You pass by an old house in the middle of the country and you immediately start thinking about the story. About the stories that make up the one story. A house is the physical center of a family, and so when you see a house that is falling in on yourself, you wonder about the times in the house when the roof was still whole and the chimney still smoked. You wonder if the condition of the house is in any way a reflection of the condition of the family, sure that it isn’t but equally certain that it could be, especially when it’s a house in the South. It brings to mind images of the Sutpens and Bundrens and a thousand other families from Southern Gothic novels.
It’s hard to see a house that’s caving in on itself and imagine laughter in that house, but surely it was there, you say to yourself. A family without laughter is as horrific a thing as you can imagine. But still, it’s hard to hear the echoes when the roof has fallen in and a wall collapsed under the weight of years of neglect.
On the other hand, perhaps it is the old family homestead that is empty now because one of the sons has made good enough in some venture or another to be able to build his parents a new house. Or perhaps it’s simply that the widowed mother has now moved in with her daughter and son-in-law in the house across the way.
All these stories swirling around us and we don’t even know what page we’re looking at.