“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“To reach Wilbur Avenue we cut across the tennis court, of grass, that my father had built for his teen-age sons so long ago. In physical life the Brenner house sits where the court had existed. Just beyond the court, and next to the sidewalk, grew an old shagbark hickory tree that I had always loved, and still remember vividly. The tree would be in the Brenner’s front yard now.

“As Floyd and I cut across the court I saw that the Brenner’s lawn was despoiled with a mixture of animal and industrial waste, like pollution. ‘What’s that?’ I exclaimed to Floyd, as I saw a large dark shape near the hickory tree. At first shock I thought it was a deer that might have been killed by a car the night before, say. It lay on its side with its back to us. Then to my amazement I saw that the supposed animal was actually the broken remnants of a hollow, life-sized metal statue of a deer that had stood for years in the front yard of a house on Harrison Street, in Sayre, at the other end of town. The house had been owned by the Maynards, who had no children. When my next-youngest brother and I were in grade school, our family had lived a few houses down Harrison from the Maynards. Mr. Maynard had been a carpenter. He and his wife and my parents had been friends. All of us kids in the neighborhood had been fascinated by the deer, which had been painted brown. We had climbed all over it. My father had photographed it.

“Now I saw, again to my surprise, that the deer had been broken in pieces and lay in the Brenner’s front yard, where the hickory tree had stood a moment ago. I exclaimed to Floyd Waterman that vandals had done the damage — young kids that I knew were causing trouble in the neighborhood. They’d broken off the animal’s legs. The Brenner’s front door was open and I saw the warm yellow light in their living room. I knew that I had to run into their house and tell them about the poor broken deer lying in their front yard.”