the difference between fiction and nonfiction

 

True story.

I used to live in the country, and I loved to walk out there. An afternoon stroll "around the block" was a good four or five mile hike, no matter which route I took.

But there was one road that used to spook me out.

The trees and vines had overtaken a ramshackle trailer settled askew a few yards off the road.

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 It looked something like this.

A pile of old tires spilled up against a dilapidated shed where a muddied pickup truck was parked.

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You get the picture...it was the kind of place meant for stereotyping. The kind of place you'd expect to find some redneck, beer-swigging, abusive boor with his toothless girlfriend and ragamuffin kids. Or, perhaps some psycho loner with his stash of semi-automatic weapons, his shortwave radio, and a fully stocked bunker somewhere out back.

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Or, on a more empathetic note...an elderly couple living in poverty who could barely afford their medication, much less the upkeep on their place. I used to cross to the other side of the road whenever I passed the place. It was that spooky.

Then...one fine summer day as I passed, the front door opened and out stepped the lady of the house, a fiftyish woman in a flowered house dress and fuzzy slippers (I kid you not). She waved and called me over. I'm thinking, "This is not happening!" But I crossed the road, worried she might be sick. Maybe she needed help. She stood on the stoop and this is what she said:

"I see you walking by every so often. Do you have any books you could bring me?"

 

True story.

 

I walked away laughing to myself. Books?? When I got home, I put together a bag of old paperbacks and castoffs...and the next time I passed her place, I put it in the mailbox for her.

 

 

 

Not long after that, the place went empty. Gradually, bushes and vines overran the place, and then one day it was gone. The trailer--gone. The shed--gone. The truck and tires--gone. Today there is nothing left of it...just the woods, as though they'd never been disturbed.

 

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Nothing spooky about it at all.

The end. 

"The difference between fiction and nonfiction

is that fiction has to be absolutely believable."

~Mark Twain~

Epilogue: I never saw the woman again. I have no idea who she was or where she ended up. And I still sometimes wonder what happened to those books. 

 

If books are made of stories, I guess stories can be made of books.

jan