My Uncle's Candy Stash The children and I looked carefully for signs of where the house had been. It was such a hot spring day that the sweat poured down my face as I drove about 10 mph on the dusty road. For 2 miles there had been no sign of anything resembling human habitation, but I'd told the boys to watch on the left-hand side for a big tree with several old cars under it. I was watching on the right for the house. It was hopeless -- vines and bushes and trees were all we could see. I drove to the end of the road, turned around, and started back. "Well, guys, I guess it isn't there anymore. It's been a long time. I wish you could have seen it, my aunt and uncle's house where Rena and Glade and Norma and Glen grew up. We came to visit them every summer. They had no electricity, no running water, no bathroom--" "STOP, Mom!" shouted Steve. "Look! Some old cars. See the sun shining on the glass?" They looked like bushes, but sure enough there was an old car visible there covered with all that verdant growth under a huge tree and several more mounds that must have had cars at their center. Puzzled, I looked toward the other side of the road. It was a jungle, ten feet high just beyond the ditch, and something that looked like a large rounded tree beyond that. "Okay guys. Maybe this is it. Stay here and I'll see." Spooked because of snakes and all kinds of unseen menaces that probably lived in that wildness, I carefully pushed through the weeds. Aha! there it was, covered in vines, the small front porch sagging, only one step remaining. "All right, guys, come on, but be very careful. Watch for snakes, don't put your foot down until you see what's there." I helped them through the weeds, and we made our way carefully onto the dangerously unstable porch. The windows of the house were all missing. I pushed the front door open, and we walked in. It was eerily strange: a decaying rocking chair was before us, a lot of dust on the floor that poofed under our feet, dead insects littering the dim room, and amazingly, vines that had come in through the missing windows. Simultaneously I became aware of a dense fragrance and purple pod-like blossoms everywhere. The old wisteria vine had grown wild and had entered the house. "Wow!" said Jimmy. "Look at this! I never saw a house like this before." Three young boys walked around the strangely-beautiful room, touching the vines and flowers, smelling them, stooping to look at the insect carcasses, finding a dusty blue jay feather, going to peer through the vines out the windows that looked out on the verdant wildness, nearly encasing the house. I moved off to the doorway on the left, my Aunt and Uncle's bedroom. The bed was gone, but there was one piece of furniture still there, a very small dresser with three drawers. I was flooded with memory. My uncle's candy stash! He thought he had it well-hidden from his children, but my cousin, Rena, about 10 years old, had found it in the bottom drawer of that dresser. He kept small paper bags of penny candy there. For himself. He never shared them with his children. She didn't tell her sisters and brother what she had found, kept it secret to share with me when we finally went to visit that year. Now, my uncle had his weaknesses, a love for too much liquor and being away from his family. Grinding poverty haunted their lives. He fished and farmed, and his wife and children also worked unceasingly to just stay alive. The one thing they always had in plenty was food, though. He brought home fish, shrimp, crabs, and oysters that were the staples of their lives. They never ate beef, but raised chickens and one pig a year, which they butchered and feasted on in the fall. They had a huge garden, and everybody worked the garden in the spring and summer, harvesting it to eat then and canning and pickling foods in clear Mason jars to last through the winter. Still, my uncle bought penny-candy and did not share it with anybody, hid it, kept it all for himself. He had never eaten store-bought candy until he was an adult. But that day Rena looked into the forbidden dresser drawer, and there it was. Unable to resist, she ate one of his jawbreakers. He didn't notice, didn't count the candy, probably because he was too drunk or exhausted to care most of the time. As time went by, she continued to eat her father's candy in guilty secrecy, perhaps only one piece a month in the beginning but edging up the count when he did not seem to notice.. He bought penny candy quite often, she assured me that summer week when we visited. She and I crept into the bedroom when everybody was outside, and she showed me. What a glorious stash of candy that was. Jawbreakers, yes, but all kinds of other candy wrapped separately as well - small morsels of vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and banana - coconut squares, hard multi-colored fruit balls, soft caramels, little chocolate babies and teddy bears, jelly beans, cherry balls, licorice, lemon chewies, orange slices, hard peach candy, red hots, a veritable treasure trove of candy! "Aren't they pretty?" Rena whispered in awe. "Only one at a time. Take one thing, and we'll come back later. He mustn't know." Each day she watched carefully as I chose a piece and slowly savored it. Then she nodded in satisfaction and chose her piece to eat, her big brown eyes enormous. All week we pilfered from his candy-stash and watched his sun-darkened gypsy-face for signs of discovery. Sometimes he'd glare at us and say, "Go on outside and play with the others, you girls. Git!" I tugged and tugged at the bottom drawer. I could tell the old bureau was empty. The boys came in to watch. "What's in there, Mom?" David said, peering over my shoulder. "I don't know, honey. Probably nothing." Finally, I got the drawer pulled out. There was nothing but a small folded piece of paper, yellow with age. Curious, I unfolded it. There, barely decipherable in Rena's childhood hand, she had written, "I love you, Daddy." A small ancient flake of pale hard candy clung to the corner. He'd put it with his candy-stash. Anne Yohn Summer 1999