There Was a Time in My Life When I Knew

Every inch of my neighborhood, every broken fence, every slab of crooked sidewalk that might shoot me over the handlebars of my black Schwinn bike. The slamming of car doors up and down the block as our fathers grudged off to work. That if there was something wrong with my family, then there was something wrong with me. 

Minnows in bait shop bathtubs, night crawlers in ancient refrigerators, the glassy eyes of a floating carp. Turtles on branches. The drumming of the one-legged man’s crutch on the swaying wooden dock.  

At night, in the summer, when windows were thrown open, you could walk by people’s houses, unseen, and you could hear things. Radios, televisions, women washing dishes. The sins of the fathers. The barking of dogs.  

If a child was wailing, it was best not to hear. 

Minnows, night crawlers, glassy-eyed carp.  

My black Schwinn bike. 

The sound of car doors, slamming. Children, wailing. Angry drop hammers at the Erie Foundry, two blocks away. Steel on furious steel.  

Every broken family, every broken fence.  

Every fault in the sidewalk, every fault in me. 

Dinty W. Moore is author of the memoirs Between Panic & Desire and To Hell With It and the writing guides Crafting the Personal Essay and The Mindful Writer, among other books. He has published essays and stories in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, Georgia Review, and Kenyon Review, and is founding editor of Brevity, the journal of flash nonfiction. More at dintywmoore.com. 

This essay is a Short Reads original.