If you are very lucky, there will be one day in your life on which your brother becomes your hero. I was hoofing home from choir practice, the December I was 10, toting a shoulder bag of science fiction books and a fair weight of embarrassment. That year the fifth graders had to sing carols before the older kids did their Christmas play. We were all sopranos, any voice change years away, so we sounded like girls, which mortified us, because actual girls had better voices and we knew it. It was a flat stroll from school to Main Street, then the shortcut behind the depot that I was forbidden to use because some kid a century ago got hit by a train, which I took anyway, then the long climb of Hill Street as the early dark descended. A boy came wheeling down the hill on a bicycle, making S shapes as he careened from the road's far left to far right, no great risk at that quiet hour. It had been a dry December, too, cold but no ice or snowbanks. Not until he zoomed past did I realize that his bike was the same model as my brother Neil's, the same green. But it couldn't have been Neil's bike, because there were no streamers flying from the handlebar grips. There was no motor sound from the playing card clothespinned to the front fork so that the spokes strummed it as the wheel spun. Otherwise, it was Neil's bike exactly. The boy riding it was tall and confident, barely pedaling as he swooped side to side. I heard the slap of shoes, and two smaller boys ran past downhill full tilt, almost faster than their legs could go. As the biker turned left, down Marshall Street toward the Farm, I heard the younger ones call out, "Hey, wait up." Then they all were gone, and I resumed my climb. It was not a farm anymore. EJ Moulton had raised beef there for years, put in a trailer home for a hired hand, then another, and pretty soon there was a whole neighborhood of them, all in rows, with a big sign at the head of the dirt driveway: "The Farm." They weren't the poorest folks in town, but almost. Our outgrown boots went there via the food shelf, along with jeans, gloves and sturdy shirts if we…
If you are very lucky, there will be one day in your life on which your brother becomes your hero. I was hoofing home from choir practice, the December I was 10, toting a shoulder bag of science fiction books and a fair weight of embarrassment. That year the fifth graders had to sing carols before the older kids did their Christmas play. We were all sopranos, any voice change years away, so we sounded like girls, which mortified us, because actual girls had better voices and we knew it. It was a flat stroll from school to Main Street, then the shortcut behind the depot that I was forbidden to use because some kid a century ago got hit by a train, which I took anyway, then the long climb of Hill Street as the early dark descended. A boy came wheeling down the hill on a bicycle, making S shapes as he careened from the road's far left to far right, no great risk at that quiet hour. It had been a dry December, too, cold but no ice or snowbanks. Not until he zoomed past did I realize that his bike was the same model as my brother Neil's, the same green. But it couldn't have been Neil's bike, because there were no streamers flying from the handlebar grips. There was no motor sound from the playing card clothespinned to the front fork so that the spokes strummed it as the wheel spun. Otherwise, it was Neil's bike exactly. The boy riding it was tall and confident, barely pedaling as he swooped side to side. I heard the slap of shoes, and two smaller boys ran past downhill full tilt, almost faster than their legs could go. As the biker turned left, down Marshall Street toward the Farm, I heard the younger ones call out, "Hey, wait up." Then they all were gone, and I resumed my climb. It was not a farm anymore. EJ Moulton had raised beef there for years, put in a trailer home for a hired hand, then another, and pretty soon there was a whole neighborhood of them, all in rows, with a big sign at the head of the dirt driveway: "The Farm." They weren't the poorest folks in town, but almost. Our outgrown boots went there via the food shelf, along with jeans, gloves and sturdy shirts if we…