Michael Kimball - The Way the Family Got Away

First published in Great Britain in 2000 by

Fourth Estate

A Division of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition first published in 2001

Copyright © Michael Kimball 2000

The right of Michael Kimball to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780007292073

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007394913

Version: 2016-01-12

For Bompa

The baby lived inside a world that was smaller and older where they still traveled by carriage and spoke a bawling language.

Bompa

The bawling language was small and died inside the baby and inside the bodies of everybody who could hear it.

Bompa

whah whaahh uuhhh dahhh dadadadada mabadaduwigo

My Little Brother

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

The Whole Way We Got There

Living Anymore in Mineola

My Doll-Family, My People-Family, the Sun Outside, My Little Brother’s Insides, the Big-People, and How They Could Have Made Me Another One of My Little Brother

Our House in Mineola

The Baby-Sized Hole Inside the Ground and Dirt-World and the Toy Box with My Little Brother Inside It

Mineola to Birthrock

Our House-Car, Bompa’s House, Going to Heaven, and When We Could Start Living Again

Birthrock to Stringtown

Some More Ways Dolls Keep People Alive, the Way You Go Away from Doll to People and Bigger, and the Big-People We Were Going to Grow Up into and Live Them

Stringtown to Albion

My Doll-Me, My People-Me, and the Way My Doll-Family Got Away

Albion to Hot Springs

How to Cut Dolls and People Out of Paper, Crayon-Faces, the String that Holds People Together, Holding Hands Together, and One More Way Any Family Can Break

Hot Springs to North Little Rock

House-Cars, Car-People, the Safety-Bars that Saved Me and My Bigger Brother, Some More Ways We Got Some of Everything Back, and Why Everybody Needs to Stop and Rest or They Will Break

North Little Rock to Campbell Station

How You Get the Breath All the Way Down into Momma and the Baby Alive, How Poppa Laid the Babies Down to Sleep and Grow Up Inside Momma, and Why We Kept Waking Each Other Up

Campbell Station to Biggerton

How to Make a Doll-Baby Out of String, Baby Clothes, Shoe Parts, Buttons, Stones, Balloons, a Hat, Glue, Crayons, a Needle and Thread, and Two People Too

Biggerton to Glenallen

How to Make a Baby Up, How to Make Me Up into a Momma, and How Many People Any People-Family Needs to Have Living Inside It

Glenallen to Anna

Looking, Looking-Pictures, the People Inside Momma, the Shape of the Baby, and Looking Inside Momma’s Stomach and Hole

Anna to Henderson

One of the Holes that Goes Down into the Ground and Dirt-World and Away to My Little Brother, the Other Momma and Poppa that Climbed Us Up and Up Out of the Hole, and How Our Momma and Poppa Kept Us Inside Our Family

Henderson to Hendricksville

My Little Brother and His Breath Inside the Toy Box, How We Played with the Doll and People of My Little Brother, and How Alive You Have to Be to Go Away

Hendricksvllle to Bennetts Switch

How Nobody Should Ever Wear Sun-Dresses Up to Too Hot, How Everybody Tried to Burn Me Up Inside One, and How You Make a Sun-Dress Out of the Sun Anyway

Bennetts Switch to Frederick Perrytown

The Doll-Family Inside the Toy Box and How Anything Bad You Say to Them Goes Away from You to Them So You Can Go Away to Somewhere Else Better Than Where Everybody Else Is Dead

Frederick Perrytown to Edwardsburg

How Momma Played Dead, the Shirt-Baby Poppa Carried, the Angels Inside the Clouded-House on Top of the Hot-Hill, and How Everybody Else Was Waiting for Us in Heaven

Edwardsburg to Sunfield

The House with Counting-Doors, the Man that Knew How Many People Were Alive, BoxRooms, More Holes, the Lady with the Rolling Trash Cans, and Why Everybody Has to Get Up and Live

Sunfield to Far Town

The People-Family that Had a Living-Baby Living with Them and the Way We Got Away with a New Baby of My Little Brother

Far Town to Morrison

How the New Baby of My Little Brother Started to Die Too and How We Gave Him Away to the Baby-Angel at the Hot-Hill

Morrison to Gaylord

How We Burned My Little Brother Up, How We Turned My Little Brother into See-Through Dirt, and How We Buried My Little Brother Inside a See-Through Jar and Farther Down into the Ground and Dirt-World

Bompa’s House in Gaylord

Why We Were Dead and Where Dead People and My Little Brother Go Away to Inside You

About the Author

About the Publisher

My brother’s cradle and other baby stuff got us from Mineola to Birthrock. My mother’s necklaces and other dress-up stuff got us from Birthrock to Stringtown. This girl there got my sister’s doll people along with all the other things that went with her practice family. They told my sister she wasn’t going to need her dollhouse and the doll people living in it anymore since we weren’t living in our house anymore. So my sister’s dollhouse and everything in it got us from Stringtown to Albion. That was where this other man got my father’s pocketwatch and pocketknife along with some other things my father almost always kept with him whenever we went anywhere.

Those things from my father’s pockets got us from Albion and all the way out of Oklahoma to Hot Springs and our start through Arkansas. That was where this other boy got my baseball bat and baseball glove along with some other things they told me were too small for me. This other boy got all my clothes but for the handed-down-to-me suit of clothes they made me wear and that left me with a ways to go before it would fit me. My brother might have gotten the baseball stuff handed-down-to-him along with the clothes but he wasn’t ever going to grow up into any of it anyway.

So all my stuff got us from Hot Springs to North Little Rock and we stopped for that one night. That was where these other people got our pillows, blankets, sheets, and the other stuff that helped us sleep. We got from North Little Rock to Campbell Station and we kept going away. My mother’s purse along with everything she had left in it got us from Campbell Station to Biggerton. This other girl there got my sister’s locket and chain that had a picture of my sister in it from when she was a baby and sick. But my sister did not die from that and that other girl getting it and that locket and chain still got us out of Biggerton and Arkansas and into Glenallen in Missouri. That was where these other men got my father’s wallet along with all the stuff my father had left in his wallet. There were the family pictures of us and the cards that had the names of other people and other places on them. There wasn’t any money left but we didn’t need any money anymore anyway. My father’s wallet along with all the stuff left in it got us from Glenallen to Anna, Illinois and left us in the middle of America with all those miles behind us and all those miles to go farther away in front of us.