It Was You For Me

2

I always imagined that no one in the entirety of the universe would ever move into Old Farmer McCollough's.

The house was big, and it had the most gigantic backyard I'd ever seen in our neighborhood. It seemed nice, if only Old Farmer McCollough hadn't lived there.

Old Farmer McCollough never smiled. My mother said it was because his daughter died, she said this at the dinner table to my father. I wondered what it would be like to loose your smile when a person died. Do they take it with them when they leave? And do you ever get to smile about other things after a while, even about them if you get to that place? I don't know. McCollough was grumpy too. I didn't think much about his daughter's passing when I was a kid back then. I could only think that my bedroom window opened up into a view of his dark and creepy home. The sounds that came from it at night and into my ears under that astronaut blanket somehow gave me nightmares. Every kid gets nightmares very easily when they still have an imaginative mind, that's what my father told me. So I blamed it on my big brain. And all the creativity inside of it. And on Mr. McCollough, for never turning on the security lights around his home. For not cutting down the large trees that projected hunting shadows against my bedroom wall. For not fixing his creaking doors that echoed in my ears. Or for not painting the house a brighter color that attracted people.

Mr. McCollough had episodes. The kind that made him require nurses at his aid every minute of the day whenever he stared at one of his trees for too long and started shouting out incoherent words. Or certain words that I wasn't allowed to say then, but heard James say them once in a while. There were times when McCollough came and left his own home countless times in only a month. I heard my mother talk about it once in her room with my father. That he was being taken to psych wards by Mary who didn't know how to help him until she got the nurses. My father asked why Mary couldn't just leave him to get some proper help at the hands of a professional. That she didn't need to suffer with him herself. My mother said it was because she loved McCollough. That she cared enough to do the job she vowed to at their altar. My father almost slept in the sofa down stairs that night. I don't remember what the fight moved on to when I left their bedroom door.

Mr. McCollough didn't seem like the worst man in the world when he died. Because he couldn't have been if Mary loved him.

Before we met, I'd heard stories of McCollough's. We were so many kids in that neighborhood, with so much to imagine about an old grumpy man dying in his front porch, and I don't think you would have, but we said and spread out so much that we could about how we thought he had kicked the bucket.

Julien Clerc said that McCollough's daughter came back from the dead to take him with her like a Zombie because she didn't want to be alone. That wouldn't sound so bad to you. The thought that a daughter came back for her father.

But Allison Grace said that his ex-wife called the witches from her ancestral lineage to kill him for marrying Mary. Do you remember Mary? She was the reason for our beginning.

You wouldn't have liked that tale that Allison told. You wouldn't have liked Allison for that at all. You hated tales that were cruel.

I said McCollough was eaten inside out by the rats that must've been living in his basement. This was after James made me watch Rat Race with him. There was this scene where the lead character, Andrew, was eaten inside out by the rats he was at a race with against time to get out of an underground confinement. I think it was a thriller, or a horror movie. All I knew was that I wasn't supposed to be watching that movie with James. I was Eight years old and too young to be watching Rat Race. And when I said that about McCollough, I didn't think it then, but I think it now— I shouldn't have watched that film. Or I wouldn't have said that about a man's death.

Would you not like me for that if you knew what I said? Would it be like what Allison said?

I shouldn't have imagined McCollough's death to be that way.

It's a cruel tale. And you don't like cruel tales. I think you wouldn't like me. But then again, I think about who you are—were, and the kind of heart that beat inside of you.

You moved into McCollough's a year after he passed this life for another. A week toward my birthday.

Your family was in a grey mini van. I was outside in the front yard with James. He was talking to a girl on his phone as I waited for when I could kick the soccer ball between my feet to him. I don't remember what I was wearing. But I remember you. When you stepped out of that van. With your hair in mini braids on your head in a low pony tail.

You wore a mustard yellow dress that made you look like summer, even though winter was around the corner. Your hand was in an older looking girl's hand. She had the same mini braids in her head, but longer. She was way taller than the both of us. But she was younger than James. And then a boy came out after the both of you. He was older than James. And then a man the age of my father. And a woman the age of my mother. I shouldn't have been staring, can I apologize for that time? But you have to understand, you were the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen, and your family was walking into Old Farmer McCollough's, I was worried.

What was a family, as perfect looking as yours doing, walking into McCollough's?

But I guess, if my family could manage to live next door to McCollough. You could live in his home.

Right next to me.

Did you think I was the most handsome boy you'd ever seen?

I don't know if you can answer that now with how things are.