is Milner Holcomb. You know, life is just like Reverend Abe said it was back when I was in

youth service squires. It's this big book of happy stories and sad stories, and you have to live

through both kinds to figure out what it all means. What happened to the Mahathes was definitely a

sad story. Everyone said they were nice people. They grew cabbage and carrots and onions and oats.

Their house was bigger than ours, but they had two kids. Then one day in spring there was an

accident with an auger, and the little girl died. Chrissy. I was too young to go to the funeral.

That's what they told me. So I stayed behind that day, and I built a fort inside. Everywhere

you went in town, people talked about it, how sad it was. Chrissy's brother, his name was Leonard.

He was the only one I ever really saw. One time after the funeral, mom and dad took a

for fried chicken in town, and we saw him playing a pinball game alone in the corner. He would

have been 10 then. Chrissy was just six when she died. I didn't know any of them, really. But even I

got sad sometimes thinking about their little girl gone and all. All through me growing up,

if there weren't any leaves on the trees, I could see the house way far off when I walked to school.

Couldn't see it otherwise, so it was just winter time might see it. Kids didn't talk about them ever.

We only talked about kids who were in our same grade or football players, not growing up stuff.

So Chrissy died in that accident, and then there was the funeral and life moved on.

And a few days after Christmas, I remember dad coming in real late for dinner. I was getting super

hungry, and mom asked him what was going on, and he said, well, it seems like the mahafis aren't

tending the farm at all. He and some other people went over to see him the week after. They took

some food, including some pork chops my mother made special. I was real jealous of that because

it was my favorite food with the bread crumbs on them. That was nine months since the accident.

I didn't think much about it except I didn't want pork chop night to get skipped. We didn't get to

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