I see myself from the outside, a skinny kid with a pageboy haircut and crooked front teeth, a scattering of freckles, grinning widely at the camera. Charlie follows me around like a toy on a string. In another memory — or perhaps it is a movie — we ride our ponies bareback into the river, looks of concentration on our faces. When I think of those days, they are always silent, with only the ticking of the projector as a soundtrack, and everything is slightly sped up: when we wave for the camera our hands are blurs. Magpie Hall was a crowded place then, filled with children in swimsuits skidding across the lawn on plastic slides, and birthday parties with pointed hats and kazoos. Parents in shorts and jandals, holding big bottles of beer. Picnics and horse rides, cavorting dogs and bonfires. We often made family treks up to the limestone caves over the hill. We were warned about playing in them because of the danger of falling rocks, and we imagined they were filled with buried treasure.
