof!" You could hear Mama's voice reverberating down the river. We dipped our new blue rowboat out and tried not to hear her shrieks.

And a rowboat thrown in, Nelson added, free! He tried to smile while sweating, which was difficult, and failed.

I was afraid he'd drop everything, pile us in the car, and go back to Pennsylvania. And I was afraid she'd see the outhouse.

Nelson! She saw it. "You mean this is our bathroom—a miserable outhouse?"

I know, Portia, but we'll soon have a real bathroom. With commode. I promise.

I didn't want to face Davie and the alley gang if we had to go home again. We'd bragged to them of going to live along a river, and they'd grown quiet and stopped the stoning for one day out of deference to us, who'd therefore suddenly pulled ranks above them.

Going to live at a river was really something that seemed to choke up city kids. They didn't realize, as we found in time, that they'd have to become, of necessity, rather barbaric, wear their bathing suits to live in and drop off their cumbersome shoes, and lose their civilization. And they'd have to stop stoning and become uncivilized, like us. You certainly did not stone anyone at the river. Wrong!

Mama went into the cottage and darted out quickly, and I heard her shriek, Nelson! Nelson! Water! How about water, Nel?

Calling him Nel was not a good sign.

It's all been taken care of, Portia. I wouldn't bring you way out here without water. There's a pump upriver. All the water you want. Good water. Good. Natural well water. Daddy was sweating profusely.

But, Nelson, she said it quiet, like death, how do we get it from there to here? I could smell Pennsylvania. The Watford belched…

The Watford resided mostly in Maryland, not Pennsylvania, but it was the same Watford they had commuted to before from Pennsylvania, so it was still with us, four miles away into Hardesty—actually only ten miles from our old home in Andover to there. It was like a nightmare you couldn't get rid of. The smell, the dull, ghostlike forms, the awful inevitability, the possibility of getting sucked into it was ever present. I was in direct line, and I started feeling a horror that I might eventually get sucked into myself.

There was a long period of bawling here that Mama did while Daddy, still perspiring, explained the dynamics of the well in relation to their kids, us. And as Mama calmed down, Pennsylvania seemed a little farther away.

Cherry stayed out of the picture when Mama got loudly verbose. She was being smart. She had a job, and it would be easy, and there were just the kids and the river. She carried her little suitcase up the outside cement stairs and said, I'm going in to freshen up. Is that okay? Mama seldom answered her, so she just went ahead by herself.

The bouquet of tiger lilies lay dead on our bottom cement steps.

That's how five Clemmens kids forestalled their swimming to lug good water in buckets every morning from a pump four cottages up, taking turns supplying drinking water, dish water, slop water, and extra-duty Monday evening water while Mama washed on her scrubboard in the dank, dark earthen cellar and talked incessantly of the home we'd left in Andover.

I really wished she'd shut up. I didn't see anything wrong with the cottage. It sounded like she didn't like Daddy. She didn't like her kids; there was nothing she liked, so we tried to keep clear of her, as well as Daddy. And the only other adult, Cherry, was a nonentity.

We tried to always carry the water before dark because it was pitch-black out with the woods lining the upper paved road on the far side, and it was horribly spooky. There were shapes; we were terrified for our lives, but none of the shapes ever got us because we hurried home fast with our galvanized buckets of water while the handles dug into our palms and water slopped around.

That first dinner was the eight of us crowded around our round table in our tiny twelve-by-fourteen kitchen. The kerosene stove (the only cooker) was leaking fumes, so Daddy unlit it, and we just had cold bologna sandwiches that we'd brought in one of the cardboard cereal boxes that were carried in the car.

There were potato chips too that we'd carried, but they were crushed. Ronnie had sat on them in the car coming over. We didn't really care about the crushed chips; they were great, and Daddy liked them, but not Mama. She just had a sandwich, and said, vacantly; I thought, I wonder who's in our old house now.

Most of our scanty furniture had been brought days ahead, Daddy borrowing someone's trailer, who came along and gave Daddy a boost. We kids had the four cots in the loft. Bubby had to double up with Ronnie; and there was Mama and Daddy's mattress we'd hoisted on top of the car. They had a tiny bedroom downstairs off the living room that we weren't allowed in.

That first day, after Mama had done her worst screaming that she was going to do about the cottage, she looked at us, remembered she had us, all dirty already, and shrilled, Get in the water! And boy, did we scoot!

But, Mama, we can't swim.

"Well, learn!"

We all just jumped right in. Even Nellie had to jump in because she was right there on the bank with us. It struck me that we might all drown because we couldn't swim, and then Mama wouldn't have any more kids. Also struck was if Mama had visions of losing us all at once; she was disappointed because it didn't happen. Five Clemmens kids swam and survived. I think I forgot about drowning Nellie.

Mama might have smiled a little; I thought there was a smile when she shooed us into the river. It looked strange because Mama never smiled. We never reckoned we should have drowned our mother, and it would be a good idea to drown our father too ideally. But we weren't that angry yet. I thought maybe I'd get Nellie later.

We were the sole occupants that first month until the summer vacationers began to arrive. Until then, we owned the place. We were nomads in a vast, new territory that had a river, and we came to feel it was all ours—the ten cottages, the woods, some fields, the bottom dirt road, and the top road with cars.

And Daddy did begin that first week to make improvements. Anything he did was an improvement. The small room in the back would eventually give us our bathroom, and Mama simmered down to soft sobs, and our future at the river seemed happily secure.

Bronzed and muscular, we soon lost our city pallor and played in the muddy edges of the river. Though the mud reached almost to our knees and had glass, it wasn't enough to keep us out until we took our rowboat and measured around with an oar. Not that we were unhappy in the mud; we just didn't know something was better out there.

What happened was, in no time we found a perfect sandbar with our oar out in the middle in front of our house, a little to the left, and went about a quarter mile downriver, and the depth to my shoulders; and as we swam around on our new sandbar, we said goodbye forever to the mud.

Our section of the Monocacy was called Larsen's Dam, which in 1924 a man with the unlikely name of Phinius Larsen built the dam downriver and for all the vacationers in the ten cottages that became dotted alongside. The river widened considerably, which soon became a vast playground across the whole expanse of Larsen's Dam for us and the vacationers that would be rolling in the first week in July.

We didn't know anything then that Larsen's Dam would soon be teeming with life and would become most exhilarating and exciting, that we would be meeting new people, colorful people, filling our lives in the atmosphere of vacation, and that they would be mostly friendly.

Yet except for July and August, after the vacationers left for the winter, we were completely isolated, which wasn't too bad, except the cold, dreary winter days that we were to find later bogged down heavily, and we were more or less confined to our tiny, now dreary cottage, seven of us. No neighbors now, no lights, and I couldn't help yearning sorrowfully for the streetlights in Andover.

School was eventually to bring some surcease, but there were still hours each day of utter isolation. But that didn't hit us until later when we were to realize gradually that except for the warm months of vacationers and swimming, of playing baseball and trekking in the woods, the inevitable depressing cold months would settle in with a boredom we were not equipped to easily handle.

But by the end of that first day in June, in our new life, we'd forgotten Andover with the back-alley stoning, although that experience was to come in handy later as we met our nemesis in the form of a boy two cottages to the left; not everyone was friendly. And we had yet to receive the pleasure of BoJo Russett.

Becoming situated, Mama and Daddy, after that first day, went off to work as usual (if two of the gray ghosts at the Watford Shoe missed a day of work, there was no pay, and even if one were missed, it still could still not adequately pay the bills or put food on the table). This was the same Watford they'd commuted to from Andover, but we'd just moved closer to it now in Hardesty as the main plant was here, four miles east of us.

One day after we were there about two weeks, there was some excitement. Mama got a bad headache. Dinner was over, and after we washed up the dishes, Cherry suggested, Why don't you go for a nice, peaceful walk along the river. It might help your headache.

Mama looked doubtful, but Daddy said, Sure, a long walk would surely help. I thought he said surely help, and I was sure he said a long walk. So out she went.

Now I'd heard the words hanky-panky before, but I wasn't sure what it meant. Yet…

I found out real soon what hanky-panky was when Mama went on her long, headache-curing walk along the river. I was only ten, but I knew you didn't take a housekeeper into your bedroom when your Mama was away and bump around and make strange noises for a half hour.

But as soon as Mama was out of sight, that's what happened. Daddy grabbed Cherry into the bedroom so fast they were a blur, and he couldn't seem to get back out.

We kids were afraid because the little cottage began to shake and groan, involving a certain amount of severe behavior that began to shake the house, and I was afraid the footers would break as I was finding out what hanky-panky was.

When Daddy said long walk, I believed he meant, by long, to strike off and see how far you could get along the river and still know where you were. I figured her for about three miles and an hour.

But Mama came sailing home sooner than anyone expected, especially the noisy duo in the bedroom. My headache just went away! she called, smiling. Oh, Nel, what a wonderful idea that was! Nel? Cherry?

Oh, they're in the bedroom making funny noises, Bubby said as Nelson and Cherry ducked out of their little love nest quickly.

Nel said heatedly, We thought we heard a noise in there and thought someone broke in.

Did Dad think, being only ten, I was dumb or something? I was almost eleven. And Mama was even older than me.

Daddy's shirttail was out, and Cherry's sleeve was torn, and she sported an angry purple mark on her neck. Cherry sobbed, Oh God, it was him, not me!

Daddy stayed silent because he knew he didn't have a prayer. I thought he should say, I don't know what came over me and "It'll never happen again," but he must have known it was futile, and he was caught red-handed, and he just pathetically backed silently into a corner and looked like he wanted to fall through the floor.

A certain amount of profanity was involved here as Mama yelled, Youlousydamnsonobitchmancrazysonbitchdon'tyoueverdarkenmydoorstepagain! You whore! Mama knew hanky-panky when she saw it. Get out! she screamed, Get out!

Frightened by such anger, her Get out! resonating in the air, the boys and I ran out, only to be overtaken by a sobbing Cherry as she pushed past us going up the top steps. It sounded like a faint Whee! but it couldn't have been.

As we pushed up the steps behind Cherry, before I knew we could come back, I was thinking I was only ten, but the boys and I could live in the woods and eat nuts, maybe kill a squirrel, or set some traps. But she meant Cherry get out, not us.

"Not you, Mama said to the boys and me, and we jerked around. Her! You kids get back in here! I meant your loving housekeeper, not you!"

She turned sharply, and I thought she was going for the gun, but she wasn't. She was going for Daddy.

We thought by all rights Daddy should be going too, making us minus a paycheck. But he stayed, so we stayed too, because other than Thursdays, the groceries were better in the house than the woods, despite all its bounty, and we harbored the thought that we could forage for food in the woods on our sparse Thursdays.

So Cherry left us, and after Mama went loudly for Daddy, he slept on the glider for two months. We thought that was the end of Cherry, but she came back months later when we'd all but forgotten her, with something, not a disease, but something worse that I still couldn't figure out. Mama should've killed her while she could. Or Daddy, but we needed his paycheck.

After Mama began talking to a contrite Daddy again, she said, We don't need any housekeepers anymore. The kids can keep themselves now.

Of course, of course, Daddy said, who was real nice for a while but looked sad.

And as they left that morning, the boys and I were put out to pasture by our elder sister, Nellie, who ruled the roost and, of course, preferred staying in the house alone.

Thus began what we kids called the reign of terror, an "Okay, now get out and stay out. I have all this work to do" kind of reign. Nellie was a pain. This was where she came into warranting some kind of demise, but she was the anointed, who took over as big boss when there were no parents within the family, parents who spent most of their time of necessity, as I clued you in, at the Watford. And Nellie preferred the house more or less to herself without kids.

So we were outside kids, without the benefits of a home; so our days, the boys and mine, after being jettisoned out every day, included being dirty, unkempt. And yet we loved our lives because after everything else, there was still the playground of Larsen's Dam and new vacationers who were still pouring in.

Mama had two factory dresses, drab, faded flowered ones that she wore interchangeably to work, and two church dresses, one red print that Daddy had given her from a couple Christmases ago and a black that she'd pulled out of the ragbag.

She'd stand on the top step in her faded factory dress and scream, seeing our wet footprints in the mud, I know you're there. Get out here, you kids! I know where you are! And we'd come out from the bushes or wherever we'd been hiding.

That was usually our dinner call; otherwise, we could go anywhere we wanted. Didn't matter where our mud tracks led to. Unless, of course, Daddy called.

And we soon came to dodge Daddy, like the devil was after us. Daddy had been a bit reserved in his beatings in Andover but quickly turned barbaric after we hit the river, if angry (forget Nellie, the anointed, who reeked amnesty). Just us four knew we were in trouble, and we stayed as far away from him as we could.

Daddy was too mean sometimes to call Daddy, so he became Mr. Clemmens, automatic wielder of what we secretly called the torture instrument. We knew of no other Daddy but supposed naturally that all daddies beat their kids, yet we just knew we didn't like ours.

Chapter 2

Suddenly it was July, and with the cottages filled to overbrimming, our isolation ended as we were overrun by vacationers, colorful vacationers invading Larsen's Dam with much action and firecrackers, drinking, shouting, happy people who came to claim their cottages, taking away the myth we'd been harboring that we owned it all.

One by one they came in and flooded the cottages until all we had left to call our own was the cottage we lived in. We got so we didn't mind losing what we'd never owned in the first place because these colorful, friendly people were much better than empty cottages, and there was a bonus besides: the vacationers—strangers, really—who wouldn't have looked at us in Andover, didn't even mind that we four were just kids.

We seemed to just naturally be included in whatever they were doing. Nellie never got out of