Michael Malone - Weebly

after their restless owners had returned to wherever
they came from, or had gone on, westward, to
whatever they thought they would find. Other highways
to build, other land to connect.
A few stayed, including the Vietnam veterans Karl
and Victor Grabaski, to take jobs building Astor
Heights, the new development just south of Dingley
Falls where Carl Marco was constructing traditional
homes at old-fashioned prices as fast as he could.
Building Cape Cods, Colonials, and saltboxes for those
families, like the MacDermotts, who could afford to get
out of Madder without having to leave town beneath the
mattress tied to their car hood.
There were also two empty trailers in the park; one
was the old rusted teardrop model, where an elderly
night watchman at Dingley Optical Instruments recently
had been found dead in a cot whose gray sheets were
gritty to the touch. The other, beside a brightly colored
patch of garden, was the sparkling twenty-five-foot
model that Maynard Henry had bought with most of the
taxpayers' money he'd saved from three thrifty overseas
tours. The rest of the money he'd blown on a week in a