A year ago, my wife read a Japanese translation of Tom Sawyer to our sons. (I have also read a number of simplified English versions to them and have shown them animated and live-action versions, so they're well versed in the Mark Twain's classic.)

Anyways, in a neighboring building is a family like ours -- a Caucasian father, Japanese mother, and boys. That's where the similarity ends. The father does not work and seldom ventures out of the house. The two older boys--junior high school and late grade school--don't go to school. The youngest is a year ahead of our own boy at the local elementary school.

When I was explaining to my son that the family had problems, that the father was an alcoholic and the boys didn't go to school, my son's eyes widened and he said, "Just like Huckleberry!"

The name stuck, so we now call the kids Big Huck, Middle Huck, and Lil' Huck.

A few years back, I met an Australian who used to live in same building as "The Huckleberries". He told me the family was nothing but trouble and things got so bad--vandalism, pranks--that he had to move out.

"Those kids have a life of crime ahead of them," was his opinion. There was no sympathy for the kids who are probably struggling to cope in the only way they know how.

Every now and again, something happens over there and one of the younger boys screams. It's a blood-curdling scream, the kind that usually precedes a knife in the chest. It happened again at seven-thirty this morning.

I don't think this will end well.