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strangers: “And what
are you
web-footed inbreds gaping at?”
    Ned even shrugged off the neighbors’ petitions every spring. Summit Avenue’s other fancy yards (two colored gardeners apiece) approached azalea season’s ruddy peak. County wagons rattled to and fro before Falls’ great homes—farm folks seemed amazed at everything that money can buy. Winona’s place stunned beauty lovers. Weeds were chest-high. Come 1859, neighbors’ letters again begged Mrs. Smythe to kindly have her lawn mowed “and timbered” (it’d got that bad).
    The woman hadn’t left her tangled yard since Ned marched off to war. All her groceries were delivered. She threw trash into her prissiest neighbors’ yards. Popularity Plus, Winona won’t. Fact is, even before she met her strange illegal destiny, she was considered semi-weird on the local level.
    For then, I mean. Of course, what passes for strange nowadays is twelve octaves more so. Example being: one of my favorite volunteer candy-stripers here at the Home. “My fave,” as she’d likely put it. Sweetest features you ever seen, but you know she went out and got herself a Mohawk hairdo? Fifteen years old. Then she just
had
to stick a pin clear through her right nostril, I’m not even talking about a brooch, child, I’m talking safety pin. And her daddy’s a doctor!
    The child still causes quite a stir when she sulks in here. Full of sighs and potential, this one. Jerome says she has a “advanced fashion sense.” If that means turning your ears and nose into a hardware store, I guess she does. She’s stayed right loyal to us, God love her. Me, I admire loyalty and remember it. I’m pleased the child wants to come in and help us—however she looks. Few along our hall still let her even read to them. I figure you can always close your eyes, during. Still, you know me, honey, I got to stare right at her. See, I’m trying and learn. I don’t plan to be like some of these fuddy-duds in here. Some whine they just don’t
get
the latest craze. Then they cross their arms, roll their eyes, and pray that death’ll take them beyond fads.
    She set here droning Dickens at me not two days back, hair up like a skunk taxidermied in butch wax. I said to her, “Zondro” (her real name is Sandra but she changed it just to have her way and feel in charge—something I understand). I go, “Zondro, is this new hairstyle a way of showing you feel … sad about the Indians?”
    That got a major sigh.
    “Why should I feel sad about some moldy old Indians? Hunh? Uh-oh, are
you
one? You could be. Indians have zillions of wrinkles too, maybe from living outdoors. But I don’t even
know
any Indians, do you, Luce?” (Ilet these young ones call me what they will. I’m glad they speak to me at all.)
    “None that’re full-blooded.” But I asked
why
that pelt set aslant young Zondro’s noggin? I told her I won’t judging, just keeping up. “Is your new ‘do’ maybe a sign of modern … sadness?”
    “Hey, does it all always have to
mean
stuff? People your age never catch on. You think all of it always adds up to something. Read Zondro’s lips. Start with zero, then go down from there. Everybody in here is old but you’ve really racked up the oldie-moldie points, hunh? You could’ve probably been next-door neighbors to the Flintstones.”
    “To the who?”
    “Fred and Wilma Flintstone.”
    “I knew a Fred and Wilma. Lived out by the ice plant?”
    “It’s more like a joke. Only not.” She was back to the hair—these young ones’ll skip around on you. They get it from off the TV, channel hopping. “See, there’s a guy at school that’s completely drop-dead-looking, hunk city. So, see, he did it and then he caught so much flak, his four best friends got theirs shaved to keep him company and then—when I heard how people yelled things out of cars at them and threw beer bottles and stared and gave them such intensive heavy-duty static, well, one night I got super-bummed over it