Family Members This story was narrated by the researcher and biographer (Art Dun) for author Bob Mitchley. Preface: “Now we’re home!” When the author was a little boy he mentioned to me that he always voiced that remark as his grandparent’s Ford Falcon crested the hill on route 973 east, which over-looked the Mitchley farm. Fifty years and two wives later he is returning home to the farm which has set vacant. This is the same farm where Bob had spent the first twelve years of early childhood; quite possibly the best years of his life, as he recalls. I’m thinking, from what he has relayed to me that he plans on living out his last days on the old homestead. Bob has always felt a spiritual attachment to the property, especially the farmhouse. You see, his mom Arlene was brought-up there, from the time she was a young girl; along with her older brother Richard. Her bedroom was nestled to the right at the top of the old stairway. You may recall, Bob’s Christmas story, (The Hide Out) which featured this same winding stairway. Chapter 1 Reminiscing Most of Arlene’s bedroom has remained unchanged after all these years. The placement of the bed, dresser, nightstand, even a perfume flask, and lipstick tube, was right where she last left them. When Bob was a young boy, he noted that he would often unlatch her door, and with shy trepidation step over the seraphic threshold and into her room. Mesmerized, he would try to imagine her movements and thoughts. To the point, as she stood dreamy-eyed in front of the open window, a soft breeze flirted with her hair, parting the locks, same as a man’s fingers; she lays her head to one side ready for a kiss. The door slams shut! The breeze and the blush vanish. The fantasy ends. She rests on the edge of the bed. Gazing through a misty window pane at the newly painted barn across the driveway… twirling her wavy auburn hair with her right index finger, crooning a tune only to herself. Or maybe he could picture her swinging on the slatted swing Pappy had made; chaining it over the sturdiest horizontal limb of the 200-year-old catalpa tree, where the lawn and driveway were separated by a white picket fence, which, when the morning sun brazed it, the slats cast long shadows up the side of the gas pump. This is the fence where hornets built a large nest in one hot afternoon. Or his mom fixing her hair and make-up, looking the way she did in the old black and white photos, now dog-eared and stashed in a lidless shoebox. After all, that is all he has to go on. He almost could picture her sleeping, tossing and dreaming of how her life would turn out if she marries Bob’s dad. If she only knew, if we all would have known! Maybe… I don’t know? God only knows. Luckily Grammy kept much of the room as it had been since Arlene left. She married Bill at age 23 and moved to California to become the wife of a marine sergeant. (A second window in the bedroom, on the north wall, faces route 973, as only the roofline sticks above the berm of the road. This becomes an important part of the story later on.) Bob’s old bedroom was across the hall, facing the pasture, beyond that, the woods and adjoining streams, where he spent a lot of time fishing and tailing snakes. An array of captivated memos has accrued from the cellar area on up to the forbidden attic, where dust-netted spider webs massed to the rafters. Above them, bats squirm and fidget their way into the tiniest cracks along the ridgeline, always taking flight at twilight, escaping through some secrete passageway the size of a dime. He has written many a short story about the house and barn, describing in narrative detail each happening. It was sold back in 1967 and has sat empty. After a strange twist of fate and a two foreclosure notices, it has fallen into his lap, and he would without hesitation make this house his again. Bob would do anything, if it came to fruition, to fix and maintain the old homestead, best he could, forever.