Out Among Humans

They sold a piece of themselves to the highest bidder.

Owning a house to raise children was especially important for the woman who never lived in one, and had grown up among six people in a 700 sq. ft. flat. The place was her baby.

The center-entrance colonial they bought all those years ago had had a series of owners and renters so the couple left it vacant through several months to make it over as their own.

They opened spaces and raised ceilings. The side yard was awarded a patio with a picket fence. A concrete porch was planked and painted. Even after all that, a neighbor referred to it as the “starter home” around the corner.

After the children ventured out on their own, the couple slowly lost interest in meeting the never-ending demands of a century old home. The retreat where they shared the family’s victories and nursed its setbacks had became too much.

The kids made the pilgrimage home to mark the days before it changed hands.

During the sale the buyer was referred to simply as the “buyer.” Their realtor and their attorney had encouraged them to maintain a distance, knowing buyers back out of deals for any number of reasons.

Neighborhood friends keep them up to date on what the charming and friendly new owner is doing. As is his right, he’s proceeded to reverse many of the decisions they were most proud of.

As the closing approached they watched their house of thirty seven years being reduced to a commodity expressed in abstract numbers on piece of paper. Sign here, initial here.

There should be a specific name for the waves of homesickness that visit the couple from time to time, but there isn’t.

You be the judge about what the boys did when Tom pushed them beyond the breaking point.

There were seven and a half guys in the group.

One of them had been diagnosed with a hole in his heart. He used it as an excuse never to climb the fence and retrieve the basketball. He counted as only half a guy.

They lived in a neighborhood that straddled several school districts. The boys were too far from their schools to hang out with classmates so they formed a local group strictly out on convenience.

As a matter of survival, they worked tirelessly on the your-dick is-so-small style of humor they’d need in high school. They had heard that a tag-team of bullies would be sizing them up.

It was in the spring when the thin, blond kid named Tom got strange.

Suddenly and for no apparent reason, Tom couldn’t control his mouth. He’d taken to ridiculing one guy’s acne. He made slutty-divorced-mother-with-peroxide-hair jibes that drew blood. His cruelty could have been forgiven if he hadn’t become so annoying.

The guys gave Tom more than his share of second chances.

None of them expected it and they hadn’t planned it, but one afternoon they proceeded to indict him. They invoked a jury and held a trial. After finding him guilty they imposed the maximum sentence — they banished him from the face of the earth.

A movie about a lynching “The Oxbow Incident” often appeared on TV. Civics teachers across the country assigned it for discussion in class. The boys came to question whether their frontier justice had been just, if they should have entertained appeals.

A decade later one of the group ran into Tom at a singles’ bar — both were back in town for Thanksgiving. They shared several rounds of drinks without bringing up the past.

Tom had tried various lines of work in California and as much as he loved the ocean he was thinking about moving home to finish night school.

He was as thin and blond as always and, now in his twenties, he was as pleasant and sincere a man as you could ever hope to meet.