Dale made a U-turn and drove back east, turning north onto Broad Avenue. The clouds were low and the wind was cold. Leaves blew across the wide street ahead of his Toyota Land Cruiser, their dry scraping sounding like the scuttle of rats. For an instant, fatigue convinced Dale that these were rats, hundreds of them, rushing through the cones of his headlights.

There were no streetlights on Broad Avenue. The great elms that used to arch over the wide street had fallen victim to Dutch elm disease decades ago, and the trees planted since seemed smaller, stunted, irregular, and ignoble in comparison. Some of the fine old homes along Broad still stood back behind their wide lawns, the houses dark and silent against the night wind, but like an old war veteran at a reunion, Dale was more aware of the missing houses than of the few survivors.

He turned right onto Depot Street and drove the few blocks to his childhood home across the street from where Old Central School had stood.

His home of seven years was recognizable, but just barely. The huge old elm that had stood outside his and Lawrence’s bedroom was gone, of course, and the new owners had long ago paved the short driveway and added a modern garage that did not go well with the American-square design of the house. The front porch was missing its railings and swing. The old white clapboard had been replaced with vinyl siding. Jack-o’-lanterns and a bulging straw man in bib overalls had been set out on the porch in celebration of the holiday, but the candles had burned out hours earlier, leaving the jack-o’-lanterns’ triangular eyes as black and empty as skull sockets; the rising breeze had scattered the straw man’s guts to the wind.

Old Central, of course, was gone. Dale had few clear memories of the summer of 1960, but he vividly remembered the building burning, embers flying orange against a stormy sky. Now the once-grand square city block was filled with a few ratty-looking ranch houses—dark and incongruous amidst the older, taller homes on each side of the square—and all signs of the former school building and its huge playground had long since been eradicated.