Welcome Home and Don’t Come Back

Some towns maintain order with committees, bylaws, and a respectable fear of neighbors. Mine chose a simpler system: none at all.

My old community seems unburdened by homeowners’ associations, where a man may park a boat on dry land and let it age into legend. And no one will trouble him unless it blocks their equally retired truck, or their slightly more ambitious pile of tires.

A straight run-down Redwood Drive serves as the neighborhood’s grand parade. Cars sit cattywhompus as if arranged by a drunk with artistic ambition and no deadline. Some haven’t moved since the Obama administration and are now considered fixtures, like mailboxes or regret.

I paused to admire one such relic when a man on a porch nearby called out, “Don’t lean on that. It’s structural.”

I told him I wouldn’t dream of it.

He nodded, satisfied. “Belongs to my cousin. He’s fixin’ it.”

I asked when.

He said, “He’s been gatherin’ resolve.”

That seemed to settle the matter.

Next door stood the old Philips place, or what survived its disagreement with fire. The remains lay scattered across the yard like a yard sale that had quarreled with itself and lost. No sign announced it as a problem, which is how you knew it wasn’t one.

A woman walking past slowed just enough to say, “Shame about that place.”

I agreed.

She added, “It was worse before the fire,” having improved my understanding considerably.

There are theories about how a place arrives at such a condition. The prevailing wisdom blames the Reservation system—an arrangement much discussed and poorly understood by the men doing the discussing, which suits them fine.

I heard one such expert holding court outside a convenience store.

“Problem is,” he said, “folks don’t take care of what they don’t earn.”

Another man nodded and said, “That so,” while accepting a free lighter from the clerk and slipping it into his pocket with professional ease.

The first man continued, encouraged by his own success.

I returned after some time away, guided by nostalgia and poor judgment, working in partnership. The town greeted me as it always had: by not noticing, which is its most reliable courtesy.

It does not burden a man with expectation. It does not pretend to remember him better than he remembers himself. It simply continues, like a story told out loud to prove the teller is still breathing.

I walked those cracked streets and felt a tug I first mistook for affection. It turned out to be a habit, which is affection after the poetry gets drained.

The houses leaned like men considering whether standing was worth the trouble. The roofs sagged with a kind of honesty you don’t often see in architecture or people.

I tried to love the place outright, but the town accepts love the way a cat accepts a mouse, curious at first, entertained for a spell, and then disappointed it doesn’t squeak louder.

It plays with you. Let’s let you believe you belong just long enough to make sure you remember you don’t anymore.

The people remained unchanged, which is to say they had changed in all the usual directions and none of the useful ones. Mothers carried the look of accounts long overdue. Fathers bore the steady tremor of men who had spent years arguing with gravity and losing on appeal.

I tried a greeting on one of them who stood behind the counter of the local gas station and food mart.

“Good to be back,” I said.

He looked at me for a long moment, then said, “We’ll see,” and went back to his work, which appeared to be standing still with purpose.

The young had mastered the sideways glance, by which they could measure a man’s worth without risking conversation. And I made conversation where I could.

The words behaved themselves but accomplished nothing. They fell between us like loose change, noticed, maybe, but not enough to bend for.

It occurred to me, gradually and without ceremony, that the town had assigned me a role. I was a returning extra.

At night, in an Airbnb, I mentioned to the host that the wind made a peculiar sound through the siding.

She said, “That ain’t the wind.”

I asked what it was.

He shrugged. “Depends how long you stay.”

I slept poorly but learned nothing new.

You might think this a harsh accounting, but the town is not offended. It has endured worse descriptions and better intentions, and outlasted both.

In the end, I concluded it is not a home in the tender, storybook sense. It is something sturdier and less flattering, a long procession where every man walks beside his former self and tries not to speak first.

I left again, as people do, with the sense that if the town loved me at all, it did so with a practical affection, one that doesn’t promise to keep you, only to remember where you broke down.

And that, I suppose, is as close to devotion as the place can manage without improving.