House For Sale

There is a house on a corner in a town in the north, where I went many times when I was young. It's a white house on a lot with a wrap-around porch, and it's surrounded by a transplanted garden.

The town is the town where my grandfather was born, and the house is the house where his brother lived for years. But not so long ago (though as for that it has been long) Uncle Oliver passed away. Yet the house stayed in the family, and years later it welcomed Bill Bunting home.

It was no accident that he moved back there. My grandfather had a way of making things come together all his life. And that he should return down the street from where he was born came, I suppose, as no real surprise to those who knew him well.

With them, my grandfather and grandmother brought much into that little white house on the corner. They had the accumulated treasure of many years. There was antique furniture, and yucky cupboards. Framed photographs and certificates. China and crystal and silver and carpets. There was a garage full of boxes and shelves and files and crates and barrels and tools and a work bench piled high with the stuff of a real engineer. And there was a transplanted part of the far-away garden that was their yard for so many years.

But my grandfather died several years ago, and my grandmother has been drifting deeper in a world of her own ever since he left. And although the house still stayed in the family and the stuff of their lives only slowly moved down the generations, the house is sitting vacant now. Its occupants are gone.

It must be cold in Michigan. Deep fall has probably given way to winter. The calls of crows must be echoing in the barren woods outside of town. And the little white house stands empty. Its occupants are gone.

Oliver is gone. Bill Bunting is gone. The renters are gone. The heat will soon be turned off. The pipes will soon be drained.

Soon little will remain of all those years. ... Of movies on the wall of the Odd Fellows Hall. Of generations of cousins running down the gravel road. Of the sound of hard Jeep tires whining on the pavement. ... Soon all that will remain there will be the name Bunting painted in black on a gray standing stone that sits in the yard of a white house on a corner in the town in Michigan where my grandfather was born.

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