Page 125 of The Staircase in the Woods

Dan designed four houses: the In-Towner, the King’s Castle, the Ranchhand, and the Dreamboat. Each equal to the others in its category, and each category offering something a little bit different for different buyers. A garage on this one, three bedrooms on that one instead of two, different paint colors on the wood slat siding. Each house was some form of what they were calling ranch style, or ranchers—just one floor, but with an expandable attic and a basement. Each had a small parcel of manicured lawn, a paved and sealed driveway, and a white picket fence separating you from your lovely neighbor.

Eddie had money and he had contacts for government land contracts, and he helped Dan start a building firm using builders who learned to mass-produce things fast and efficient for the Navy during the war.

And by 1947, they had their first neighborhood—

Not just a neighborhood, but in fact a whole Pennsylvania municipality:

Harrowstown, PA, in the south of Bucks County, not far from the city.

A suburb. Clean and beautiful.

Each house was under ten thousand dollars. Most advertised at just sixty-five dollars a month. And best of all:

No money down for American heroes!

(Dan initially had it say “for veterans,” but Eddie wanted that punched up a bit. “Marketing,” he said, with a sly wink.)

Three months in, every house was bought.

(By white people, of course. Eddie said this was a neighborhood for a certain kind of person, and didn’t the Blacks like the city better anyway?)

—

Enter: Alfred—Alfie—Shawcatch.

Shawcatch, a veteran of the 82nd Airborne, Army. There on the ground to liberate Wöbbelin, a sub-camp of Neuengamme just outside Ludwigslust. This camp was not one of gas chambers and experimental surgery suites, but rather had been used as overflow when Germans moved captiveJudenand other inmates out of camps that were on the verge of liberation. At Wöbbelin, the inmates were forced to live like animals, thousands wrangled together, left to suffer thirst, starvation, disease—

And ultimately, cannibalism.

Alfie Shawcatch came home to his wife, Judy, and sought peace away from the nightmares of war. When it came time to settle down, thanks to the G.I. Bill, he was able to choose one of the inaugural homes in Harrowstown—

He chose the most handsome model of them all.

The Dreamboat.

—

And just like that, a house became a home.

Judy, pregnant, gave birth to the first of their three children—Marie was the first, then the next two were boys named Oliver andFrancis—Ollie, and Little Frankie, respectively. They bought a dog: a red hound they called Lou.

Alfie himself took a job in the city as a trolley conductor for the PTC, the Philadelphia Transit Company.

Judy grew roses and loved to bake.

Marie was a little firecracker—a whip-smart kid with dreams beyond her expected station.

Ollie was a church mouse, and Little Frankie was a clown.

Lou didn’t understand how to play fetch. He’d fetch whatever you threw for him, but he did not return it and instead liked to be chased around.

Things were good.

Except inside Alfie’s head.

—

Every night, a little bit less sleep. Eroded, chewed in sharp-toothed nibbles. Alfie dreamed so often of war, not just of the gunfire and the explosions and the eggy hell-stink in the air. Not just of the injuries he saw on his fellow soldiers—injuries that wouldn’t close, that seemed to birth clots of maggots, that started to smell like old meat. Not just of who he had to kill—and Alfie did have to kill, because that was war, you became death or you got dead. Most of his dreams were of the camp. Of the starving and the sickened and the dead. Of people pushed so far they had to eat one another just to survive.

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