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assumed to be the manager’s mother, or grandmother, or great-grandmother, for she was the oldest-looking person any of us had ever seen. We guessed her age at anywhere from ninety to one hundred fifty. She was thinner than a taffy stick. Her scalp looked as if it had been planted with dandelion fuzzballs. I found myself speaking lightly to her for fear that a loud word might blow her over.
    No doubt her skin had once been as solidly pink as mine, but much of its pigment had drained away so that she now seemed skinned in waxed paper. Wherever she was left uncovered, you could follow the humped blue tributaries of her circulation. I imagined that her doctor, examining her, could peer, like a tourist on a glass-bottomed boat, right through to her heart and other organs.
    The older Miss Teufel was seldom seen. She lived behind a doorway curtain that separated the store from the living quarters. But on occasion when the younger Miss Teufel was away, the older one came out to wait on customers. She sorely tested a kid’s patience: It could take forever just to buy a Mounds bar. But I for one did not mind, for watching the old Miss Teufel behind the counter was a fascinating experience. As I stared at the thin, blue-corded hand that passed me the Mounds bar, I wondered, would that be my hand in eighty years? My common sense said yes, but I couldn’t quite believe it. The bell above the green-framed screen door tinkled as I happily rejoined the sunshine and the hard reassuring warmth of the sidewalk bricks. Inside, the old woman disappeared behind the curtain.
    Henry Doerner lived in the next-to-the-last house on the block—the end of the dead end. Henry was a burly, rambunctious kid. He got into his share of trouble. He didn’t take any guff. He was active, feisty, you might even say pushy. When there were games to be played, he was there, in the middle. When there were sides to be chosen, he was there, up front, staring down the chooser.
    Maybe that’s why Henry Doerner was seldom chosen last. On the other hand, he was never chosen first, for Henry had disabilities. He had been born with one leg too short and an incomplete hand. The short leg required him to wear a special shoe, the sole of which wasa leather platform about six inches thick. It leveled off both feet to the ground and made walking, if not graceful, at least possible. The hand was a hand in name only. The wrist tapered to one finger with, as I recall, an extra finger or thumb projecting from where the palm should have been.
    And here is the thing: In my memory Henry Doerner is always running. The good leg moves normally, like mine, while the other swings straight outward from the hip, more like an oar than a leg. But he doesn’t seem to know, he doesn’t seem to care. He just runs. And the rocking chair on his porch is empty, and nobody says, “You can’t do that.”
    The other day I found Henry in one of my high school yearbooks. It’s the group picture of Homeroom 49. He stands in the second row, and you can’t see the hand or the foot. But you can see the face, and it’s pure Henry Doerner: eyes that pierce the camera as if it’s the chooser in a pickup game of street football, and a smirk that says, “Go ahead, I dare you not to pick me.”
    If I could go back and if I could be chooser, I would pick Henry Doerner first.
    Among the dead-end population, I count one soul who had no address on George Street. As far as I knew, he had no address anywhere, though he was at home everywhere. He was the hokey-pokey man.
    In the warmer months of the year the hokey-pokeyman roamed the streets of town, pushing before him a white wooden cart. The bed of the cart was occupied by a block of ice covered with a dishtowel. Flanking the ice were two rows of bottles containing flavored liquids in a variety of colors that always reminded me of a barbershop shelf.
    The hokey-pokey man knew kids. He knew our ways better than we did. As we got older and our routes about