THE LAST KID LEFT in Paisley, Kansas.
Man, oh, man.
How can I explain a life in which one's closest friends have tails? Or exoskeletons? Or compound eyes?
This was my life after the Baldersons moved to Kansas City. Insects, arachnids, grass-loving reptiles, ground-dwelling mammals—these became my acquaintances after the people departed. Not that I ever depended all that much on the indigenous people, other than my mother, but it was reassuring to be around someone with whom I had a common language.
Before Mr. Walker died so suddenly, he and I would talk about baseball in Kansas City. Before Mrs. Franks moved on, we would discuss the lives of writers such as Hemingway, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Proust, and Sinclair Lewis.
My mother read, but what she read were addresses and postmarks and contradictory directives from the United States Postal Service. When she'd get home from her rounds in the late afternoon, all she wanted to do was watch TV. Game shows. People arguing. Oprah.
I never knew my father. He died working in the fields a month before I was born. I wear his hat. It's a ball cap with an embroidered logo that says CATFISH, honoring a minor-league baseball team from my father's hometown of Columbus, Georgia.
It has his sweat stains.
It fits me perfectly.
Except for a few classroom assignments having to do with famous people from history (James Whitcomb Riley, for example, and William Allen White), I've never written anything except what you hold in your hands. I mention this because I'm hoping that whoever reads this journal will be sympathetic to the fact that I had to figure out a lot of things as I went along.
For instance, at what point should I tell you my name? For the record, it's Spencer Adams Honesty. My friends—ha, ha!—call me Spence. I say "ha, ha!" because there's nobody left in Paisley to call me anything at all, except my mother, who doesn't need to use a name since I'm the only other person in the room.
"Here," she'll say, "take this out to the trash barrel and burn it."
There's certainly no need for her to add "Spence, dear" to her instruction. Who else could she possibly be talking to?
Under these circumstances, it's easy to forget that I have a name.
If I'd ever gotten a dog, I suppose I'd have called him "Here, boy," because what's the point of identifying differences using names if there's nothing left to differentiate?
Sometimes I'd sit on the front porch and name the hummingbirds. Ruby. Flicker. Buzzy. Emerald. But this was a meaningless exercise since I was the only one who knew who each one was and they were incapable of understanding the names I'd given them.
When I'd say, "Come here, Ruby," they all would show up, or not, as the case may be.
So things in Paisley, Kansas, simply became things.
Names no longer mattered.
The talisman that Chief Leopard Frog carved for me was in the shape of a rabbit. From nose to tail, it was two and one quarter inches long, and from feet to tips of ears, it was one and one half inches high. It was very smooth and the perfect size for a hand or pocket.
In some cultures, Chief Leopard Frog told me, such charms are called netsukes. They are sometimes carried in a pocket, as I prefer, and sometimes drilled so they can be worn on leather lanyards or golden necklaces.
They are almost always in the shape of protective animals, although tiny Buddhas are not uncommon.
It all depends on who's doing the carving and how he's feeling that day.
My talisman had big eyes, a prominent nose, and laid-back ears. His forelegs and haunches were merely suggested by the carver, but his tail was as carefully defined as a button for a shirt collar.
In the spirit of the gift, I carried that rabbit everywhere. My constant fidgeting and fiddling with him oiled his surface so each day he became a little darker, a little smoother.
How things work out depends a lot on luck.
And I had a real honest-to-goodness, handmade Native American lucky charm.
Or so—in my eagerness to see the bright side—I thought.