Anarchy

Tenth in a series on my West Virginia childhood and Appalachian exile.

Each afternoon when school let out, my brother and I walked a mile home together. We were forbidden from answering the phone when my mother was at work, so she came up with a system to reach us. She would dial our home number and let it ring twice then hang up and call back right away, at which point we were allowed to pick up the receiver.

Left on our own for longer and longer stretches after the divorce, we found ways to keep busy. I began to explore the kitchen on my own, bringing a chair to the stove to stand on and making peanut butter or chocolate candy I’d seen my mother cook before.

I had also seen her fry homemade donuts using cylinders of biscuit dough. The process hadn’t looked complicated. I filled a pan halfway up with oil and let it get hot. When a drop of water made the liquid in the pan pop and spit, I knew it was ready.

Peeling the foil off the cardboard tube and jabbing it with a spoon to break the vacuum seal revealed the soft dough beneath. I separated the biscuits then punched a hole in each with my thumb before lowering it into the hissing oil.

I cooked them one at a time, keeping them moving in circles to avoid burning them. It was a trick to flip each one and cook the other side without splashing myself. When the dough had turned golden brown, I would hook it out, drag both sides through a plate of cinnamon sugar, and lay it on a paper towel to cool.

I placed the finished donuts together on a plate to share with my brother. Surveying the stack from one direction and then another, I felt pleased with the results, forgetting that I'd left the oil unattended.

After a faint whoosh, a cloud of fire filled the space where my hands had been a minute before. Once the oil was truly burning, the flames climbed a foot or more above the lip of the pan. I turned the burner off, but the fire no longer needed help to rage on its own.

I didn’t know how to put it out. For a moment, I wondered if it was time to call the fire department. Instead, I dialed the operator. When she answered, I asked if I should pour water over the pot of burning oil.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “The oil will explode. Is the burner off?”

Yes.

“Does the pan have a lid?”

It did.

“Is there an oven mitt or potholder nearby?”

I had a mitt.

The operator told me to take the mitt and try to put the lid on the pan. Confident in her knowledge, I crept up to the flaming pot and dropped the lid on it. She stayed on the phone until we were both sure the fire was out. The next time it happened, I didn’t need to call, because I knew what to do.

***

My brother and I delighted in our freedom. Quincy Hill was steep, and in heavy rain, torrents of water filled the street running downhill along one side of the house. We weren’t allowed to go outside without our raincoats, but if we put slickers on, no questions were asked. With our plastic armor, safety procedures had been observed, and we could proceed into the storm.

Water filled the edges of the street at first, but in a real thunderstorm, it might form a small river that reached two feet out onto the blacktop. Pulling my hood on and tying it tight around my face, I lay down in the gutter, arms held stiff to my sides, feet aimed downhill.

Water barreled from above, working its way underneath my back with enough force to lift and move me. The torrent carried my body in the slipstream. Looking up through the oval opening of the hood, I could see only tree branches and sky.

Lightning flashed. Cars drove by on the narrow street, heedless of our adventure. We rode the tiny rapids flat on our backs down to the point at which the road made a hard bend to the right, where the current deposited us in leaves and mud. We stood up, climbed the hill, and did it again.

Winter at the house on the hill was even better. If two inches of snow fell, my brother and I went outside to make snowballs. Gathering a pile in our arms, we carried them into the house, going upstairs then even farther up, to the attic.

The gable on the side that faced the street sat above and well back from the bay window below, forming a narrow ledge outside the attic. Up went the sash, and we crawled out onto the ledge, maybe twenty-five feet off the ground. The metal flashing on top of the gable was decorative. Even at the time, I understood it hadn’t been built to hold people; it warped and buckled as we moved.

By the time we made our way outside, the fist-size lumps of snow inside our jackets had hardened into ice. We squatted out on the ledge, watching for cars navigating the unplowed hill. Just before they pulled directly below us, we threw our ice balls, now solid as rocks. My brother had a good arm and could hit consistently. With gravity on my side, even I could find a windshield sometimes.

We rejoiced every time we hit the mark. The car stopped. A window rolled down, or a door opened. The driver leaned out to look around. Sometimes they would climb out of the car and scan the terrain in vain. We huddled low and waited for them to get back behind the wheel. We sat so far above them, we were gods. They never looked up.

Summer brought more freedom. My mother’s most consistent rule was that it had to be seventy-five degrees for five days in a row before we could run through the neighborhood barefoot. We lit out for Quincy Hill Park in cutoff jeans and no shoes. We vanished for whole days. We climbed on top of Shane Lyons’ garage and wandered through other people’s backyards. At dusk, I wrote down license plate numbers of cars going by, recording them in a tiny notebook and imagining they would later become the missing clue to solve a mystery.

Left to our own chaos at the house on the hill, my brother and I reveled in our salad days. We were growing into a feral strangeness I wouldn’t have been able to name, yet recognized from books and fairy tales.

Where was our mother, and what was she doing? We did not know and didn’t think to ask. Only months later would the realization come—too late—that our childhood had already banked for the descent. The anarchy of benign neglect was the best we could have hoped for, and the first thing we would lose.

You can read another story in this series about my childhood here, or find out more about me and this newsletter on my About page.