The Neighbor

10

We didn’t want to go back into that house ever again. We didn’t want to talk about what had happened there or be questioned about it.

Using a typewriter in a research room at the public library, my sister wrote a letter to the police, reporting in some detail what they would find in the Clockenwall residence. She made sure that she wiped all fingerprints from the paper and envelope before mailing it at a post office twelve blocks from our house.

Maybe they thought the letter was a hoax. But they had to check it out. The story was a sensation for a week, which was a long time in a year when the news was full of big stories about war in Vietnam and race riots in America’s cities.

Having found the scrapbook devoted to Amalia, the police came by to speak to her, and she told them how Mr. Clockenwall had spooked her on those two occasions when she was thirteen. But she said not a word regarding our adventure. Perhaps because she never lied and had about her a palpable air of truthfulness, they never thought to ask if she had recently been inside the house of murder or if she might be the one who had written the letter. I do not believe the cops were careless or incompetent in their investigation; what I think is, because of Amalia’s great good heart and the purity of her gentle soul, some Power that watches over us ensured that she would be spared the ordeal of being the object of a media frenzy.

She and I never again spoke of those events. There was nothing that needed to be said, for we understood and accepted. Occasionally, however, my sister came to me and hugged me tightly for the longest time, and although she seemed to have no reason for doing so, we both knew the reason.

As I said, that was the summer when I met Jonah Kirk, who became my best friend for life, who loved Amalia as if she were his sister, too, and who has written so well of her in his book, The City. During the months thereafter, far more happened to us than we, at our most imaginative, could have foreseen, all of it different in character from what I’ve just told you here, with more wonder and delight, with no evil spirits but with worse.

For years, the Clockenwall house remained for sale, but no one would purchase it. When eventually it sold, the buyer tore it down and, with the city’s permission, converted the property into a pocket park with a fountain where birds bathe and with benches where people sit to watch them and to rest from the stresses of the day. On the granite base of the fountain, a plaque bears only the name MELINDA LEE HARMONY, which means to say that she didn’t truly die on that ground but lives there forever.