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By Root 924 0

had been farther south. But whereas the snow had softened the boulders, the wrecks looked cruel as the rusted and warped fenders punched through the snow, making harsh holes in the drifts. I was in Franconia now, with the White Mountains everywhere, and it should have been beautiful, but it wasn't. The mountains themselves seemed impossibly far away, as if they didn't want to get too close to the trailers. It was awful, all right, so depressing, so poor, and by now the hole inside me ― the hole where Anne Marie and the kids were, the hole that pretty Red Bell had started to fill ― was as large as ever, and I'd forgotten about Red Bell entirely, couldn't remember what made it so beautiful, couldn't even conjure up a gristmill. This is what poverty does, I guess: it ruins your memory of more beautiful things, which is just another reason why we should try as hard as we can to get rid of it.

Peter Le Clair's address: 10 State Route 18. I found his place because of the hand-painted number 10 on the mailbox, which was bent face downward, almost off its pole, as if ashamed of its address. His trailer was the same as the others except for one thing: Peter himself was standing at the trailer's one front window, watching as I pulled into his driveway. His face disappeared from the window, and seconds later the tan plywood door to the black plywood addition swung open and there stood Peter, five-day beard and flannel shirt and no coat, holding a gun. Except it wasn't a gun ― my eyes and assumptions were playing tricks on me ― it was a plunger (Peter had real plumbing problems, in addition to his other problems). Still, Peter looked mighty threatening. He was big, much taller than six feet, with a chest that was full barreled to my half. There was a doghouse in front of the trailer, right next to my minivan, and a dog howled from inside it but didn't come out. I wished I were in the doghouse with the dog, who knew Peter better than I did and could probably give me a few pointers about how to please its master. Or maybe the dog was trying to do just that, through its howling, which was loud and echoing from inside the doghouse. Go away, it might have been howling. Go away, go away.

But I couldn't go away. For one thing, it was only six o'clock, and I had to stick around until at least midnight to find out who had made that phone call and why. And for another, I had nowhere else to go, nothing left to do. Perhaps Peter's trailer in Franconia was as close to home as I was going to get. Perhaps, for a man like me, there was no longer any such thing as a true home and so I couldn't be picky, couldn't just sit in the van and refuse to come out because the homes were depressing and their inhabitants were large and menacing. Yes, I needed to get out of the van. Now that I knew that, the dog's howling took on a different meaning, and instead of Go away, go away, it was Get out of the van, get out of the van. I got out of the van.

Boy, it was cold. The sort of heart-clutching cold where after being out in it for a second, you can't bear another one. Even Peter and his plunger were less frightening than the cold. Plus, it was still snowing hard and I didn't have a hat, and if I stayed out there much longer, I'd be buried like the wrecked vehicles in the yard. There were three of them, to the left of the doghouse; I could see their antennas sticking out of the snow.

"Mr. Le Clair, I'm Sam Pulsifer," I said, walking up to him. And then ― not reminding him of who I was or of the letter he'd sent me who knows how many years ago or even waiting for a response ― I said, "Let's go inside, what do you say? My teeth are chattering right out of my gums, they're so cold." And with that, I kept walking, right past him and into the trailer, not because I was brave but because the fear had frozen inside me. It was that cold.

It was warmer in the trailer. There were boots everywhere, and coats, lined flannel shirts, and hooded sweatshirts hung on hooks and off the backs of chairs and even off the back of the TV, keeping it warm. It was an enormous, old