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      Going to Ground

      In the center of Italy, surrounded by the rolling hills of Umbria, there is a city built on top of a hill. This city is called Perugia, an old fortress city, with tunnels under it designed to withstand sieges during the many battles that, through the centuries, have raged up and down the Italian peninsula.

      A few kilometers south of Perugia is a much smaller village called Prepo. It has only twelve houses in it; these are the homes of farmers who work tiny plots of ground around the village. Mostly the farmers grow olives and grapes on their land. They also grow vegetables for themselves, and grain for their animals.

      In order to plow the ground, the farmers have huge white oxen called buoi. These beautiful animals are usually hitched by a wooden yoke in twos to pull a plow. The wooden plows dig deep into the dark, brown earth.

      Up on the side of a hill, beside Prepo, is a small forest of pine trees. At the edge of these pine trees, and above a small plot of two hectares, is a medium-sized stone house. This house has a tile roof with moss growing on it. There are five windows with wooden shutters, and a chimney. Attached to the house, on the south side so it catches the sun, is a terrace with a grape arbor. In the summer and early autumn the grapes hang over the terrace and the leaves give shade. In all, it is a beautiful place to live.

      Inside this house on the side of the hill, near the forest, lives a most interesting family. The father is an American. The mother, although she speaks perfect Italian, is not Italian; she doesn’t look American either. She has golden tan skin and dark red hair. The people in Prepo consider her brutta, or ugly, because red hair to them is a sign of the devil. Actually, almost anyone from anywhere else would call her beautiful.

      This American family has lived in their house for more than forty years. The father comes out often and talks with the villagers or rides his bicycle into Perugia to shop. The mother stays home and keeps house and works in the garden. She does not talk to many people. If someone comes to visit, she is very polite, but she never invites anyone to come and never visits anyone herself. Many times she walks alone, or with her husband, through the fields, in the night. There are some in the village who have insisted she is a witch.

      This American and his strange wife have four children. Three of them, when they were old enough to leave home, went elsewhere to live, but the youngest still lives with them. None of the children ever attended the Italian schools or any school whatsoever. The parents have taught these children themselves.

      The man speaks some Italian but with a quite strong American accent. The children all speak beautiful Italian like their mother. It must be she who teaches them.

      In addition to cultivating his grapes and olives, the American father, whose name is William Wiley, is said to write stories for children. Often he can be seen in the neighborhood pedaling around on his bicycle with a folder of paper and a box of paints while he looks for places to paint or draw. No one has ever seen anything he wrote or painted, so there is no way for them to know that the stories he writes and illustrates are published in America and England. The people in Prepo do not travel much. The farthest any of them has ever been is Rome.

      It’s the postman who made that journey. He also travels all over this hilly region of small villages, delivering the mail. He is considered by everyone very well traveled. He says the American often receives packages and letters from America or other places. In fact, the mail this American man, William Wiley, receives is probably about half the mail the mailman delivers from the small bag attached to the front of his bicycle.

      One of the strange things about this family is they do not make wine from their grapes. They pick the grapes at the proper time, when they are filled with juices, then eat some of them, as does everyone in the village. The rest of the grapes they crush in a large wine press, as everyone knows it must be done, but then they bottle the juice and keep it tightly closed so it can never turn into the lovely light wine for which this part of Italy is famous.

      They drink this juice of the grape