Brettonwoods

I clearly remember the smell of hot coffee, and the sound of hushed voices around the kitchen table, telling and retelling the details of what happened that fateful winter. When we were children would stay quiet and just out of sight, but not out of earshot of our mothers, listening to the gruesome particulars of these events. This is a story that happened, not to me, but to my mother and aunt, and because of their advanced years, and realizing the approach of my own decrepitude, I thought I should document this story before it is lost to time. This took place ages ago, but my recollection serves me well because of the fear and morbid curiosity that was attached to those memories. This unfortunate chain of events took place in the suburbs of Detroit. I dont remember the actual address, and some of the names of the people involved have been forgotten, and maybe its for the best. The year was 1964 and the tin can sound of our transistor AM radio played the Beatles singing, A Hard Days Night. FM radio was still a thing of the future. I spent a great many of my childhood days at my grandparents house. They were my mother's parents and they lived on Brettonwoods Street in Madison Heights. It was a time when everyone knew their neighbors by their first name, and you could buy a whole bag of candy and a bottle of pop with two dimes. Our moms worked at home most of the time, and A & W was the popular fast food. None of us kids wore expensive cloths in those days; holes in our pants were patched, and all tennis shoes were created equal, (unless of course you were artistic and colored flowers on them with your ink pen). People were thrifty in those days because they were living in some really tough times that taught them to be frugal.

That was the year that a family of five moved into the house next door to my grandparents: a mother, a father, and three grade school aged children. Nobody knew anything about this family, because they kept to themselves. The mother never came out to visit over the back fence with my grandma or exchange greetings in passing. They never sat on the front porch on nice days to chew the fat with their neighbors. I never played with their kids because they stayed inside most of the time, not unusual now, but back then it was quite strange indeed for children to be indoors all the time. There were no video games or cable TV to entertain us, and if we hung around the house too long, our parents were bound to put us to work, therefore we spent our days outside entertaining ourselves. In the summer we practically lived on our bikes or played ball in the streets. A simple picnic table adorned with a vintage yard ornament wagon wheel quickly became a sailing ship on the high seas where we fought storms and battled pirates. An old abandoned junk car provided the perfect way for us to embark on an imaginary road trip to one of those exotic other states we had heard about, like California. In the winter, we built walls out of snow by stacking snowballs and waged war on each other with snowy projectiles. At the beginning of the winter, we ran water to flood our yards and create ice rinks to skate or slide on. Technology may have been limited, but our imaginations kept us well entertained. No one knew if this new family had any relatives near, because no one had gotten to know them; they kept to themselves all of the time. They never told anyone where they were from or even talked to anybody for that matter. This particular winter was one of the coldest and snowiest winters that I remember. The sides of the side-walks were several feet high in snow, and then the temperatures dropped until it was bitter cold. In early December of that year, that family seemed to just vanish from the face of the earth. An entire

family of five was gone and no one knew exactly when they left or where they went. No one saw them packing to move, and no one saw them leave. Some people speculated that they must have left in the night; some folks figured that they probably left in a quick huff and were getting a divorce, thinking that maybe a bad marriage was the reason why they kept to themselves. Others tossed around the idea that maybe the man was a criminal running from the law, and maybe that was why they were so secretive. Like many other close-knit neighborhoods we were gossips, and also very nosy. So after noticing that there was no activity at that house for a couple of weeks, both adults and children slunk around to peek in every window that we could reach from the ground. Though there was not much to see with all the curtains drawn we still tried to peek through the cracks, but to no avail; it was just too dark inside. Being children prone to great imaginary leaps, inflected by a lack of television, we started telling the stories before anyone even knew there was a story. Maybe we perceived the evil like a bad smell radiating out from that house. We called it the monster house and I would hurry past it, casting worried glances back if I were walking alone. The house was built by the Bailey family years before I was born. Jobs were scarce and wages were bad at that time, so they had built the house out of garbage that they collected off the streets, though you would not know it by looking, because the house was pleasant, clean, and looked well built. The Bailey name had been associated with the darker element of city life, and maybe some criminal activity connected to it. The Baileys had moved away some years back, but I speculated that maybe there was something evil built into that house that cursed it from the beginning, causing all who lived there to come under the influence of some darker unseen element.

It was quite some time after Christmas and the mysterious family had still not reappeared; that was when my mother, my aunt Audrey, (who was my father's sister), and the woman who lived across the street on the corner, all got together, and as Ricky Ricardo would say, Hatched a plot. They presumed that because no one had seen the family pack to leave, then there must be a lot of their belongings left in the house, and some of those belongings should be clothes. Those were difficult times when jobs were hard to come by, and all three families were in need of childrens clothes. So with careful calculations and synchronized watches, like secret agents on a mission, they gathered around the table and laid out their plans. They would wait until after dark, then break into the house from the back where they would not be seen, and grab as many clothes as they could carry. They justified what they were going to do by saying that, after all, if that family was not coming back, there was no use in wasting good clothes; they could definitely use the clothes as much as anyone else. There were three children in my family, my aunt Audrey had six, and the woman across the street had nine children, so no matter what size the clothes were, they were going to fit somebody. Our moms were a very unlikely crew to be capable of criminal brilliance. As soon as it was completely dark the three young mothers gathered together; dressed in dark clothes, they had transformed into stealthy cat burglars. They hopped the fence, crept silently to the back of the house, where they taped up the glass in the window with duct tape, broke the window, and reached in to unlock the back door. They carried no flash lights, so they would not attract the attention of anyone passing by who might see lights shining from inside the house. They carried only empty laundry bags to haul home their illgotten booty. Now inside the house, they stood still for a few seconds to let their eyes adjust to the dark; the first thing they noticed as it came into view was the

Christmas tree. It was standing in the living room with all the unopened presents still under it just as if it were Christmas Eve, and at any moment the children would wake up and rush down the stairs to open their presents that Santa had left them. The thought of how sad and strange that was, would have to be analyzed later, but for now they felt an urgency to complete their mission. All three young women wanted to rush and be done with their pillaging, so they could get out of the house just in case someone actually showed up. It was dark, with only the moon illuminating the interior through the windows. They drew back curtains to let the dim moonlight in, and it was enough light for them to see to get around; so off they went toward the front and center of the house where the stairway was, then up to the second floor where the bedrooms were. By the dim glow of the moon, they could see piles of clothes on the floor everywhere, like someone had just thrown everything out of the dressers and closets onto the floor in preparation of a hasty and disorderly departure, then just left them there. As their eyes became a little more adjusted to the darkness, they moved swiftly and silently, as if making a noise might awaken some unseen sleeping person. With adrenalin rushing through their bodies making them move even faster now, they crammed the clothes into their bags with speed born out of panic. They wanted to get out of the house quickly. The soft sound of a door opening and closing at the back of the house stopped them dead in their tracks; no one moved a muscle. They were all holding their breath thinking, Oh man, weve been caught. What do we do now? The three frightened women, clutching their bags of clothes, silently inched their way to the top of the steps where they had a clear view of the floor below. They stood motionless huddled close together, cocked like a hair trigger ready to shoot out of the house. They were desperately hoping that the person

who entered the house would just leave, but they were poised to take flight at the first sight of any shadow or movement. They heard footsteps walking toward them as they stood silent and unmoving at the top of the stairs. The clear and unmistakable clacking sound of high heel shoes on a tile floor echoed through the house; the sound was amplified by the silence within the walls. As the seconds ticked by, the trio of terrified cat burglars stood unmoving and silent. They could not tear their eyes away from the landing below, waiting and waiting, to see who would round the corner at the bottom of the stairway. The hair on their arms stood on end and each of them could hear their heart beat in their ears like thunder. Their nerves were electrified and their senses heightened so that every sound was magnified by a thousand times. The footsteps came closer and closer, and then rounded the corner below to the bottom of the stairs. A bunch of used clothing is not worth going to jail over and each one was dreading the moment of truth that was about to appear at the bottom of the stairs. Another possibility occurred to them at that moment; could it be another intruder who had taken notice of a house with no one home? Then the footsteps stopped; they stopped directly in their line of vision at the bottom of the stairs and all three terrified women stared on in wide eyed horror, at nothing. There was no one there! There was no one standing there, no one at all. All at once the spell was broken, and the three terrified robbers, clutching their bags, ran from the house as fast as they could; their feet barely touched the stairs as they flew down the steps two at a time, through the house, and exploded out the back door into the welcome darkness of the night. Across the street they ran with their bags of clothes, and into the safety of the neighbors house. Nobody talked for a long time. They just looked at each other and let their minds try to process everything they had just witnessed.

In the neighbors living room, they dumped their bags in the middle of the floor so that they could divide up the plunder among them according to, who needed what worse, and what fit who. They were horrified at the sight before them. All the clothes were blood soaked and had dried that way. Piles of blood soaked clothes on the floor laid before them! They wondered where so much blood could have come from. The question was not asked out loud, for the three women knew the answer in their hearts, and they felt that saying it out loud would be speaking it into existence; dont say it out loud, it wont be true. That thought did not change the reality they gazed upon. Winter coats were among the loot, and as they looked at those coats their hearts filled with sorrow, as they envisioned three cold shivering children in the snow. That thought was quickly replaced by the question; who in this great white northern region takes flight at this blustery time of year, without their coats? People who dont need coats, dead people, thats who. Calling the cops was out of the question because they would go to jail for breaking and entering, as well as larceny. They were much too afraid to take the clothes back inside the house because of the invisible presence in high heals who patrolled the downstairs. So the unnerved housebreakers decided, with great remorse and very little discussion, that they would have a fire that night. The young mothers with large haunted eyes stood reverently around a fire in the back yard and burned the bloody clothes without pomp or ceremony. Over time, they talked about it at great length and over the years much wild speculation has been tossed back and forth. The family that lived next door to my grandparents was never seen again. A year later a woman from out west knocked on my grandparents door and inquired about the woman who lived at the address next door. She said that she was a relative of hers who had lost touch years ago and was trying to find her, and this was the last address she could locate for her. My grandma told

the woman that she hadnt seen them in over a year. To our knowledge, that was the only time anyone ever inquired about anyone or anything to do with that family. We were children with limitless imaginations and good story telling abilities, so we surmised that the father had murdered the whole family. Since it was the dead of winter, and the ground was frozen solid, we thought he may have buried them under the house, which was the only ground that was not frozen at that time of year. We would dare each other to go up on the porch and look in the window or look under the house. I crawled under that house once on a dare. There was a cat or something digging and throwing sand; I didn't stick around to see what it was. I nearly killed myself trying to get out by high speed crawling. I never went under there again. Over the next few years that house had many families live there, but it was empty a lot more than it was occupied. No one ever stayed there very long. I think it was an unhappy place that held the tortured memories of spirits who have a story to tell, a story of murder, hate and fear. Who was at the bottom of the stairs that night? Was it the mother, reliving her last day of life over and over? Was her soul trapped there because her body and the bodies of her children were still there? Can houses actually hold the emotions and memories of tragedy? It made a great haunted house in the neighborhood. I could never walk by it without thinking of the blood soaked clothes, the unopened Christmas presents, and the coats left behind in the dead of winter. As I listen to the Beatles today it takes me back; back to those memories of that house, and I wonder who lives in there now. Do they feel the sadness and evil there all these years later? Its been thirty years now since my grandparents retired and moved from Brettonwoods Street and I don't know who lives in that house now, or if they are happy, or haunted. I truly believe that man murdered his family. Maybe his wife was going to take the children and

leave, but he caught her before she could get away. Maybe he took their lives in some gruesome, bloody act of murder, then he used their clothes to clean up the mess; then maybe he disappeared into the night and got away with murder. I have conjured up scenarios in my mind to the unanswered questions like, maybe that man left and was killed in an accident, or maybe the laws of karma were in play and he was murdered by another unbalanced person, or just maybe, he went somewhere else and did it again. Who knows where he went; it could have even been anywhere. We may never know what really happened, but the big question still remains; how well do any of us really know our neighbors?