C

Freckled faced neighborhood boy

My first memory of C is of him rummaging around in the bamboo thicket by the house on the island.

We had moved in — in the fall of 78, just before Thanksgiving.

C is in the bamboo thicket in an oversized winter coat that must have been a hand-me-down from his brother.

No one had ever lived in that neighborhood area year-round until we moved in, so he used to have a free-range domain, and the neighboring cottage hadn’t been used in decades.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I remember calling over to him as he was half-hidden in the thicket.

His freckled and dirty face emerged. His gruff and strangely mannly voice called back. “Looking for rhubarb.”

“Rhubarb?” I asked. “Yeah, Rhubarb. I am collecting it for winter.”

I vaguely recall going into the thicket as he shyly showed me what he was digging for.

I told him it wasn’t probably wise to eat things dug up. Telling him it could be poison.

He just looked at me and shrugged, telling me it was good to eat with sugar sprinkled on.

I am not entirely sure of this memory, or the season— but that is my first memory of him digging for rhubarb in the bamboo thicket on our property boundary in an oversized coat with a dirty little boy face, probably about age 5 or 6, me being 8 or 9.

He was always slightly dirty looking but in a healthy little boy outdoorsy sort of…