Brightly you say: “It’s said that if life has no intrinsic meaning just having a family, keeping together, and alive, and keeping yourself alive, can provide the meaning.”

These are words that you have heard, or have read. These are words Tyrell Jones would understand. Perhaps Tyrell is the originator of these exact words. Ironic that you of all people should be repeating these words as if you knew fully what they might mean.

In that instant thinking—I will have my own family. I will begin—soon!

The turning point of your life. This instant on the sidewalk at 388 Black Rock Street. When you leave South Niagara, which will be soon, you will begin the campaign to establish this new life.

Lionel says, skeptically: “There’re different kinds of families. You get born into some, but others just come along. Sometimes—it’s just one person.”

Again, this is not like anything you’ve ever heard from your reticent brother. Any of your brothers.

You wonder if Lionel is referring to his experience in the prison. You wonder what he endured, so many years in a facility in which for part of that time he’d had to have been one of the youngest inmates.

County prosecutors insisted upon charging Lionel as an adult, and sending him to an adult facility. Jerome Jr. and Lionel had both gone to the maximum security facility at Marcy. The other boys, likely as guilty as Lionel, or no less guilty, were treated more leniently. Your cousin Walt Lemire was sent to a youth facility from which he was released at twenty-one. Don Brinkhaus you’d heard had been long ago paroled from a medium security prison.

You feel the unfairness of the sentence, as Lionel would have felt it. The injustice. How the world has been poisoned for him, the air he has had to breathe.

You wonder if Walt Lemire and Don Brinkhaus know that Lionel has been released from prison and decide yes, of course they know. Their families would have informed them.

You wonder if they live in the area, now. If Lionel has made any attempt to contact them.

Probably not. For why?

Reluctant to leave the old house, yet it’s time to leave, walk away. Just—turn, walk away.

The last time you will see the house. You are sure.

Still, you are restless, excited—you and Lionel both. Not ready to return to the house on Harrison Street. No.

Making your way to the dead end several houses away, without needing to exchange a word.

The first wilderness you’d known. Where, as a girl, you’d been warned not to “play”—You never know who might come along!

Warned by your mother, many times. But the injunction could hardly be enforced for the dead end was so close, and overlooked the river.