Householder

“Her car died in the parking lot of an abandoned Walmart.”

In Spring 2025, the following composition notebook was discovered, sealed in a Hefty bag, beneath Register #3 in an abandoned Walmart near Strawberry Plains, Knox County, Tennessee.

Five minutes from I-40, the commercial park consisted of a neglected Walmart, Toys R Us, Staples, and Starbucks decaying around an overgrown parking lot. Disturbances in the area in Fall of 2023 resulted in the death of a Knox County Sheriff’s Deputy and the discovery of three partially-dismembered corpses in the woods near the highway.

In the aftermath, the East Tennessee Interstate Authority added the Strawberry Plains interstate exit to their patrol route. Often, officers would stumble across signs of those who lived in the abandoned buildings years before— deer bones, traces of campfires, piles of children’s clothing, and, beneath Register Number Three, a notebook.

This notebook was recently released to the public.

Considerably weathered by moisture and heat, college-ruled, filled out in blue gel pen, the paper is only partly legible. A numbered list (Excerpt #1) is followed by a series of drawings (Excerpt #2), most of them profiles of unrecognizable persons. Finally, a personal account (Excerpt #3) provides a tantalizing glimpse at the person who produced this record of a peculiar and doomed American community.

Excerpt #1: Numbered List (pages 4 to 25 of the Strawberry Plains notebook)

1. Amaranth was 27 when her parents died of liver cancer. As capable young scientists, her mother and father delved into the US Government’s secret projects in the bunkers near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. So they both got snuffed out like candles. Capable, intelligent, well-educated, Amaranth’s providers blundered so significantly that their bodies were riddled with tumors by 50. So they raised Amaranth to be naive, dependent, and homesick. When they died, the house at Oak Ridge was empty. Amaranth got in her coffee-bean Volkswagon Beetle and went. Her car died in the parking lot of an abandoned Walmart.
2. Vermilion was 35, raising a child alone, a product of South Knoxville, kudzu, and poison ivy, several children in his past, incapable of fathering but desiring it, incapable of supporting a child. One afternoon Vermilion and Emma, off to anywhere they didn’t belong, arrived at one of those pockets on the side of a highway which have lost all economic viability. A parking lot and a few empty box stores. Vermilion knew he had to be homeless. Still he knew that even homelessness would happen on his own terms. There were people inside that Walmart, a handful of dirty, skinny, sharp-eyed people, fitting rooms into the empty shells, stringing up laundry, bathing in rainwater. Mostly women. Emma was the only child there. He had been in this peculiar place, which they called the Parking Lot, one week when the women came and said “Would you like to stay here? Stay here. However, if you are going to stay here, we are going to take Emma off your hands.”
3. In their 40s, Coquelicot and Gamboge realized (late) what it meant to have family, because they rode bikes up to Gatlinburg twice a month and Gamboge had taken a motorcycle through Nova Scotia and Coquelicot spoke Spanish, German, and French, but they never had family. Together the two abandoned a home whose walls were coated with pictures of the pair in foreign places, surrounded by friends, smiling, and alone, although the abandoning happened gradually. SOMETIMES ABANDONING IS GOOD. Gamboge found the Parking Lot first, and he tossed his bicycle into the concrete pond behind the Starbucks. A strange place of honest behavior. True expression. All the people had renamed one another after unusual colors. Gamboge, a deep saffron color, at first intended to never communicate with his wife again. Then he found out about Emma’s situation. Gamboge also learned about Vermilion, the heavily tattooed young man from South Knoxville with the scar over his eyes and the little black backpack he always kept at his side. SOMETIMES ABANDONING IS BAD. When Vermilion was found dead on broken glass, having fallen from a window, the people of the Parking Lot left him exposed in the woods. All that autumn those who stumbled upon Vermilion in the hunts they made through the highway woods found a body slowly corrupting, in a beautiful way almost, into mushrooms, bones, and pulp wood. Emma was raised by Coquelicot and Gamboge. Coquelicot, a shade of red, arrived a week later on her husband’s motorcycle. He needed her.
4. The retirement home of Guarded Acres, three highway exits from the Parking Lot, lost as many to bankruptcy that autumn as it lost to Grandfather Death. It was a bumper year for being thrown out of your retirement home. Three old women came to the Parking Lot in a golf cart, horns blaring, tires squealing, police lights flashing, along the side of the interstate. Here began a long sequence of somewhat suspicious arrivals. WHO HAD SPREAD THE WORD? Someone had given the old women a tip — “A place where you can stay for free, a difficult place to live but a good one”. Spreading the word was strictly against the rules of the Parking Lot. Nobody did anything about it. WHY NOT? Here we called them Violet, Periwinkle, and Plum.
5. Her hair began to go gray. Her shoulders were still strong as a man’s. Mulberry spoke rarely, only after a good meal. When provoked to speak, she told a story about hunting Japanese whalers.
6. Two fat teenage boys from good homes chose the Parking Lot instead. Glaucous and Burlywood played card games, burned candles in the Toys R Us after dark, obsessed with apocalypse, that End of the World. They believed the end would come that winter. WHO HAD SPREAD THE WORD? The world did not end, although Vermilion was found dead in broken glass, and Violet grew sick and passed once the weather got cold. The Parking Lot ran out of food for a short time. Because of this, Mulberry had to steal a car, Amaranth had to steal from dumpsters, and Gamboge had to purchase a gun and hunt deer without permit in the highway woods. At that time Glaucous and Burlywood still pulled weight. In fact it was that winter when every last one of the Colorful People began to thrive.
7. Wine, the young man about 30 or so who arrived when the weather got worse, had once been a teacher, had a very commanding manner, and made trouble at the time when Glaucous and Burlywood still pulled weight. And Wine made trouble for Amaranth. Wine hid behind the stairwell, coating his body in sticks and leaves. Wine climbed up the windows with his bare hands. He had the body of a mountain climber. Mulberry beat Wine in the kitchen in front of the young folk, that improved his manners for a little while, and then there was the time when it got so rough that Emma lived apart from the rest of us — Glaucous and Burlywood no longer pulled weight —
8. Aureolin, trustworthy, 40-something, unfortunately his diabetes —
9. — pilfering boxes in sub-basements, surviving without the use of electricity —
10. One evening Amaranth, spilling the big box of Crayola crayons, held them so tight in one hand some melted at the ends. She passed around the crayons like handing out straws, and we all took a color, and who should draw the shortest straw, the darkest color, the worst of them all, but INK. That is my name — INK.

Excerpt #2: Descriptions of Sketchwork (margins of page 1 to page 100)

• Fragments of face, female, juvenile (“Emma”?);
• Young men leaning across a table, hands on one another’s wrists. A game similar to arm-wrestling (“Glaucous and Burlywood”? Patrol officers located a wisdom tooth in the drain of the Starbucks washroom consistent with an adolescent male);
• Middle-aged woman carrying a Winchester rifle, smiling broadly;
• Female juvenile from (1) and (7) with arms around an older couple, possibly playing make-believe;
• A room without furniture, people sitting lotus-style on the floor;
• A room missing its far wall (consistent with the ‘kitchen room’ located in the anterior of the Walmart, once a stockroom): mats on the floor, board tables, dice and cards, human figures dressed in robes;
• Female juvenile (“Emma”) painting a wall with her hands. Self-portrait of the journalist (“Ink”) lotus-style on floor, sketching her movements. Ink appears to be an early adolescent; he is clearly small in stature; although his face is deliberately obscure, it shows roundness and peach-fuzz on his upper lip;
• Three lumps between the roots of an oak tree, likely graves: the first hollow, the second full, a cross sketched over the third grave.

Excerpt #3: Autobiographical Account (page 40 to page 100).

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Note: this section is nearly illegible. Due to its fragmentary nature, and allowing for concerns of readability, unreadable pages are marked with a dash (“—”) .

The Parking Lot (which is what they call the whole paved settlement on the side of a road) — Her essential idea of me as a person was formed when I was too naive to be judged, saying to the elders that ‘this young man has become much too gullible’, although I did not realize what they had fed me was their brand of conspiracy theories. WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG YOU BELIEVE ALL ELDERS ARE EDUCATORS. But what you didn’t, just didn’t, couldn’t know how to say was TEACH ME TRUTH AND TEACH ME WELL.

Emma writes good morning to Ink.

Teddy bears!

Ink writes a good morning to Emma. — Some argued for relocation. Some argued for the mountains. Some argued to stay until the area is sold and we are evicted, to then go on to live normal lives, or according to Mulberry we shall all meet again in a co-ed jail when we shall be arrested for committing box-store related crimes and begin to enjoy the jail experience, which according to Mulberry shall pleasantly remind us of the freedom of living on concrete —

Simply put we had segregated, gender-segregated, although not totally. In the sunrise building, the young men, Glaucous and Burlywood and all the rest of them, never pulling one ounce of weight. And in the sunset building, the older, the capable, the ones who had followed the rules. My name is INK. I would go in the evenings to carry food. Everyone still loved me then, because I was small. It was not the same for Emma. In reality she had truly wanted to help the children, but because she was found in the pantry it was assumed —

— Jeffery James is the name on his driver’s license, which we found in the river, in his wallet, in his pants. I suppose we would not have had that reaction to Jeffery James if he had not come in a white shirt and black tie. He does not know that we burned all the white shirts and black ties, or that we made drawings of him years before he arrived. We were ready for Jeffery James to arrive. Ever since we all got back together again, ever since we started sleeping in the back garden instead of the sun-room, we have made plans together for what will happen when this home does not work any longer. When we are no longer homeowners and householders. We have made plans together. It is a beautiful Parking Lot and a great lovely concrete box, but it can’t last forever. It used to be a store! So Jeffery James, who arrived by accident, was not allowed to go. However, we did not make him fall into the river. YOU ALWAYS HAVE THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE. Yes, Emma, if I had children, I would give them the freedom to choose. I would show them the world I left when I was seven years old. And I would do it when they are seven years old (my favorite numbers are three, six, seven, and twelve). Emma, you know I have enjoyed my years less since I turned twelve, mostly because now I have a job to write, which hurts my hands. We argued with Jeffery James. He had the freedom to choose. We decided to let him go, but his car didn’t work anymore. Mulberry and Emma are making a blueberry pie.

When I look back on the end of the world: I was gullible, and I really did feel the moon would fall from the sky like a shooting star, the mountains would fall back into the ocean, the water would rise, and me and mine would sit on the roof of the Parking Lot, looking out over the waves. I was gullible. And then with the hooks (Glaucous and Burlywood had me make them fishing hooks), we would perhaps catch sharks, whales, and squids.

I return my hand to the box of Crayola crayons after the others have gone. It is too dark to see the name of the color. I laugh, because really it is terrifically funny. I mark my hands, my knees, my face. I walk out into the moonshine but the moonshine has no color. I am certain late in the night that I have marked myself INK again, and truly nothing can ever change my name. I want to know a different name so I can put it in these pages, or maybe tell it just to someone. At the time I am very young, so the someone is probably Amaranth. It rains that night. I have fallen asleep within striking distance of the kitchen window.

Emma has a fantasy. She has told me this fantasy in many different ways. In her fantasy the police arrive and there is a scramble. Because we are youngest and, at our growing age, at last strongest, Emma and I are the only two arrested by the police. Since she was sixteen she has had this fantasy, or so she says, but she made drawings of it when she was twelve. After years of solitary confinement awaiting trial, in Emma’s fantasy she and I are sentenced to lives in jail. Now it is not us, but a woman and a man. Because they are so much older than Emma and I plan to ever become. Emma and I will run away to the mountains. The woman will meet the man in prison again, and they fall in love and decide to have children. She becomes pregnant and one day the door is left open in the summertime. The hot air and insects swarming over the concrete reminds them both of another place.

SOMETIMES ABANDONING IS FINE.