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Winfield is barely alive. All the businesses on Main Street—the dime store, the pool hall, the newspaper office, the banks, the grocery stores—long ago disappeared. There is nowhere to buy Nehi pop. You can’t purchase a single item of food within the town limits. My grandparents’ house is still there—at least it was the last time I passed—but its barn is gone as is its porch swing and the shade tree out back and the orchard and everything else that made it what it was.

The best I can say is that I saw the last of something really special. It’s something I seem to say a lot these days.

Chapter 11

WHAT, ME WORRY?

LIES IN MORGUE

17 HOURS—ALIVE

ATLANTA, GA. (UP)—An elderly woman taken to a funeral home for embalming opened her eyes 17 hours after arriving and announced: “I’m not dead.”

W. L. Murdaugh of Murdaugh Brothers funeral home here said two of his employees were made almost speechless.

The woman, listed as Julia Stallings, 70, seemed dazed after her long coma ended Sunday night, but otherwise appeared in good condition, Murdaugh said.

—Des Moines Tribune, May 11, 1953

THE ONLY TIME I have ever broken a bone was also the first time I noticed that adults are not entirely to be counted on. I was four years old and playing on Arthur Bergen’s jungle gym when I fell off and broke my leg.

Arthur lived up the street, but was at the dentist or something when I called, so I decided to have a twirl on his new jungle gym before heading back home.

I don’t remember anything at all about the fall, but I do remember very clearly lying on damp earth, the jungle gym now above and around me and seeming awfully large and menacing all of a sudden, and not being able to move my right leg. I remember also lifting my head and looking down my body to my leg which was bent at an unusual—indeed, an entirely novel—angle. I began to call steadily for help, in a variety of tones, but no one heard. Eventually I gave up and dozed a little.

At some point I opened my eyes and a man with a uniform and a peaked cap was looking down at me. The sun was directly behind him so I couldn’t see his face; it was just a hatted darkness inside a halo of intense light.

“You all right, kid?” he said.

“I’ve hurt my leg.”

He considered this for a minute. “You wanna get your mom to put some ice on it. Do you know some people named…”—he consulted a clipboard—“…Maholovich?”

“No.”

He glanced at the clipboard again. “A. J. Maholovich, 3725 Elmwood Drive.”

“No.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell at all?”

“No.”

“This is Elmwood Drive?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, kid, thanks.”

“It really hurts,” I said. But he was gone.

I slept a little more. After a while Mrs. Bergen pulled into their driveway and came up the back steps with bags of groceries.

“You’ll catch a chill down there,” she said brightly as she skipped past.

“I’ve hurt my leg.”

She stopped and considered for a moment. “Better get up and walk around on it. That’s the best thing. Oh, there’s the phone.” She hurried into the house.

I waited for her to come back but she didn’t. “Hello,” I croaked weakly now. “Help.”

Bergen’s little sister, who was small and therefore stupid and unreliable, came and had a critical look at me.

“Go and get your mom,” I said. “I’m hurt.”

She looked at my leg with comprehension if not compassion. “Owie,” she said.

“Yes, owie. It really hurts.”

She wandered off, saying, “Owie, owie,” but evidently took my case no further.

Mrs. Bergen came out after some time with a load of washing to hang.

“You must really like it down there,” she chuckled.

“Mrs. Bergen, I think I’ve really hurt my leg.”

“On that little jungle gym?” she said, with good-natured skepticism, but came closer to look at me. “I don’t think so, honey.” And then abruptly: “Christamighty! Your leg! It’s backward!”

“It hurts.”

“I bet it does, I bet it does. You wait right there.”

She went off.

Eventually, after quite some time, Mr. Bergen and my parents pulled up in their respective cars at more or less the same moment. Mr. Bergen was a lawyer. I could hear