Installment 6

It must have been about 1950 when I moved to Holly. Really, I stumbled upon it unintentionally. I was on my way somewhere else, I can’t remember where now, and I missed my turn. I ended up at a dead end, expecting at least a gas station, but there was only a cluster of homes. As I turned around to try and find where I went wrong, I saw a “For Sale” sign in front of one of the houses. Two weeks later I was signing the papers and a month later I moved in.

The house wasn’t much. It was really just one big room that had been quickly separated into four - - a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and an area for a table or a sofa. Still, I was young and independent. I was elated to have my own key to the front door and my own checkbook.

Walt was just one of the neighborhood kids. I was too old to really become friends with any of them. Besides, I worked during the week and they went to school. We were living different lifestyles.

After a year, I was completely settled into what had become my home. I was never a big part of the community. Nonetheless, I felt a strong connection to my surroundings. There was so much peace. Living in a secluded natural area, there weren’t many disturbances. The worst we had were some small robberies. People kept their doors unlocked; any drifter could walk in and swipe whatever he pleased. Most of the time, the crime was limited to shoes taken from a back porch or firewood missing from a stack by the shed. No one felt unsafe or threatened. After I had been living there for about a year and a half, all that changed.

Bobby Loomis went missing in May of that year. He was only fourteen. His parents said goodnight to him, and in the morning he wasn’t there. He probably just wandered into the woods and got lost. All his friends were questioned, including Walter, but no one knew anything. I don’t know who it was, but after a while, someone whispered my name as being guilty. That whisper turned into a roar, and soon I was being interrogated, hounded. It got worse and worse. There was no evidence, no proof, but people wanted justice.

Soon, they questioned why I lived on my own, why I had moved there, and why I didn’t go to church. I told them that I would swear to the same God to whom they prayed that I did not harm that boy, that I didn’t know where he was. It never stopped, and I was forced to leave. I moved about fifteen miles away to a town called Seabeck. Luckily, no one had heard of the scandal in Holly, and I left it behind me.

My house in Seabeck was much bigger - - two stories - - but it was falling apart. I spent my spare time going to the hardware store and making repairs. I had been there for a month when Walter called me out of the blue. He must have looked up my phone number. He said he was sorry about what had happened and that he wanted to come visit.

The next weekend, I watched as he sat behind the steering wheel of his father’s green pickup truck and pulled into the driveway. We ate lunch, talked a little, but mostly avoided the subject of Holly. I told him about my house, and from then on he would drive down every day during the summer to help work on my house. Sometimes I’d wake up in the morning to him hammering away, or he’d show up with a truck full of materials. He never let me pay him back, and shrugged every time I thanked him. We became like brothers - - he even lived with me for a short period. I don’t know why he called that day in June, but I do know that we stayed friends for years and years.

Holly was scarred by what happened with Bobby and what happened to me. The community wanted to move on, and they did. They preferred to forget rather than ripping the scab off the wound. Healing is a long process, and sometimes the scars are made of lies. To this day, I do not know what became of Bobby Loomis. It disturbs me, but my conscience is clear. I sleep soundly every night.