The first time we saw him was during one of those summers where if you were hungry, you could lob an egg out your window and in five minutes have a fried egg on the sidewalk. The heat licked at our sunburned faces and coiled around our limbs like a great hot-blooded serpent.

The ground smoldered and sent up a disorientating haze. Even the birds were silent and the grass stood still as if too hot to move. Mid-June and July in Magnolia were the months of subtropical heat waves, shockingly humid afternoons, and soulful melodies of cicadas. The heat would bounce off the streets and cause an illusion of wavering images.

They were one of those days when a neckerchief wasn't such a bad idea -- a day when the perspiration would surface on your forehead, your cheeks, the bridge of your nose, and run in rivulets down our faces until we became sodden. It was one of those summers which included those days when even the well turned-out dandies could not conceal the massive sweat pits on their sophisticated dress shirts. Furthermore, they were one of those days where every single bird, leaf, cloud and town inhabitant would succumb to the dastardly talons of indolence.

We, however, were vivacious children, either too stubborn or too stupid to let the heat impede our pleasure. My mother was a queer woman. Yes, I mean strange and that, well… I also had another mother. Anyway, one of their shared idiosyncrasies was this outlandish, almost aberrant, obsession to collect gnomes. They were all sorts of sizes and colors, but all had this air of dismal around them. They were all rather dark and orphic looking. Perhaps it was due to being weather-worn, but something about them seemed too realistic to be statuettes.

We always stalked around the house, regarding them attentively, as if they would jump up from their platforms and pedestals and create a delightfully terrifying variation of the yard. Perhaps they would turn it into a skeletal jungle of dying trees, considering the gnomes were probably possessed by demons. We had countless theories, but we had never fathomed that our main theory was true: The gnomes were alive.