19.

The house is a two-story (three if you count the unfinished basement; four if you count the attic, carpeted with insulation). It was built in the 1920s. The white paint has aged to oatmeal gray. A narrow cement path connects the sidewalk to the front stoop. Climbing the four stairs, which are cratered like a teenage boy’s face, one will meet a white, universal hinge, crossbuck metal storm door. Open it and you’ll be standing inside a screen-enclosed porch. This 6' × 12' area is littered with junk—a metal gas can; a dozen empty ceramic planters; a hoe and a rake; a bucket filled with screws, nails, washers, and bolts; a ten-pound bag of salt; oil-spotted washrags piled in a corner; empty Faygo bottles; and so on. The porch screens are a dense weave and let in little air or light; a few of the bottom corners of the screens have been torn open by squirrels who want warmth, muffin crumbs, or a sniff of the oily rags.

The door shrieks when you walk into the house. There is no mat to wipe your feet on. You stand in a narrow foyer on hardwood the color of baked bread. In front of you is a staircase with a polished, peat brown banister. To your left is a coat rack mounted on the wall. Turn to your right and view the living room, which is not large and feels even smaller because of the cramped arrangement of furniture. There is a loveseat and a dumpy sofa. A glass coffee table covered with Popular Mechanics magazines. A mustard recliner in the shadow of a skinny floor lamp. A low bookshelf holds books and a 12¹¹ television. To your left is the dining room, where a rectangular table is surrounded by six wooden chairs. Beyond the table are the swinging saloon-style doors to the kitchen.

Push through these doors, go to the kitchen sink, and peer out the window. You’ll see that the backyard is a 15' × 15' square, bounded on three sides—on your right by a one-car garage, badly flaking; in the middle by a six-foot wooden fence (a section of which leans precariously inward); and on the left by a row of bushes sheared roughly level with the fence.

Many are already familiar with this yard, this house (the exterior, anyway). These people hail from all quarters of the United States and the world—Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Phoenix. Athens, Georgia and Athens, Greece. Pamplona, Spain and Knob Lick, Kentucky.

In first gear, their rented Plymouth Grand Voyagers ease down the hill of Moriarty Street, two-thousand pounds of steel rivaling the top speed of a riding mower. The wife squints out the passenger window, searching for house numbers. She points, excited. Her husband parallel parks two feet from the curb and stomps the emergency brake to the floor. On such an incline, he won’t take any chances. Hesitantly, they deboard the vehicle, scoping out the surroundings, surprised at the neighborhood, surprised that This, really? is the landmark they’ve read about. They clutch their pocketbooks and cameras in two-fisted grips, “boip-oip!” the locks, and then double-check, just to be safe, by tugging on the handles.

When they spot Oscar Foster raking his tiny yard a few houses up the street, they relax a bit. Oscar is in his seventies, widowed—a nonthreatening man. Although he’s not exactly high society in his flip-flops, black socks, and ratty bathrobe, Oscar is Caucasian. His roundness, moreover, isn’t vulgar (more of a Santa-esque shape, not unlike their own). His presence assures them that although the neighborhood is not glamorous, they will probably not be jumped by dark-skinned hooligans before they snap a couple of digital photos of the infamous Mapes home.

Perhaps when they are showing these pictures at a cocktail party, an observant friend will lean in, squint, and say, “Is that a person? In the upstairs window?”

On closer inspection, it does look like a face. Or maybe it’s only a reflection, a trick of the light. Yes, it has to be. “After all,” they say, “we rang the doorbell five times.”

Long before this day, however—three presidents ago—when peering out the kitchen window at the backyard bounded by garage, fence, and bush line, you would often see Audrey Mapes, a pretty three-year-old in a yellow cotton dress, squatting near the garage, holding a plastic shovel.

She digs at the soft earth where the grass is thin. She works languidly, now and then sifting through piles of soil with her fingers, now and then taking a handful to her lips. She chews without expression. On her right, a robin has lighted atop the wooden fence. The robin studies her. Audrey imagines that the bird, with its expression, is asking, “Why eat dirt? Not even I eat dirt. Try a worm, Audrey.”

Audrey doesn’t want a worm. In fact, when she feels movement on her palm and looks down to see a wriggling, soil-caked earthworm, she startles.

She throws the handful of dirt against the side of the garage, where it rattles loose a few chips of white paint. Candy.