Name All the Animals A
Memoir
Alison Smith
Scribner New York
London
Toronto
Sydney
SCRIBNER
1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Copyright © 2004 by Alison Smith All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. SCRIBNER
and design are trademarks of
Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales: 1-800-456-6798 or
[email protected]
Designed by Kyoko Watanabe Text set in Goudy Manufactured in the United States of America 3
5
7
9
10
8
6
4
2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Alison, [date) Name all the animals : a memoir/ Alison Smith. p. em. 1. Smith, Alison, [date) 2. Bereavement-Psychological aspecrs. 3. Brothers-Death-Psychological aspects. I. Title. BF575.07 S58 2004 155.9'37'092---dc22
2003060432
ISBN 0-7432-5522-4
for Roy
This is a true story. Some names and details have been changed.
Name All the Animals
Out of the ground God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature , that was its name.
GENESIS
2: I
9
Not everything has a name .
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
Prologue
THE S P RING M Y brother, Roy, turned twelve we discovered an abandoned house in the gully by the old railroad tracks. Roy saw it first. "Look at that." He pointed and his skinny arm trembled. The funny thing about this house was that its entire front half had been ripped away, as if a large claw had reached out of the sky and tom it clean off. The remaining rooms of the house were still furnished. Wallpaper, water-stained and peeling, hung on the decay ing walls. Snow clung to the seat cushions. Rusted pots and pans languished in the kitchen cupboards. It was as if the house's owners had stepped out for a moment and while they were gone someone had tom their home in half. "What happened to it?" I asked. Roy lay down under a crabapple tree, placed his chin on his hand, and stared at the house . I lay down next to him. "I don't know," he said. He scratched the back of his head, took a deep breath, and suggested we take a closer look. "Are you crazy ?" I asked. "No," he said. He got to his feet. "What if it's dangerous ? What if it's haunted ?" "Come on, Al." He walked toward the house . Over the next few months, Roy was drawn back to the aban doned house again and again. Each time he crossed its threshold, stepping over the splintered floorboards, he removed his baseball cap as if he were entering a church. All spring we lay in the field outside the ruined house. The ground warmed under us, the snow melted into runnels. One day he asked me, "What do you think happened to them ?"
2
·
·
·
·
Alison Smith
"Who ?" "The people who used to live there. " I glanced a t him. H e was squinting u p into the trees. "Maybe they found a better house," I said. "No." He rolled away from me. "That's not it." "Then what do you think happened ?" "I think they