by Louis Jenkins

BACK HOME

The place I lived as a child, the sharecropper's farmhouse with its
wind-bent mulberry trees and rusted farm machinery has completely
vanished. Now there's nothing but plowed fields for miles in any
direction. When I asked around in town no one remembered the family. No
way to verify my story. In fact, there's no evidence that any of what I
remember actually happened, or that the people I knew ever existed.
There was my uncle Axel, for instance, who spent most of his life moving
from one job to another, trying to "find himself." He should have saved
himself the trouble. I moved away from there a long time ago, when I was
a young man, and came to the cold spruce forests of the north. The place
I thought I was going is imaginary, yet I have lived here most of my
life.