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The Red House (Story in progress) Copyright October 31, 2024 by Gary E. Andrews

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1. "Anishine Remembers" (October, 1920)

Anishine' (ah-NEE-shin-NAY) has only vague memories of the tenements where she had lived all her life.

Her vivid memories begin at the time of... the move... away from the tenements somewhere in the city, to the country suburbs.

"Remember," she asks, "in 'The Wizard of Oz' when Dorothy and Toto wake up and the world is no longer black and white, but color? That's what it seems like, now, looking back. That's what I remember, is colors."

She remembers one day there was lots of packing of everything in her home. They didn't have much.

"It was... fascinating... a bit frightening!" she told me.

Anishine remembers the smell and texture of a big black suitcase. Her mother pulled it out from under the bed, the dust, the two big straps like... like her father's belt... that went around it.

Anishine remembers the concern on her mother's face. It was there all the time now. Anishine liked when her mother would pick her up and the look would go away, by degrees. Finally, then, was her mother's face, smiling, laughing, talking, the way it... used to be... the way it always... used to be.

The old man who had come with cardboard boxes was cheerful.

Anishine was afraid of him! He was loud! Anishine remembers wanting to play with the cardboard boxes. She had a 'playbox' once but it got burnt up in the potbellied stove.

He was friendly, hugging Anishine's mother, laughing, calling out from the other room, walking through with empty boxes, pulling smaller boxes out of bigger boxes. He rolled up the rag rugs, and then his big brown work shoes clopping on bare floors like her father's hammer nailing floorboards and loose steps in the stairwell outside. Her mother filling a box with dishes. Anishine remembers how the man quickly folded the flaps so they stayed down, picking the box up, clomping across the floor, going out.

And coming back!

Anishine remembers thinking he was leaving the first time he took a box out, closed the door behind himself. She ran to her mother again when she heard him in the stairs, coming back. More boxes to fill. Her mother saw her fright, snatched her up, grinning. It's okay. Everything is alright. The man opened the door and came right in again.

Her mother stood too close to the old man to suit Anishine, his big red face, his unfamiliar voice, his loudness. She turned away from him, looked over her mother's shoulder at the house in disarray. She remembers her mother keeping everything in its place, in the kitchen, in the bedroom.

When they went down the hall to the bathroom she remembers her mother cleaning there, and everything there then having a place, while they were there.

Now... then... Anishine remembers... there was... chaos... disorder. It was confusing. Her mother puts her down. She walks through the two rooms, the bedroom, the kitchen, and sees things... out of place. Pots and pans on the floor, clothes on the kitchen table and chairs, books on the bed, the dark and light striped bare mattress, the closet door standing open, the closet empty, except... for her coat, her mother's coat, and... her fathers green Army uniform. He used to wear it every day when he first came.

"Stay out of the way, Anishine!" her mother called. She remembers repeating they rhyme in her head.

The man is back. They talk. They laugh, the old man, her mother, so Anishine isn't as afraid any more. Still, she wants to stay close to her mother, tries to hang onto her mother's dress. But her mother is moving around, putting things in boxes. Anishine remembers she still didn't know what was going on. 'Stay out of the way, Anishine'. She lets go her mother's skirts and wanders about the bedroom, the kitchen. The old man is going out with the big black suitcase.

Anishine remembers wondering where her father was. He had not come home for days. She looked for him, listened for him, smelled for him in the mornings. When he was home there was coffee in the mornings. When he came home there was hugging and kissing, laughing and strong hands that squeezed her, lifted her high up by the yellow light bulb, and down again. She remembers crying the first time he did it... because he lifted her fast, let go of her, let her fly up to the ceiling, by the lightbulb and fall back down. He caught her, but she cried and wouldn't let him do it again. Later he lifted her up, held her up, set her back down. She trusted him again. He smelled of woodsmoke and sweat and shaving lotion and sometimes with beer on his breath. Anishine remembers. She watched out the window for him when the sun shone in the bedroom and kitchen windows in the evenings, shading her eyes with both hands, watching people and horses on the street far below. She watched the rain fall, outside those windows.

Anishine remembers how her father came in, wearing his Army uniform. She was very young, but it was strange for him to be in their kitchen, hugging her mother. He moved in with them. It was strange to have him in her house. He was scary to her but soon it was normal. They all slept in the big bed. She knew he was her father. She remembers her mother telling her he was her father. But she was four years old and had never seen her father. He was away... at a war. She didn't know what a war was.

Her father stopped coming home, just some days ago, lots of days, and never came. And never came. And never came.

Her mother cried. And her mother cried. And her mother cried.

Anishine has a... vague memory of going... somewhere... men in long white dresses, the stink of chemicals, people in... beds... covered up with sheets. She remembers her mother's face, terrified. She remembers crying because her mother was crying, crying so hard. She was glad to get out of there, back to their home.

One day, Anishine remembers, her mother gave her biscuits and gravy for breakfast.

And biscuits and gravy for lunch.

And biscuits and gravy for supper.

The next day... well... Anishine remembers... that WAS the next day, the day an old man came with boxes, cardboard boxes. There had been only one biscuit that morning, and no gravy. And no milk. There was jelly... but... Anishine remembers the butter knife scraping and clanking in the empty jar, then a spoon, scraping, scratching, just enough jelly for a few bites of biscuit... too much biscuit... not enough jelly.

When all the boxes and bags and pots and pans were boxed up and gone Anishine remembers running through the rooms, hearing her shoes on the bare wooden floors, echoing off the bare walls. She shouted out, just a noise. She heard it echo. Shouted again. She remembers talking, listening, being quiet. Stepping quietly through the room. Stamping her foot. She remembers passing her hand through dust in the shafts of sunlight coming through the kitchen curtains. And... looking out on the street... searching the faces, the figures, one more time.

Her mother turns off the light, calls her name. She has her green coat on. She picks Anishine up, stands her on the striped mattress, and holding on to the white painted iron bed, cracks in the paint, dark spots where the paint was gone, as her mother puts her coat on, tugging her left hand off the bedframe, to put her left arm in its sleeve, buttoning it up all the way to her neck. She knew they were going outside. Her mother holds her right hand as she jumps to the floor, the noise echoing. Anishine runs past her mother to the kitchen. Her mother comes and turns off the light there. It's dark inside, but still light outside. She looks around at the corners of the ceiling, under the kitchen table to the stove. The dark corner where the empty wooden box is, no longer with potatoes, onions. Her mother picks her up, walks back into the other dark room, the closet, the mattress, the white bed, goes to the windows, parts the left curtain from the right, and Anishine parts the right curtain from the left. They look out. Anishine remembers that last look down at the street where her father never came.

She remembers seeing the wagon, old gray wood, a lighter shade than the soot tainted tenements, the old man moving around it in the red brick street, his hat hiding his face, the black suitcase, her father's uniform, the boxes in the back, the mule with blinders on its head. Anishine remembers.

2. "The World Came Real"

Her mother carried her down the stairs. She remembers. She didn't like all the steps coming up, having to climb them herself because her mother's hands were full with potatoes and onions. But she remembers not minding going down, hanging onto the handrail with both hands, one step at a time, sometimes sitting, slipping step to step, wondering how fast she could go down if she tried. One day a nail caught her dress, tore it.

Anishine remembered... remembers.

She decided that day it was her favorite dress. She had another one just like it, same handiwork of her mother's needle and thread, a faded purple. The torn one was a faded pink. Her mother sewed up the tear, but Anishine remembers knowing it was always there, looking at the place when she sat at the top of the stairs and thought about it. Her father... hammered that old nail. She remembers going with him as people asked him to come in and hammer nails in their houses, nails in walls to hang a picture of Jesus, a house with water and trees around it, blue sky and white clouds, a nail to hang a coat on, a nail in a loose floorboard. The houses were a little different, looked different but not much, smelled different, just two rooms like hers, or maybe more that she could see through the doorways. Anishine remembers holding her ears while her father's hammer pounded nails!

Anishine feels the sun, warm on her face, her hands. The wind comes, cool, cold until it stops and the sun comes back. Leaves blow around the street. She whirls from her mother's left to see where the wind takes the colored leaves to her right, down the broken sidewalk, into the street. Down the street she sees big black trees that make a shady tunnel, their leaves yellow and red and orange, in the trees, on the ground, on the red brick street, lighting the tunnel.

The mule snorts! Her mother tenses up, squeezes her tighter, moves away from the mule, back beside the wagon. Anishine watches the mule move its legs, bending its knees, hears the iron shoes click on the red bricks. She can't see its eyes for the blinders. She wonders about its eyes. Anishine remembers.

Then her mother is setting her on her feet, up in the front of the wagon! She remembers... looking down at the rump of the mule... turning... seeing the top of the old man's hat, him climbing up on the other side! She turns, reaches for her mother, wanting to cry out, her voice choking in her throat, but her mother is coming up, climbing, holding her dress. Anishine reaches for her mother, pulls at her clothes, reaches to be picked up again when her mother is standing in the wagon.

She remembers... her mother sitting down, picking her up, but instead of holding her on her lap, turning to set her on the seat between, beside the old man. She looks up at his face, big and close! She sees his cheek flex and hears him make a sound with his mouth, flip the leather straps that go out to the mule. There is no time to protest! The mule lurches forward with the wagon! There is the clopping of hooves on brick and squeaks and rattles of the wagon and the iron wheels rolling over the bricks. She hears dishes and pans rattle in the back. There is so much to hear, to see. There are people, strange faces, blank faces without smiles, old faces with smiles, the old gray tenements, colorful clothes on lines running across the street over their heads, clouds, blue sky, wind, noises, people yelling, smells of food. They pass the store where they got potatoes and onions. There are orange pumpkins, big ones and little ones, red apples and yellow ones, potatoes... and onions.

Anishine remembers being very hungry, but forgetting it, at the time. It... was all... too real, more real than anything, any memory before that day. Memories before seem blurry, short, vague... unimportant in broad detail, just... the important... things.

"The world came real," she tells me.

They turn a corner. The shadows of buildings make it colder. The wind blows too hard, hurts her eyes. She snuggles against her mother. Her mother puts her arm around Anishine, lifts her, puts the left side of her big green coat under and pulls it around her, covering her shoulder, both their legs, and holds it there. It blocks the wind. The wind blows her hair.

She talked; her mother talked, but Anishine doesn't remember what she said. The old man talked too, short sentences, laughter.

It made her feel better, her mother talking, the warmth of her body, her smell. It was all... everything was alright. Everything was going to be alright. Just different. But alright.

It wasn't, Anishine remembers... but... I'll let her tell you.

3. "Carpets And Couches And Clothes"

I remember... traveling through the city, the wagon slow, steady, the mule snorting. I remember the sameness... the same grey wooden buildings, the occasional painted building, a store, a house, the signs, the red letters and yellow letters, the black letters on white, like in my picture book... my father brought for me when... he first came.

There were lots of horses, a few cars. They moved by us, coming from behind, passing by so I only saw the back of them, and quickly on and away. I smelled them. One is parked on the other side so I get to see it as we come to it, big round lights on its front, the slots in the hood, a flying woman statue in the middle of the front, steam rising from it. Two men stand looking at the steam, fists on their waists, both of them, turning their heads to each other, talking, nodding. A woman is inside, on the sidewalk side. I see her, her hat, her face, until we pass by, see her arms in her lap, her coat, green like my mother's. I see its shiny wooden sides as we pass, the shiny wooden steering wheel inside behind the glass. There's a little boy in the back, looking back at me. He raises his hand and waves. I wave back but my hand is under my mother's coat. By the time I got it out between the buttons I know he didn't see me. But he saw my eyes.

We called them 'automobiles' in those days, vehicles that didn't need a draught animal to make them move. They moved 'automatically' with foot pedals and levers. I didn't call them anything. I didn't like the noise. It scares the mule. That scares me. I didn't like the smell of petroleum smoke. I like wood smoke.

We thought... my mother thought automobiles were just toys for the rich. And they were. You had to have hundreds of dollars to own one. And more to buy the gasoline to keep them going or they quit on you. And I heard they took the tires off in wintertime and stored them in talcum powder and left the car in the barn until good weather came again.

"Mules go, rain or snow!" my grandfather always... says. The old man is my grandfather, my father's father.

I see a woman on a bicycle riding there by the stopped car. I've seen her from our windows before. I wonder if I could ride a bicycle.

People would vow, 'I'll never own one! My horse, my mule, my oxen move fast enough to suit me!'

'I don't need to go that fast', they'd say.

My mother told me when they heard locomotive trains would go fifteen miles per hour they said, 'Oh! You wouldn't be able to breathe going that fast.'

Now look. Not a horse in sight and every man with a job drives a car or wants to as soon as he gets enough money. And trains zoom through the countryside. Cars speed on every street. My grandfather would yell at them, "Slow down!", as they would go by the house, loud enough for drivers to hear him, "Slow down!" Sometimes they seemed to speed up instead, the noise louder instead of quieter.

He'd look after them and say just so I could hear it, "Tear it up! Hell ain't half full yet!"

(Anishine laughs, sounds like... herself again. She goes on.)

I remember... I must have fallen asleep. I remember waking up, poking my head out of my mother's coat, and there are lots of trees on both sides of the road. There is gravel in the road, crunching beneath the wheels.

I look back and see the city below us, down the hill, the jumble of gray buildings, the smoke from every chimney, the river shining golden white in the sun, boats in the water, church steeples. The wind is warmer now, blows sweet with autumn leaves. Leaves shower out of the trees into the wagon, on the mule, on us. I collect them, hold them in my left hand and reach to catch more with my right. The old man catches them too, or... when they land on his sleeve, he hands them to me. Mother helps me... I remember, turn them all the same way so they're easier to hold onto. I... remember her hands, red from washing sheets and blankets and clothes, blue from the cold. I hold her hand with both of mine... to... make it warmer. I had let go of the leaves there inside her coat. I remember thinking I'd get them later, but I forgot to.

We went on forever, it seemed, down the road between barbed wire fences, fields with hay standing, some with hay cut down, through little forests where cows stood chewing, some horses in the fields, then we turned off the gravel road onto a blacktop road, with curbs of cut stone. There are houses that stand all by themselves at the top of low hills, with long gravel lanes up through grassy yards, wilting flowers, gardens with corn in rows, and big orange pumpkins, fodder shocks. The houses get closer together, not so far from neighbor to neighbor, and smaller, the yards smaller, the gardens bigger, hedges, white-washed tree trunks in rows along the road, brick and stone columns by the lanes going up to the houses, numbers and letters, names, I knew. I remember... wondering whose homes these were, who decided to live here, to have flowers and gardens and dogs.

Dogs run free, barking, stay behind the stone walls of the yards of the houses, front feet up, looking over, barking, barking, barking. Other dogs bark from somewhere behind the houses, where barns and garages stand, little outbuildings, and outhouses. One garage leans left like it may lay down in the garden at any minute. More than one has a roof sagging between front and back... distorted... shapes. The dogs quit barking, after we get away from their houses.

"There's the store," the man says. "Almost home," he says while I'm thinking about the dogs. I see the store, letters in the window, on the sign at the top where there's a balcony as wide as the building. I see potatoes and onions and pumpkins and apples.

"Do you have a dog?" I remember asking him.

It... shocked me... to ask him that.. to ask him... anything. I was embarrassed, tried to squeeze closer to my mother. Where had that... courage... that... boldness come from? I had... forgotten myself.

"No," he says. "Emma won't have a dog. She says they just make messes, need feeding, need walking, need... leave hair all over carpets and couches and clothes."

I remember him saying 'carpets and couches and clothes', saying it again in my head, 'carpets and couches and clothes', and again. We never had a couch. We never had carpets. We had rugs. My mother made rugs out of old clothes, rag rugs she called them.

I remember... sitting there... never having... thought about having a dog... keeping a dog... suddenly wanting to say, 'I'll clean up the messes! I'll feed the dog! I'll walk it!' How to keep it from leaving hair on carpets and couches and clothes eludes me. I sit, don't make any of those... promises. Then... I wonder who Emma is. I do ask that question, again, shocked by my speaking to him.

"Who's Emma?" I remember hearing my voice. It echos in my head like the echoes in our empty rooms.

"Why Emma's your grandmother!" he says. "Didn't your father ever..."

When he stops... I remember... a strange... feeling. I look up at the side of his face. I look back at the side of my mother's face. I remember noticing then... how much I look like her. And how much the old man looks like... my father. I shut up. I remember... not... wanting to know... anything more about... anything... right then. It was too much to wonder about. I remember thinking I'd... know everything... later... about... family.

The Red House... he called it that... said, "There's The Red House!"

Down the lane, I see big unruly brown-leafed bushes along the yard of the property on the left, and then... a red brick house on top of the hill, and on the right... stands the... The Red House.

I thought it was... a rusty red, like one of my crayons, not a red red. I wondered which box my crayons were in. And my picture book; and Shakespeare. I wanted to draw the... The Red House and color it. It's different shades, dark rusty red, lighter rusty red, and almost white like the paint has come off, faded in places. It's full of windows and doors! I want to color it, draw it, and color it, just like that. It hasn't changed has it? Gary?

Lost in my own reverie I realize Anishine is asking me.

"No," I tell her. "It hasn't changed."

She goes on, describing it just like it is.

Double doors of shiny brown wood on the ground floor, rounded on the top corners to meet square in the middle, a concrete foundation. I don't think I knew what concrete was. All I'd ever seen was wood houses, gray wood, the tenements, wooden stores. There were brick buildings in Portsmouth but mostly it was wood. Gray wood, painted wood, white, red barns.

The windows of The Red House have stone all around them, as you see, still today. It looks like the concrete to me. You know how the concrete foundation slopes up with the lay of the land? I remember wondering if the floor inside was the same way, sloping up.

The second story balcony and the other one near it looked like a... like a Romeo and Juliette house... a castle or... something. I could see another balcony sticking out toward the road. Then another one higher up, and the windows, and the roof. The roof... reminded me of my father's hair, when it got long and he parted it in the middle and he tied it behind his neck. The roof... the way... it slopes toward the street, back toward the field. I see all the windows, wonder who lives in all the rooms, if we share the bathroom with other families. I know... we're coming to live here... in The Red House.

I can see Anishine thinking, to herself, remembering, vague memories, her father's voice reading Shakespeare, her mother's voice, reading the same, and unable to continue, crying. She's told me of these things.

Anishine shakes herself, or shivers, lifts her tea, comments, not a complaint, just a statement, "My tea's gone cold." She sips again, and again. She looks at my teacup, empty because I drank it all while it was hot. She smiles, regards me, looks up at my hair, back in my eyes.

"There's one big oval window and one small round one," she says, "to the right of the double doors. The second floor balcony... with the cast iron grill fence around it..."

I too remember the first time I saw it. I was a young boy, not as young as Anishine was when she first came. And I saw her too, then, opening those double doors, stepping out, young and beautiful in a summer daylight. A little dog came and sat on the threshold beside her, watched us coming down the lane in my father's car.

I remember my father saying, 'There's the store. Almost home.' And then, The Red House, and Anishine.

My world changed... the day I met my cousin, Anishine.

4. "Home, In The Red House" (September, 1934)

I was in trouble. The school had called the police. The police had found my father at... work... and told him I had vandalized school property. He told me, "The cops... they made it sound violent! They said my name, 'Armand Andrews?' I thought I was caught at something! They told me you'd vandalized school property. I thought you'd burned the damned place down!"

"It scared me to think you'd done something horrible!" he laughed, later, driving us home.

I had painted what I thought was a clever, clowny face, on an old stone wall that already looked like that face. I just added some details with a small can of white paint and a brush. It took sixty seconds! It didn't take all of sixty seconds.

The Principal asked me, "Evan, did you plan this?"

He called me by my middle name. He didn't know me. I thought it a foolish question. I obviously did not find the paint and brush on site... at the scene of the crime. Of course I planned it. I saw the face in the natural contours of the stone wall around the playground, on the outside, by the street, done the paint, and that's when Mr. Higginbotham saw me outside the school grounds and came to see.

I don't have to answer the foolish question. We hear the cops and dad come noisily up the hall, six men's shoes clomping on the marble floor, echoing in the empty hall. Dad, followed by two cops, strides into the lobby of the Principal's office, his long coat laid open, his hands in its pockets, disturbing the quiet here, interrupting the interrogation.

The Principal sends me out to sit in the office lobby. My dad touches my shoulder, smiles as I pass him. The cops go in. They close the door. Mrs. Cobham is typing, noisy clickety clack. I hear the voices, the Principal's high voice, my father's lower, calmer, the policemen's, one or both, somewhere in the middle. It isn't long before the door opens. The cops come out, look at me, each of them, eye contact, mug-shotting into memory, I figure, and leave. My father comes out, that ever-present smirky smile, and talks to Mrs. Cobham about getting my records sent to... to where?

People were always threatening, "That's going on your permanent record." I wondered if we had temporary records and permanent records. Nobody ever talked about temporary records. I'd been teasing Gladys Feldman about anything she did, telling her, "That's going your permanent record!" Any excuse to say anything and look in those brown eyes and see her cheeks dimple slightly, then more, and finally a smile. If her mouth went all the way to a grin I thought I was in love. I was. Ooo Gladys? Where are you now?

Dad thanks Mrs. Cobham, turns from the counter, smiles, gestures with his hat, his right arm, toward the door. I go. Mrs. Cobham stands, watches. She looks... sympathetic. I raise my right hand to wave at her. We walk out into the hall, me expecting to go back to class but dad going out the main hall exit, stopping, gesturing with his hat again for me to come.

Out on the sidewalk he's putting on his hat as he says, "You've been expelled!"

We get in the car. He says, "They showed me your... artwork," he called it. "I think it's quite an overreaction on everybody's part. Those two cops acted like they'd caught Al Capone! The Principal acted like you'd [naughty word removed] in his shoes!" He laughed. I laughed. I thought about that image of me and the Principal's shoes, laughed again.

Expelled. I... wasn't sure what that meant. I mean... I knew it meant kicked out of school. But... how long? I thought maybe a few days, an apology, clean the paint off, contrition, remorse, a slap on the knuckles with a ruler. I knew they wouldn't paddle me. Dad made it clear when we came here... me in the fourth grade then... that no corporal punishment, no touching, hitting, would be allowed.

Dad had... a reputation. He... ran with... a tough crowd.

"I", I heard him say, "will take care of any punishment my son should merit."

As a ten-year old I was confident in the rationality of my father when it came to punishment. I might be made to work, to confine myself to the house or my room. But there would be no violence. I hoped a sixteen year old would get equitable punishment too.

I figured that... upfront warning... to them... had to do more with him and the Indian School than anything I'd ever done. A friend told me he heard his dad and my dad talking about their time in Indian Schools run by the Vatican Government and said it was "Evil [naughty word removed]." I didn't ask for details. I often wonder if I want to know. I think that's what made my dad... so... cold. He'd say, "I don't get mad. I get even." People stay out of his way.

I'd been resistant to going into school, leaving my wild wandering in fields and forests to enter first grade. I was five. I wouldn't be six until December. I was a little animal. My mother was... 'alive' then. Dad says, "She's dead to me!" I know it really hurt him when she left, took my little sister, wanted to take me back to North Carolina where he'd found her.

Mom told my older brothers to take me to the school. They left me to tag along behind them. I fell back, and when I thought they were far enough ahead, I ducked under the big round chain link corn crib someone had there on the corner of the trailer park. They didn't come back looking for me. I think I did that for a couple days. Then one day I saw my mother bring the laundry to the washhouse for the washing machines, with my little sister in tow. I sneaked closer. I don't know why. My little sister saw me in the weeds, in the ditch. She walked right over. My mom came to get her, saw me, and I started going to school. I cried in the classroom. I must have had a pretty good vocabulary. My mother asked me what my teacher's name was.

"Miss Easly!" I said.

"More like Miss Hardy!" I said.

For the first four years I settled in to the routine. We moved across the river to Kentucky that first year. I showed them at Clay Township School my mom's note that we were moving, and they sent my records, and then we didn't move that weekend and I showed up Monday and the teacher said she'd sent my records and I felt like I was in trouble. Then we moved again when... mom... left... and I started here in the fourth grade, at the grade school. There was art and lunch, recess and... after we moved, for the next four years, and until now, there has been Gladys Feldman, all the reason any boy could want to go to school.

But the powers that be make the big decisions for us, don't they? And their decision was that I was no longer welcome in their school.

I'm sixteen, a junior in high school. Dad says, 'Time flies, whether you're havin' fun or not.'

Dad led me up the stairs without taking his coat off, went in my room, told me, "Pack your bag."

I did. A pillow case and a satchel. My guitar. A tennis racket. I never played tennis. I left the racket. My books. We loaded in the car and drove, dad just smiling and talking, me wondering what was being decided for me now. And... being okay with it. Whatever happens next is okay with me. I don't give a... I don't care.

Then, there was The Red House, and Ah-nee-shi-nay.

Dad pulls up the road next to the house and backs up into the yard. There was no driveway or parking area there, back then, just grass. The nose of the car stuck out in the narrow road when he put it in park and pulled the parking brake.

I remember Anishine crossed her arms under her breasts, bunching them up, I saw through the opening of her blouse. I know she's my cousin, but... she's hot! We've only met a couple times before but she's always been hot!

I get out of the car, turn away from her, close the door. I watch my dad's face rise up, grinning at Anishine across the top of the car, watch my dad go by the fender, eyes locked on her, come around the hood of the car, go grinning toward the house.

I turn, watch him hug her, and think she didn't hug him back. He let her go. She grinned at him, looked up at his hair, brushed at it, told him, "You need a haircut." She bunched up... again with her arms, looked at me. "Bring your things!" she commanded. They went in. I get my pillow case, satchel, guitar, all in one trip, turn, look up at The Red House, tall, three stories, and say aloud, "Looks like I'm home."

5. "Where One Of Us Has A Home" (October 1920)

"I remember..." Anishine says, "coming here, coming in, smelling the house. I wonder if it still smells... to other people... like it smelled to me... then." She looks about the room, puts her fingers on her teacup, takes them away to brush her right index knuckled on her chin, takes the cup again and tilts it to empty.

"Emma was a small woman, dark eyes, dark hair. She always stood with her right hand holding her left wrist. She'd walk that way, slowly, carefully, quietly. She wore a wonderfully colorful dress. I loved it. It was art to me."

She's quiet, smiling, welcoming without saying anything. The old man... my grandfather, hugs her with one arm, a box under his other. She reaches up, touches his face, with the back of her hand. He goes on up the stairs. We're in some kind of... sitting room... like the landlady's in the tenemant house.. a couch... I think of dog hair... a carpet... more doghair... and her clothes... all so... so... everything in its place.

She takes my mother's hand, calls her Elsha. I hadn't heard her name since my father... quit coming home. "Elsha," she says, "welcome to your home. Come and sit. I have spoonbread and porkchops, green beans, mashed potatoes. Rest here while I put it on the table. She leads my mother to the couch. My mother lets go my hand, stops, takes it again, leads me to the couch, three of us holding hands. She sits. I climb up by myself. Emma, my grandmother, my father's mother, looks at me, kneels on the floor, looks closer. I'm afraid, but her face is so... so... open, so soft and rounded and friendly.

"You are your mother's daughter," she said. I remember thinking, "Yes, I am," reaching for my mother's hand.

"And my father's daughter," I tell her. She smiles, grins, her teeth small and white. Her eyes water. She stands up.

"Yes you are," she says dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief that I wonder where it has come from. "Yes you are," she repeats, touching my mother's hair, turning, walking slowly out of the room, holding her left wrist with her right hand.

I smelled... I remember... the... foods she mentioned, mixed with air from the open doors. Grandfather... is back down the stairs, smiles, out the door, back with two more boxes, stacked, his chin on the top one, up the stairs, sure-footed as a mule.

Emma was a wonderful housekeeper, a wonderful cook... a... wonderful grandmother. She moved with such slow, quiet dignity... I was aware of her presence in the house. I knew she was up there, down there, somewhere in the house... if I wanted or needed anything. If she could give it to me she would.

I was sleepy. I... think I dozed there with my mother, my mother asleep too. Soon my mother was picking me up, still asleep, back to sleep on her shoulder, being carried to the kitchen. I saw the double doors were closed. I saw through half-closed eyes, the bright yellow kitchen, lit by the yellow lightbulb in the ceiling and that pretty little lamp on the wall. I smell the food and raise my head. Mother sets me in a chair, my head barely above the table top. There is a plate of food there, green beans, a brown porkchop bone, the meat cut off into little squares, buttery potatoes, with black specks of pepper, a yellowish gravy, steam. I see a glass set on the tabletop in front of me, watch cold milk from a frosty pitcher pour into it, just about a third of the way up, and stop. I approve. I remember thinking that will be enough, not too much to be too heavy to pick up, not too little to... cleanse my palate between bites of the different foods. And, if Emma is like my mother, I can have more if I want it, after I drink this. We eat, quietly, me looking at my mother, her looking at me, smiling. She hands me a yellow napkin, fine cloth. Ours are white, just old dishrags. I lay it in my lap, like she taught me. Emma is gone. Grandmother Emma.

I got it. I remember... thinking... knowing... we were going to live here. All our things were in boxes. Grandfather, Evan Andrews, had brought in the boxes, taken them up the stairs, clomping shoes, big feet clomping, walking on wooden floors, noisily, up the stairs on floors somewhere. That was when I fell asleep. Sitting at the table I wondered where he was now. I was still... a little afraid of him, always hearing him from anywhere in the house, always wondering where he was now if I didn't hear him.

Emma comes back, so quiet. She sits at the table far away from us. We eat. I look at her, her eyes, her nose, and away. I take a bite of mashed potatoes. I sneak a look again, see her mouth, her ears. Her hair is very black. It... comes to a point on her forehead... like... my father's.

"You look like my father too," I tell her.

"Too?" she says, and I remember perceiving that it was a question.

"Like... my grandfather," I explain. I gesture to him, somewhere there, in the house, out with the wagon and the mule, somewhere, with my fork in my hand.

"Yes," Emma says. Your father is my son. Our son," she clarifies. "You look like him too, and like your mother. I see all the faces of our ancestors in you."

Did I know what she meant? I remember being comforted by it, feeling... that where one of us has a home we all have a home. It was going to be okay. We were going to be... cared for... helped. I ate everything on my plate, picked up the bone and chewed more fat and meat off of it. I was given more milk and a little tea plate with spoonbread. I thought it was cornbread, then cake, and was surprised to find kernels of corn in it. I'd never had spoonbread.

I was very full, my stomach fat and round, I thought, and very sleepy. I was a little delirious as mother picked me up, carried me up the stairs. I saw grandmother coming slowly, quietly up behind us, her left hand reaching, touching the wallpaper. The upstairs air smelled like the kitchen, pork chops and butter.

The bathroom is pink! My favorite color. Mother doesn't clean. It's already clean. The sink is pink. The bathtub is white, with gold 'feet' like a lion's claws, I remember thinking. There's water in it. I touch it and it's warm. She pulls off my clothes, washes me, brushes my teeth. I don't have pajamas. She carries me, wrapped in a towel, rolls me out of the towel, laughing, onto white sheets that smell clean, grandmother standing, watching. I think... my mother sat on the other side of the bed and cried then, and grandmother sat in a rocking chair, talking very little, but there.

I slept, and dreamed... my father came home.

6. "In The Red House" (October 1920)

I wonder aloud what Anishine's first morning, waking up in The Red House was like. She tells me what she remembers.

Mine is comfortable enough. The big bed with big pillows was more comfortable than my twin bed back home. I had to scoot down on that bed so I didn't feel my hair touch the headboard. Then, I could bend my foot just a little and touch the footboard.

But hers... a tiny girl. Was she six?

"I remember," Anishine tells me, "Breakfast is ready. I smell it. I wake up. I have an expectation of seeing the... tenement bedroom, seeing through the curtains that hung in the open doorway between there and the kitchen. I'd lived there all my life. I instantly remember where I am now. My mother isn't in the bed. I'm in my underwear, no pajamas. I see the boxes the old man... grandfather Evan, brought up from the wagon. I slip off the bed. There's a rag rug, like my mother makes, but bigger. I step off it onto the wooden floor and it's cold! I struggle to open a box, finally get the four flaps to let go of each other, and there are my crayons and picture book. I see the big black suitcase, lift the unstrapped lid, and there are my clothes! I dress myself. Mother usually dresses me. I see it's a bigger job for me than when she does it. My purple dress smells like our old house.

I see my shoes by the bed, no socks. I put them on. They hurt my feet. I go back to the suitcase, find socks! I sit on the rag rug, take my shoes back off, put the socks on, see that I had my shoes on the wrong feet, get them right this time. I lay back on the rug to rest. All this dressing and undressing and dressing is hard work without my mother's help. I look at the ceiling, see the bluegreen crescent moons and stars on the light fixture. I roll my head toward the windows. It's sunny light out there. I spring up, suddenly not tired because I want to see out! I go to the windows, part the heavy curtains, feel the cool glass, see a hill that rises slowly, a fence row that goes back to the trees in a forest back beyond a barn. There's.. my grandfather... coming out of the barn, leading the mule! I wonder what he's doing, think to go up there to the barn, run to the door.

I open the door, creep out of the room, pull the door closed, admire the clear glass doorknob in my two hands. There's no one in the bathroom at the end of the hall. All the other doors are closed. I go there, see our things in my father's shaving kit, brush my own teeth, wash my own face with just water. I try to comb my own hair. It's... a bigger job too. I look at myself in the mirror. I give up.

They were all so quiet I don't think there is anyone in the kitchen until I get halfway down the stairs and can see them in there. Grandfather Evan is there! How did he get back so fast? He and your father are reading newspapers. I'd never seen your father before. For a moment I thought he was my father... I... remembered my dream.

Grandmother Emma is leaning on the stove, facing them. I can only see her body, her dress and apron, her arms, her left hand with a big spoon, her right hand holding her wrist, not her face. I hold to the handrail with both hands, come on down.

By the time I come to the big arched doorway in the hall, open into the kitchen, grandmother Emma is turning away from setting a plate at an empty chair, steaming yellow scrambled eggs, brown toast with butter melting under jelly, bacon. She comes back with a glass, pours milk from a pitcher.

"Good morning Anishine," she says quietly. I say it back. "Good morning..." and stop, not knowing what to call her, 'Emma?', 'grandmother'. Too much time passes so I let it be that way.

My mother isn't here. I expected her to be here. I'm suddenly... not comfortable.

Your father lowers his newspaper. I've never seen him before. He looks like my father. Grandfather lowers his paper. He looks like my father, but... older, with grey hair at his temples. I stop in the doorway, stand, put my hands behind my back. I think about going back upstairs, wait there for my mother.

Suddenly I hear a noise across the living room. I lean back, look. One side of the double doors opens, and there she is! She grins. I grin. I still don't like being there with... all these strangers. I want to run to my mother but... I don't want them... to know I am afraid. I go and climb onto the chair.

Grandmother Emma is still there, holding the pitcher of milk. "I think you may want a little more milk," she says and adds a little to my glass. It's still less than half full. Good.

"Thank you," I say.

I'm aware... your father is looking at me. I let him look. Grandfather grins at me, starts reading his paper again, sitting straight up, holding the paper so I can't see him, just his big brown fingers. Mother comes and sits to my right. Grandmother puts the milk in the refrigerator. I think to say, 'We had a refrigerator!' but we didn't have it for long before my father... quit coming home... so... it seems... unremarkable. The landlady had some men come and take it up the stairs to someone else's house.

Mother must have already eaten, gone out for a walk. She looks fresh, smells fresh with outside air. She didn't have her coat on.

I'm sleepy. I eat without looking up.

"She's as pretty as her mother, Elsa," your father says. He always said how pretty I was. He'd tell me, "You're so pretty!" It was embarrassing. He'd ask other people, "Isn't she pretty?"

I don't want to look at him. I... think I didn't like your father even then. I look at my mother. She is pretty. She smiles a little, her face a little red from the cold outside.

"I think she looks like Darius," mother says, looking back at me. She pushes my hair behind my ear. My face feels warm. Darius is my father's name, Darius Andrews. I know my name is Anishine Andrews. I look at all the faces, all looking at me, and look at my plate. No one says anything. I eat. I take my glass in both hands, drink, look over the rim at your father. He quits looking at me, grins to himself, reads his paper.

It's our first morning, in The Red House.

7.

My first arrival at The Red House was, somewhat uneventful.

Almost as soon as we got there Anishine insisted we go to the high school and check in. My Father didn't want to do it.

"I got business!" he said. Then he went and sat at the kitchen table, as if he was in no hurry to get anywhere.

Anishine looked at me, said, "I'll take you. We'll get you registered so you don't fall behind."

She started getting ready. My father argued against it, said, "He can go by himself in the morning!" He was rude, loud. She ignored him, kept getting ready, giving him her cold-eyed defiance look. She went upstairs to change clothes.

"I got business!" he said, looking at the clock on the kitchen wall, looking at his wristwatch, watching through the archway as she climbed the stairs.

"Good!" Anishine, said from the stairs, without stopping. "You'd better get to it. Those poor people aren't going to get their own booze and lottery numbers!"

He laughed, his harsh dominance seeming strong, but then it crumbled. He made a sound in his throat, a word sound that never quite came out.

Finally he changed his... demeanor. He acted like he was still the smart one and was condescending to a lesser being.

"Alright!" he said, putting up his hands in an 'I-give-up' gesture. "You do it. Thank you!"

Anishine was gone, upstairs. I thought his... performance was for me, to show me he was still the man in charge. He wasn't.

I saw who was superior.

When she came down, she said, "Let's go Gary!" from the stairs, kept going down and to the double doors. I got up from the table, went out, stopped on the step to wait for her. Anishine stood, her hand on the door lever, looking back toward the kitchen. My father, finally, stepped out into the hall, looked at her. He acted disgusted, came stomping across the living room and past her, and out.

"I'll give you a ride!" he said, jingling his keys out of his pocket.

"We can walk," Anishine said, pulling the door closed. "Gary needs to know the way and how long it takes him to walk there."

He came back, hugged Anishine. Again, I noticed she didn't hug him back. I remember it now, looking back. I... noticed.

My father grunted, again, an expression of disgust. He stood, looking over the car as if he was thinking of another argument, couldn't find one, and he got in the car and left, spinning a little grass and dirt as he pulled out.

There was something defiant about Anishine.. her attitude in general. I didn't dissociate it from her attitude toward my father... at the time. It was just Anishine. She just didn't take crap from anyone. I'd seen her in the city, my dad's friends mashing on her, saying artless, even lewd things to her. She just stared them down, cold-eyed. These... characters would get red in the face, walk away.

Once she slapped the mortal crap out of a guy. I was embarrassed for him! My dad intervened but he was more apologetic to the guy than to Anishine. I didn't like that! I liked Anishine. She talked to me. She treated me like an adult, listened when I talked.

You have to understand that my family never seemed very close. I never met Anishine's father. He died before I was born, or shortly after. Anyway, I met her mother, and Anishine, and she... they both... immediately talked to me instead of the adults. She was so pretty. And intelligent. Her conversation was intelligent, about stuff, not just jokey, one-up silliness. I felt pretty special. Her mother Elsa was pretty too. She... they both had... dignity... a dignity about them I wasn't used to. Women around my dad were loud, some obscene in how they talked, how they dressed. I liked looking at them but I didn't like them, their... personalities. So I felt respect and respected Elsa and Anishine. They seemed quite content to sit with me and have intelligent conversation. That was unusual. Then the... get-together was over and I didn't see her again for... I don't know... a year.

Grandfather, I only saw him and Grandmother a couple times. We came to The Red House and I woke up the next morning and went downstairs. There was a percolator coffee pot on the stove, percolating. I knew what it was but we didn't have one at our house. Dad was always out late, slept in. I got myself up... from as long as I can remember... after mom left... and to school. He'd be gone when I got home. But, at the Red House there was a bathroom upstairs, but, for some reason, Grandfather Evan would go out to an outhouse up the hill, a two-holer, as if someone else could sit in there beside you! I somehow surmised that's where he was and went up there and he had the door closed. I said,

"That coffee pot is percolating! Do you want me to turn it off?"

He said, "No. It'll be alright."

That may be more conversation than we ever had. No wait. I saw him again and as soon as he saw me he said, "Gerry..." he called me Gerry instead of Gary, "Gerry," he said, "You're a'fleshin' up!" I knew he meant I was gaining weight. I remember thinking I was also gaining height but he didn't mention that.

And that... that may be the only times we ever talked; if you can call that talking. Dad acted like he didn't like to go there. I think... I think his father knew what... my father does for a living and didn't like it.

I know Grandmother Emma didn't!

One time he said, "[naughty word removed]" and she reached up... she was a little woman... and put her index finger to seal his lips, told him, calmly, "Don't say that." and asked him, "Don't that make your breath smell bad?" I didn't laugh then but later I just had to tell Anishine and we laughed then. She laughed heartily. I liked making her laugh. She could make me laugh. We laughed every time we were together.

Grandmother Emma went to the Pentecostal Church down the road. My uncle went with her one time and my dad too and my dad would tell about his own skepticism at people talking in tongues and jumping around. His brother Billy suddenly sprang to his feet and shouted, "Boly-eye!" And then he sat down and stared straight ahead. Dad said he never asked him about it. Billy was away now with the Civilian Conservation Corps. He sent home a redwood sapling from California. Grandfather Evan said he planted it up on the hill behind the barn but it never took.

I wondered how Anishine got along with our Pentecostal Grandmother and our gruff, plain-spoken, laconic Grandfather. I asked her.

8.

My first days at The Red House were scary and joyous by starts. There was lots to explore. I found the door under the stairs that faces the street, where the mailbox is, and learned what grandmother was doing there when she would look at the clock, knowing it was time for the mailman. She'd come out of the kitchen, go look out, come back, peer across the front room through the double doors, to see if he was coming down the road.

She told me to put letters out there in the mail box and to put the little flag up. I figured out that the flag was the signal to stop and get the letters, even if he didn't have any mail to give us.

Grandfather Evan came out of his room one day and I was standing, looking up the stairs to the third floor.

"Who lives up there?" I asked him.

"Nobody," he said and started down the stairs.

"Yesbody," I said and he laughed, stopped and said, 'Nobody' again and I said 'Yesbody' again and he laughed.

We'd say it every so often when one of us thought of it and wanted to have our little joke.

He was big; you remember. He was tall. He was broad shouldered. He'd work in a sleeveless t-shirt, chopping wood for Emma's fireplace. She loved to have a fire. And he had big arms. He could pick up big bales of hay and throw them up to a worker in the top of the barn. He kept the cows and hogs and Emma kept the chickens and the house. She would practically stand on her head bent over working the garden. They were always busy with something.

Emma took me to get eggs and I was afraid of the chickens. They all looked like a crazy man I saw in the city. My mother was kind to him, bought him a sandwich when she bought one for us to share. He had crazy eyes. I saw that when we passed him. I saw him talking violently to no one there, shaking his finger, saying, "You better not do it! You better not do it!"

My mother brought the sandwich to him and he took it, talked sensibly, thanked her, said, "Oh! Thank you. I was getting hungry. It's been a long day! It's gonna rain." Said it all in a hurry like that!

We walked on and I looked back and he was eating quietly, leaning against the building, looking peacefully around at people.

The chickens all looked like that, the big one eye staring, blinking, ducking their heads like they were talking to no one there. I wondered if they needed a sandwich.

Emma said, "Listen!" I heard a chicken squawk. "One of the hens is laying an egg and another chicken is squawking about it."

Inside the chicken coop, sure enough, she found an egg under a hen, and it just sat there while she put her hand under and took it, and showed me how warm it was. She collected more eggs and I looked around. There were bales of hay in there and one was leaning up lengthwise on the wall, up high, and I saw a chicken up there, blinking down at me.

"What about that one?" I asked. Emma looked at me, looked where I was pointing, explained, "That one's going to hatch her eggs. We won't bother her."

Anishine was out of breath, walking, talking, stopped on a corner, pointed down the street to a red brick building.

"There's the school," she said. She started walking again, more slowly. "Shoot!" she said. "Your father made me forget what time we left. I was going to tell you how long it took. But you see. You'll need to leave early enough to get here on time. Don't be late. It's a bad habit in life."

We went in. Anishine was recognized by teachers, the janitor, and the Principal when he saw her waiting to talk to the office staff. He came out, greeted her, shook her hand when she reached hers out. She explained why we were there, just that I was transferring. He asked, "Living at The Red House?" and she told him I would be. He asked about my records and I told him I thought they were being sent. Some paperwork, signatures, a quick tour of the halls, which he abandoned for a phone call and Anishine took over, telling me teachers' names, what their subject was.

I was in, we were out, and walking home.

Now... if... if I seem like... a nice kid... I wasn't. This wasn't the first time I'd been in trouble in school or on the streets.

I tell you that to tell you this; Anishine had... an effect on me. I wanted to be the person she expected me to be. Walking back to The Red House she stopped on the stone bridge that crossed the ditchy looking creek coming down out of the hill, leaned over the wall on her elbows and looked at it.

Gary, I expect you to take care of yourself here. I'm not your momma. I'm not going to deal with a lot of problems you create for yourself, here in school, here in the neighborhood, there at the house. Emma and Evan never had to deal with any of my problems. I took care of myself, got where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there, did what I was there to do. Now, don't get me wrong. I will help you in any way I can. I hope to help you succeed in life. I think you'll be better off here than with your father. I..."

She stopped, stood erect, hands on the stone wall, went on,
e
"I think your father is a bad influence on you and you're a better man than he is. You can be. You have that chance, that choice. I want to believe that. I want you to believe that about yourself."

She's looking down the creek. She's not looking at me.

"I'll try," I say, without really knowing what I mean.

"That's all I can ask," she said, looking at me, that face with that smile, and she made me want to do better than I have done, with everything, school, getting along with people, not... being a thug, misleading other guys to be... thuggish. I thought it was cool. I thought I was cool. I was the cool guy whose dad was a... big man around town. People knew about him. Their parents told them and they'd ask stupid questions, like I knew if he ran poker games and illegal whiskey and hookers. I thought he did, but... I didn't know, and if I knew I wouldn't be talking about it. They thought it was cool. I didn't respect them so I didn't think they needed to know what I knew, which wasn't much, for sure. My brothers knew and that's why they left before they got tied up too much in dad's... business.

And I didn't like the people he had around all the time. I didn't want to... be like them... or be like him.

I wanted to change who I'd been, who I thought I was, to keep my good parts and leave some parts behind. I had that chance. And I wanted to take it.

Sometimes the world has... other plans.

9.

Anishine remembers: I was seventeen. I'd been with grandmother Emma to the store many times. It was a nice walk. She enjoyed it, seeing other peoples' yards and homes and flower gardens and vegetable gardens. The road was narrow. We'd get on the side and stop if we didn't feel safe to let cars pass. If they slowed down and acted like they had some sense I'd just fall back single file behind her and we'd keep walking.

One day... some boys, older boys, men really, started hooting and carrying on as we left the store. Emma didn't pay any attention, told me, "Don't pay any attention to those. They do this all the time."

But they came across the street from a beer joint to in front of the store and I didn't know why they were bothering us. We kept walking.

Then one of them said, "We don't want no red niggers around here!"

All the others laughed so uproariously I thought that must be the focus of their complaint. Emma is full-blood Cherokee. She kept walking, that slow stepping patient walk she did everywhere. She didn't look back at them. They followed us, kept hooting, jeering, just a couple of them chanting, "Red [naughty word removed]! Red [naughty word removed]!"

I got madder every time they did. They followed us all the way to The Red House. One of them came around me, up on the grass and around and in front and reached and grabbed Emma's paper bag! Apples and oranges fell out all over the road! A car stopped to keep from running over them.

"Anishine," Emma said, "go in the house and get us another bag."

Those boys, those men were just laughing and talking to each other. Emma ignored them, went about the business of getting the fruit out of the road. The man in the car didn't get out to help, rolled his window up, in fact. Finally she had her fruit out of his way and he went on. She reached in her apron pocket, handed me the keys. I knew we hadn't locked the door. I started to say, 'It's not locked,' but thought maybe she wanted me to pretend to unlock it. She told me later that was right. We started locking the doors after that. She went about gathering fruit out of the roadway, bringing it back by the steps. I ran in, put my groceries on the floor by the newel post, laid the keys on top of it, and ran up the stairs! I went straight to grandfather's room, got his double barrel shotgun, broke it down like he had shown me, checked that the two shells had not been fired, and headed for the stairs.

I came out with that shotgun, clicked it straight, and raised it, and three of those boys turned and ran. The two that still stood there acted like they weren't scared. I kept coming right to them and one tugged at the last one's arm and then ran himself. And finally I was as close as you and me and I cocked the hammers. That was his final ounce of courage. He turned and walked back the way he'd come. He got to the top of the hill there and yelled "Red [naughty word removed]!" and I pulled the triggers!
They ran and I don't know if buckshot got them in the feet or not.

Emma said, "Anishine! You shouldn't have done that. You could hurt someone."

I laughed, told her, "Yes. I could hurt someone." My shoulder was bruised for a month.

If they ever bothered her again she never told me. Some of those guys are still around. They like to stare at me but they don't say anything.

That was the first I ever knew that we were Cherokee. My hair's been as much red as brown all my life. I started looking closer at pictures and I can see how we all have a lot of common features. You're more Cherokee than I am. I've seen pictures of your mother. She looks Cherokee.

"Does she?" I ask. "I don't know. "When I found out we were Cherokee I couldn't wait to see Grandmother and ask. She looked at my father and said, 'You told them? The Government will come and take them away and sell them to the Catholics!"

My father just laughed. He said, "Ain't nobody takin' nobody away any more."