Where Have All the People Gone?
by Randall Countryman
Growing up in the countryside of Southern Ohio offered little potential for developing many friendships. In farm country, the houses didn’t set right on top of one another, or even next door. Our closest neighbor was an old couple a mile away on a lonely stretch of road, one lane wide, whose black pitch softened and bubbled in the hot sun. Underfoot the bubbles would pop and my sneakers left a trail through the tar and out into the middle of that ribbon cut through the cornfields and hardwood forests, on my way to investigate a frog, snake or other unsuspecting creature pressed into the pavement after making a bad decision to cross the road at the wrong time. It didn’t matter if they looked both ways or not, some just didn’t escape the proverbial train. I used to mow the old people’s lawn and every Christmas my family would take them a big basket of fruit which contained several varieties of jams, crackers, meats and cheeses. Seeing their wrinkled faces with toothless grins light up, and the moistening in their eyes made an otherwise cold, snowy day glow with warmth.
Despite the seclusion of country life, I made acquaintances and friendships with kids from school. We played baseball together, hunted, fished and swam in the creeks and ponds that dotted the landscape. Our parents often invited one another over for cookouts and family events. My best friend Rusty and I became inseparable after the second grade and the two of us could find more mischief than ten boys. Actually we didn’t have to go find chaos, we were like small satellites or planets that had our own gravitational pull and it knew that. Trouble had an uncanny ability to track us down. I would hate to have to play hide and seek with it, because I would surely be discovered instantly.
Rusty was the kind of kid who was going to have it relatively easy in life. He had natural good looks: dirty blond hair, sparkling white teeth and just the right bone structure and facial features that would ensure he wouldn’t have a lonely life. He often experimented with hair styles; short and spiked, shoulder length, parted in the middle and feathered back, or parted on the left, and he even showed up to school one morning with a perm. None of these alterations negatively affected his appearance. I on the other hand was often introduced to the business end of my mother’s barber scissors. That certainly didn’t help my looks any.
We went on great expeditions through the hills and woods, our backpacks full of bologna and cheese sandwiches, little bags of potato chips, cigarettes and cans of beer stolen from our parents. We explored abandoned homesteads and barns and stuffed our packs with old books that had yellowed, dog-eared pages, lanterns, rust encrusted tools, cookware and anythingelse that appeared to have some measure of value to it. Our idea of valuable treasure was pretty liberal. I remember on one of our excursions we returned with nothing more than a sack full of groundhog bones. We cleaned them in a solution of bleach and warm water, scrubbing them with an old toothbrush. Metal coat hangers were used for support as we methodically reconstructed the skeleton and mounted it on the best piece of wood I could find. That board just happened to be one of the shelves from my mother’s china cabinet, but I didn’t break any of her dishes and I left them neatly stacked on the counter, which I thought should have accounted for something, but it didn’t. See what I mean by trouble tracking us down?
I found one dilapidated house in particular to be spooky. More than spooky actually, it was downright scary. It was an old two-story house, probably over a hundred years old, and had nearly fallen in on itself by the time we stumbled across it. The front door leaned awkwardly, hanging on one hinge where there had once been three. It creaked eerily as we brushed past it to gain entrance into the creepy recesses of what could have very well been in my mind a haunted mansion. Plaster from the ceiling had fallen in powdery chunks and mingled with the layer of dust on the floor where we stood. I wondered who was the last living person to stand on this sagging floor. The hair standing up on the nape of my neck made me feel pretty certain that the dead had walked where I now stood, and not too long ago either, maybe even last night. The planks groaned and threatened to give way under our weight. Here and there, vines and plants had pushed their way between the boards and basked in the shafts of sunlight that had found holes in the roof and the clapboard sides of the house. The floor, or what was left of it, was also littered with broken glass, pieces of torn clothing and most troublesome of all, a little red shoe that was lying on its side next to a ragged, gaping hole. The sneaker looked to be about the right size to fit a four or five year old and was partially eaten away. I could see the puncture marks caused by teeth—no, fangs, sharp canine fangs. A rational mind would deduce they were probably caused by some animal that lived in the woods and had chosen it as a chew toy, intrigued by the odor, as it used the room for shelter during a storm. All sense of rationality had departed from me the moment I entered the house and I just knew the red color on the shoe wasn’t natural, it was blood and the animal that had chewed the shoe was not of the ordinary cuddly forest variety, it was an evil beast that had ripped through the sneaker while the child was still in it. I wanted nothing more than to leave that place way before nightfall when unknown things lurked and patrolled the hallways. There wasn’t anything of value except an old wire bird cage by the door; we took it with us. At the last moment before crossing the threshold to exit the crumbly building, I dashed back to the wide-open mouth in the floor and snatched up the tennis shoe and stuffed it into my pack. Perhaps it would be useful in solving a missing person case in the future. Perhaps some day I would be a detective.
I miss those treasure hunts and adventures and I would even go back into that house right now, haunted or not, just to relive the experience and enjoy the childhood friendship with my pal. I haven’t heard from my friend, Rusty, in over twenty years. In my isolation from the real world, I get nostalgic and become curious of the lives that have touched me somewhere deeply. Did I impact them in the same way? Am I alone in my thoughts of what has become of them? We lose people in our big, fast-paced world. We become what all the little events of days stacked upon days make of us. Life as a whole is the finished piece from a proficient artist or poet. Each experience is but one stroke of the pen, its ink splashed across the page. Every poem is a masterpiece, regardless of the labor involved in its creation. There are no mistakes, only the use of an artistic license to vary the work. Stories are often intertwined and share the same space of parchment between the binding. The book of life with its pages pressed together opposite of one another, allows them to participate in an alternate landscape, get to know each other and possibly build friendships. They inevitably get lost in each other and within themselves.
That is what I mean when I say we lose people. We get on with our own business of living and waiting to cease to be. Everything we have shared is boxed away and stored somewhere out of sight where our sounds and smells are kept, until we are reminded of instances of time, of people and of places. I am not speaking of losses due to freak accidents, disease or old age coming to collect when rent’s due. I write of the friendships and relationships we’ve encountered and promised never to forsake. The same ones that for whatever reason get broken and forsaken. We lose people and wonder where they have gone.
