Keeping
Syracuse
1993
Hayden Carruth had retired the year before I arrived in Syracuse after teaching at the university for a dozen years. He lived out in the country, in Munnsville, but would come into the city on weekends for dinner parties and readings. Once, we all watched a video of the new movie, Brother’s Keeper, about the four Ward Brothers and the death of one of them and the murder trial of another. Hayden knew them. They were his neighbors. He was able to provide commentary as the bleak documentary played. We all watched the dark, deeply shadowed pictures of the illiterate and inarticulate brothers punctuated by Hayden’s understated poetic footnotes. In the end, nothing was resolved. Was it murder or was it death by natural causes? There was not enough evidence either way, and as with all stories there were many points-of-view and several different ways to narrate what transpired or remember what exactly had happened.