There s a little gray house across Center Street. Its windows are framed in new white paint. Some tired rhododendrons wait on either side of its new front door. Three foot brown-tipped Arborvitae slouch in cedar chip beds dug at that house s corners, east and west. It s an odd neighborhood, across Center Street.
Houses are simple, square, two bedrooms, one bath, each.
Every one of them lean at slight angles. Each, at varying degrees. All, away from what seems an epicenter the way Douglas Fir fell away from St. Helens, the way building bricks and structural beams blasted out from downtown Hiroshima. But not so far, nothing so furious. Across Center Street, house frames, fence posts, Poplar trees, all upright things flee subtly.