The house on the corner was empty, then Ariel moved in. She stays indoors, mostly. I don't know her name, I call her Ariel, because not long after she had moved in, I was shopping at the mall and overheard a mother calling on her daughter: “Ariel!” The mom was losing patience a bit, but even then the name was sounding nice.
Ariel’s hands, leg, and the rest of the body frame don't work well as a team. But she does walk, with a walker, even mows the lawn. Nobody visits Ariel, except for an older couple on the weekends, surely her folks. On rare occasions when she’s outside and I pass by, I drop a “hi,” and try a word or two. Doesn’t jump-start much of anything. On top of that other thing, Ariel has a speech problem and is self-conscious about it. Although with the parents she needs no sign language, I saw.
I haven’t seen her visit any neighbors. The same thing, communication, I guess. Would be hard to accuse the neighbors of unsociability, because I had moved in here not that much earlier and have gotten to know everyone. We chat, I go to their barbecues. Maybe they grasp, through some atavistic part of the selves, that there’s something untoward about leaving such persons all to themselves, imposing all onto all on the basis of that conceited will-to-homogenize. It’s Montana, you can still encounter those raw pioneer spirit’s gusts here, ask me about it.
By the year’s end the parents took Ariel back. Students moved in.
