I never left the house on Pearson Lane. My body left the house: the organs and the muscles and the tiny joints. My footsteps led to ignitions and gas pedals, and gas pedals led to the distances that have since grown between my body and the house of stone and wood and shingle on Pearson Lane. But I never really left.
The house was something magical – I don’t say this wistfully, but with absolute certainty – a spark of which must be attributed to its location. Georgia (the South in general) has always been a proprietor of enchantment: the hanging moss in the trees… the inescapable, almost biblical, swarms of mosquitoes in the summertime… the honeysuckle… the peaches… the heat… the thunderstorms…
