I.
The Social Security Death Index only says "Dec 1971."
I remember it so vividly that the abbreviated date seems vaguely insulting.
There was no snow on the ground, and I was walking home from school on Starr Street, which stretched from our apartment complex, past the Acme, all the way to the steel factory like a spool of satin ribbon fallen from a table.
The walk seemed endless.
I often took it with my friend Everett Ashenfelter. At 12, he was already fat. But he was kind; meaning, that he spoke to me rather than taunted me.
On this particular day I was alone. Quite likely, I was wearing the black, sherpa-lined boots my mother bought for me that slipped on and off so easily, and perhaps even the ridiculous faux fur coat that made me look like a pre-pubescent Tallulah Bankhead.
My mother was also fond of dickies, the tightly collared sheaths that fit under V-neck sweaters—functionless and abbreviated, not unlike "Dec 1971."
That day, I might have been carrying my plastic Bundy clarinet in its black velour-lined case, double latched, indestructible as a Kelly green tank. My reeds—I had two—slipped into a tangerine paper folder with the name of the music store on Bridge Street rather carelessly rubber stamped onto each side.
Perhaps my mother had called the school. I might have been dismissed early and told, without explanation, to return straight home. Today, I can look at a map online and determine, with the accuracy of nostalgia, that it must have been at about house number 759 that my mother's white Ford Mustang passed me, then turned into the Acme parking lot and stopped.
I got into the car.
Brian was in the front passenger seat looking frightened and sullen.
No one said anything.
