much to see.
All they did see was an old, ramshackle two-story house on Winslow
Homer Avenue- a tiny dirt road on the outskirts of town that ran all
the way back to the sea. It sat on a three-acre plot of land, the
front yard and the forest beyond long since combined and climbing the
broken stairs to the gray, weathered front door. Vines and creepers
everywhere. Out back, a narrow slip of land sloped to the edge of a
cliff, below which was the ocean.
Never once did I see them as a boy. Ben and Mary Crouch had
disappeared into the dank interior of that house long before my time. I
heard rumors, though. We all did. Talk among our parents that led us
to think there was something 'not right' about Ben and Mary. Beyond
that good parents wouldn't go, not with the kids around. But
it was enough. Because later there were more rumors, which we
ourselves created.
How they ate children and lived inside huge cocoons spun from the flesh
of babies. How they were really living corpses, vampires, witches,
zombies.
The usual thing.
Once, when I was ten, three of us got up the nerve to run around to the
back of the house and peer into their garbage.
They lived completely out of cans.
There was not a piece of paper wrap or frozen-food box or ash red of
lettuce anywhere. Just cans. Canned fruit, canned peas, carrots,
onions. Canned meats and tuna from S. S. Pierce. And every can had
been wiped or washed so that it was spotless. I can't tell you why
that odd bit of cleanliness upset us so. But it did.
There was dog food- also canned- and lots of it. We counted five
separate bagfuls.
Everybody knew they kept dogs, though how many dogs was a matter of
conjecture. But it wasn't just two or three. The place had an
unmistakably doggy smell to it. The stink of unwashed fur and dog
shit. You could smell it yards away. But there were no neighbors
around to complain. Not for miles. Just a forest of scrub pine and
brambles out of which the house seemed to rise as though out of a
tangled green cloud, moving densely back to the sea.
We looked into the garbage and peeked through the basement window. It
was much too dark to see in there. But Jimmy Beard swore he saw
something sway and move in the darkness.
We did not argue. We ran. As though the stories we'd made up were
true. As though hell itself could come pouring out of there.
And I can feel my hackles rise as I write this, remembering how it felt
that day.
Because maybe, in a way, we were right.
Here's what made the papers:
I was thirteen I think when the police came and opened up the place.
It was a delivery boy from Harmon's who had called them after a month
went by with all the cans piling up unopened, untouched, on the porch
and no slip in the mailbox with his payment.
,
the delivery boy, and one of the cops came very close to losing his
hand. Because behind the door there were twenty-three dogs. And all
of them were starving.
They sealed the house up again and called in troops. The next day half
the town was out there, me and Rafferty included. It was quite as how
Six policemen and Jack Gardener, the sad old drunk who was our dog
warden, and six or seven guys in white lab jackets from the ASPCA in
Machias dumping whole sackfuls of dog food into the house through a
punched-in hole in the front kitchen window, then settling back,
waiting, while the snapping sounds and the growling and howling and
eating sounds wore away at everybody's nerves.
Then when it was quiet again they moved in with nets and stun-pistols.
And I had my first look inside the place.
I couldn't see how they'd lived there. Once the house had been
somebody's pride. I remember being told it was a hundred years old or
more. There were hand-hewn beams in the ceiling, and the wood on the
doors and moldings where it wasn't stained and smeared with god knows
what was still good high-quality cedar and oak. But the rest was
incredible. Filthy. Foul. Floors caked with dog shit, reeking of
urine. Old newspapers stacked everywhere, almost reaching the ceiling
in some places, damp and yellow. A couch and an overstuffed chair torn
to shreds, pieces of them scattered everywhere. The refrigerator door
hung open, empty. Cabinets and doors were chewed and clawed to
splinters.
A few of us kids stood at the front door, making twisted faces at the
stink. We watched them as they brought out the dogs one by one and
locked them into the ASPCA van. Many had to be carried out, they were
so weak. And all. of them were pretty docile after the feeding. I
wondered if they'd dropped some drugs in there too. I remember a lot
of them looked sort of bewildered, dazed. They were pathetically
thin.
I stopped looking when they found the bodies.
There were four of them. One was just a puppy. One was a Doberman.
The other two had been medium-sized mutts.
Obviously the other dogs had eaten them.
pretty angry. He pulled me into the car and then just sat torting,
shaking his head, his face getting redder and redder. I knew he wanted
to hit me, and I knew how hard it was for him not to.
1 guessed I'd disappointed him again.
So I told them all this over two rounds of egg creams. I had them
wide-eyed.
'Ben and Mary they never found, by the way.'
'Never?' Steven had this habit of pointing his index finger at you
