The Big Old House On the Corner

As I walked through the neighborhood, I couldn’t help staring in the window of the big old house on the corner.  For the first time ever, there was music coming through the open window.  Loud music.  Boogie-woogie music.  Heavy bass.  Repetition.  You couldn’t ignore it and I couldn’t  hardly stand it.  I just stood there on the sidewalk, not caring  it was obvious  I was staring, and stared away. 

That had been my grandparents’ house during my growing up years.  Papaw had a lumber yard in town and they were what Mamoo called prosperous.  But they both have been gone now for a dozen years, and my uncle Sonny, who inherited the house, went to jail shortly after when the feds caught him making moonshine in the garage out back.  Sonny never had much sense, anyhow.  He didn’t figure on the sheriff getting suspicious when there was lots of coming and going at a house where just one single man lived.  

So the house has been sitting there, empty for better n’ ten years now.  And except for a seasonal trim of the lawn in front by a jail trustee that the sheriff sends over, not a lick of paint or other upkeep has happened to that big old place.  So naturally it began running down and looking pitiful next to the other big houses on the street. 

I walk by the house most every day.  I like to keep up some exercise to keep my joints from freezing up like Mrs. Luke's done.  She just sat on her porch after Mr. Luke died and did not one thing, just sat and watched the traffic going by, and don’t you know, it wasn’t no time before she couldn’t hardly get around at all.  Our bodies need to move to keep oiled up.  Everybody knows that, or should know it.

Anyway, here was loud music coming out of Papaw’s house.  I haven’t never been one to just stand around when something draws my attention; I like to get to the bottom of it.  So I went right up the steps onto the porch and knocked real hard at Papaw’s front door.  I knew it would take quite a banging to be heard over that loud music.  Nothing happened at first.  I guess my knocking just sounded like it come from the record player.  But then the music stopped.  I guess it got to the end of a song, and so I knocked again, real loud.  

This time I heard steps inside coming toward the door.  I backed up a little bit, cause it occurred to me that maybe it warn’t too smart to be interfering with something that wasn’t really my business.  The big old oak front door creaked open, and I could see a person standing there behind the screen door (which was latched incidentally, I’d already tried it.)

The person was kinda hid in the dark of the hallway, but I could make out that it was a boy, maybe a half-grown boy about twelve or thirteen.  He wadn’t too filled out and not yet any taller than me, so I wan’t too worried that I was in any danger.

“What  you  doin’ in my Papaw’s house?” I blurted out.

“Who are you?” he said.

“I’m the one needs to know who YOU are,” I said.

“I didn’t think it would be a problem,” he said.

“You here by yourself?” I asked.

“Who are you anyway?” he asked again.

“I’m the granddaughter of the man used to own this house,” I said, “and I’m the niece of the man who owns it now, and being as how he’s in jail, I don’t think you have any permission to be staying here.”

“Well,” he said, “Daddy wrote me that I could stay here for a while till I figure out where else to go.”

“Your Daddy? Who’s your Daddy?

Reginald Whitehouse, but everyone calls him Sonny.

Oh, law.  Sonny don’t have any kids.

He has me, he said.  He just didn’t know it till recently.