APPLE HILL ROAD

Summer days began without a plan. You got up. You had a bowl of cereal. You went outside. A lawn mower hummed. Ducks passed overhead in perfect V formation like World War Two bombers. A dog barked, and another dog barked back. Somebody was hammering nails into a roof. Somebody was bouncing a basketball two streets away. You heard the sound, then the echo. A cat crept across the grass and disappeared beneath a hedge. It was hot. The sun was strong. The crickets made a seething noise. A sprinkler came on and made a quiet rain sound when the water hit the grass and then a louder rain sound when the water hit the street.

"Let's do something."

"Like what?"

"I don't know."

"Crab apple fight?"

"Nah."

We thought it over. After a while someone got an idea, and we did something.

* * *

Our street before it was a street used to be an apple orchard. The apple trees were planted in neat rows that went up the hill as far as you could see. The Dad told us about the apple trees. He remembered them from when he was a boy. He used to come out to the country for picnics with his family in his father's car, which was called a Graham Paige, and they would get a drink of apple cider at the farmhouse and walk around the apple orchards.

That was a long time ago.

When they built our street the builders cut down most of the apple trees and sawed up the logs and dragged the branches away. The builders left some of the apple trees for looks. Every house had one in the front yard, giving off shade and dropping crab apples into the grass. Everyone kicked or swept the crab apples into the street, where they got smashed and worm-eaten and smelled like rot. The crab apples were not good to eat. They were sour. Mik Cosgrove ate them but no one else did. We threw the crab apples at cars and squirrels, at telephone poles and each other. Once I nailed Albert in the middle of his forehead with a rotten crab apple, which exploded. The Dad saw it from the kitchen window and came outside and said, "That's a good way to take someone's eye out."

All the houses on our street looked the same except for the farmhouse. The houses were white, split-level houses with flat roofs. Some of the front doors were painted different colors. On every stoop was a gray milk box. Each house had a sign above the front door that said something like "Welcome," or "Home Sweet Home," or "Bless This House." The sign above our door said "35."

We lived at number thirty-five. Stev lived directly across the street from us. Tiger lived next to Stev. Mik Cosgrove lived next to Tiger. Franky DiLorenzo lived across the street from Mik Cosgrove. The Estabrooks lived next to us. At night Diana Estabrook kissed boys on her porch swing while Albert and I watched from our bedroom window. All the boys liked to kiss Diana Estabrook.

The farmhouse was located at the bottom of the street. The farmhouse was built in 1805, according to the little sign on the front door. A brook ran through the backyard of the farmhouse. There was a well in the yard with a pump and a bucket which no one used anymore. The well was for looks. It had no water. The sign on the farmhouse mailbox said "Geo. W. Sage," but nobody by that name lived in the farmhouse. An old lady lived there, but the lights were always off. The old lady had never been seen. She lived her whole life in the farmhouse and never came out. She was like a rare butterfly. If you could just catch a glimpse of her with your binoculars, your life would be special. But it never happened, not once.

THE GROUNDHOG ARRIVES

That summer, a groundhog invaded our backyard. The groundhog arrived in the middle of June, after school had ended. The groundhog made a tunnel in the backyard that went around and around, making ridges in the grass like a pencil doodle. The tunnel ended underneath the back porch.

The Mom said, "I'll call the humane society. They'll know what to do."

The Dad said, "Don't bother. I'll take care of it. Come on, Timmy."

The Mom said, "What are you going to do?"

He got into the Mark IV, drove very slowly onto the lawn and steered around to the backyard, making tread marks in the grass. He stopped next to the back porch and got out. The car looked strange sitting on the lawn.

The Mom came out onto the back porch. She said, "What in God's name are you doing?"

"Watch and learn," said The Dad.

He taped the black garden hose with duct tape to the exhaust pipe, then stuck the other end of the hose down the groundhog hole and filled in the hole with dirt. Then he got back into the car and gunned the motor. Approximately five seconds later smoke started pouring out of three separate holes in the backyard.

The Dad said to me, "You see him?"

"No. You?"

"No."

"Maybe we got him."

"Maybe. Or maybe he's got some holes that we don't know about. Maybe there's more than one groundhog. Maybe there's a bunch of them."

"What's a bunch of groundhogs called?"

"I don't know. A family?"

After a couple of minutes of gunning the motor, the backyard smelled like car exhaust.

The Mom said, "Stop that this instant. What are the neighbors going to think? I've never been so embarrassed in my entire life." She went inside and slammed the door.

The Dad said, "Okay. That's enough."

He unwrapped the hose, and we drove around the side of the house and parked in the garage.

* * *

The Dad looked like Rock Hudson with a gob of Brylcreem in his hair, which was black and thick and low on his forehead. The Mark IV was his pride and joy. He used to own a Mark III, but he traded it in for the Mark IV the day the new model came out. The Mark IV was dark blue and had a V-8 engine with maximum horsepower. The Dad washed and simonized the Mark IV regularly, rubbing and buffing it with a terry cloth. He had a special compound to take out scratches. As soon as he was done washing and waxing he immediately put the car in the garage and closed the overhead door. The Dad acted like a big shot when operating the Mark IV. He'd wheel into a restaurant parking lot, push down the tinted windows and tell the car jockey,...