I thought it an odd request. What questions did he need answered? And why ask me? Curiosity of his strange world enlightened and teased me. “Of course, Mr. Roberts. Let me tend this hose first and I’ll be right up.”
“Thank you, young man,” he said, turned, and vanished inside his room.
The task of rolling the rubber hose into a continuous circle and hanging inside the tool shed came easy for me. I couldn’t count how many times I had accomplished it that summer, and two summers before? Thereafter, I closed the shed and made my way up the wooden stairwell to room 210, stood outside, sucked in the night’s seeping air, and knocked once, twice, three times.
Middle.
Radcliff answered the door and welcomed me inside. More darkness and inferno heat consumed me. He turned on a light over his wr
