cause the town fathers said paid for it. But Grandfather them for it, and he told and he sat erect and walked stiff and kind of swaggered. He didn’t do it all the time, though. I didn’t they paid them what to say on it, and what was said was enough. They did have a flower carved on it too, though. But grandfather said it was all right. It was pretty and it didnt lie. It looked like a weed. Grandfather insisted on paying for the tombstone (and the funeral) when he heard the town fathers were sending his body to Bester, five miles east of our ‘town, and ‘our street. Amot didn’t belong there. He really didn’t belong to our town, either, but he did belong to our street. He lived on that street for his last 25 years. It was cailed Ratter Street, and he lived in watch ched smoke house, but it time, when but I wat- he acted like to it, and swaggered, and sat. Once I saw him go to the door and say “Yes, who’s there?” He opened the door a crack and then looked out. “Pranksters,’ he said to himself, “Juveniles, young hoodlurns, distubrbing: ame. Dd: wilk), tel’ their parents!” Nobody was there, either. I mean, nobody was there in the first place. When he did things like that, the only person I ever told was Grandfather. He didn’t say much, but he loved Amot. That’s why he paid for the funeral and all. He didn’t particularly mind the City Fathers paying for it, but he felt it was his duty, or maybe his honor to pay. the had all the Amot Matooy, and sometimes when he looked in ithe mirror, and talked middle of its block length. Amot lived in back of mine and my Grandfather’s house in a shack. It was an old him sometimes win- dows cut in it now, since right after Amot moved in. He lived there alone.. One day, I remember, I went out to his house and knocked on but not because he hadn’t shown it before. He always had, but now he the door, and he said, “Hey, had He nobody I asked him who, and would acted wanted like to he somebody I don’t he know his it to the love town, too, not to tell them. them what they what they should He would tell should know, and be ashamed of, Grandfather could, I think he would have had a statue of Amot erected on his grave. No, not on his grave, but maybe in his - Amot's - house. His shack. It would have been better there than on his grave. The he went in that house, be. show show because Grandfather was the only real person in our town who loved Amot or showed respect for him. But Grandpa didn’t only show respect for him, he felt it. He knew it. He lived it. Amot Matooy was his charge and he realized it. If said, “Somebody we used to know. Somebody new, too.” I don’t think he was talking about himself. I think he meant somebody he wanted to be. He had his dreams living there too. I mean that he, when to to Amot, not to me, not to anybody else on Ratter Street. We knew. The town needed to know. Grandfather lives here!” I waited for him to come te the door, because | thought he was being funny, but he didn’t come. I knocked again, and he said, “Hey, nobody lives here today!’ I went away after that, and when he came to eat in the big house later that night, he told me he saw somebody just move into the house in back. needed always people who, his but I saw him through the window, 14 who grave would would have have seen looked it on the same way they did at his name, but they would have looked at the statue worse. In his own house, only Gradfather could see it, and, people wondered if it was really stupidity. The mayor even once called him into his office in the City Council Building to ask him what he was up to. Because Amot used to just walk -all over town. He never went any place though. I mean he never stopped anywhere. He just walked, and people complained because they didn’t like him. I mean they didn’t even care about him walking around too much. They just cared that he was doing things walking around and stuff. They didn’t want him out and around because he was supposed to be bad and low class people. They didn’t want him because tthey weren’t, and he wasn’t supposed to do anything they weren't, I mean. They were old people too, adults, and they still thought like that. They were really by rights, he was the only one entitled to it, to look at it, to remember Amot from it. Grandfather already has a statue though. It’s what he believes Amot was. I mean, the image he has of Amot. And it’s a statue because that’s all a real statue is - an image. When people build statues, or carve them, ‘they want the person they carved it of to be in it. It’s supposed to personify the _ person. Grandfather felt this way about Amot. He had a statue in his mind of him. I think he deserves a statue too. He tried to have one during his own. lifetime, but our town was against him. He wanted people tto know him and think of him the way he really was, but no one did. They thought of him as they saw him. The old ladies thought of him as they wanted ito see him. And the old men thought as the (their) old ladies thought. The only people in the town who didn’t hate him or dislike him were my grandfather, me, children. The girls hated him because he hated by everyone but didn’t back. The boys didn’t care. girls hated him and that’s all cared about - I mean the girls. Amot wasn’t even liked on was hate The they Own and most street. ‘of the Even on Ratter children. our Street, looks where he lived for twenty-five years: He lived in his shack and in my Grandfather's house at dinnertime and on that street for his whole life. For a whole hundred years he lived there. Lived and Lived and Lived and existed, and was hated, No, even worse than that. An immature adult is always worse than any child. Amot died two days before his birthday. Grandfather was in his bedroom (in his own shack) when he was ill just before he died. The doctor was there too. I was in the house reading and looking out the window at Amot’s shack. Everybody was in it until about 2 o’clock. Grandfather told me the nexit day he died at about 11 O’clock, but they didn’t know because he was sleeping and not moving at all and he might as well have been dead by the of him, but he’d looked like that all along, so they didn’t know until 2 O’clock when the doctor checked his pulse- just as he had been doing about every hour all day long, except for the last three, and found out he was dead. Then he determined he’d been dead for at least three hours. I guess it was okay though that nobody knew he and moved about under the cover of his own stupidity, (the twonspeople said stupidity) which made him a mystery because it might not have been stupidity. Even the towns- was dead tthree hours didn’t realize he had about the same time. 15 late. They been alive till