“I’ve slept with James Joyce many times. More often with Yeats, of course. He was always more willing and ready, as was I. But, my only true fancy, when I was young, was my George.”

Helen said this, politely lifting her cigarette up above her head so that the smoke would rise to the high ceilings and not bother those who had gathered closely around, giving everyone captured by her husky voice the odd impression of the Statue of Liberty on a break. Perhaps the appearance was more the dress. The gowns she favored were embroidered silk and often hung from one shoulder. It was a cream colored silk that night.

At 77, Helen still had very nice shoulders and showed them off like a coquette, and often expressed herself with a slouch, or a shrug. She was always thin. I’ve seen photographs. She might have been all of five feet tall, but no more. A waif. And she knew very well what she was saying. This was 1965, after all, and the sexual revolution had hardly begun. We were a middle class lot, mostly from the suburbs of New York. She liked the effect on our faces.

Helen had pulled one of the metal stools we always used in class over to one side, so that she could watch the party from beyond the traffic of bodies moving back and forth to the wine table, and naturally we had gathered there around her.

She said, “I could stay awake all night impaled on his words and when he was finished with me I always slept in his arms.

Someone rudely broke the imagery by asking, “George who?”

Someone else turned and answered, “McNichol, of course. George McNichol.”

The questioner endured a moment of puzzlement. I turned to see that it was a fellow named Paul and he maintained as straight a face as nature would allow, and then said “Of course.”

Most of us had already sought out what copies of McNichol’s work we could find. We understood.

The moment is so clear to me now for another, less voyeuristic reason, however. On that evening, someone across from me, a woman I was about to meet, said, “But Yeats must have been so old.”

Another woman, out of my sight in the gathering of Helen’s students, giggled. I recognized the giggle.

The parties began at dusk, and ended at dawn, but only in the summer months, so the nights were never terribly long. I can remember it raining just once. The stairwell to the roof would always be open and the party stretched upward from the great open studio on the first floor, skipping her apartment on the second where few were ever allowed to enter. The building was only a garage, after all, once horse stalls, and later a repair shop for taxi cabs, and Helen referred to it as her ‘goo’raj,’ with a pursing of her lips. In 1965 it was a remnant of a bohemia already lost.

She owned the building, as she had since sometime in the 1930’s, when Greenwich Street had been on the fringe of the Village. It was, she told us “the only thing my second husband ever gave me that I kept, or ever wanted.”

On a humid day I could often catch the perfume of manure, like chinking in between the old bricks. The glaze of motor oil in the air remained as well. Mostly we were always aware of the pungent drying of our own art work set out on narrow shelves along the walls.

Helen asked, “I am sorry my dear–your name?” She often forgot our names, and we forgave her because she made no pretense about it.

The girl with brown eyes across from me answered, “Alice.” She had only just started her classes then.

Helen assumed the meaning imbedded in the question. “Alice, it was a platonic sleep in the case of both Joyce and Yeats. I first took my little red copy of the ‘Dubliners’ to bed one year during the war–to take my mind off poor Harry. He was my boyfriend then,” she paused, inhaling slowly of her cigarette, the first person pronoun lost in the breath “…met Harry in England where I had gone to get away from the fighting when it closed on Paris. He had known Joyce from his job at the publishing house, Grant Richards in London. Harry was home at the time on leave to recuperate from an encounter with German gas at Somme. He was very sweet like English boys can be… But I never met Joyce himself until ‘23, while I was studying again at the Sorbonne. I was looking for meaning. I thought the French were so intellectual. I was wrong, of course. But why paint, when you have nothing to say? Harry was over on business with some papers–he never learned to speak French–and he rang me up to help him…Joyce stared at me. He couldn’t see, you know, and I was so thin at the time, he probably wondered if I was a boy or a girl. Or perhaps he was just trying to annoy Harry. Harry couldn’t stop looking at me either. I suppose I had changed a little since we had last met. But the author and the publisher were at odds over something. I had heard the great man was shy, in either case. But ‘Ulysses’ did not seem like a shy work to me. It was as if he knew I had already taken him to my bed. We talked for hours. An entire afternoon.” She inhaled deeply again on her cigarette. “Yeats was more of a rape. He assaulted me in my sleep. In my dreams. I could never resist him. But, sadly, I never met him.”

The other woman giggled again. I think now that it was Patrice. She giggled often, always at the worst moments.

Alice looked at me just then, in an unexpected collision of eyes. I was deeply in love from that moment.

And Helen turned her eyes back and forth and smiled at us both. She was usually ahead of everyone in knowing what was happening between her students.

I had first come to a class with Bill Thornton. Bill always liked to use the dark in a piece. That was why he was so successful later on doing work for the comics. He had told me my work was flat–told me to quit working from a white surface. Helen would teach me the secrets of chiaroscuro. I had just managed to get a job then as an office boy uptown in the mail room at BBD&O, and I felt flush and grandly shelled out the sixty dollars as if I could afford it.

A few months later I was fired from the job for being slow, and I didn’t even have enough for my apartment rent. Helen gave the sixty dollars back to me and told me not to be late for class again. In fact, I had only come late to tell her I would have to drop out because I was broke. She never asked. She just knew. And of course I was slow. The secretaries at BBD&O talked so fast I was never able to finish a sentence. I’m a slow reader too. And I never did finish Finnegans Wake.

Patrice had given me the use of her sofa shortly after that, until her room-mates had objected and I had gratefully moved into her bedroom. But by the night when I first met Alice, I was waiting tables again, and I had moved to a room in the East Village on Tompkins Square Park, and Patrice had taken an interest in Fred Baker. They married some time afterwards. That would have been 1966. He thought her giggle was cute.

Memories string out like that. One to the next. And on that particular night at the party, Helen was caught up in her memories more than usual. She was so matter of fact, even abrupt, as a teacher. But as a hostess, she would sip her French wines from the green glasses she had bought in Venice before the Second War and begin her own admixture of fact and fancy for anyone who cared to listen. I didn’t know then what was true and what was not. I didn’t know then that Helen could not tell a lie.

“Mr. Joyce had a fabulous jaw. I told him so. I asked him if I could make a sketch and he objected. He knew his art and wasn’t about to let a raw student like me make a botch of it, or be forced to say ‘how nice.’ He was not a rude man…Yeats, I understood, could be rude. Joyce was shy. He spoke in a low toned singsong voice without stops for punctuation–a bit like some of what he wrote, I’m afraid. But he kept his eyes on me. He asked me how old I was. I told him. He said I looked like a child. Of course, if I had been a child, he might have let me do a drawing. He said—“ She stopped herself, as if she had almost revealed a confidence that still mattered, cocking her head to the side suddenly with the impact of the interruption. “Oh…He had no idea of how to speak to a woman. It was always left for the female to set the stage with Joyce…Poor Nora.”

Because the room was open from wall to wall, the noise had risen as the party grew, and Helen’s low voice made our cluster draw closer to hear. Those in front sat on the worn Indian carpet which figured in so many of the paintings around us.

Someone asked how tall Joyce was. Someone else, another of the students, commented on how Freudian Joyce’s work was. Freud could still be a revelation to a young mind in 1965. Helen did not answer. She left the cigarette in her mouth a moment, one eye fluttering in the smoke, her own mind on the past.

I could imagine Joyce seeing her as a child. I was impatient for the rest of the story.

I said, “What happened then?”

She tilted her head the other way. She often cautioned me about rushing my work, and that was the look in her eye just then.

Smoke accented the words as she answered, “Mr. Joyce raised up one hand, his long thin fingers spread in the air as if to make the shape of it, and he said. ‘Da had the jaw. I only have the tongue.’ And there above us on the wall,” her eyes lifted as if to the equivalent space on the wall beside us, “…was a portrait of Joyce’s father and it was as if Mr. Joyce were looking through my eyes past the movement of his fingers, not through his own. He outlined his father’s jaw perfectly.” She turned back and smiled at me. “I’ve always liked a good jaw on a man.”

My own jaw had come to me directly from my father. He had the jaw of an actor, which he was. Helen had even met him once, when he had stopped by on some pretext. Dad had actually needed some money, and I had a few bucks because I was still working uptown at the time. And she had remarked on his jaw even then.

There were no pictures of Helen’s husband George close by for me to make an immediate comparison, but later, after I had gained entrance to the rooms above, I saw several paintings she had done. George had a jaw like the old Arrow Shirt man.

Remember, George McNichol was a newspaper reporter. He had his day. He knew Mencken quite well. And Runyon. He was often compared to Hemingway because of that short sentence structure that journalism favored then. But his novels suffered from a dark cynicism which settled over everyone after the war. It was the world then, and not the generation which must have seemed lost.

I asked, “I thought you had actually painted Joyce.”

She smiled and blew a great plume of smoke upward and cleared the gravel in her voice.

“That was later. It was George who took me up to Joyce’s apartment the second time. He knew all of them. Ben Hecht had introduced him around. And George wrote stories about them for the Herald. Vignettes…Still unpublished in book form, I am sorry to say…Ah.” She exhaled the disappointment. “So I asked the great man again a second time.” She paused again, this time to turn and look specifically at me, I think. No, I am sure. She said, “Persistence of pursuit is the key, you know…He said again he would not pose. I said it was not necessary, and asked if I could just sketch while he talked. I think Almond was there. I’m not sure. Maybe that argumentative Canadian writer I always forget the name of was there as well. They were talking politics. Joyce tried to cooperate by listening to their chatter. A generous act I have always thought. I ignored them and sketched away in my book. I did the painting later.”

Always star-struck in those days, I wanted more, “Did he like it?”

She pouted. “He never saw it. I was out of time in Paris and had to go home. George and I married soon afterward and we went back to Chicago…Anyway, I had gotten all the visual information I could use that very first time. It was all in my head from that moment on.”

Bill Thornton came down the stairwell from the roof and loudly announced, “the moon is full and ripe for kissing.”

At least a dozen people hurried upward, quieting the room by half. The group around Helen remained.

Alice was not up on all the names, but she understood the gist of Helen’s reminisce. Alice never really liked modern literature. Her Catholic school had taught her Latin, and she read Dante, and the classics and that kind of thing as readily as Hemingway or Faulkner. She was always fairly tolerant of my tastes. I say fairly. But she was never ashamed of what she didn’t know. Alice would just ask questions. That was something Helen liked about her as well.

“What happened to your George?” Alice asked then, her voice losing power as she spoke the name, perhaps realizing.

It was the way she said, ‘your George.’ It opened the can like a knife. But Helen answered quickly.

“He bought himself a Chevrolet…I never learned to drive, myself…He was very proud of it. He bought it with the money from his second book, and went flying all over Chicago for the papers. He was making a name for himself. And one night he didn’t come home…That’s something I’ll never know the truth of. The car burned after the crash. The police said there was booze all over. I told them that George never drank. They wouldn’t listen…And that was that. Chicago was a rough place for a newspaperman just then. It was Prohibition, you know…He just had those two novels. He would have written so much more.”

Most of us knew all of this. The information was in the short biography was on the back of the paperback copy of his second book. That was the only one in print at the time.

Alice said, “I’m sorry,” She could always make me feel guilty for anything she did wrong, by the way she said she was sorry.

Helen smiled with the corners of her mouth. “I came to New York then and Donald Simms looked me up because he had gone to college with George before the war and I got caught up in that. I should never have married again. But at least I ended up with this.” Helen’s eyebrows rose and her eyes scanned her ‘goo’raj.’

Alice tried to make good on her question. She wanted to understand. “What happened then? In Paris. Did you ever find–I mean–why were you wrong about the French?”

Alice is so earnest. And she listens. She would never have made it with the pseudo intellectuals. She believes in right and wrong.

Helen answered just as earnestly. “It was what I did not find that really mattered. I did not find my answers, you see. I was made to keep asking questions. I was made to see that answers were just facts. There are so many of them to choose from. But the questions are few. That is what I discovered–how few questions there really are.”

To someone else this might have been taken as an avoidance—a way of saying, please stop asking. But not to Alice.,

Someone said, “Wittgenstein says there are no answers.”

Helen laughed. Her laughter had a pitch of delight. A sort of husky barking. We all loved it when we made her laugh and traded looks among ourselves for the accomplishment.

“You mean that we make up the problems because of the language of our questions–Yes?…But no. The questions are what is important. The answers may be mistaken, but the questions are the means to see. Our looking glass. God makes no quarantees for the answers we take. He only gives credit for the honest question.”

Someone said. “But Wittgenstein says everything is nonsense. We just are. It just is.”

We looked back at our mentor. The steady voice of the teacher spoke now. We all listened.

“That is the hubris of a Wittgenstein, supposing that all philosophy before his arrival is nonsense–” She stopped. She was remembering something–or trying to place a mental finger on some thought. The only sounds in the room came from a few students who were showing off their work to other guests. A minute passed as she stared away.

I impulsively spoke out loud the thought on my mind. I was embarrassed for myself before all the words were out.

“You’re confident in your knowledge now, because you’ve lived your life, always questioning. But, I feel so stupid. I don’t know where to begin. Do you remember what it was like then, when you were first beginning. What were the questions you asked?”

Alice was watching me. She wasn’t smiling.

Helen laughed again—not at me but in obvious delight. Everyone else laughed to the sound of it.

Helen said, “Don’t put me in a coffin just yet. I haven’t finished my work…I have new work now. I am always just beginning…I never had children, you see. That’s my only regret. So instead I have adopted you. All of you.” Her hands swept the air. “A parent is young again through the experience of their child. Childhood is the moment of life before the acceptance of false answers. The young are pathetic…that is from the Greek. ‘Pathetikos’. They are capable of feeling…I teach only because I enjoy being with the young. I love the pathos. The passion. My fear in life has never been death. No. I fear the loss of feeling. I fear the emptiness which absorbs our time, our age. We are overwhelmed by the nonsense of Wittgenstein’s facts. Facts. As if any human being has a grasp of all the facts which bathe his senses—And then as if all facts should be discarded because we can only know the few…What is art? Those philistines on 53rd Street have no idea. As if art could be ‘modern’. Art is always ‘ancien.’ Art is the expression of what we know that is beyond words. Even when words are used, art is the sum which is greater than the parts. Words are the equivalent of Wittgenstein’s facts. He knew that, of course. He understood the foolishness. He said as much later.”

Someone asked incredulously, “You spoke to him?”

She shrugged the shoulders, catching all our eyes with her bare shoulders. “In England. A handsome man. I was quite drawn to him. But his passion was cold. That foolish book of his was all the rage. I said to him ‘you have given a rationale for anything–for murder.’ He could not grasp what I was saying.” Only Helen could say this without a hint of hubris. She shook her head as if remembering again some disappointment. “If everything is nonsense, then nothing matters. The brilliant imbecile. I think he understood later on. After the German ovens had transformed his philosophic Viennese pastry to ashes. He understood the evil of silence.”

Someone else asked, “Are you saying he was a bad man?”

She smiled. “No–Perhaps a saint. You’ve never read Dostoyevsky? Then, you’ll understand the evil of saints.”

I wanted to erase my display of foolishness from before. I made it worse. “So you’re saying that art is just a question. A quest. Does that mean we’ll never find what we seek?”

I looked up at Alice’s eyes again for comfort, even before my last word was spoken.

Thankfully, Helen took my inquiry seriously.

“You are not looking for a tomb beneath the sand. You’re not looking for gold, or facts, or numbers. What you find is in the doing. The quest of art is to speak truly. Not to find a language, but to find meaning. Language is only a tool. Words are only the pieces of that tool. Color. Sound. They are all tools. They are what our faulty senses perceive. But even the colorblind can paint–oh,” she inhaled deeply on a new cigarette and straightened herself with a thought. “I saw a new print of a film the other day. They have released a new print of William Dieterle’s ‘Hunchback.’ You must see the color that black and white film can hold.”

The conversation turned then to film. She had turned it. A party was not a place for arguing Wittgenstein. It took me half an hour, and a trip to the beer cooler, to move around the edge of the group toward Alice. Bill was worried about his draft status, and showed me the small white card he had just gotten. Patrice came over to ask about my new apartment. I think that was when I introduced them. Helen was quoting Yeats by the time I got back. Alice was standing apart then with her back to the wall. A flower.

I asked her if she had any work hanging. There were maybe forty of us then and we came on different evenings after our jobs, or weekends. I only knew the people who were there on my nights. She had three pieces which she felt were unfinished. Helen had told her to put them up anyway. She did not move away to show me. I didn’t insist just yet.

Helen was reciting from memory, “’I know what wages beauty gives / How hard a life her servant lives, /
Yet praise the winters gone / There is not a fool can call me friend, / And I may dine at journey’s end / With Landor and with Donne.’”

She read it with a touch of the Irish in her voice. I already knew she had no Irish blood in her veins. But I did not know that poem then.

Someone asked, “Do you wish you’d met Yeats?”

She smiled, “No. The gods are dangerous. They demand our daughters–and ourselves. He touched me. That was enough for mortal me to deal with.”

I looked to Alice. “I suppose I should be happy I’m not a god.”

Alice ignored my intent. She said, “I wish I had the talent to recite at will.”

I attempted to offer her the refuge of an excuse. “It’s the old school. Back when they taught Latin, they taught young minds how to memorize.”

Alice shook her head. She wore her hair long then. It was the fashion and it entangled my eyes. I often wish she still did. She said, “I know the Latin. It’s the facility. I’ve never had it. I’m always looking things up.”

I looked back toward Helen. She was answering someone else’s inquiry about Joyce again. “The painting? I gave it away to a student some years ago. He was a Joyce scholar–a very nice boy. I think he took my art classes just to be close to someone who had been in the almighty presence. He was actually very talented and I told him he could have the painting if he would keep working with water color. He had an eye for the delicacy of water color.” She slowly exhaled a long plume toward the ceiling. “But I’ve never heard from him again.”

This took most of us by surprise. A betrayal. There was a brief silence as everyone searched for the right thing to say. Would any of us be so unfaithful?

Alice spoke first. “It’s like a forever war. You train your soldiers as best you can and send them out. You can’t know.”

Helen’s eyes widened at Alice’s thought and then she tilted her head to look at us both. “Some things I know. Sometimes…”

1955 (part one)

A tar blister, black and shiny, bloomed from the wooden crevice of a joint in the short bridge, close to Aran’s right foot. The glisten of sun on the tar caught his eye. Aran shifted his sneaker away. His grandmother would not want the tar in the house. The bridge, lengths of wood as thick as railroad ties and darkened with creosote, joined the rusted bones of an iron trestle that crossed the wider gully of the creek more than the creek itself, spanning the red gouge between a corn field and a pasture.

He whispered, “Aw, shoot!” his voice muffled by the dense quiet and his breath smothered by the sun. Everything had changed. Nothing ever stayed the same long enough.

Elbows planted on top of the side rail, Aran stood in partial collapse at the middle of the bridge, his palms clasped to each cheek as he stared down into the gully and studied the ruin of his plan.

The last time he had been here, a year and a half before, it was winter and the sand in the bed of the creek had been broadly spread in a clear swath above and behind a natural basket of rocks and several boulders where the water swirled through a narrowing gap. Behind the larger rocks the creek meandered from side to side over this sunken plain between embankments of raw earth so red they appeared artificial. Now the weeds and undergrowth had taken the sides in, enveloping the banks and overhanging the water in most places, leaving few breaches for him to approach.

His Grandfather had told him, “Right there is where you momma used to swim with Jesse and Susie. Dinah too. It was deeper in those days. There was a wood lot to the far side and not so much sand. Your aunt Susie would never keep her clothes on when she was near the water.”

Aran had pictured his mother sitting on the big rock at the middle of the flow and directing her sisters in the same way she had always directed him.

He had been here most of summers of his life, but only that one winter during the second grade. It was the year his father had changed jobs and they had been forced to move from their small house in Westbury, Long Island. With no other home in New York then, his mother had taken them south to stay with her parents on their little farm near Spartanburg. That was a dark year, of grays and browns. This plan was one of only two aims surviving from that time in his mind.

The following summer they did not come. The old car had not been up to the trip, he was told.

But that winter he made his plan over and again for the warmer weather, whenever he had passed this way from school. It was the long way from school. The way to avoid other things. And then, by the time warmer weather did arrive, his father had found a new job and rented an apartment for them back in New York. In the year and half since then, he had continued to dream of this place and what he would do when he got the chance. Last night they had finally arrived at his Grandparent’s farm for the summer once again.

Sunday dinner still filled his stomach, but he had taken two more biscuits in a small sack and stuffed them into his pocket for a snack. A car passed over the bridge close behind him causing scraps of cooler morning air to lap at his bare legs from beneath the bridge, teasing him.

What would he do? Disappointment locked his brain. He had no idea. The sun ran like hot liquid in his short-cut hair as the air continued to thicken around him. He studied the situation with a sense of urgency not visible in the stillness of this place. The creek ran silent and undisturbed in its dark channel.

Tomorrow was the Fourth of July, and there would be fireworks and other things to do. On Tuesday his grandfather had asked Aran to go out with him in the truck. It would be his first chance. He would be his grandpa’s helper then for the rest of the summer, scrambling about in the back of the truck to get this or that for the customers. He had always wanted to do that as well. He had been too young for the job before and he had looked forward to it even more than coming here to the creek to play. And he might not have time to come here again for days.

Aran’s eyes wandered back to his own shadow against the dun brown sand just below. Dragonflies—what his cousins called ‘snake doctors’–floated on the still air, testing the edges of Aran’s shadow on jeweled wings. The drone of insects in the undergrowth blended in a sort of loud silence. The corn stood at attention, soldier like, without a word of rustling leaves, watching him. Waiting for orders. No small breezes pushed at the upper reaches of the scraggle of trees on the pasture side.

“Shoot!” he said again, just to hear his own voice.

At one side, the weedy interlopers closing on both banks of the creek had been cut down from the edge of the pasture to make them less tempting to the white-faced Herefords. Aran could see the shapes of the cattle laying in the shade of larger trees higher on the rise toward the railroad tracks. His original scheme had included less of that side because of the cattle. But they were kept back there from the gully by an electric fence. The weeds beneath that rise were not as intimidating.

There was no good in waiting.

First, he needed a stick. The longer the better. He settled on a discarded length of splintered post left near where it had been replaced in the cattle fence. With this he climbed down toward the creek on the pasture side and began to batter the weeds. Some of these were nearly as tall as himself. The raw smell of shattered stems flavored the air. The quieting of the insects made the sounds of his attack all the more fierce. Within minutes sweat had fastened his shirt to his body. He took his shirt off. Chaff from the weeds attached to his pale skin. By the time he broke through to the dry sand bed bordering the creek he was ready for his first swim.

He pulled his sneakers off without untying them and waded in. The cold of the water straightened his back, but didn’t halt his plunge.

It was more of a baptism. A wallow. The creek was not yet deep enough. There was no width for even a shallow dive. But then, this was the whole point of his plan.

After a moment he sat in the sun at the edge of the sandy bank, with his legs wide in the flow of the gentle current, and reconsidered.

A car passed on the bridge, clapping the boards together enough to stir the cooler air beneath and an invisible edge of this touched him before dissolving, like a ghost. As he imagined a ghost would be. Aran shivered in the heat and stared into the shadows there. Waspy mud daubers had decorated the underside of the metal trusses in crusty nests.

The sun braised his head and back. He shifted his place to a shadow from the bridge and restudied his project once more. He would need to wade into the cluster of rocks at the center and lift them up toward the boulders. This thought of wading suddenly jerked his mind into awareness and he rammed his hand into his pocket. The paper sack there was limp and wet and tore as he removed it. He peeled back a portion and exposed his waterlogged biscuits. The loss felt tragic. He loved his grandmother’s biscuits. His frustration welled from his throat into a loud “Yow…”

The shadow from the bridge suddenly moved. Aran looked up. Even in the blinding glare he could see a smile of white teeth.

The black boy there quickly closed his mouth over his smile, but this raised both eyebrows with the effort to conceal it.

Aran said “Hey.”

The black boy lift one hand from the rail in a partial wave but said nothing.

They stared at each other for half a minute. Aran wondered at the boy’s silence, and then at where he had come from, and then at whether he was terribly hot up there. The boy had no shirt. Aran was sure he wore no shoes, though this was not immediately visible from below. Knobby knees, reddened by a blush of dirt, peeked from beneath khaki shorts.

Aran said, “Watch out for the tar. It won’t come off.”

The boy looked directly down and shifted his body. Aran saw one bare foot lift gingerly. Still the other boy said nothing.

Aran said, “It’s cooler down here. By a little, anyhow.”

The boy said, “I know it,” and nothing more.

Finally, Aran turned away and reset his plan. He could use some help, but there was no asking if the boy had no interest.

Slowly he began to move the rocks, one after the other. At his lower angle, the natural gathering of rocks at the middle was barely visible through the glare off the surface of the water and he was forced to feel the way with his hands, making the grasp of each piece a small adventure. Crawfish scooted at his feet. Snake doctors and mud daubers visited when both his hands were occupied, making him flinch.

Having spent many hours, in the past, fishing in the larger waters at Boyd’s Old Mill and asking his grandfather all the questions he could think of, he knew of no real dangers lurking beneath the surface here. Not even a big catfish. And he believed water moccasins were unlikely in such a small creek. The minnows and other fish were too small. Frogs were the largest beasts he might see. Still, pulling at what he felt the edges for was a mysterious sort of blind exploration with his fingers.

When one rock slipped from his grasp as he raised it, splashing back at him, Aran looked up for a smile but the black boy was gone.

In an hour, with breaks for reconsiderations and imaginings of what it would be like when he was done, he had a solid line of rocks from one side of the narrowest point in the creek to the other. Perhaps six feet. Nine of his own feet as he carefully stepped the distance off placing one foot before the other. He had the mental image of it, with the curving strength of the Hoover Dam, just the way it appeared in a volume of The Book Of Knowledge. Creation of this curve required the shifting of much more sand and many more rocks than a straight line would have taken, but he already felt a great satisfaction in looking at his accomplishment. Even so, his work had hardly affected the flow of water.

It was while admiring this marvelous arc of rocks, and imagining what it soon would be, that he glanced up toward the pasture. In the shade of one small tree at the edge there, he saw the black boy again, sitting. The boy dipped his head in a nod. He was now gripping the rolled end of a small paper sack in one hand.

Aran squinted in the sun. There was no way to know what was in the sack.

Aran said, “Still cooler down here.”

Teeth flashed. Then the boy gave another nod, but sat a moment longer as if snagged by some uncertainty, before rising to move down the slope through the opening Aran had made. He stopped at the bottom to eye Aran across the swath of dry sand. His head tilted to one side, clearly unsure of what he might do next.

They were nearly both the same height. Both were thin all the way to the boney angles of their elbows and knees. With their bodies bare except for their shorts, the difference in their skin color seemed at once both exaggerated and less important. The other boy was more black than brown, and his hair was cut short to his scalp. Aran’s white skin was burned more red than tan by his few chances in the sun since school had ended two weeks before.

Aran stuck a hand out, his arm awkwardly stiff. “My name is Aran.”

The other boy said, “Taylor,” and shook Aran’s hand twice in a definitive manner before pulling the hand away again and spreading his fingers at his side apprehensively. Aran felt the formality of the introduction. This was not a common event. He would often play with kids for hours without ever knowing their names. But this was somehow different. He wasn’t sure why.

Taylor ran his eyes over the area around them in an overstated survey of the situation. Aran looked the territory over again himself for the hundredth time

Taylor said, “What’cho workin’ at?”

Aran shrugged. “Makin’ a dam.”

“For what?”

“Gonna make a swimmin’ hole.”

Taylor frowned. “Why’in’cha go to that pool in Arcadia.”

Aran shrugged. “Cause.”

“Cause why?”

Aran raised his shoulders even higher at that in another shrug. The real answer was not so easy to tell. He said what came to mind.

“My gran’pa says my momma used to swim up over here when she was a girl.”

Taylor tilted his head to the side once more with a short consideration of this. He said, “Who’s your gran’pa?”

“Joe Burke.”

“Your gran’pa ol’ Joe?”

“Yes.”

“I know him.”

Aran was about to say that everyone knew Joe Burke, but held it back as an unnecessary statement of the obvious. Joe Burke peddled fresh produce from the back of his truck all over that side of Spartanburg, from Una to Lyman. Instead, Aran turned to his handiwork.

“I’m gonna build a Hoover dam,” and pointed at the simple arc of stones beneath the water.

“What’s a ‘Hoover’ dam?”

“Like that,” Aran held the tips of his finger together with his palms curved in a demonstration. “It’s bowed. It’s stronger that way.”

Taylor studied the placement of the stones. When his eyes slipped further over to the wad of damp refuse Aran had thrown by the cut path, Taylor held up his sack.

“Wanna biscuit?”

This was a questionable surprise. Aran’s grandmother made the best biscuits on the face of the earth, as everyone knew who knew anything. But Aran had started being hungry as soon has he had discovered his earlier mistake.

There was really no question about it. “Sure.”

Aran could see several biscuits in the bag Taylor held open, and took one. He put it to the test beneath his nose first. The sour smell of the buttermilk pried his mouth open without a hesitation. The biscuit was sweet.

Neither of them had yet moved from the same spot facing each other. Taylor took a biscuit and put half in his mouth at once.

With his mouth full, Aran said, “This is like my gran’ma’s.”

Taylor said, “Then your gran’ma mus make’em like my momma.”

Aran decided not to correct the backward priority. He was happy enough with the result.
He pointed down at his task. “You wanna help me make a dam?”

Taylor smiled, his eyes flaring with another recognition. “My daddy says that. He say,‘You wanna make a damn,’ when he say what he want to do. But he mean the other thing.”

It seemed an odd comment, as if part of some larger thought still fresh on the boy’s mind.

Aran asked, “What’s your daddy do?”

Taylor widened his eyes at the question but he didn’t answer. This flare of the eyes seemed to be a habit. Like Aran’s cousin Danny who shook his head when he meant to say yes. With Taylor the expression seemed to signal that he was unsure of something as much as surprised.

Aran finished his biscuit and bent down on his knees in the sand to cup a drink of water with his hands. As he did this he asked, “Where do you live?”

Taylor half turned his head in the direction. “Over to Una,” paused, and then asked, “About you?”

Aran said, “New York,” as he stood up again.

Taylor’s eyes flared. “My daddy’s in New York.” This was said with a drop in his voice, as if it was an unhappy thought. But that was something they had in common. Aran’s father was still in New York as well, though Aran was certainly happier to be here instead.

He said only, “So’s mine.”

This coincidence of fact hung in the air for a moment before either of them moved again.

Aran waded into the creek, bent low to the water to grasp another rock, and lifted it up to show. “None of’em’s as big as they look from up on the bridge. But they’ll do.” Then he carried it the short distance to the others he had set in line and let it drop to achieve the greatest amount of splash back. This brought a flash of teeth again from Taylor.

“Whyn’t you just throw’em.”

“I can one. But the next gets heavier. They’re lighter under the water but they’re heavy to lift up above.”

Taylor waded in as if challenged, explored the bottom with his hands, coming up with the largest rock he could find, and then lifted it high over his head, hefted it once as if to start a throw, and then purposely fell over backwards. The splash covered Aran.

This started a water fight that lasted at least ten minutes. The noise of their laughter made the cattle stand-up in the field. Winded, they sat in the sun afterward and ate two more biscuits, each bending low for a drink more than once.

Aran commented as he knelt at the edge, “It’s good water. I believe it’s better than my grandpa’s well.”

Taylor nodded. “My momma gets water from that spring up yonder. Same water. She go up the other road an bring a milk bucket. I help her. I pull the wagon.”

Aran asked, “You ever swim here before?”

Taylor shrugged. “No. I come sometime. I sit on that rock there,” he nodded toward the largest of the three boulders in the midst of the creek. “Watch for frogs. There a turtle in here too. Brown as mud. He hidin’ away now, but he there.”

Then the serious work began. They carried the rocks individually, one after the other before Taylor had the idea to cut the distance in half, with each of them taking just one end of the work. Taylor put his face in the water to see the bigger rocks and then grabbed them up and took a step or two and handed them off to Aran who placed them as carefully as he could manage in the slowly rising arc.

Taylor asked, “You live in a house or ‘partment?”

“Apartment. We used to live in a house. Before”

“My daddy live in a ‘partment too.”

“Where.”

“Brook-lyn.”

“That’s near where I live. I live in Queens.”

“His name is Martin.”

Taylor stopped to look for some sign of recognition from Aran.

Aran shrugged. “I don’t know anybody named Martin.” A few rocks later he asked, “You live in a house?”

“Trailer. ‘hind my uncle Elton’s house.”

“What’s your Uncle Elton do?”

“He work at the Beacon. He be one of the fella’s who bring the food to the cars. My daddy did that before he went to New York.”

Aran had eaten at the Beacon Drive-in a hundred times. He might have even seen Taylor’s uncle. Or perhaps his father.

He said, “I like barbeque.”

Taylor looked at him suspiciously. “Everyone like barbeque.”

Aran nodded his agreement.

Taylor asked, “What your daddy do.”

“He’s a salesman. He sell’s stuff.”

“What kin’a stuff?”

“I don’t know. He’s changed his job since he told me last time.”

In another hour they had made enough difference to flood the sand bar where they had been sitting. Aran carried his shirt and sneakers and the spoiled wad of his own biscuits up and snagged them on one of the small trees by the pasture fence. Several of the white-faced Herefords had wandered down to the little shade there and stood silently watching. Looking from above, the spread of water had already created a wide pool, shallow as it was on the sandy side, and the air was now disturbed by the gurgle of the water over their small impediment. It was a happy sight.

Taylor flashed a smile from where he stood at the middle, and straightened tall with one arm out to his side as if presenting the fact, loudly announcing, “Aran Dam,” in his deepest voice.

Aran climbed back down, making his correction on the way. “The Aran-Taylor dam, I think.” He liked that. It had a very official sound to it.

They switched places in the work line then, with Aran pulling rocks out of the creek-bed, his face down into the water just like Taylor had done it. Between times he sat in the depths and floated on his back. Taylor only watched.

Aran said, “Come on and try it.”

Taylor shook his head. “Can’t. Can’t swim.”

This put another halt in their progress.

Aran stood, waist deep. “No foolin’?”

“I’m no fool. I just never did learn how.”

Aran was confused. What should he make of this? Why was Taylor building a swimming hole if he couldn’t swim? Was it because he wanted to learn?

“They have lessons over at the pool in Arcadia. That’s where I learned. I learned to swim two years ago when I was only six years old.”

Taylor said, “That’s good.”

Aran said, “They have instructors. You could learn there yourself.”

Taylor reached his hands forward and wiggled his fingers for another rock. “I don’t reckon so.”

Aran pulled another rock up from the bottom and handed it off. “It only costs a quarter each time.”

Taylor sniffed, already wiggling his fingers again. He repeated his words, “I don’t reckon so.”

Aran frowned and handed off the next.

“I’m sure. I’m sure of it.”

Taylor shook his head. He said, “No. Not for colored folks, it don’t,” and dropped the rock into place with a definitive splash.

This made Aran stand still again. He felt dumb struck by his own stupidity. He had never seen any black people at the pool in previous summers, yet he had never even wondered at the fact, much less asked why.

Taylor stood with his head to the side again, hands hanging with fingers spread.

Aran said, “I’m sorry.”

Taylor shrugged. “It don’t matter.” His eyes went up to the sky. “We ought’a hurry. I be gone soon. I got my chores.”

“On Sunday?”

“Chickens. Chickens sit on Sunday same’s any.”

Aran pulled another rock from the bottom and handed it off. “I’ll be goin’ out with my gran’pa on Tuesday. I’ll be his helper. Maybe he’ll head up by Una.”

“I be up ta Packer’s Tuesday. Peaches’ ripe. I be wif momma pickin’ peaches.”

Aran felt like he was still fighting the previous revelation in his mind. He said, “Gran’pa might want a few bushels of peaches for the truck. Maybe I’ll see you at Packer’s”

“Maybe.”

Aran looked over the incomplete project. “Can you come here next Sunday?”

Taylor’s head went to the side. “I reckon.”
Then he turned and climbed the bank with his empty sack in one hand, stopping to wave only when he reached the top.

Aran said, “I can show you how. I can show you how to swim. I’m a good swimmer.”

Taylor waved again and disappeared in the direction of Una.

The next Sunday Aran brought a shovel. Taylor was not there when Aran arrived at the bridge.

Wading into the shallow pool, Aran removed a dozen rocks at the center of their dam and set them to one side to let the water run through until the sand bank was exposed again. As he waited, he whistled.

The sound of his whistle echoed beneath the bridge and caused him to look through the dark frame of the underside. There he could see almost level across the surface of a broad flat pasture beyond. It was like a picture in a museum, but for a shiver of heat at the green edge of the grass, almost as if electrified by the fence. The steady fuss of insects gave an electric buzz to his thought.

A pickup truck passed on the bridge above. From his place on the sand he could only see the top of the cab and the side gate. It was not his grandfather’s truck in any case.

He shoveled the sand, tossing it back further from the dam to widen the pool. His hand was sore where it gripped the shovel and reminded him of the wire handles on the peach baskets. The holes he made in the sand quickly filled with water. When the metal of the shovel struck a rock he pried it up and threw it on the dam. The repetition of this process soon engrossed him.

Aran had arrived at the creek earlier this time, having contrived to finish his Sunday dinner before anyone else. He had borrowed the shovel from the collection of tools in the small shed at one side of the chicken yard, and exited his grandparent’s farm through the back corn field to avoid being seen or, more importantly, being questioned. This way was in fact the same way he had once come home from school to avoid the direct route down the road that passed in front of his grandparent’s house. But in summer, the unused field at the back was tall with wild raspberry vines and burrs.

Those wild fields were what remained of a separate farm abandoned when the house there had been burned down years before. ‘Johnson’ land, it was called. The stories of that place had all happened long before Aran was even born, during the Depression, and the remains appeared to be that much more ancient because of the kudzu vine that enveloped the ruin in a thick undulating blanket of leaves.

Aran had used the shovel to scythe a narrow way clear to the dirt ruts of the back road close to where the burned farmhouse once stood. Brick supports there, entwined in green, tilted at the sky. He knew they were brick because in the winter they were exposed, and because the fact of how substantial this house once was figured into several of his grandfather’s stories.

Because Aran was already sweating and moved too quickly with anticipation as he approached the back road, he had snagged his bare shins on thorns in several places in his hurry. In his belt he and stuffed the top fold of another paper sack with some of his grandmother’s biscuits as well as half a dozen ripe figs he had quickly plucked from the sagging tree by the shed.

At the creek, the scratches from the thorns burned with his own sweat as he shoveled the sand back at the swimming hole and he waded into the water repeatedly for relief.

His mind continued to wander over incidents of the past week. They had indeed gone to Packer’s for peaches on Tuesday. His grandfather did not need to be asked, announcing his intention at breakfast on Tuesday morning. But Aran had not seen Taylor. The orchard was large, stretching a quarter mile along the Old Greenville Road, and it was busy with pickers. Taylor could have been almost anywhere out of sight and Aran quickly gave up looking.

There were several clusters of activity along the road where trucks waited to be filled and sorting tables were busiest. The peaches were carefully dumped from smaller baskets held on wide straps slung around each pickers neck. The dumped peaches spread into shallow wooden troughs covered with strips of black rubber cut from the inner tubes of tires. Four or five women re-sorted the peaches there into bushels not by size but by the ripeness apparent in their color.

Aran’s grandfather had pulled into a side road at a point he had already chosen for some unspoken reason, and bought a dozen bushels for their small truck right at the sorting table, paying cash to a tall white man in overalls who wore a baseball cap. This man continuously squinted so tightly against the sun that Aran could not believe he saw the money to count.

Nearby, several black men picked up the thin wood and wire bushel baskets which had been sorted, already packed and covered, and lifted them high into a larger truck for someone else. The pickers and the sorters were all black women in broad yellow straw hats. The yellow straw hats bobbed in the bright sun as they moved.

Aran helped his grandfather carry each bushel they had chosen to the truck. He held to the thin wire handle at one side, even as it dug into the soft flesh of his hand, by clinching his teeth. His grandfather carried the other side with far less effort and then climbed up on the bed of the truck and positioned the basket to achieve the most of the limited space. Between each carry Aran waited for his grandfather to return by looking at the faces of the individual women at the sorting tables, watching their eyes scan the flow of peaches, their features darkened further by their hats, and wondered if one of the women might be Taylor’s mother–but he had no intention of asking.

The pooling of the water in his shovel holes dissolved the sand beneath his bare feet, exposing more rocks which he pried out of the sand with the shovel blade, one by one. His project seemed to be increasing in size rather than getting finished. He rested often between shovelfuls, not to judge his efforts but to consider the events of the week.

That week, as they had drifted the back roads in the green truck from one cluster of small houses to the next with his grandfather calling out from the open window, Aran had learned when to move and when to stay put.

“Rosen ears. Peaches. Strawberries. Muskmelons. Maters. Green beans. Turnips.”

At this time of the year, all but the peaches were grown on his grandparent’s five acres. When that crop was thinned, maybe next week or the week after, they would go to Greenville early one morning, to the Farmer’s market, and supplement the supply.

Almost anyone they saw along the way waved familiarly. The sight of a hand rising up without a wave seemed to be the sign. The truck, never moving very fast, slowed to a halt at the side nearest the path to the house, as his grandfather stood on the clutch and shifted the knob on the long gear stick. Once stopped, more people usually came out of the shade from porches and sheds, and for a few minutes, there would be a flurry of activity. The plain metal scale squeaked on the chain as it was loaded by the handful and then unloaded into paper sacks. Aran moved around the nest of baskets inside the bed of the truck and on the raised shelf suspended between the side gates, pulling out what was pointed at, balancing a foot here or there in the slates in the wooden side gate, or holding to a cross bar, but always watching the faces.

His grandfather would pull beans from a basket and hand them out.

“Taste that. Sweet as sugar.”

He pulled the husk down from the browned top of a ‘rosen’ ear. It was just a fat ear of corn–a roasting ear it had once been called in times past when corn was cooked in the fire with the leaves still on. Aran had found it was a term unknown to anyone in New York.

“Look at it,” his grandfather would say. “Full yeller.”

Or he would pluck a strawberry from a pint batch and drop it into an open palm. “Picked on the Fourth of July. Red’ned by the sun. Not nearly soft. Jus’ honey an’ tart.”

This was in fact the same food they ate themselves each day and Aran new exactly what his grandfather was telling them.

They had unloaded most of the peaches into the shade of the pecan tree in the yard on Tuesday morning to make room in the truck for other produce. While Aran and his grandfather wandered the roads, his grandmother would have both stoves hot and the kitchen steamy as she cut and canned as many of the peaches and as she could.

It had been a busy week.

Aran scanned the rail of bridge above him repeatedly with his eyes, hoping to catch sight of Taylor. He was getting hungry again. He imagined he could smell both the biscuits and the figs in the closed paper sack at the bottom of the path.

A cow pulled at the longer grass close to the electric fence, careful to avoid the sting. Aran rested again and watched this with the cold water bathing the scratches on his shins.

Each night he had sat on the porch with his grandfather and listened to stories and thought about the faces he had seen. The stories usually involved some character from the past. Sometimes they were anecdotes about relatives Aran only knew vaguely of. But some stories were about the people they had met that day.

Just the evening before his grandfather had leaned forward with his forearms resting on his knees.

“You saw Miz Presley. She had that leg amputated a year past. Diabetes. She use’ta work over at the mill in Saxon. I knew her husban’. He was no account. Liked ta gamble. Ran off to Columbia and got his self kilt playin’ a game of cards with scoundrels.”

This forthright statement was of a kind usually punctuated with a spit of dark tobacco juice into the hedge. This appeared to be a cautionary tale. Perhaps a warning against playing cards with the wrong people. Perhaps against playing cards at all. His grandmother was a strict Free Will Baptist and did not hold with playing cards or gambling in any way. But then his grandfather was a gossip of an odd sort. He seemed to fixate more on the hazards of their lives, not the relationships of people, especially women with men. Never anything “off color.”

And his grandmother never spoke a word about anyone else except to affirm their better natures or good intentions, or when necessary, to offer a condolence for a loss.

Aran leaned forward on the shovel handle to dig deep. He could not use his bare foot on the back of the rusted metal blade. When metal struck rock he pried the shape up through the sand and tossed it to the growing dam. Tossing it was a confirmation of what he sensed to be his growing strength.

This was like the improving balance he felt as he moved about the back of the truck.

When someone was infirm or bought more from his grandfather than they could carry, Aran was sent back with them to the house with his arms full.

He often gaped at what he saw.

Aran had stood impatiently at Mrs. Presley’s door to allow her to make her way from the side of the truck. Impatient, he had gone ahead to find the shade of her porch, and the two cantaloupes and the bag of tomatoes grew heavier in his arms as he waited there. Her crutch dug deeply at the gravel on the path and she stopped at every step to take a heavy breath, speaking to him each time.

“From New York your gran’pa says. I was in New York one time. With my momma…My Daddy’d done joined the Navy. That was the First War, you understand. He was in the Navy right there. Worked at a shipyard in Brooklyn…We took the train all the way from Spartanburg to visit. Didn’t drive. Not like they do now. My daddy didn’t have a car at that time anyhow…I remember that trip like it was yesterday. Did you know they had dinner on that train? With tablecloths and flowers at each place and silver that shined like gold in that yeller light…I saw it. We didn’t eat any of that, you understand. We brung ‘ars along in a basket. But I saw it…D’you take the train? D’you see all that?”

“No ma’am. My mother drives.”

“Your momma drives. All that way? All the way from New York.”

“Yes.”

“By herself? That would mean your folks have a car. What kind of car would that be?”

“Yes ma’am? An Oldsmobile.”

She shook her head at the news as if it were a sad thing to know. “I know Chad Paget. I knew his mother. He has the Chevrolet dealership, you know.”

She arrived at the porch puffing breath like a small steam engine, mounted the steps one at a time, and stopped next to Aran to consider the contents of his arms.

“I should have bought me some of those green and red peppers. I like those in my rice. When you put that down, would you go back and fetch me some peppers?”

“Yes ma’am.”

Mrs. Presley pulled the screen door open and revealed a front room tight with furniture and collected things. The flowered wallpaper was mostly hidden by pictures cut from magazines and tacked up without frames. Not religious pictures, as Aran often saw, or the faded sepia tone portraits of unhappy relatives, but colorful advertisements of stoves and clothes washers, refrigerators and television sets. Above this, out of his reach, the walls were decorated with whole dried plants strung upside down on white string from nail to nail. An assortment of chairs pressed close to a coal stove to one side and a long table at the other was piled with an array of jars each filled with the crushed remains of some kind of dried plant.

She followed his eyes.

“Herbs. I sell herbs. Social Security isn’t enough, you understand…Does your mother work?”

He nodded. He didn’t think he should say anything about his mother. It might take time and his grandfather was waiting. Besides, the smells in the house were a suffocating mix of cooked food, herbs, and raw sweat.

Mrs. Presley used her bare arm to brush back the jars on the table, making space there, and Aran set down the things he carried.

Mrs. Presley leaned close. Aran saw that she had freckles amidst the hairs on her lip.

“What kind of vacuum cleaner does your mother use?…I’m sure she needs one. I recommend the Electrolux.” She pointed at an advertisement just below a dried sunflower head which had lost many of its seeds on the floor below. She added, “Harold Bennett—just across from Belk’s you know–he will sell her an Electrolux at the very best price if you use my name.”

Aran backed away.

“Gran’pa is waiting on me.”

She frowned at his lack of responsiveness.

“Your gran’pa doesn’t know how to wait. He’s out there sellin’ his goods. But you go on. He might need you. And here, take this quarter and fetch me some peppers.”

The quarter she dropped in his hand was wet with moisture.

Aran pushed his shovel deep and filled it with a solid clot of sand. It occurred to him that instead of tossing it back from his swimming hole he should toss it right on the dam to fill the cracks. This inspired him with a renewed energy.

The fact was that Aran’s mother was gone again. She was off to visit one of his aunts. He could guess which one. None of the others had any money to speak of. He had heard his mother talking on the phone late the night before as he lay in bed. She was trying to borrow money. It was a fact that they had almost run out of gas on Saturday as they were approaching Spartanburg. The needle was on the red when they pulled up at his grandparent’s house. She certainly had no money for a vacuum cleaner.

Aran’s stomach growled. A voiced spoke back.

“I believe you need some peanut. And I haf just that thing.”

Taylor had showed up at last, not much later in fact than he had appeared the previous Sunday. He explained that he had been in Church until noon, and then had to walk his grandmother home and get her what she needed before he could play. In his excitement he said all of this with more words than he had spoken to Aran the entire time before.

They ate the figs and peanuts first as Aran explained his efforts with the shovel.

Taylor slapped a knee with a laugh, “Maybe we ought’a fin’ us a few more to help. The way this plan keep growin’ it almos’ seem like work.”

Aran protested. “No! Just us. That’s all we need.” And then realizing he sounded a bit too adamant, he added, “We’ll have you swimmin’ before you leave today.”

Taylor’s face grew suddenly serious.

“My mamma say, even my daddy cain’t swim.”

Aran shrugged this off as a minor detail. “Then you can teach him.” But he knew this was not a small matter at all.

This is what I remember.

But someone else could say, “I know that place. You’ve got the names all wrong.”

I’d have to tell them that they’re mistaken. In any case, I don’t remember them being there.

They might answer, “The doorway was on the left. That woman was a blonde.”

I’d have to remind them that they were standing at a different angle, and the lighting was not as good.

This all happened before mobsters replaced cowboys at the movies, and long before government Indians and stock market brokers took over the business of gambling. I was a nobody then, the same as I am now, only then I was a nobody with promise. The unsecured credit of my youth opened doors which have since been securely locked. Reflecting on that time now, I am aware of the forgotten order of things. We all tend to place remembered matters in a sequence of importance determined by the lives we are presently living, and too easily forget the values we once held so dear. We judge our past selves by the logic of the present, as if we might have foreseen the unfolding of things we could not possibly have known.

My favorite outside job through college and for some years afterward was the night clerk shift at a hotel, because it left me time to study during the day, or write the things I write, and free of too much supervision. The money never mattered. I always made twice as much waiting tables, but then I’d came home in a sweat and a busted mood, without the heart to set down a noun and verb that agreed to the same sentence.

The best hotel job I ever had was at the old Dartmouth. For a lot of reasons. For one, it was close to the Boston Public Library, and I spent most of my free time there in the reading room. Another was the age of the place. The newer hotels are all about efficiency and cost effective use of space. The grand corridors and wide lobbies of the old Dartmouth still whispered with a pomp of royalty and circumstance. The old hotels were made to be a safe haven for travelers too far from home. The public spaces were lined with small shops offering the necessary services of an age when men wore hats, shoes were shined, and women had to be pleased with gifts before they would succumb to the ardor of lovers. Even in the later days of my time there, the Dartmouth still had the usual airline ticket office, travel agency, Newsstand, florist, barber shop, and a smoke shop that perfumed the north exit enough to be fragrant late into the night, hours after it was closed. It was like working in a self-contained village of a sort. But the main reason I remember the old Dartmouth so well now is because of a few of the people I got to know.

Times change–Nothing remains the same–the sort of wisdom that’s always been free of charge and readily available at any corner. It seems we only listen to the advice we pay for, with blood or money. The more we pay, the harder we listen.

I always tried to listen on the cheap. But then, I guess, I’m easily distracted.

Of course, the old Dartmouth Hotel has changed even more since my time there. More than just another coat of gold paint on the rococo filigree. For one thing, they ripped out the Carousel Room a few years after I left, because the aging mechanism beneath the turning floor overheated and caused a fire. Once, you could sit in a single spot beyond the wheel of the inner floor and watch a lounge act from every possible angle in the space of half an hour as the center of the room drifted by. This was not so kind to the over-ripe acts that often played that venue, but the constant movement made the place seem busy even on slow nights. The piano bar at the middle was usually stocked with women, young and otherwise, each happy to be on revolving display and often attended by anxious middle-aged men. And during those years, on most nights after ten o’clock, anyone entering the main door by the maitre d’ stand might notice the dapper figure of Dom Benedict sitting at his table in the far corner, beyond the drift of the floor. From there he maintained a steady angle on a revolving world that was somehow especially his.

At the time, the Dartmouth was already outdated by the latest standards, a slightly shabby warren of wide halls which suddenly narrowed to make room for the newer conveniences, large rooms with lowered ceiling to hide ductwork and additional piping, and bathrooms with vaulted heights. There were luxurious suites which had been divided into multiple singles, and singles with king-sized beds. Not all the elevators went to every floor. The balcony over the lobby could only be reached from above because the grand staircase had been removed to make room for a breakfast cafe. Elaborate plaster ceiling medallions were truncated by the upper reaches of odd walls installed to create spaces for things already forgotten and now reused for other purposes. Fire regulations dictated exits, but these often lead to hallways and then to other spaces connecting with more hallways. Few were aware, for instance, that the heavy silk and velvet curtain behind Mr. Benedict’s table in the Carousel Room covered a service door, which he used discreetly to come and go. I knew this because I was habitually curious and spent my breaks away from the front desk exploring whatever nooks I could find.

When new, the Dartmouth was the ‘modern’ hotel of an opulent Edwardian age, and the architects had allowed for an elaborate floor plan offering the greatest potential to the whims of that time. Most inner walls were not meant for support. The bones of massive steel girders spanned ten yards at a stride, and in its early days, walls were moved from year to year, like partitions, allowing displays of the latest in automobiles or the hosting of the kind of political conventions which had once made Boston the ‘Hub.’ In my time, all this had declined to the gatherings around school graduations and the annual comings of the Shriners or the Knights of Columbus. Most of the once temporary inner walls had been left in place for decades by then. Still, small doors opened from one space to the next at odd places and on several occasions, upon opening one or another of those, I witnessed things I have not forgotten.

The duties of a night-clerk were proscribed: checking in late-comers, turning away those without reservations who did not appear trustworthy, taking calls directly from rooms when guests needed information or help, ringing the bellmen to hoist bags, delivering ice, passing disputed bills over to the night bookkeeper, watching out for the pimps who were themselves keeping an eye on potential business, and calling the hotel security in times of emergency. All of this might absorb two or three of the eight hours of duty I was salaried for. The rest of the shift was supposed to have been spent with hands folded on the gray and pink of the Italian marble counter, eyes watchful for the wants of needy patrons. I usually spent this quiet time reading paperback novels which I opened out of view on a nook of shelf below the room chart, and kept hidden the rest of the time, splayed beneath the reservation board.

My previous hotel job in Brattleboro, Vermont had required me to make the wake-up calls as well. At the Dartmouth, this chore was handled by a small women named Ellen, whom we seldom actually saw except when she was coming in to work, or leaving, but whose voice was a common thread to us all. The old switchboards, long outmoded and since automated, or by-passed completely by direct dialing, remained in a sort of hulking majesty of Bakelite and brass, their once proud technology massively spanning a narrow room in the basement, just below the front desk. Ellen spent her shift there ensconced before a newer console of small black switches, hardly bigger than an office desk, in one corner of that space where previously four women had once chattered busily as they plugged and unplugged a morass of short copper-tipped cords in their oddly biological game.

Ellen was my source of encyclopedic data and untested depths of trivia. She did the New York Times crossword puzzle each night without reference. Her words were shaped by the generous and motherly concern of a woman who never had the family of her own she had wished for, and by the lush turns of the Santee River in South Carolina where she was born. Ellen was the first to know my name the day I came to work at the Dartmouth, and the last to say goodbye the day I left.

I was not a particularly good night clerk. But I persisted. I can become very absorbed in a good book, and on many occasions I was rudely disturbed by a paying customer who had given me ample opportunity to finish whatever sentence or paragraph I was on. This unfair irritableness on my part was magnified by the inevitable coincidence between a major plot turn in the story and the length of time necessary to satisfy the needs of the hotel guest.

In my own defense, I had fallen into bad habits at the previous hotel where I had learned more in those hours after dark–things I still remember better–than I had from any of the textbook knowledge acquired during the day while stumbling through college. At that previous place I was supposed to ignore certain comings and goings to avoid conflict with the laws of the State of Vermont, which prohibited things like prostitution, or the high stakes poker games held weekly in the Presidential suite. I learned that laws were selectively enforced, and those who made them often broke them. A lowly desk clerk could be called to testify in divorce proceedings or worse, things that I had no wish to be part of. To some degree then, reading on the job was my way of keeping my head down. Dom Benedict had certainly warned me about that more than once.

Dom had strict and simple advice, as free as the street corner variety, but more precise. ‘Keep your nose clean. Keep your hands out of your pockets. Keep your head down.’ He said this on our first meeting, early one morning in the empty main dining room where I was eating my sandwich at a bare service table in the half-dark.

At first, I thought he might be the manager, Mr. Henry, whom I had yet to meet even though he lived in the hotel. Dom didn’t correct my misconception and the next evening I embarrassed myself by assuming the actual Mr. Henry was a guest who had taken a wrong door.

Dom was a tall man, lanky in the way of people who are always at ease. His severe appearance–thin mustache, hair combed straight back, always wearing an expensive dark blue suit–was at odds with that posture. He looked more than a little like Howard Hughes, and that I later learned was not accidental. But Dom never flew in airplanes. He liked trains.

On that first meeting, the glow of only one chandelier at the center of the high ceiling in the dining room added a colorless haze to the darkened elegance. Curving rows of tables were pre-set for the next day, with napkins twisted into flares of white against beige tablecloths and silverware glinting with orderly traces of the diminished light.

Dom had appeared out of nowhere from a back corner as I absent-mindedly gazed over the open space in some reverie or another. His dark figure approached as if intending to speak to me and was something of a shock. This was before I had discovered the narrow passage that separated the Carousel Room from the main dining area. The passage was intended as a kind of buffer against the sounds of the nightclub, but was used as well for extra chairs and assorted furniture.

His first words to me were, “What are you eating?” The low rumble of his voice indicated a serious interest despite the subject matter.

I answered, “A sandwich,” suddenly unable to swallow.

The shadows gave the reaction on his face a look of exaggerated importance concerning this incidental addition to the sum total of human knowledge.

He said, “I could smell the peanut butter from the next room,” as if he found this amusing. “It’s good for you, you know. Almost the only thing I ate until I went into the army.”

I swallowed and added, “And it’s cheap.”

That brought a thoughtful nod. “And it’s cheap. But don’t get it on a table cloth.”

I felt somehow caught in a wrongful act. “Yes, sir. Paul said I could sit in here if I wanted.”

He considered this added morsel of fact as if armies might be called into action for the difference. “If Paul said so, it’s ok,” and then added, “You started this week?”

“Yes sir. Yesterday.”

Mr. Benedict paused thoughtfully again. Looking upward, with the chandelier behind him, I had no knowledge yet of the hard blue in the eyes that studied me.

“You like the place so far?”

An easy question to answer. “I like old hotels. Things are always going on.”

With his left hand he pulled a cigarette from a pack I could not see inside his jacket pocket and with his right hand he lit the end with a square Zippo lighter that appeared as if by a magic trick in his palm. The metallic chirp accented the glint of gold plate.

“That’s true. Something is always going on. But you have to remember to keep your nose clean, keep your hands out of your pockets, and keep your head down.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered

Paul Lazlo, my authority for eating lunch there rather than the dank basement enclosure known as the ‘employee lounge,’ was a thin fellow too, but his ill fitting black uniform gapped in odd places, and his bow tie floated at the bottom of a long neck. Paul was always in a hurry; coming to the front desk twice each night, once from the main dining room after it stopped serving at nine, and then again after the Carousel Room closed its doors at one. As Headwaiter, he was usually loaded with small bills and loose change from tips, and given to fast conversation as he stacked his dollars and quarters in neat piles before our cashier, Francesca. She would exchange it all for tens and twenties, and he would be gone.

I wondered if I had consulted the wrong authority.

“Paul was right about me eating in here, wasn’t he? I know he’s just a waiter–”

Mr. Benedict pulled a chair and an ashtray from the closest table and sat down with the ashtray cradled in the palm of his left hand.

“Whatever Paul says is usually right. Don’t worry about it.”

I offered my excuse nonetheless, “The staff room downstairs has an odd smell.”

He gave the matter a moment of grave consideration before answering.

“Nobody eats in that place. It stinks.”

That seemed definitive. But I was surprised he had bothered to sit down, and still more unsure of myself. Remember, I still thought he was the hotel manager.

Dom began to ask questions, strung one to the next, never seeking explanations for any odd answers I gave. I was assuming that the peculiar shapes and edges of my life were not interesting enough to pursue. Later I came to understand his method of inquiry. He liked puzzles and wanted all the pieces necessary on the table before he started to fit things together.

I had not had a real interview when I applied for the job. I filled out the employment form and offered my references and was told when to report for duty and where to find a uniform, all within an hour. I assumed, correctly as it turned out, that someone had just quit without warning and there was a sudden slot to fill. Now I wrongly guessed that Dom’s inquiries were to make up for that omission.

We talked for too long that first time and I was late getting back to the desk and had to face the scowl of Mr. Wiggin, the night bookkeeper and undesignated authority over all. He had filled in at the front desk during my absence.

The little man spoke with an audible huff to his voice, the shine off his bald head flashing light in eyes still accustomed the darkness of the dining room. Mr. Wiggin was given to short declarative sentences and few idle questions. “I’ve got better things to do.” The one constant with him was his dissatisfactions.

I thought that keeping my hands out of my pockets was related to some perverted pleasure all Catholics feared, and obeyed this rule happily. I never had much of a problem with colds, and never thought a lot about my nose in any case. But the first time I fully understood about keeping my head down was on a hot night in June, a couple of weeks after I had started the job.

I was in the middle of Nevil Shute’s novel, Round the Bend, and was unaware of anything unusual until the cashier’s tray hit the floor on the other side of the half wall partition that separated my space from Francesca’s. The bounce of quarters and dimes on the marble floor was enough to awaken even my already absorbed consciousness to the reality of the moment. Startled, I lunged across the oak divide to see if I could help and saw in intimate detail the sleek lines and sculptured dark metal beauty of a short barreled .45 caliber Colt automatic. I can swear to this day that I actually read the words ‘Patented April 20, 1897’ before I realized what it was. Then I pulled my head back as quickly as it had arrived and just ahead of a concussive wallop that deafened both of my ears to Francesca’s simultaneous soprano scream.

Unfortunately, my glasses had continued in the original direction, weighted like a plumb bob by the heavy glass lenses. I saw little else afterward with less than a blur. I did hear the follow-up curse of the robber, who shot into the air again for no other apparent purpose than to keep other heads down as well, and only knew he had fully retreated by the unmistakable crash of broken glass as it shattered against the floor in the west vestibule when he shot his weapon a third time in frustrated anger as he struggled, his other hand encumbered by his loot, to get that door open during his escape.

Francesca was huddled in the corner of her booth beneath the marble overhang of the counter, and with my reappearance over the divide she shrugged almost nonchalantly with the words, “What are you gonna to do?” which is what she often said–a question I could not answer honestly and thus remained silent. I smiled instead.

This was a stupid reflex. My tongue has always been in conflict with my brain and speaking too quickly was often an embarrassment of stuttering and mangled grammar that safely hid the etymology of my purpose. I had worked to avoid this at all costs ever since the dawn of my adolescence, adapting a quick smile from my father’s number one rule of life. ‘Don’t speak unless you have something to say.’ He would say this quite often, correctly assuming my verbal mutilations to be the result of an untidy mind, or worse. I had long since revised his wisdom to, ‘Don’t speak when you can raise an eyebrow instead, or nod, or best of all, smile, whichever seems appropriate to the occasion.’ My revision of rules is often more wordy than the original.

Francesca took this to be some kind of quiet bravery, while I was marveling at her own apparent calm. Even in that blurred haze, I was aware of her eyes.

Mr. Wiggin, the bookkeeper, poked the slick pink bowl of his head over the half door that closed the cashier’s booth off from the back office.

“What did he get?”

His tinny monotone sliced through whatever it was that joined the air between Francesca’s eyes and my own.

She answered, “Whatever he wanted,” as she reached upward for my hand.

Quarters and dimes gleamed against the darker marble, surrounding Francesca’s bare legs, but all paper bills were missing.

I reported helpfully, “All the cash is gone.”

Her hand was firm, and warm. The sensation of her touch was a greater shock than the explosion of the gun that still rang in my ears. By this time a crowd was gathering from one corner or another. Francesca discovered my glasses in the folds of her dress and handed them up to me as she stood.

She said, “You were very brave.” There was no polite smile given with the words. She seemed completely serious and I was not about to deny her mistake. I searched my repertoire for a response. Smiling would not do, nor a nod. I attempted a skeptical raising of one eyebrow. My mind just then was possessed of that singular joy that the severely myopic feel when they discover that their glasses have not been lost or destroyed. An acute vision of the restored world around me combined with the sensation of her hand, which I reluctantly released when she was standing.

Victor, the night bellmen stood close at the outer edge of the counter and stared at me blank-faced through his own thick lenses. He said nothing. He was as far-sighted as I was near-sighted, and his eyes were magnified into a steady blank surprise. He had obviously moved quickly to the sounds, and one of his hearing aids protruded oddly from the side of his head like a knob.

I said, “I’m okay.” He blinked but did not move. I was not yet capable of giving him a larger explanation of what had happened.

Within minutes two police officers entered from a far door directly opposite to the one where the remains of a glass display glittered across the floor. Ken, the hotel security guard, simultaneously appeared from the basement laundry room where he had heard nothing over the chant of the machines and his on-going flirtations with the housekeeping service staff.

Questions were asked. More questions. I gave my name out twice to different officers and twice again to reporters from the Herald-American and the Globe. I had little to report and said so. My eyes had never focused on the robber’s face, only the gun. Francesca repeatedly confessed that her mind had gone blank with the shock and remembered nothing other than a few broad details. Photographs were taken. An unblinking eye of dark wood had appeared in the cream white trim above and behind me, where layers of paint in different colors were chipped away like gaudy make-up revealing the oak beneath. This was examined, but the bullet not immediately found. From the west vestibule I could hear Greg, the night janitor, pushing broken glass across the floor in front of a wide broom. Throughout this, half a dozen of the women who worked in housekeeping watched in a kind of gallery formation from the north end of the lobby, the monotony of folding towels and sheets thankfully interrupted. Ken thoughtfully reported the known facts before they retreated.

Several guests arrived during the aftermath of the initial commotion, and unaware of the quaking of the earth which had just passed and still shivered inside me, none seemed terribly concerned about much more than finding their rooms and getting to sleep. Late customers were usually like that, and I appreciated them for it.

With an uncanny sense that the hubbub had passed, Ellen called from her narrow room below. Her voice was firm with instruction. “Don’t you ever say ‘no’ to a man with a gun. Do you hear me? Money has no value in the grave. The ground is full of young men who thought they would live forever.”

I said, “Yes, ma’am.”

Quiet settled. Except for the chatter of Francesca’s register as she ran a report to establish the extent of the losses, I was temporarily deaf to the usual echoes of distant halls. My ears still rang like they once did after a large firecracker had exploded in my hand when I was a kid. I opened my paperback book again and stared at the page hoping to focus enough to read. My mind kept rewinding a recording of Francesca’s words, ‘You were very brave.’ I had never before heard words like that spoken in my direction. Behind me I caught an occasional louder buzz of voices in the office, as the story of the evening event was told over again in the high pitched tones of Mr. Wiggin.

And then I was caught off guard by the approach of someone else.

“You could have gotten your head down a little sooner.”

Dom Benedict stood a few feet out from the counter, his blue suit nearly black even in the better light of the lobby. I noticed he had one hand tucked into a side pocket of the buttoned jacket–perhaps an infraction of the rules–and thought immediately that I would look foolish if I pocketed one hand in the same manner, even though he looked very European that way.

I smiled and added confirmation. “Yeah.”

He pulled a lone cigarette from his pocket. I wished I could ask for a cigarette just then, but smoking was not allowed on the job. A renewed thought of the gun took the strength from my legs and I sat back down on my stool.

He said, “The slug missed your right eyebrow by the width of a finger. You’ve got powder burns.”

I did. I had not realized what the itching on my forehead was and assumed I had acquired a mosquito bite.

Francesca said, “Let me see,” having heard Mr. Benedict’s words and suddenly leaned across the partition. It was the first time I ever saw Dom Benedict flinch. I turned toward Francesca to see the source of his discomfort and faced a display of her natural endowments that is still vivid in my mind.

I had to close my eyes.

Admittedly, this is not the most intelligent thing for a man to do when a woman of such blessings leans toward you, but it was the best thing for me to do at that moment.

She fingered the skin around my right temple and then ran her hand back through my hair as if to put it in place. I could smell licorice.

I managed a complaint. “It itches a little.”

The sensation of her fingers had interrupted my breathing.

“It feels rough,” she said. “Like you have beard stubble there.”

Dom’s Zippo chirped and with the cigarette caught at the corner of his lips he said, “Burns. They’ll go away unless they’re under the skin. Those you’ll keep. They’ll look like this.”

He undid a gold cuff link, pushed up both the cuff of his jacket and his shirt in one motion and extended the pale under-part of his left fore-arm. It was speckled with a grey-black splatter tattoo.

I said smartly, “How did you get that?” Assuming it would be a war story like those my uncles might tell.

He answered quickly, “Sawed-off shotgun. It itched for weeks,” before pulling the sleeve down again.

One eye was squinted against the smoke from his cigarette, but the blue of the other seemed to study me as he turned the clasp of this cuff link into the starched white cloth and straightened his jacket.

Francesca brushed the tips of her fingers lightly across my skin. “I don’t think this will be as bad as that,” she said.

I was about to object to her assessment, thinking it would make her use her fingers for yet another examination, but Mr. Benedict spoke first.

“No. I don’t think it will.”

I smiled instead.

Mr. Wiggin leaned over the half-door behind Francesca, and seemed to be making an assessment of the now clean floor before I saw that his eyes were a little too high and directed at Francesca’s back side.

He finally spoke, “Francesca, did you finish running your register report?”

The tininess of his voice had reached metallic purity.

Francesca turned and handed him the looping paper tape from the register and he grunted with one last look at the hem of her dress and disappeared again.

We were always supposed to avoid personal conversation at the desk, well aware that any transgression of this rule would be reported by Mr. Wiggin. But conversation with patrons was encouraged, and Dom Benedict was qualified in this regard.

Dom turned to Francesca.

“You’re ok?” His tone suggested that he already knew she was.

“I suppose,” she shrugged. “What are you gonna do?”

Mr. Benedict studied me once more, his face blank as he spoke.

“It was a near thing. The guy was a head-case. That was obvious. Probably coke.”

Francesca nodded and shrugged again.

I answered him with some surprise. “I didn’t see–were you there? You saw it?”

Dom looked me directly in the eye before he answered.

“Did you see me there?”

I said, “No.” A simple fact. I wondered from what corner he had observed the event and understood without bludgeoning my brain that he did not want it known he had seen anything at all. He was not about to be questioned by cops.

He looked at me, shrugging, almost in an imitation of Francesca, and said, “Come over during your break,” and then walked away toward the coffee shop.

I had noticed the gathering of figures in the glass walled enclosure of the closed cafe each night, with the lights turned off so that only the glare from the lobby illuminated the interior. It seemed part of some nightly convention and was not my business. I had questioned it once, early on and was told by Victor, the bellmen, that it was “A prayer service.”

I turned to Francesca and met her eyes immediately and tried to smile, but there was no smile on her broad face.

She said, “Thanks,” her voice just above a whisper and out of Mr. Wiggin’s hearing.

I asked, “For what?” wondering what I might have done.

She looked deeply grim.

“That guy was going to shoot me. I know it. If you hadn’t interrupted him, he would have shot me for dropping the tray. I could see it in his eyes.”

I could see the gun again, so close a smear of oil gave texture to my own reflection in the surface of the metal, and I shook my head with the terrible thought. I liked the look of what I was seeing in Francesca’s eyes just then and I did not want to say anything that might disturb her new awareness of my existence.

For a little more than two weeks we had been working within a few feet of each other. I had tried to make small talk, and been ignored or turned away. But I had admired the full curves of her figure whenever opportunities allowed. She wore the white blouse and black dress required, but her dress had the flair of some subtle pattern and was longer than usual, showing only her ankles. Her blouse billowed in pleats of starched cotton and the embroidery of flowers in white thread. I found out later she had done the needlework herself. It was her hobby.

She appeared to have little patience with small talk, and no interest in the everyday details of hotel life that so easily fascinated me. Her eyes were a few inches below mine and I guessed she was not quite six feet tall in her low heels. The very first night I had estimated that she might be two or three years older than myself, just for the way she carried herself and the confidence she seemed to display when she spoke to customers. Her skin was olive more than tanned, and her hair was nearly black and extremely long. Twice, deep in the quiet of the night, I had watched as she undid her hair until it reached the floor from the stool she used in her booth, brushed it, braided it, and rolled it into a snake-like curl at the back of her head.

In one conversation she admitted to being Sicilian, which I assumed by a turn in her voice was where she was born, and thus not completely Americanized in her ways. Another time she spoke Yiddish to a customer who was paying his bill. Later, I found out that she had been born in New York, but had lived in Palermo for much of her childhood. Her father had been an American soldier from Brooklyn. I did not yet know that she had been married and divorced before I had even graduated from high school.

In a sense, she was my immediate boss, having already worked at the Dartmouth herself for several months. I had quickly deferred questions of hotel policy to her. She had asked me to get her coffee a few times from the closed cafe where Mr. Benedict now stood in the shadows. Several times I made room counts from my board to coordinate with her own records. Most of her shift was spent matching room bills and charges, and few other words were passed between us. Now, I decided it was probably best not to push this better acquaintance too far for the moment and turned back to my book once more. The steady male cadences of Nevil Shute were now dampened by the odd and husky tones of Francesca’s voice repeating “What are you gonna do?” inside my head.

My shift was from 10:30 pm to 6:30 am. At 2am Mr. Wiggin came out from the office with a folder of customer slips and tallied his report at my space against Francesca’s register, a little late on that night, but as he usually did, while I took my break.

I entered the cafe with hesitation. The figure of Mr. Benedict was mostly hidden in the darkness beneath the copper hood over the broad black iron griddle. Greg the janitor, and Ken, the security guard sat together on counter stools closer to the glass window, with plates of half finished food in front of them.

Dom’s voice boomed from the shadows.

“Our young hero has arrived. Eggs? Bacon? Toast?”

I took the comment as a sort of manly sarcasm and tried to focus on his figure before finding the red coal of his cigarette suspended in the dark. Standing uncertainly at the end of the counter, I wondered at what the rules might be here. This could not be an officially sanctioned venue of the hotel management. But just as certainly, I wanted to stay.

I said, “Sure.” There was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a brown bag in my hand and I had planned to buy a can of coke at the machine on the second floor.

The closed cafe was a far more hospitable place to eat than the darkened dining room, but I felt out of place. Since grammar school I had developed a difficulty with being around larger groups of people. One person at a time was fine. Three made me uncomfortable. I think I purposely took jobs which involved dealing with the public just to counter this, but being a night clerk was a poor compromise and the problem had not gotten better in the few years since. It would be fine if I could sit invisibly to the side and watch. I suppose this makes me a voyeur of some kind.

Later I learned that Mr. Benedict did not cook every night. Usually he drank a last cup of coffee and chatted with one person or another as they ate the lunch they had carried in. He often stayed until the baritone resonance of his voice had become nearly inaudible with fatigue and then disappeared without a word. His room on the seventh floor faced out to the west over Copley square so that the morning sun would never wake him. But I came to realize that my first night in the cafe was an occasion. A small celebration. It was for me.

After a moment of adjustment I could see that Mr. Benedict handled the griddle like it was an old job. He spoke to me over his shoulder, the cigarette perched in his mouth, with the glowing end of it jittering in the dark.

He said, “Sit down.”

It was a small enough fraternity. It did not seem that I would be committing myself to any larger association.

And so I did.

The Boston News-Letter, a paper of overt Loyalist sympathies, published a one paragraph account the day afterward: “Last Tuesday Night the Grenadier and Light Companies belonging to the several Regiments in this Town were ferryed in Long Boats from the Bottom of the Common over to Phips’s Farm in Cambridge, from whence they proceeded on their way to Concord where they arrived Yesterday: the First Brigade, commanded by Lord Piercy,” (‘Percy’ was his name. The errant spelling of the period was less of a problem than the erring fact) “with two pieces of Artillery, set off from here yesterday morning at Ten o’Clock as a Re-inforcement, which with the Grenadiers and Light Companies, made about eighteen Hundred Men. Upon the People’s having Notice of this Movement on Tuesday Night, alarm Guns were fired throughout the Country, and Expresses sent off to the different Towns, so that very early Yesterday Morning large Numbers were assembled from all Parts of the Country. A general Battle ensued, which from what we can learn, was supported with great Spirit on both sides, and continued until the King’s Troops retreated to Charlestown, which was after Sunset. The Reports concerning this unhappy Affair, and the Causes that concurred to bring on an Engagement, are so various that we are not able to collect any Thing consistent or regular, and cannot therefore with certainty give our Readers any further Account of this shocking Introduction to all the Miseries of a Civil War.”

On April 25th, with clearly different sympathies, the Salem Gazette reported: “Last Wednesday the 19th of April, the troops of his Britannick Majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this province, attended with circumstances of cruelty not less brutal than what our venerable ancestors received from the vilest savages of the wilderness…”

By May 3rd, two weeks after those first ‘shots heard round the world,’ printer and publisher Isaiah Thomas, also a participant in the event, was reporting in the Massachusetts Spy, “Americans! Forever bear in mind the Battle of Lexington! Where British Troops unmolested and unprovoked wantonly, and in a most inhuman manner fired upon and killed a number of our countrymen, then robbed them of their provisions, ransacked, plundered and burnt their houses! Nor could the tears of defenseless women, some of whom were in the pains of childbirth, the cries of helpless babes, nor the prayers of old age, confined to beds and sickness, appease their thirst for blood! Or divert them from the DESIGN of MURDER and ROBBERY!”

It is in those last lines of Thomas’s appeal, alluding to defenseless women, childbirth, the cries of babes and the aged confined to beds and sickness that we have the first reporting of what had happened not in Lexington but at Menotomy.

My interest was clearly in that specific place mid-way on the larger map of events that day. I might have to understand the broader circumstance and thus investigate what had happened immediately before and after, but most important to me was what had happened in that part of West Cambridge then known as Menotomy. Because it was there that more British and Americans died during that long day than anywhere else, and it was there that a young woman and a boy were lost in the well of time.

The cause of all of this cannot be laid at the feet of William Legge (you entertain yourself as best you can when you are doing dry research), second Earl of Dartmouth and Secretary of State for the Colonies in England. Legge was the stepson of Lord North, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and one of the most powerful human beings on the face of the Earth. It was he who gave the actual order to confront the rebellious colonists then draining the British Exchequer with their stubborn refusal to obey the Parliament and the King. But Legge was a reasonable man, founder of foundling hospitals, an opponent of slavery, and namesake to a college in the wilderness. There were many possible ways to accomplish his goal.

Certainly the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia against the Kings wishes, carried responsibility for much of the continuing tensions which might otherwise have faded with the seasons. Their demands denied the powers of Parliament and offered little compromise. But then, historically speaking, it was only a matter of time before the natural tendencies of the offspring who had often been required to take care of themselves would break with the tenuous bonds of the mother country.

The British soldiers—the Regulars as they were known—were following orders, as soldiers must do, without a morally compelling reason to refuse. Certainly they were acting within the purview of commonly understood authority. They were on British soil, and they had a right to protect themselves.

No, the responsibility for what happened that day must be laid at the feet of a single man. General Thomas Gage.

It is important to remember that Thomas Gage was not a stupid man. Quite the opposite. He was, however, a product of his age–a General manufactured by custom and class. He had earned his rank at the battles of Fortenay and Culloden. But as the grandson of a peer, it is a fact that he purchased his first military positions, as was the practice at the time. He had been wounded as a field commander during the French and Indian Wars, had lead the attack on Fort Ticonderoga in 1757, and succeeded by merit to the position of Commander in Chief of all British Forces in America.

Thomas Gage loved America. He had planned to retire here. He had married an American girl from New Jersey, Margaret Kemble, whom he loved dearly. They had five daughters and six sons. There is tragedy to be found in the story of this man whose greatest folly was to begin the American Revolution. His loss was in common with every farmer and shopkeeper and sailor who awoke on the morning of April 19, 1775, believing themselves to be British, and ended that day wondering what else they had become. At the end of that day, his dreams, his career, and his marriage, were in shambles.

I understood that fact, but I saw no direct connection between Thomas Gage and Mary Andrews. Her fate, and that of her family, had most certainly been altered by the orders of Thomas Gage to Francis Smith, John Pitcairn, and Hugh Percy. And her death was not the doing of those officers, only the circumstances that had made it possible.

Ensign Jeremy Lister who was with the Tenth Regiment of Foot reports clearly enough on the friction which had arisen between Provincials and Soldiers, “being in eminent danger every Evening of being insulted by the Inhabitants the worst Language was continually in our Ears often dirt thrown at us they went so far as to wound some officers with their Watch Crooks…who had nothing to lay to his charge only he was walking in the streets alone therefore thought him easy pray.”

On a Sunday in March, when a portion of the 43rd regiment was out on practice maneuvers, they happened to halt opposite a church for a few minutes to rest and “the Congregation imagined they was going to fire in to the Church or at least take them all prisoners, jump’d out of the Windows as fast as possible and was quite confused.”

“Things begun now to draw near a Crisis and we expected daily coming to blows,” Ensign Lister says, in his narrative, written seven years later, ‘..on the 18th of April in the Evening there was a detachment ordered under Armes to go on a secret expedition, under command of Lt. Col. Smith of our Regt the detachment consisted of Light-Infantry and Grenadiers of the Army…”

The Diary of Lieutenant John Barker of the King’s Own Regiment says they were ashore at Lechmere Point at 11 o’clock that night, the very same hour Paul Revere left over Charlestown neck. Lieutenant Colonel Smith of the tenth Regiment was in command, accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Bernard of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and Major Pitcairn of the Marines.

The regulars climbed from their long boats into waist deep water on the Cambridge side, traversed several tidal inlets and began their march about midnight.

They were already cold, and starting out tired for having missed a nights sleep. The wet leather of their boots must have made a frog-like chorus of their march in the moonlight for the first mile or two. That march was steady but not quick. They passed through Menotomy for the first time with only minor incident just before 3 AM.

Samuel Abbott Smith, in his short but generally accurate history ‘West Cambridge 1775’ notes: “The Committee of Safety on the day before (the eighteenth) had held their session at the Black Horse tavern in West Cambridge, kept by Wetherby, which stood near the site of the old almshouse.” Three members of that body, future “Vice-President Gerry and Cols. Lee and Orne, spent the night here, and arose from their beds to view the unwonted sight. They watched the soldiers passing by, till, as the centre was opposite, an officer and a file of men were detached to search the house. This movement gave them the hint of danger, and they hurried down stairs. Gerry in his perturbation being on the point of opening the door in their faces, when the landlord cried out to him, ‘For God’s sake don’t open that door!’ and led them to the back part of the house, whence they escaped into the corn-field before the officer had posted his guards about the doors. There was nothing to conceal them from view in the broad field but the corn-stubble which had been left the previous fall a foot or two high, and that was little protection in the bright moonlight. Gerry stumbled and fell, and called out to his friend, ‘Stop, Orne ; stop for me till I can get up; I have hurt myself!’ This suggested the idea, and they all threw themselves flat on the ground, and, concealed by the stubble, remained there half-clothed as they had left their beds, till the troops had passed on. Col. Lee never recovered from the effects of that midnight exposure; he died in less than a month from that night. The house was searched in vain…”

Further along the road, Henry Whittemore “was alert and came to the door to see what was stirring. A soldier, leaving the ranks, asked him for a drink of water; he refused, saying, ‘What are you out, at this time of night, for?’ As soon as they passed he at once began to warn the company, and at day-break they were formed on the common ready for active service.”

Not everyone was so concerned. “Though it was so long after midnight, some young men were busily engaged playing cards in a shop…and they did not leave their game till they were startled by the near approach of the British troops.” Seeing a “glimmer of a light through the shutter of the house, a soldier was sent to inquire. The wife replied that her “old man was sick, and she was making some herb tea.” The soldier was satisfied with the answer, and rejoined his comrades.” But the “old shoemaker and his wife had just been melting their pewter plates into bullets, and when startled by the loud knock at the door, the old man had thrown himself upon the bed, and his wife had upset the skillet of molten lead into the turf ashes before she unlocked the door.”

The stepson of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Lord North, was not the only political power intimately involved in this day. William Legge, Lord Dartmouth had given orders which were unpopular with many, including Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland, the son-in-law of Lord Brute, perhaps the most powerful Whig in Parliament, and one of the wealthiest. Hugh Percy at 33 years old was an unhealthy and visibly ugly man who suffered from hereditary gout and poor eyesight—he was also a gentleman of impeccable manners, and a brave and excellent soldier beloved by his men. He had been in numerous battles before, and as Brigadier General and Colonel of the 5th regiment of Foot, it was his job to march on that April morning in relief of the beleaguered Smith.

From the beginning, Percy was against the Gage plan “for being petty and fraught with risks,” as one historian notes. It was thus inevitable that it should be Percy who would have to salvage the venture.

The British field officer was the unsung hero of that Empire. The glory so often went to the Navy. But it was Wellington who defeated Napoleon, not Nelson. And until the Old Men annihilated that special breed by tossing them against the machine guns in World War One, it was the British field officer who built and preserved the Empire. Losses on the world stage were few, given the far-flung nature of their exploits. A study of their failure in America would be a book on the inherent weakness of occupation, not of the soldier.

Opposing them was an unlikely network of rebels, relatively undisciplined, untrained, and ill-equipped. The stuff that legends are made of. But the myths of the American Revolution have never quite matched the reality. The reality was that much greater in every respect.

I was not interested in challenging those myths with my small story. I wanted a simpler focus on the death of this young woman and this boy, and the reasons their murder might have happened at that time and place. Clearly they were murdered. The ultimate crime. And the time and place offered a terrific circumstance. I was sure there must be a story to tell.

“It was then young flood, the Ship was winding, and the moon was Rising,” Paul Revere said.

I have long believed Revere to be the first American. Not the great Franklin, or Washington, or Jefferson. Revere. This forty-year old Apollo was more than a patriot. He called himself a ‘mechanic.’ He was a craftsman, a father and a husband. He was an entrepreneur and engineer. He was an engraver and artist. He was not a wordsmith, but a revolutionary. The spirit of the new-formed American character was in him.

Revere had ridden in his cause far beyond Concord, and more than once–to New York and Philadelphia. He had what was often called ‘native genius.’ He was capable of walking through the only gunpowder mill in the colonies, a closely held technology the British had banned in their effort to suppress rebellion, and comprehend what he saw without taking notes, and then remember enough to duplicate it again in nearby Canton—a resource the Revolution could not have done without, and a crucial bit of spying for the war to come.

I don’t believe I have ever been strong enough, even after boot camp, to make a four hundred mile ride over rough roads, but I can appreciate the misery of it. Always as brave as what was necessary to the moment, Revere was never heedless and seldom reckless. And until that night in April, he was an Englishman. Because he acted before the first shots were fired, and because he was present when those shots were fired, and because he fully accepted the consequence of his actions from that first moment, I believe he uniquely belongs to history.

The lights in the church tower are known to most. The wonderful Longfellow poem certainly made myth of it. And that there were others who rode in the night has always been known and is often retold, as if this somehow debunks the fact of Revere’s accomplishment. But because fine historians have detailed the adventure from start to finish, there is no need for me to recount his ride in full. What is most important to my own story is that Revere passed through Menotomy shortly before midnight. He had ridden many miles and had many more to go over dark roads made ugly by spring thaw and natural erosion. That he was a superb horseman is seldom noted, perhaps because it was assumed or else he would not have been given the task. But that he bravely paused at each house to call the warning is a better deed still. He was a hunted man. There were British officers on the road, put in place to stop him. His life was very immediately in danger, and stopping again and again did not make his chances of reaching Hancock and Adams in Lexington any easier. But he did this. And it was important to me that any house on his way would have been awake. The Andrews house was not directly on Revere’s route, but close enough to have been alerted shortly after his passing, when “alarm Guns were fired throughout the Country.” I believe Isaak Andrews and his family would have been awake, at least from that moment on. And certainly by the time the 700 British soldiers under Smith marched in the moonlight soon afterward.

When I was teaching high school history I used to spend a week on just this one day. The school would not give me a bus to take my classes out, so I walked them through it in the room and the hall. In fact, it was in the hall that I got into trouble with a math teacher, that last year before I quit. He objected to the popping of balloons. I explained the fact that we were not allowed to have guns—even fake guns. He wouldn’t listen. Math is a quiet and insidious subject.

In any case, even the worst schools teach a little about the confrontation, though they get the facts screwed. But what they tell is only what happened at Lexington and Concord. The battles of Menotomy is pretty much ignored outside of the town of Arlington itself.

Ensign Jeremy Lister wrote of the confrontation that morning, “it was at Lexington when we saw one of their companys drawn up in regular order Major Pitcairn of the Marines second in Command call’d to them to disperce, but their not seeming willing he desired us to mind our space which we did when they gave us a fire then run of to get behind a wall. We had one man wounded in our Compy in the Leg his name was Johnson also Major Pitcairns Horse who was shot in the Flank we return’d their Salute, and before we proceeded on our March from Lexington I believe we kill’d and Wounded either 7 or 8 men. We Marchd forward without further interruption till we arriv’d at Concord, tho large bodies of Men was collected together and with Armes yet as we approached they retired.”

Lieutenant John Barker says in his diary, “We met with no interruption till within a mile or two of the Town, where the Country People had occupied a hill which commanded the road; the Light Infantry were order’d away to the right and ascended the height in one line, upon which the Yankees quitted it without firing, [this was Rev. Emerson who was persuaded to change his mind about “if we die let us die here” by Eleazer Brooks of Lincoln] which they did likewise for one or two more successively. They then crossed the River beyond the Town.”

Provincial Capt. Amos Barrett led his company before the British playing their drums and fifes. It is important to remember that at this point there were only about 100 armed Provincials from Concord and Lincoln, in all.

Smith broke his troops defensively to cover his position and sent detachments forward to accomplish the objectives of his orders. Lister describes the defense at the Concord River: “I proposed destroying the Bridge, but before we got one plank of they got so near as to begin their Fire which was a very heavy one, tho. Our Compys was drawn up in order to fire Street firing, yet the weight of their fire was such that we was oblidg’d to give way then run with the greatest precipitance at this place there was 4 Men of the 4th Compy Killd who was afterwards scalp’d their Eye goug’s their Noses and Ears cut of, such barbarity exercis’d upon the Corps could scarcely be paralelld by the most uncivilized Savages.”

It is noteworthy that Lister remembers this detail of barbarity, which he did not witness because he had already withdrawn with ‘precipitance’, so much more clearly than the crucial events he actually participated in. The fog of war has always been the saving grace of the soldier with adrenaline pumping. The imagined cruelty of the enemy has always been the just cause of the warrior.

Lister notes specifically, “there was a good number Wounded amongst which was a Lt Hull 43rd through the Right Brest, of which with other Wounds recd that day he died three or four days after. L. Gould 4th and Lt Kelly 10th also Lt Sunderland a Voluntier Wounded…” These were comrades he knew personally. Lt. Gould and Lt. Barker were the only officers who were at the skirmish at Concord Bridge. Lister continued, “after we had got to Concord again my situation with the remains of the Compy was a most fatigueing one, being detached to watch the Motions of the Rebels, we was kept continually running from hill to hill as they changed their position…”

Re-gathering his forces before noon, Smith started his retreat to Boston. Lister says, “…the Rebels begun a brisk fire but at so great a distance it was without effect, but as they kept marching nearer when the Granadiers found them within shot they returned their fire just about that time I recd a shot through by Right Elbow joint which effectually disabled that Arme, it then became a general firing upon us from all quarters, from behind hedges and Walls we return’d the fir every opportunity.”

Low on ammunition and quickly being outnumbered by the gathering forces of rebels as word of the confrontation spread, Smith and his Regulars were happy to meet with re-enforcements under the command of Hugh Percy as they again reached Lexington just before 3 pm. It is there they stopped for a brief rest.

I believe it is important that most of the looting began in Lexington, during the retreat, and after Smith was wounded. It was there that Percy took command of the situation. Historian Frank Coburn, quoting from Historical Society Proceeding and the Journals of the Provincial Congress, cited the loses of individual property owners. Coburn believed “the wonton and needless destruction of property must have been by the express command,” as it occurred, “within a few rods of where Percy sat on his white horse.” I see no other interpretation. And if the mind-set of Percy’s soldiers had been turned to pillage and plunder, it might have encouraged other thoughts as well. “While Smith’s soldier’s were resting, some of those under Percy…wandered about that part of the village bent on mischief and pillage, not the kind usually indulged in by the average rowdy element in the army, but on a much larger and grander scale. Houses were looted and burned…together with such of their contents as could not be carried away…To him belongs the blame…for the killing of such helpless old men as Raymond, the summary removal of Hannah Adams and her infant from child-bed, for the killing of feeble minded William Marcy; for the killing of fourteen-year Edward Barbor. His entire march back to Charlestown was thickly dotted with just such incidents, unrelieved by any conspicuous merciful action, or by any deed of bravery. It was a masterful retreat, indeed, and it was a brutal one…”

It was a wonder to me that this fine officer and gentleman had allowed his soldiers to run rampant in that way. He must have had a purpose. But nothing of that was clear in any correspondence or testimony available on-line or in various databases.

Still, the Regulars were, “13 miles to Bunkers Hill, under continual fire from all Quarters as before…” Having been wounded, Lister was given a horse but it was then they were approaching Menotomy: “…When I had Road about two miles I found the Balls whistled so smartly about my Ears I thought it more prudent to dismount and as the Balls came thicker from one side or the other so I went from one side of the Horse to the other for some time when a Horse was shot dead close by me…”

Menotomy is forgotten because it was not where first blood was drawn for the great cause. This is part of the American obsession with firsts. First editions. First nights. First loves. But Menotomy must be remembered as part of that first day-long battle, when the gorge of blood replaced the choke of words in American throats.

That the brutality of the day was inconsistent was made clear by many small incidents. Samuel Smith notes: “A little girl, named Nabby Blackington, as they marched by, was watching her mother’s cow while she fed by the road-side; the cow took her way directly through the passing column, and the child, faithful to her trust, followed through the ranks bristling with bayonets. ‘We will not hurt the child,’ they said.”

Perhaps knowing that Percy had chosen to carry minimal supplies with him in order to move more quickly in relief of the earlier expedition, General Gage smartly made the decision to send a resupply of ammunition by wagon with military escort. But the rebels had torn up the planks on the bridges to impede just this sort of possibility and the wagon was delayed long enough to allow a small group of the ‘old guard’ to rally in ambush. These were men with military experience but not well enough to be moving quickly in pursuit of the main force of the British. Close by the First Parish Meetinghouse at the crossroads the British detachment was caught by surprise, the lead horse of the wagon shot, the several regulars killed or wounded. In desperation, others fled west along the shores of Spy Pond. There “they met an old woman named Mother Batherick, digging dandelions, to whom they surrendered themselves, asking her protection. She led them to the house of Capt. Ephraim Frost, where there was a party of our men, saying to her prisoners, as she gave them up. ‘If you ever live to get back, you tell King George that an old woman took’ six of his grenadiers prisoners.”

It is an interesting note that these may be counted the first British prisoners taken in the Revolutionary War.

Later, it was close by this place that the retreating Regulars, busily pillaging every house near to the main road, broke into the home of deacon Joseph Adams. This was an odd story. Adam’s wife was still there with five children hiding beneath her bed and a newborn infant, in her arms.

“A soldier opened the curtains and pointed his bayonet at her breast; she cried out for mercy, and another soldier who stood near, said, ‘We will not hurt the woman if she will go out of the house, but we will surely burn it.’ She threw a blanket over her, and with her infant in her arms, crawled to the corn-crib close by.” From beneath the bed the children “watched the feet of the soldiers moving about the room. Joel Adams, a boy of nine years old, curiosity getting the better of his fears, lifted up a corner of the valance, to get a better view… A soldier saw him, and said, ‘Why don’t you come out here?’ The boy answered, ‘You’ll kill me if I do.’ ‘No we won’t,’ the soldier replied, and the boy came out of his hiding-place, and followed them round.” His father, as church deacon, was responsible for keeping the silver communion service and as the soldier took this along with the family silver the boy yelled at them with indignation, ‘Don’t you touch them ‘ere things. Daddy ‘l lick you if you do.”

Poor lad. His father had failed to prepare for the return of the Regulars, and when they did, the deacon had fled, leaving them all behind, and was even then hiding in the barn while his helpless family faced the kindness of soldiers. When the enemy was gone, it was the children who were left to extinguish the fire using a pot of home-brewed beer and rain water from a barrel.

The Jason Russell house is on a small rise above the Concord road, with the mill brook further below. It still stands amidst the congestion of modern Arlington. And it was there that old Russell, feeling too infirm to flee to safety, had barricaded his gate and prepared to fight, saying ‘An Englishman’s house is his castle.’

Some Danvers and Woburn men, finding themselves flanked by the Regulars, had foolishly chosen the house as a place to make a stand as well. Shot and bayoneted, Mr. Russell died there in his doorway shortly before five o’clock that afternoon. Others died in rooms throughout the house where Mrs. Russell later found the blood ‘ankle deep.’ But several of the Woburn men had hidden in the basement and escaped.

One of the best stories took place on the Concord road close to this. There, old Samuel Whittemore lay in wait behind a stone wall for the return of the soldiers, the well-oiled pistols and muskets he had used in the wars with the French on the ground beside him. His spot was too close and he had been warned to take better cover, but refused. One thinks he might have chosen this better way to die after a long life. “He fired some half dozen shots at the enemy. He had just loaded his gun when he heard the wall rattle and saw five soldiers of the flank guard approaching shoulder to shoulder. Besides being eighty years old he was lame, and knew that it was no use to attempt to escape. With his musket he shot one of the soldiers, and, instantly drawing his pistol, fired at another. He aimed the second pistol and discharged it just as they fired at him; one of the soldiers was seen to clap his hand to his breast. As he fired the third time a ball struck him in the head, and he fell senseless. The soldiers beat him with their muskets, bayoneted him, and left him for dead. After the British had passed by, our people, finding that there was some life left in him, carried him to Cooper’s tavern, where the surgeon, Dr. Tufts of Medford, said it was useless to dress his wounds, for he could not live. He dressed the wounds however, and the old hero lived another eighteen years after this, dying in 1793 at the age of 98.”

The rebels continued to gather from all quarters as fighting had intensified through Menotomy. British ammunition was almost depleted. With the daylight nearly gone and faced with the more densely populated parts of Cambridge still ahead, Lord Percy was forced to make another crucial decision. Abruptly, he changed direction and moved his columns for the peninsula of Charlestown and the cover of the guns on British ships.

The great historian David Hackett Fischer, summed up that first day with a poignant clarity in his book Paul Revere’s Ride. With the provincial militias following close at the heels of the regulars, “on Boston’s Beacon Hill, crowds of spectators could see the muzzle-flashes twinkling like fireflies in the gathering darkness.”

This story got started last winter. I was out shoveling snow. There was at least ten inches on top of the four that had dropped the day before. The morning was as gray as stone and the snow was smelling sweet, like it does when it’s been snowing long enough to clean the air and the daylight hasn’t poked a finger into it yet. I figure it was about 6 am. No traffic. No sound but a street plow maybe two blocks over and the scrape of my own shovel. There was a light in Doddy Parker’s bedroom window and the yellow of it was brilliant inside the colorless hollow before dawn.

Up the street where the snowplows had made things passable I see a big fellow coming who walks like someone I know. He’s got his parka closed over his face and a spume of breath trailing him.

He says, “Hey John. Been looking for ya.”

It’s Ricky Haven’s voice. I say, “I haven’t moved for a week. What’s the problem?”

He says, “I got a story. Kind you’ll like.”

I’ve only done about twenty feet of Doddy’s driveway, but I could use the breather and I prop myself against the handle of my shovel.

“What’s up?”

Ricky shrugs, “I’m on my way to work. Gotta open for the boss. He’ll never get in from Concord with the snow and all. Can’t stop for long, but I’ve been meaning to tell you about this. You’ll like it.”

“So what’s it about?”

He pulls the opening in his parka apart a bit more so I can see he hasn’t shaved his fat cheeks.

He looks back and forth. “Why ya over here? I thought you lived in that place on Perkins.”

You have to be patient with Ricky. He works his own way. I tell him, “Doddy had another heart attack in November. He can’t do his own drive anymore. So tell me the story before I fall asleep here.”

Ricky pulls at the opening in his parka again. “You’ll like this. It’s great. It’s like one of those Halloween episodes they do every year on television cop shows. You know? Where the cop picks up the plastic skull from the leaves in the gutter and says, ‘Hey. This isn’t plastic! This is the real thing.’ And then they trace it back to a kid who’s been selling bones to all his friends and they get the kid to tell them where he got them and it turns out to be right in the kid’s basement. Only the kid lives next door to me and its Paulie Perry and I’m his godfather so I get to hear the whole deal and its great. He’s a good kid. He just did what anybody would do. It fell in his lap, you might say.”

“What did?”

Ricky takes a full breath and I get my hopes up that he might get it all out in one go. “Paulie can see right off that the bones are old, so he’s not stupid. He figures there wasn’t any murder going on or anything. These are real old bones. But Halloween is like two weeks away and he needs a little pocket money. There were like a hundred bones down there. More. All wrapped up in some kind of cloth behind the foundation. Paulie’s dad, Nick—you know Nick. He was the goalie who—“

“I know Nick. So what about Paulie.”

“So Nick had to pull some of the old granite blocks out of the foundation of his house to reset’em before winter. They get water in the basement. I get it too but not so bad. Nick’s been complaining about water in the basement since—“

“Ricky. You have to open up for your boss. Get to the punch line.”

“Yeah. Well. Paulie goes down there to see what’s going on when his dad ain’t around. You know. And he sees something odd in the dirt behind where the granite blocks were and digs at it with his finger. The way kids do. And it’s the edge of some kind of cloth. So he pulls at it and the dirt collapses and the bones fall out right into his lap. Scared the shit out of him. Really. Messed in his pants. He wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. A pile of bones right in his lap! If it was me I would’a had a heart attack. Right?”

“Right.”

“Cool as hell. Happened just before last Halloween. I’ve been meaning to tell you about it. It was in the papers so I figured you heard about it anyway but I know how you like all that historical stuff and I got some more dope on it after. Nick has been calling the people at Harvard every week.”

“Why Harvard?”

Ricky puts his hands up in the air like it was obvious. “Looking for a little cash back. You know. The bones have to be worth something. Right? They were on his property. Right? The cops gave the bones to some woman at Harvard to look at. A professor. Talks like she has a tooth that’s been taken out and the cotton is still in her jaw. Woman named Sawyer. It turns out the bones were from a woman and a guy. The professor came over and they dug out more of the dirt next to the foundation and they figure that there was an old well there. Nick’s house was built in the 1890’s. Just like mine. They dug a trench for the granite foundation back in 1890 and didn’t notice anything. But there was an old well there before. And that’s why he gets so much water. And now his problem is solved. They put in some pipes—“

“Ricky!”

“Yeah. So. She finally tells Nick a couple of weeks ago that the bones were from the Revolution. Some time like that. The professor says it looks like somebody dumped the bodies down the well and then a lot of gravel and other crap on top of that. And guess what? It was a murder after all. Both the man and the women were stabbed to death. By a bayonet. Like on the end of a gun. Just like my dad used in the war. A friggin bayonet. Both of them. I don’t know how they can tell something like that. Do you?”

“No.”

“So it was a murder after all. Only they won’t catch the murderer now. Right?”

“Right.”

“Cool, heh?”

“Yeah. Thanks for telling me.”

“Yeah. I thought you’d like that.”

“Thanks.”

“Later.”

“Later.”

So I know Becky Sawyer. Rebecca isn’t as pretty now as she was when we were in school, but she has style and she’s handsome enough. The stiff jaw came later. I think her first husband taught her that. I made a play back when, but I wasn’t her type then I guess. I’ve bumped into her a couple of times since. She’s divorced and remarried. She’s the first person to tell me I was stupid for wanting to teach high school history. She was right. I would have been better off at a college where you can keep your distance from the students and say anything you damn well please as long as you aren’t a Republican and you remember to use footnotes.

Anyway, that was then. This was now.

The next day I went down to Harvard. Rebecca is in a building right next to the museum there. In fact, that’s how we happened to bump into each other one other time. I like the Blaschka glass flowers at the museum there, as well as the other old displays. Stuffed animals. Whale bones. Polynesian boats. They remind me of being a kid. All the wonder. All the questions. Museums aren’t the same anymore. Everything is bright and shiny now. Just a lot of answers. But when I was growing up, museums were dark and gloomy. Full of questions.

I think that may be the reason I look at history the way I do.

Rebecca was in her office with a student so I sat down on a window ledge in the hall and read the book I had in my coat pocket until the kid comes out and I go in. Becky went wide-eyed. Let me tell you from the start that I know her second marriage isn’t going very well. She did a lot a smiling where I wasn’t being very funny.

The two best words in the French language are décolletage and lingerie. I have never seen Becky’s lingerie, but I had always been taken by her décolletage. She still made good use of it even in a blue wool suit.

She’s cut her hair short, of course. That’s the ‘independent woman’ thing to do. And she’s wearing glasses pretty much all the time now, but she took them off as I came in the door. Reflex I guess. She had them on again inside a minute. She asked me what I was up to. I hit the big items first and told her about my divorce. This made her shift in her seat. I swear. Then I told her I had quit teaching and was working in an office shuffling papers. This all happened before I started working security with Connie, remember. But still, that dampered the fires in her eyes a bit.

After the preliminaries I finally tell her about talking to Rickie and ask her about the bones. She sat up straight again for that and turns around in her chair. She’s got one of them right there on a shelf behind her in a box. The skull of the woman.

She pulled the skull out and held the jaw up to the top part and moves it like it’s talking. The teeth are missing at one side and she even does a Boris Karloff lisp that seems to fit. “You came over to ask about me, a woman who’s been dead for two hundred years, and here’s this beautiful creature, sitting right here, very much alive, who hasn’t heard a peep out of you in what? Eight years?”

This is Becky. She does a wicked Peter Lorre as well. I corrected her calculation. “Nine.”

She waited for more from me. I just smiled. I wasn’t interested in going back. Not then. I hadn’t met Des yet, and I was lonely enough for it, but I wasn’t ready to be going back for anything I’d left behind. I figured that was real history.

After a bit of uncomfortable silence she finally says, “So what can I do for you?”

“I was curious. That’s all. You know, I raised my kids in a house near Mass Ave in Arlington just over from where the British soldiers killed Jason Russell on his own doorstep. But I was full of all that kind of stuff from the first day I could read. When Rickie told me you were investigating the whole thing with the bodies in the well, I just got curious.”

She smiled. She nodded. She smiled again. I tried to guess what the thoughts were.

She says, “That’s you, John. Always curious. Well, I’m sorry to say, I’m not really investigating anything anymore. There’s nothing much left to investigate. It’s all just a lot of history now. Mary here—that’s her name by the way–Mary Andrews.” Becky fit the skull together again in her hand and held it from the bottom, turning it to face me. It had a questioning look to the eyes. “Mary lived in a house about forty feet from the well. There’s another house there now, right on the exact spot. But we’re pretty sure it’s her. She disappeared. On that very day: April 19th, 1775. She simply disappeared. The family wrote letters to everyone for miles who might know her, looking for her. They’d been separated in the rush to get away as the British outrider’s came through. But she never turned up. And she had a distinctive feature. She‘d lost a finger in a kitchen accident and that was mentioned in several of the letters as an identifying mark. The index finger on her right hand. And this poor woman had the same finger missing. So we think it was Mary. Killed, and dumped down the well.” Becky set the skull down carefully atop the papers on the desk in front of her. “And maybe more. Maybe worse. I wrote a paper about it for an academic magazine but they haven’t taken it. We found scraps of clothing. Buttons. A few bits of leather. The man was fully clothed when he was killed, but she was naked. Both were killed the same way. Direct thrust from the front. Ribs broken and clearly marked. So I tried to imagine what happened. I speculated that she’d been raped. There was a barn close by. We know that. She might even have been hiding there, foolish girl. As you know then, the British outriders who came through Menotomy that day were charged with clearing out snipers and making the way safe for the retreating soldiers who were coming back from Concord and Lexington. It was bloody all around. Officially there were only about 25 colonials killed in the area. Maybe 50 in total. But the records were poorly tallied. There was more than one missing person. We found that much right off.”

This was the stuff I had hoped for. This was the kind of thing that had been sitting in the back of my brain for years.

I told her, “I read the Fischer book, Paul Revere’s Ride. I’d like to read more about it.”

“A good book. But there isn’t enough written about that retreat. They say about 40 British troops died on the way, but I’m certain there were more. And the man killed with Mary was not a soldier. He was not even a man, I think. Probably just a big healthy farm boy. We don’t know his name. So many boys ran off to fight and some were never heard from again. And then there were so many indentures that were broken. The war was a good excuse for those who could get away from a bad indenture. He was clearly a farmer by his boots and his straps. He might even have come to the sound of her screaming and been killed by her assailant. Or assailants. There are accounts of gang rape at the time. Mostly in Boston, but they happened. Any soldiers caught at such things were often hung to keep discipline, so they would have hidden the body. Both bodies. And there were other things in the well. Even parts of a slaughtered pig and glass from a window. My guess is they tried to hide the evidence. And then the well was abandoned…Here…” She pulled the side drawer of her desk and fingered the files until she came up with a thin sheaf of paper. “Take this. It’s a copy of what I wrote.”

She was not leaving anything to chance. She wanted me to know she was interested. It made me hesitate just a bit before I took the copy.

I asked about the letters. She had found two of them at the New England Historical Society and they referred to even more being written. The family was distraught over what might have happened to the girl. Then, Becky ripped a page off a pad on her desk and wrote down some notes so that I could find the letters again if I went into the Historical Society looking for them. She did that first, and then she asked, “So why do you want to know about all this John? You have a purpose. I know you John. You always have a purpose.”

I shrugged a little to try to lighten the answer up a bit. But I was committed now to giving her a serious answer.

“I’m writing again.”

She waited for me to say more. I was just not ready with the answers.

Finally she said, “Good. Good. I told you that you ought to keep at that…Remember. What happened to that piece you were doing about the glass flowers and Leopold Blaschka and his son?”

I told her. There was no good in hiding anything. “I gave up. I got lost in it. I think I didn’t understand the father. I think he was just too European for me. That, and my high school German failed me.”

She ran her tongue over her bottom lip and took one of those long deep breaths meant to let you know she was thinking all kinds of serious thoughts. But then, she probably was.

“But at least you’re writing again.

“Yeah. You told me I should. And you told me a couple of other things. Remember?”

“No. I don’t. What did I tell you?”

“You told me not to write fiction. Remember that? ‘No novels.’ That was your advice. If I was going to have any standing as a historian, I should stay away from the fiction. But that’s all I’m up to now Becky. I’m writing stories again.”

She nodded, but the smile faded a bit more.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Does it? You aren’t looking for a career at a university anymore, are you John.”

It was my turn to smile—anything to soften the truth. “Never was. That was all you. Not me. You wanted me to do that too, but it was never the thing for me.”

She sat back and looked every bit the professor I had first seen from the door earlier.

“History is so much more interesting than fiction John. You have to admit. Look at this woman. Look what we’ve found. That’s history!”

I gave the pause an extra half-second. I didn’t want to be arguing with her now.

“What you have here is just the bones Rebecca. All you found were the bones. The story you told me is fiction…Good, isn’t it? It’s the story that makes those old bones talk.”

She smiled with amusement then, as if there were something humorous to it all.

“Well then. Here we are again. Back at the old argument. Back in what? 1978 or thereabouts?” She looked at me as if I was supposed to say something but I knew it was better to keep my mouth shut. Then she says, “But I guess that’s history too, isn’t it?”

I could have accepted that without comment. But I didn’t.

“Yeah. I guess it is.” I held up the sheet of paper she had given me with the reference to the archive at the Historical Society. “But this is a story. This might be something to work with. And I like what you’ve imagined, Becky–what might have happened to Mary Andrews. Would you let me use that? I’ll even put in a footnote for you if you’ll let me use it.”

She took a breath. It wasn’t a hesitation. More as if she were relieved over something.

“Sure. It’s yours to use. But forget the footnote. My life has too many footnotes as it is.”

The story ended up being a bit longer than I had anticipated. A few thousand words grew to 40,000. The insurance office where I was shuffling papers was in the Pru and I was taking late lunches and running over to the Historical Society for an hour and a half or so every day. My boss didn’t like it but I was working late as well and they needed that too so I got away with it.

I was writing in the mornings, five to eight. Maybe a thousand words a day. I didn’t have a social life anyway so I just went to bed a little earlier. It only took a couple of months. I polished up the first draft by the end of April and then looked around for someone to read it.

My oldest daughter got first crack. Susie is a hardnosed critic. She doesn’t let me get by with much. But I was wondering if she’d recognize the character I had fashioned around poor Mary Andrews. People never see themselves the way others do. I was betting that she wouldn’t notice a thing.

She called me the next day after she got it.

“You didn’t have to kill me off, did you? Couldn’t you let me enjoy a little love affair without paying the ultimate price?”

So that was that. The important thing was that she liked it. Her sister Sarah read it next and wanted to know right off if I had chosen the name ‘Mary’ for the victim as a psychological replacement for their mother. I had to convince her that I had used the real name to give the story a little verisimilitude. Sarah is a detail person. She always suspects me of the worst when I start using long words to explain myself. She’s usually right.

At least I had a story. It wasn’t the first one I had written since the divorce, even though I was pretty sure it was the best. But I wanted to be sure I had the details right to a knowledgeable eye. I worked out a few kinks that Sarah had noticed and corrected some Eighteenth Century grammar. Then I sent the manuscript to Rebecca Sawyer. That was around May Day.

Of course, I understood that it was the end of the semester and that she might be busy. I waited. Around June 1st I called her office. Becky was gone. She was on an archeological dig in the Mohawk River valley near Utica. She would be gone for a least a month.

On July 3rd she called me.

No ‘hello, how arya, howse the kids.’ Her first words were, “Did you do more research on this before you went into your reverie of speculation?”

“A little bit.”

“How sure are you that the family were loyalists?”

“Positive. It’s even in those letters you found, but it’s only subtext.”

She let a moment of silence pass as an expression of doubt.

“It reads well. I like it.”

“Good.”

“Can we talk about it over dinner?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is the 4th.”

“So it is. Do you have to play with firecrackers? Your kids are grown up, aren’t they?

I tell her, “Yeah. Tomorrow’s fine.”

She says, “Where would you like to go?”

I say, “How about Memorial Drive.” I say that because that’s where I was planning to go anyway.

She says, “Where’s that?” I suppose she thinks it’s the name of some kind of restaurant.

“I mean the street. On the Charles River.”

“You want to eat on the street?”

“Sure. There’ll be some great food along there. All the lunch wagons will be out. And we can watch the fireworks.”

She thought about that a moment.

“Can we talk? Will it be noisy?”

“It’ll be very noisy. But we can talk anyway. Come on. I haven’t gone to see the fireworks since before Sarah went away to college. And Matty won’t go with me anymore. You’ll like it. It’s great.”

I put the entire conversation down in my journal five minutes after I hung up the phone because I thought it was a little odd. This was a woman I had spoken to only once in the past nine years and that was six months before, and now she’s talking to me on the phone like we see each other every day. It worried me.

Rebecca lives in a time warp. She always has. It’s disconcerting. During the school year I suppose she has her benchmarks to keep track of things but other times she seems to forget about the cycles of the sun.

We only went out for a few months when we were in college. There were not many places to go in Amherst during the winter. Not in 1978. I remember we hung out at the bookstore a lot. Becky studied compulsively. I was trying to write my first version of the great American novel while getting credits for my degree in History. It didn’t make for a creative relationship and by the end of the semester she was gone as a volunteer on a dig in Virginia. We never made it as far as the dormitory.

When I bumped into Becky years later at the Natural History Museum at Harvard and she told me her life story up to that moment in under five minutes, I had some sympathy for her husband. We went over to Bartley’s for burgers that day. But I don’t remember the conversation. We were both unhappy with our marriages but I don’t think the subject came up. It was a hot day and I do remember her décolletage.

This July 4th was hot as well. The humidity would have made clothing optional if there were not so many cops along the way.

The sun hadn’t completely set when we started walking down the river from the Harvard Bridge. I figured that would give Becky time to rip my little story to historical shreds. Instead she seemed almost calm.

She said, “I feel like I’ve been doing this for too long…Another summer. More field work. August up at my parent’s old place on Isle Au Haut. Then another school year. Time passes very quickly when you aren’t paying attention.”

Those were the facts. Even I had noticed.

“Sometimes I think my kids grew up all in one summer.”

She laughed at that.

“It’s true. That’s it. When I look back on my childhood it feels like one long summer with barely any interruptions.”

“Sounds like a good childhood.”

“It was.”

Then she reached out and took my hand. Caught me by surprise.

Almost immediately she said, “So why haven’t you gotten married again.”

I looked out over the small boats on the Charles River all making their way down to get a good spot to see the show and wondered how I was going to move the conversation over to poor Mary Andrews before I lost the chance.

Rebecca said, “You don’t have to talk about it. I just wondered. I think I wanted to know if it was the opposite reasoning to what made me marry Leonard. My second husband.”

I mustered a voice, “What was that?”

She shrugged. “Loneliness. That’s all. A kind of compulsive loneliness. Like eating all the chocolates in the box. I can’t stand the loneliness. And now I feel it even with him in the room.”

Well that was that. I couldn’t argue. Mary Ellen and I spent the last years of our marriage that way. Of course, it meant the kids got a lot more attention, but it was a common enough thought at the time. Now, I had most of that pretty well buried. You keep busy. You write a story and make up something better. Read a book. Call one of the kids. Fix something. And here was Becky wanting to do a little archeology.

I told her my first thought on the matter. “I feel sick when I feel lonely. I don’t like it. But I’ve been in that room myself—with someone only a few feet away. That was worse. So I just keep busy.”

She squeezed my hand.

“What’s the answer for it? After seventy-five thousand years you’d think we’d have an answer for that.”

Too quickly I said, “We do.”

“What’s that?”

Then I had to say it. “Love.”

That stopped her in her tracks. Becky didn’t look up at me. She looked out at the water. She said, “Sex is so ephemeral,” and seemed ready to say something more but didn’t.

I had to correct the course of the conversation a little, “I didn’t say sex. I said love.”

She repeated, “Love,” but with a dubious tone.

So I told her a thought I had once.

“A few years ago, I read the autobiography of a nun, St. Teresa of Avila. She–.”

Becky suddenly let go of my hand and turned at me. In the twilight her frown seemed fierce.

“I didn’t know you were religious.”

Another correction. “I wish I was. But I’m not. Not that way. In fact I was reading about her to understand the nature of religious devotion. I knew somebody once–.” I stopped at that. There was no good it talking about that mistake.” But I mention her because St. Teresa said quite a bit about love. When she spoke about love it had nothing to do with sex. And in that strange way when you’re reading something totally at odds with your own experience it makes you take a different angle, it helped me understand something I only understood vaguely. Only as a father. And sometimes as a writer…I think it was what Bernini was trying to capture about Teresa in stone.”

That seemed to puzzle her. “You mean in Rome? I saw that once. I can’t quite remember it.”

I tried to explain it better. “It’s rather too grand. Framed by marble pillars and topped with that ornate cap of carved stone. But I had a little postcard I picked up in the shop there. Just the statue itself with the angel. The very idea of ecstasy. It made me examine my life looking for some moments of that. And I found them. But it had nothing to do with sex.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Becky took my hand again. The muscles in her own hand felt harder now. There was a little sweat there.

“Love…Is that what ecstasy is?”

“I think so. It’s not by way of explanation or definition but more by comparison.” I hesitated then before I made my move. I didn’t hesitate long enough. I said, “I was trying to capture a little of that with Mary Andrews.”

She dropped my hand with a bit more emphasis.

“Ha! You just want to talk about your damned manuscript. That’s all this is…Ecstasy my foot! You’re trying to avoid the subject of the moment. That’s all you’re doing.”

“I was just trying to connect the two.”

“Sure you were. You were just scared to death I was going to go all stupid with you. That was it. Wasn’t it?”

“No. Maybe a little. I’m not sure that would be so bad.” Like a coward I fled my position on the battlefield and ran back toward the rear lines. I took her hand back. “Didn’t you ever feel that when you were a kid on Isle Au Haut? Islands do that. They can bring everything to a focus. No place to run. You’re all at once lonely and in heaven.”

The muscles in her hand relaxed a little.

“Yes. That’s right.”

I had pulled the island out of the hat. I’d only spent a few days of my life on an island and this was not a memory as much as a daydream.

For the next couple of hours I got her to talk about her childhood. She seemed to enjoy that. By the time we got on the subway at Kendall Square she seemed pretty much at ease. The problem was, she was giving me the eye. Her husband was away at his own family home in New Orleans. It seemed he spent all his time there now. And she had her own ideas for this evening. And there I was taking her home.

I didn’t get her to talk about the manuscript until we were having coffee the next morning. She launched into it all on her own.

“Let’s talk about your little reverie then. I liked it. It makes sense. I think you’re right about the British Regulars. They wouldn’t have tarried to rape a girl with a running battle going on. I don’t know why I let that idea even come into my thinking. Maybe just a modern prejudice about war. I like your idea of Mary coming back to an empty house. With her parents temporarily fled for their loyalist sympathies and her alone with no place else to go. She was the oldest. She must have had a boyfriend. It makes sense. The neighbor’s son is an obvious choice and he might well have come by to check on her. And I’m sorry I missed the fact that her father Izak Andrews had been married before and this was his second wife. Mary was the oldest child by quite a bit, wasn’t she. The other five children were not even in their teens. She must have been the child of the first wife. That would make her role doubly difficult in a small house. They would want her married. And then, if she were fond of a boy who did not share their loyalist sympathies, that would make matters even more difficult. I agree with all that. But I’m not sure of the indentured servant. Your Paul. Remember, this is not a casteless society. Not even like it was just a generation later. If the fellow who was killed and thrown in the well with Mary was indentured, then he had some value to his master. True? And he had no hope of supporting a family on his own. He would have had guarded feelings for the girl at best.”

I defended myself the easiest way I could. “But it could have happened. People fall in love for no good reason.”

A smile flitted across Becky’s face. “They do that.”

I fled that position again. “After the battle there would be more than a few British muskets left behind. And of course the rebels had few bayonets on their own weapons yet. If the father were to return under the cover of darkness and find his daughter in bed with his revolutionary neighbor’s son, his rage and pride might have been enough to make him kill her.” Becky frowned. I did not let her protest. “The neighbor’s son would run away. Jump from the window if he could. He wouldn’t believe that Mary was in danger of her own life…and that would leave the servant to defend her. Poor fellow. Too late. And having killed his daughter the father might worry he needed a scapegoat and certainly wanted to eliminate any witness to his act.

She raised both eyebrows critically. “Very messy.”

I shook that off. “Murders are seldom planned. The father acted in rage using the weapon he had found in the bushes along the way. Among his various jobs he had been a metal smith. I established that at the Historical Society. That and the fact that they moved away soon afterward. But he was running a tavern then. He certainly was strong enough. The second wife would come to his defense because he was the only source of security for her and her children. It was she who wrote those letters to their friends looking for their lost daughter. Not the father.” Becky’s eyes widened with recognition. I pursued that, “And you have to admit, they were cold. Even by eighteenth century standards they were coldly written. Like they were searching for a lost dog. But they needed some explanation for her disappearance, didn’t they? And with the servant missing as well, people would jump to their own conclusions, after the well was covered over.”

Becky smiled. I think I’d won her over.

“That was a good catch. The letters were very cold. I should have noticed that.”

“Anyway, it makes a good story.”

My dad was a ‘Sligo man.’ I was not sure what this meant other than the example he set himself, but we always believed it. He never put a foot in Sligo until he was seventy-four and then he was dead the next year. But his own dad was born in Sligo and we supposed it was an idea of what a man should be, and what we should be—a standard that my dad had grown up to believe in and he tried to pass on to us.

It just didn’t take with me.

My brother Teddy is probably as close to that standard as anyone left now, but not the whole package. Not that much at all, now that I think of it.

I remember the day I first stood eye to eye with my dad. I was just back from college, in my third year, and he came in the door from work.

The Fore River Shipyard was still open then and he was a foreman. An ‘outside man’. He was too big to work in close quarters. The day was cold and his cheeks were burned red with that and with the many swipes of the wool sleeve of his heavy coat against his nose—a bad habit my mother teased him over.

That would have been about Christmas, 1977.

I was on my way out already, having kissed my mother and washed my hands and face at her command. I had someone to see. Probably Connie, because he had not gone away to college himself.

Dad came up the back steps at a bound and I met him on the level at the top. And there we were, eye to eye.

No hello. Just a “Where you off to?”

I said, “Out.”

He said, “Did you see your mother yet?”

“Yes.”

“Then stay a moment and watch me take off my shoes.”

I probably heaved with impatience. That’s me.

He sat down on that stool at the back by the stove. Mom keeps a geranium there now, right on the stool, in a clay pot.

He bent low at the waist and untied his boots. Slowly. Waiting for me to speak first. Always giving me the chance. And me not taking it.

Then he sat straight. I had collapsed by then in a chair by the table.

“You’ve grown some.”

“Yes sir. Or you’ve started to shrink.”

That made him smile.

“Things are alright at school?”

“Alright.”

“They sent a note, you know.”

“Geeze.”

I had been skipping a required class. An English class taught by a woman who hated men and never lost an opportunity to make that clear. I was weary of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein. I had tried to get into another class instead, but I had missed the chance.

I said, “I’ll make it up. I told the dean. Next semester.”

“Your mother was worried.”

“Yes sir.”

I fidgeted and heaved another great breath of impatience.

“You’ll be back for dinner?”

I said, “Yes, sir.” But I wasn’t. That was the cause of the ruckus later on.

I got back at nine. My dinner was on the table with a bowl over it. Fried pork chops. I could smell them.

Dad heard my knife and fork against the plate. He had the Herald still in his hand when he came to the doorway and stood there to watch me. Not a word. A Sligo man doesn’t do a lot of talking.

I stopped eating, of course. Finally self conscious at what I had done.

I said, “Sorry. I couldn’t catch a ride. We went down by Paragon Park. Connie had to leave early and suddenly I didn’t have a ride.”

“Park’s closed.”

“There’s a pizza place there.”

“You said you’d be home for dinner.”

“Just a slice and a coke. Just a hangout.”

“Connie went home to dinner. I called over. He answered.”

“You called! You called?” I was outraged. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

Dad’s face didn’t change.

“Not your body, anyway.”

I said, “That’s embarrassing.”

He offered a slight shrug. “Sure it was. I felt terrible. And for your mother too. But we’ll get over it.”

“God damn it!”

Of course I had said it without thought, yet it was exactly the wrong choice of words. A curse and an affront to God all in a piece.

He wanted to hit me just then. I could see it. But he knew his own anger and kept his fist on that. He wanted to shake me. He wanted to get through to the lout I was. And he had no way. He never hit me. Nor Teddy. And if we were beyond shame, then he had no hold on us. I imagine the frustration of it must have aged him where he stood.

I saw a breath come. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a breath since he came to the door. I remember the thought and a certain feeling of wonder at it.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

He answered, “Tell your mother. She’s the one you hurt.”

I got up then at long last and went in to see her. She was already crying. She was crying at what she heard. The tone of voice, not the words.

That might be one more reason I married Mary Ellen. She’ll cry at the tone of a voice. Words won’t do that trick.

Mom stayed in her chair, her back to the door, hands folded on her book. She looked up at me over her shoulder as I came through. There was the tear, at the edge of her eye that we all lived in dread of. She looked away.

She said, “I understand…You’re young.”

Long ago, ‘I was young.’

The all-purpose excuse. And when I did the same sort of thing so many times again through the years, what was the reason then? All the times I came home late because there was something ‘important’ to do. Or never showed up at all.

I can see Mary Ellen with her homework papers in two piles on her lap and me smelling of cigarettes and beer. Only she wouldn’t leave a plate for me on the table.

With English tests you have to be careful of the spelling. There is grammar. You have to read every word and catch some semblance of an idea purposely expressed as well. When I was teaching history, I just scanned the papers for key words: 1066, Alfred, William, Hastings–That’s an A. Next…Mary Ellen always thought it was unfair. I did the homework for my students in forty-five minutes. She took two hours. She was right. It was unfair to my students. That’s one reason I quit.

Mary Ellen asked, without looking up, “Where did you go?”

I said, “To Cleary’s, for a beer.”

She had a red pencil in her hand, but it didn’t move. “Sarah was looking for you.”

I said, “I’ll go talk to her.”

Mary Ellen never looked up. It was if she was ashamed to. As if my carelessness was somehow her fault. She said, “She’s asleep now.”

“Was it important?”

“Everything is important when you’re seven.”

Everything is important when you are thirty-seven. I just didn’t want to know it.

I should have been there. I remember thinking a Sligo man would have been there.

I just didn’t listen.

Teddy listens. He can sell cars faster than anyone you ever saw and do it all day long because he listens. I’ve been over to where he works in Norwell more than once and seen it. I’ve watched. He’s like Dad, the way he listens. The other salesmen talk.

Dad had a bad back. Sometimes he would even sit on his stool to eat his dinner, just to avoid the lower chairs. He said it was because he liked the warmth of the stove and he got chilly. But that was a small lie. One of the few. He had a bad back and he didn’t want anyone to know. It was an infirmity.

Often, he would come to the kitchen door and stand, with his forearm braced against the doorframe above his head, and he would listen to us talk. Listen to me talk. Listen to Mom. And he would never say a word unless he had to. That was a Sligo man.

I was just thinking, as I wrote this, that I have seen that posture on a man somewhere else. And it has just come to me. In the movies. Dad’s favorite movie star was John Wayne. His favorite movies were The Quiet Man, and The Searchers. He didn’t like TV all that much and didn’t go to the movies very often but Teddy won a prize his first year at the Ford Dealership. A VCR. And he gave it to Mom and Dad for Christmas. That would have been around 1984. Something like that. Mom loved it. She got to see all the movies she had missed. It was her toy. Dad would watch from the doorway, behind mom’s chair. With most movies he was gone by the second act and out under the light in the garage fixing something. But if she wanted him there beside her for the whole time, she could just play one of his favorites and he would hang there, as if suspended by that arm against the top of the doorframe. And now I realize that it was a pose that John Wayne often held. Only with dad, it was no pose. It kept his back straight.

I suppose he was ‘a quiet man’, then. But that does not stick to him the same way in my mind.

He was seldom unhappy. In fact, I would say he was generally a happy man, with a ready smile—a small smile at the edges. Never the wide grin. He was always self-deprecating. When something went wrong it was always his watch and he should have seen it coming.

The unhappiest time I recall was during a strike. He did not like his union. He called them thugs. But he liked his job. He did his job well, and when there was a strike he could not go to work and spent the days in the garage making a new molding or fixing some old thing ‘that would be better thrown away’ as my mother would say. During that time, Dad didn’t speak at all it seemed.

Only once in my memory did he raise his voice. I know it happened more often than that, but I can only remember once.

He took us fishing that day. We were out by Peddocks Island off the end Hull near where the tide rushes through. We had gone there many times. But this time some idiot in a big stink-pot cabin cruiser came roaring through the gut with too much speed and we could not get our little boat around fast enough. The wake from the stink-pot hit us broadside and the three of us were suddenly fighting for balance in that small awkward space. Teddy and I both thought it was a great treat. But I was the one who thought it smart to rock the boat even further, just for the ride. I was a great fan of the ‘Giant Coaster’ at Paragon Park. I stepped into the cradle of the motion. Only I was stupid with my timing. Dad had just righted himself. Now that I think of it, his back muscles must have wrenched to keep himself upright. His fishing rod flew into the air like a catapult.

“Jesus Christ God Almighty Damn.”

You don’t forget it when it’s said with enough emphasis to echo off Peddocks Island twice before it dies in the drone of the passing boats on a Sunday afternoon.

But when you are small–I mean eight or nine–a Sligo man is one who cuts his own lawn with a hand mower. He paints his own house. He washes his own car, (with your help). He wears boots more often than shoes.

I spoke at his funeral. I got the chance to say some of this then, and mentioned how I felt about our Sligo Man. Afterward, Mom came and took my arm. She has that way of bringing a moment with her. She watched my eyes to see if I was listening. And she said something I did not know.

“He only meant it as a disparagement of himself.”

I never knew that. I couldn’t speak with the realization. How do you address a lifetime of simple misunderstanding?

She said, “And his father had meant the same by it when he called himself that. It was just another one of his self-deprecating remarks. He would never brag on himself. You know that much.”

“I know that.” I should have known that.

She said, “To him it meant to be quiet in the face of troubles. To lay by and not speak up or bring notice to yourself. Your granddad left Ireland ashamed that he had never spoken against authority when the opportunity came or then against those who were willing to kill their neighbors for their beliefs. He did not feel he belonged in the company of those who had.”

I had never understood. I had misunderstood for all of my life.

And now, at 52, all of that is so far away. Another country on another continent.

And I do not want to be a Sligo man.

There were four feathers on the inside edge of the bar. Each of them were gray, black and iridescent in different ways. Pigeon feathers. They reminded me of a story. Not the Updike. The Mason. They weren’t white, but that’s just the way my mind works.

So I asked the bartender about them. He said some woman had been sitting there earlier and left them. He was going to keep them aside until closing just in case she came back.

She didn’t come back.

He was wiping things down for the last time and I folded my money on the tab and I asked him if he’d let me have them. He nodded.

I put them up into the edge of a picture frame I have in my room. The picture is a joke. My oldest daughter came by to visit one time and later she sends the picture to me because my room is so small. It’s the picture van Gogh did of his bedroom in Arles.

I have to admit, the chair and bed are just about the same. But I think my room is smaller.

I put the pigeon feathers up in a row across the bottom, evenly spaced. It gave that cockeyed picture a touch of whimsy it didn’t need, but it entertained me. There just wasn’t a lot like that in my life right then.

One week later–a true August night with the air baked still and the streets empty except for those of us who were too stupid to be gone–I was in the same bar. For the same reason. The job was killing me. I really needed a hard drink, but I usually settle for the beer. They have the local brews on tap and I sample them one by one. I can watch the ball game through to the end that way. There was no TV in my room. No air-conditioner for that matter.

Before I can order the bartender says to me. “You still have those feathers?”

I say “Yeah.”

He says, “Can I hav’em back? The woman came in the next day lookin’ for’em. I told her you come in sometimes on Fridays. She said she works late on Fridays, and could I get’em for her.”

This kind of put me off. Partly because he didn’t apologize for his mistake. Maybe just because I liked the look of them up there in the frame. But probably because I could tell this woman had some curb appeal. Most bartenders won’t make a lot of effort for just anyone. And I wasn’t even going to get to see her. And then too, possibly because I can get a little stupid sometimes.

There are at least six different bars between my office and the subway entrance. I had chosen this one for no particular reason. I did not feel any special attachment. The TV picture was nothing special.

So I said, “I don’t think so.”

He gives me a scowl. “Why not?”

I said, “I like them. I’ll keep them.”

He sets the empty glass in his hand down with a real knock. I guess he had picked it up for me in the first place.

I said, “See you later.”

Now I knew my reasons weren’t all that good, but that’s the way I felt about it. I get to do what people tell me to do all frigging daylong, five days a week. There was some little pleasure in saying no. Afterward, I felt bad for the bartender. He was just trying to get along, same as me. I wasn’t making his life any easier. But it was done.

The next Friday I’m in a bar about a block away. It’s the middle of the game and I’m into my third beer.

Someone taps me on the shoulder.

I knew it was the woman who left the feathers the instant I turned around. Women don’t tap me on the shoulder all that often, you know. Besides, I always wear the same cap my kids gave me for Christmas more than twelve years ago and I’m not a small guy.

She says, “Can I have my feathers back?”

I gave her a thorough look. I didn’t miss much that wasn’t covered.

Then I said, “No.”

“Why?”

“I like’em.”

“They’re not yours.”

“They are now.”

She tilted her head sideways at me. It was more a pose than anything. I could tell she wasn’t thinking a whole lot. She was angry…She was gorgeous.

She said, “What is it with some people? Why be an asshole?”

There are a lot of ways to answer something like that. Witty ways. Thoughtful ways. Humorous ways. Stupid ways.

I said, “Tell me why you want’em.”

She said, “None of your business.”

I said, “Okay then,” and turned back to the bar.

You know how it is with beautiful women. They get their way. They’re used to it. The smart ones even know how to play off other women who are less fortunate and jealous of their looks. They learn how to do that when they’re just out of diapers. My youngest daughter does it without a thought.

The woman stood there. I could feel her anger radiating in her body heat.

She says, “Why do you want them?”

Her question was right in my ear. I didn’t turn around. She hadn’t answered my own question. I could’ve demanded that she answer me first. But that didn’t seem the way to go.

I told her the truth, “They’re beautiful. They remind me of a story. They fill up the room with the story. I like that.”

She just stood there. Not a word. I waited and sipped my beer. The Red Sox gave up another run. Maybe a full minute passed.

Then she said, “You ought to trim the hair in your ears. It’s ridiculous.”

So that kind of broke the situation down. It gave a little perspective.

I said, “You want a beer? The Red Sox are getting their butts kicked.”

She hesitated. Then she sat down. I put my index finger up for the bartender.

She says, “What story? Updike?”

“No,” I tell her. The Four Feathers. A. E. W. Mason.”

She says, “I never read it.”

I look sideways at her. She has the profile. She’s going to get old someday but her nose will never hit her upper lip.

I said, “You haven’t been a sixteen year old boy with ambitions to wander in deserts, prove your courage, and fight for love.”

She glanced back. This wasn’t as sure a glance as I expected. She was worried about something.

“No. I never was.”

The bartender set down a glass of the same tawny ale I was drinking. She held it up, kind of looking through the color. She held the glass with her fingertips so her fingernails sort of bit the glass. Women do things like that to draw your attention. Makes you wonder about the feel of those nails on your skin.

I gladly interrupted the thought. I said, “It’s all in my head now, of course. You get to a certain age and it’s all in your head or it’s not. You can’t make it up anymore.” She was sitting there real quiet then. I expected some repartee. You know. Women just don’t sit down in bars with strangers without a few lines ready. But she didn’t say a word. For my part, I was well beyond most of that. I haven’t yet picked up a woman in a bar that I can remember. Not for lack of trying. They just don’t get excited when I start talking about Raymond Chandler or Joseph Conrad or whatever I’m reading at the time. And I’m not about to spin my wheels over some broad who probably can’t tell me why she likes Patrick O’Brian better than C.S. Forester. Women always like O’Brian better. At least that’s the way my daughters think. I’ve had that argument but I always like to hear them explain it.

Finally she says, “What do you do?”

Legitimate. Reasonable. But not what I expected for some reason. I expected her to get back to the damn feathers.

“Office work. Whatever they have.”

“Why?”

“Child-support.”

Now this covered a lot of ground without much explanation. There wasn’t really a story there anyway. Not worth telling. So I just left it.

She’s quiet again. I can’t tell what she’s thinking now, but I make up a scenario of possibilities. I decide she has it figured that I’m just a divorced loser with an attitude, who reads books to escape from the mundane reality that has him pinned to the boards. At least I hope she’s thinking that because it would mean she’s smart and it’ll save a lot of time talking about the ugly details.

She says, “Why don’t you teach?”

I had to think about that. It was an odd question under the circumstances. How much was I going to say?

“I taught for twelve years. I hated it. It’s not one of my talents.”

She says, “Why don’t you write, then? If you write your stories down, you wouldn’t have to steal other people’s feathers.”

She’s good. She’s thinking it through real quick. I had a friend who always said ‘those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, write.’

I tell her, “I did. But my stuff didn’t seem to hit on the right nerves. I write too slowly. It takes a lot of time and doesn’t pay the bills.” Now she knows enough. Now I want to know something about her. I ask, “Now you tell me this: why did you sit down?”

She sipped at her glass, nodded a bit, and licked some foam off her upper lip.

“Just curious. I wondered why you wanted those damn feathers.”

I gave that a nod. “So now you know. Talismans of lost time. Relics of religious wars. Symbols of self-made myths.”

She smiled. It was a real smile. At least I had humored her.

She said, “Maybe. Maybe you just wanted them because they were left behind and it made you wonder what their significance was in the mind of the woman that left them…You like imagining such things I’ll bet. And then you liked what you imagined and you didn’t want to lose it.” She looked at me. She knew she was right. She wasn’t looking for confirmation. “What was the story you imagined?”

This was more than self-assured, I thought. It was really smart. And it was begging me to ask why she had the feathers in the first place, all while placing the onus on me. My middle daughter does that kind of trick all the time. She’s gotten better at it since she started college.

Right then I was also wishing I was ten years younger and still had the balls left to make a decent play here. This was the kind of woman I could get serious about real quick. It makes you wonder about the perversity of life. Everything is timing, they say. I married a woman who taught high school English in the room next to where I was failing to teach history, just because we both liked the rice pudding in the cafeteria. She never wanted to do anything else. She’s a sweetheart, but she imagines grocery lists and color coordination and when to put the winter clothes away. I dragged her all over Eastern Europe after the Iron Curtain fell in 1991. She was miserable. She didn’t want any part of it. The streets were dirty. The sewers were backed up in Budapest. Who cares where the hell Dracula once lived? With the same money we could have bought an above ground pool for the back yard for the kids for Christ sake…All that’s in your head, and you have to find a simpler answer.

“Okay. I’ll tell you. And I’ll tell you first so you don’t think I put it together from the evidence that’s sitting right here beside me. But then you have to tell me the truth. Tell me why you want the feathers so bad. Don’t game the situation.” I took a deep breath for emphasis. She squinted at me. I think my preamble irritated her. Good women hate to be presumed upon. So I started in on it anyway, “I imagined you were a good ten or fifteen years younger. Early twenties. Not in love but wishing you were. A little lost. Full of pretense. Maybe the type who always wants things bigger than they are and has started to settle for second best. And you found the feathers over in the park on a bench. A kid had left them there. And it made you remember your own childhood and the dreams you had and the way you used to collect little things to mark the dreams, like bookmarks. And you realized you’d made a wrong turn. You were reminded of the person you wanted to be and that now you were forgetting about, what with all the demands from college and family. The feathers reminded you of your own promises to yourself.”

She sat back. The squint was gone.

She said, “Damn.”

I said, “Damn what?”

She blinked. “Damn you.”

I think I saw a little circle of light flash there in her eyes. She was very serious.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

It was all I could say. I wasn’t sure which part of what I had said hit the mark, but it was enough.

She sighed. Then she took a long drink on her glass. Nearly emptied it.

She turned to me all the way on the stool when she put her glass down. “I’m not that old.”

I shrugged. “I figured you’re about thirty five, thirty six. That’s a lot younger than me. Why are women so touchy about their ages. It’s no big deal.”

She said, “How old are you?”

I look every bit of it so I told her. “Fifty-two”

She nodded. “I turned forty last week. That was the day I got the feathers. I was sitting in the park, watching those kids. I don’t have any kids. You know? But I wanted them. And then time went by. It just flew. And there I was, forty years old and this little girl came right up to me where I was sitting. I heard her mother tell her they had to go home and she had to leave the feathers, but she came over and gave them to me instead. They were my only birthday present…And I wanted them back.”

A cut of the light told me definitely there was a tear there and she turned away then because she saw that I saw it.

I was done.

I said, “They’re yours. You can have the feathers back.”

But she shook her head. She said, “It’s too late. There’s another story now.”

→ More John Finn Stories

Look. I’ll tell you the story. But you have to appreciate the situation first.

You know, I used to say it all the time. People aren’t any better than they have to be. And let’s get this much straight. It’s still true. With most people.

The golden rule was stolen a long time ago and melted down to make pinky rings for crud who like to use other people for sport.

Crud comes in all flavors.

Every guy who gets soft on a gal wants to think she’s better than he is—wants her to be the true thing. But women are no better than men. They have a little less muscle, so they make up for it in other ways.

Your mother was not a saint. She married your father. Isn’t that proof enough? If she hadn’t married him, that would have made her smarter, not better.

This is not cynicism. It’s life.

You are not the center of the universe. You are a speck. Just another zygote that got too big for the womb.

You want to play a name game? Want everything to fall into neat categories? Good. Bad. Better. Best. The universe doesn’t give a damn. You’re just as dead as the next guy when your time comes. So you do what’s right because you know it, not because somebody told you to.

Get that much straight. If you don’t want to be a crud yourself, then stay out of the way. Keep your head down. Don’t advertise. And don’t smile for no reason.

Otherwise, always carry a role of quarters.

I might have to add something to that last bit of philosophy. Tape the role so when your fist hits the other guy’s ribs, the quarters don’t break out all over the street. You won’t have time to pick them up.

And that’s about where I was in my thinking at the time. I had a few years on me to get there.

On that Sunday night I was walking home—at least what I was calling home just then. A room with a sink. The toilet and shower were down the hall. My fist was in my pocket. I had half the role left and used my thumb to push the ragged paper over what remained. I didn’t look back. There was nothing to see that I couldn’t hear.

I shouldn’t have been out in the first place. It was after midnight. There’s no cover on a street that late on a Sunday night. Even most of the crud are home with their warm TVs. The ones who are out are the losers who don’t even have their own TV’s and hang around the bars to watch what they can and maybe get lucky.

The fact is, the night had nothing on how dark I felt. That should have been warning enough.

I’d made a big mistake. I’d met a woman I thought was better than me. Now I was walking home alone on a Sunday night and wondering just how stupid I could be. I’d left her at the YWCA. She said she was staying there. But when I went back to tell her something–when I’d gotten up the nerve to actually say what I was thinking, she wasn’t there. She didn’t even have a reservation. And I was pretty sure she had no family in town because she was just off the bus from Albany.

That was a moment I can remember like it just happened.

Buses aren’t like they used to be. They used to stink, and they still do, and the toilets didn’t work, and they still don’t, but you used to meet some interesting people. I have stories I could tell. I hit the road when I was barely eighteen. Maybe I told you about that before. I hitched and bused from here to California. More than once. But I hadn’t met anybody worth talking to on a bus in years, until I sat down next to this gal in a green shirt and jeans. A ‘slip’ of a girl as my dad might say. She had her shoes off, and was wearing those little white socks that don’t reach your ankles and her jeans were worn white at the knees. She had her arms around her legs and her knees were pulled up under her chin and I thought she was asleep. I thought she was probably still in high school. And–get this—the guy behind me in line as we got on the bus was a bad piece of work I’d seen on the street in Boston before. He didn’t know me. But I knew him. And I figured pretty fast that if he got the chance he’d take the seat beside the girl, so I took it first.

Now this is the set up when you are about to play the fool. You’ve just done something noble–or at least decent under the circumstances. You’ve done the right thing and you’re patting yourself on the back for a good move. You’re distracted by your own hubris. That’s when you get hit up-side of the head.

I turned on the little overhead light and pulled out the paperback I was reading to pick up where I left off.

That’s when she spoke.

“Harry’s a jerk. Why does he want to have anything to do with that women–What’s her name? Jean? Jean’s got nothing to offer him. I quit reading in the third chapter. I couldn’t take it.”

She still had her legs drawn up and she was looking over one knee cap at my book. Like I say, it kind of caught me off guard.

I said, “That’s the story. If you like Harry, you want to see how he survives. I can’t fault him for being a fool–not after looking in the mirror this morning when I shaved.”

She nodded just a little, mostly by rocking her body. You know the way.

I don’t know the numbers on the other rules, but rule number two is that you don’t fool around with girls. Women are difficult enough. Girls are automatic trouble, and no fun because they don’t know enough to make it fun. So I just went back to reading my book. It’s about three and a half hours from Albany to Boston. Part of that’s the stop in Springfield. We weren’t even through Troy before she spoke again. It was almost 8 pm and there was nothing else to look at out the window. That’s what I thought.

She says, “What’s in it for her? He’s got no money. He’s got a drinking problem. He hates himself. She’s only looking for the main chance. The big break. What does she see in him?”

So I told her only what I knew at that point in the story. It was just a guess. “A kindred soul. Somebody who knows the ropes and might offer some small comfort in a cold world.”

She nodded again. I went back to reading.

Then she says, “Why does he stay. Why doesn’t he get out. Florida. California. Someplace warm.”

I shook my head at that. I was thinking that only kids and old people believe they can escape the cold by going south. I said, “You’re still too young to know it yet. But the cold wakes you up. It keeps you awake. Too much can kill you, but that’s true of heat as well. Warm puts your brain to sleep.”

She laughed a little. “Do you really believe that? You don’t do you? You just said it to be saying something. Maybe if Harry wasn’t hanging out in cold places he wouldn’t be looking for comfort in the wrong places.”

This was a wise appraisal.

“Maybe.” I say. “But I’ve been to Florida. I’ve never seen so many walking dead. I’ve been to Southern California. You figure out right away why they think they need cocaine to enjoy the scenery. It’s too warm.”

Now I was being cute. Of course. I was trying to be smart. That’s the hubris again. What I should have said is that if I had any brains worth saving I’d have stayed in La Jolla. It was never better for me than that. But that was then. I couldn’t go back.

She said, “Bull shit.”

So she caught me again.

She put her legs down then. I took advantage of the moment, in what light managed to get over her way. She was thin. But I got the first idea that she might not be a girl anymore.

I defended myself the best I could under the circumstances.

“Yeah. Warm may not be so bad, but it might pass for an excuse when you don’t have anything more intelligent to say. I suppose Harry is a creature of habit. He stays close to home because that’s what he knows and understands best. In a place like California they have other rules.”

Her hair was dyed black. It was short and neat but I wondered what color it had been. She was using something on her eyebrows as well. It made her skin seem pale. One of the eyebrows rose up in an arch.

She says, “Harry has a dog. Isn’t that enough?”

I said, “No.”

She folded her hands in her lap. She asks, “You ever have a dog?”

She looked like a girl again.

I said, “Yes.”

I was going to tell her about dogs but she spoke up first.

“Did he get old?”

I said, “I suppose he’s getting there. He’s in California now. He likes the warm. How about you?”

She took a breath and cleared her throat. “She got old. I miss her.”

Now I was pretty sure again that she was too young to be chatting up, so I lifted my book. Harry was in a predicament. I wanted to know how it came out. But I only got through a dozen pages or so.

We were at the Massachusetts border. She had been looking at me. Or maybe just reading over my shoulder.

She says, “What do you do?”

I actually thought for just a moment that if I ignored her she might take offense and settle back to her own business. But I’m that stupid.

I said, “Whatever’s paying. Mostly I cook. I was just in Albany to back-up in the kitchen at a lawyer’s convention.

She asked, “Are you any good?”

I told her the truth. “No. Just good enough.”

She said, “What would you like to do?”

I told her. “I don’t know. I’ve tried a bunch of things. I worked in Florida a few years ago doing framing work on houses after one of the hurricanes. That was good money but about as boring as anything I’ve ever tried. I just don’t know.”

She nodded at that. “And you’re from Boston?”

I told her, “Yeah. Well. Watertown. Close enough.”

I wanted to ask what school she was in. If nothing else, I wanted to make a point about her age. But she didn’t give me the chance.

She says, “I’ve been a waitress, mostly. One thing you learn about being a waitress is to stay away from the cooks.”

That got a laugh out of me. Its true. But it seemed like some kind of invitation, so I said, “Why is that?”

She says, “You know,” and she raised one eyebrow at me again.

Yeah. I knew. There wasn’t any place I wanted to go with that line of conversation. I said, “Why are you going to Boston?”

She said, “School.”

I said, “Where?”

She said, “No place yet. A friend of mine took night classes at Harvard once. I could never get into Harvard through the front door but it’d be great to say I went to school there without lying.”

So I asked, “Are you from Albany?”

She shakes her head and tells me. “Saratoga Springs. My daddy is a cook at a hotel there.” Then she smiled. “So I know about cooks.”

Now I was in trouble. You see. I was already interested enough to be putting my head up where it might get whacked.

I said, “Is this your first time away?”

She laughed again. “No. I’m twenty three years old. For Christ sake, if you’re still living at home when you’re twenty three you aren’t worth spit.”

So I was hooked. I mean, look. This situation was a no brainer and that’s my territory and I know it well. Her father was a cook. She knew about cooks. And she liked to read. She was old enough to know better. I was like a fish with the hook through my lip.

I said, “What would you like to do?”

She said, “I don’t know. Just like you. I don’t know.”

I put my book away.

I say, “But you’ve done something else than wait on tables, right?”

She sighed, “I’ve worked in a few stores. Sales clerking. I was a bartender for almost a year. That was tough. But I haven’t done much. I haven’t done enough. That’s my problem. Not many options. So I’ve been saving my money. But I’m impatient. I want to get it going.”

I understood that pretty well. I said, “I guess you have more patience than me. I hit the road when I was eighteen.”

She didn’t speak for almost a minute. I kept my mouth shut and waited to see what she might say.

“Where did you go?”

I figure she was asking herself whether she wanted to know anything more about this guy. I suddenly felt lucky. That’s another warning sign. Rule number three maybe. When you start feeling lucky, it’s because you don’t know all the facts.

I said, “Alaska first. I mean, that was the place. Right? The pipe-line was humming. I worked the kitchen on a cruise boat out of Seattle. Then I got a job in Anchorage—in a kitchen–of course. I tried to get a job with one of the oil companies. But by the time I got there, they were laying people off. I hung around awhile. Then I went to California. Got a job driving nails. That was good for awhile. More fresh air. I got a tan. Then things didn’t work out. I tried Florida after that. Now I’m here again.”

She responded to that almost before I finished speaking.

“Ever think about going to school?”

I say, “For what?”

She arches that eye brow at me, but even bigger than before. “To learn something.”

I wasn’t going to back down on a count like that. “You mean to get a certificate to show that I’m a human being. No thanks. I already know that.”

She says, “Don’t you think you have anything to learn?”

This is a subject I talked about often enough even then. I didn’t want to get a rant going.

I say, “Yes. Sure. A lot. I try to learn something every day. But I come from a long line of Irish heretics. I’m not interested in getting anybody’s permission to think. And if I find something I want to know and I can’t get it out of a book, then I’ll go to school. But I haven’t found that yet.”

She sat there for maybe five minutes then without saying a word. I was pretty sure she was going to pick my little speech apart. But she didn’t.

She was looking out the window into the dark or else looking at the reflection of me sitting there looking at her when she spoke again.

“I wish I could feel that way. I just don’t think I’m going to stumble across the right thing all by myself. I figure it can’t hurt to go to school for awhile.”

I think I used to look at it that way too. But I‘d met a girl in California who had her degree already and was working for the Institute of Oceanography. She had brains to spare, but she was as stupid as a hammer. All she really wanted was somebody to take care of her and empty the garbage, so she could be free to have deep thoughts about the survival of the sea otter and the abalone. I read some of her papers. I read the book she helped write. Her name was the fourth one from the top. I told her that her programs were full of crap. All she needed to do is leave the frigging sea otter alone and learn how to cook the abalone. But she wouldn’t.

I figured the little girl next to me on the bus was looking for answers. Another thing I know for sure is that you don’t get answers from people who want to hand them out like candy. You get answers from asking your own questions.

I said, “Going to school might not hurt. But I wonder if they don’t get a hold of your brain and start squeezing it into the shape they want. Look around. Everybody talks the same. If you draw your vowels out in a different way they think you’re stupid. If you point out that Shakespeare didn’t talk the way they do either, they think you’re even more stupid. They all think alike. They even read the same books, if they read at all. They watch television. They listen to crappy music that’s ripped off from older crappy music. They work in little offices doing little things and growing old. I can grow old without the degree.”

She was pretty quick responding to that as well.

“How about money?”

“Yeah. How about the money. That’s a nice trap they have. The harder you work, the more they take.”

It was right then that I get a tap on the shoulder. It was the Piece-of-work who had been behind me in line when I got on the bus. He says, “Keep the chatter down will you. I’m trying to sleep.”

Now I keep my voice down anyway. I’m not a loud talker. Right? But it’s a bus. It’s a public place. I wasn’t talking much above a whisper anyway. And the girl hadn’t been loud either. I was pretty sure that my conversation was bothering this guy for other reasons. Missed opportunities and all that.

So I stand up in the aisle and I tell him, “You may want to talk with me about that when we get off the bus. But right now, you might want to mind your own business.”

He laughs. It’s the kind of snarky laugh of somebody you don’t want in the seat behind you and I got angry in a flash and put my hand in my pocket for the roll of quarters. His eyes got big for just an instant. I realized he thought it might be something more than a roll of quarters. He didn’t answer. He tried for the laugh again. It was a little weak.

I sat down. I said, “Money isn’t worth much if you don’t know how to use it.”

It was kind of a left-over thought, but she looked pretty serious now. I think she was disturbed by what I said to the Piece-of-work behind us.

After a minute she says, “Sometimes it gets pretty thin just trying to get by.”

I thought about that a lot. I saved my money and spent as little as I could.

“I think it’s a matter of priorities.” I told her. “I’m looking to get myself a truck. I have my eye on a three year old Ford with twenty thousand miles on it that a buddy of mine uses to drive out to job sites. My buddy wants a 250 for loads and this is just a little 150, but it’s fine for me. I’ll build a little camper for the back and I can go up to Moosehead when the weather’s good and get a spot in the state park. And I know a place in the Adirondacks where there’s a little deep water lake. You can catch trout on the brook that runs out of there that are the direct relations of ones that were swimming when the Mohawks were still singing songs. I don’t need much.”

She gave this a minute.

Then she says, “Brown’s or Rainbows.”

I said, “Browns. If they were Rainbows it would bring the weekend fishermen like flies. They don’t seem to gather as much for the Browns. But they taste just as good.”

So what does she say? She says, “My Daddy likes to fish.”

Now this is real trouble. Her daddy is a cook. Her daddy likes to fish. It’s like a total set up. And right here I start getting worried. You know something is going to go wrong if you’ve been rooting for the Red Sox for more than a couple of years. There is something I don’t know. I start thinking. She’s married. She’s got a kid. Two kids. She’s a congenital liar like the woman I knew in Florida. I’m telling myself to stay cool. But I don’t listen to myself often enough. Like you’ve said a few times–I have too many rules and forget which ones I should be paying attention to.

I say, “Does your mother like to fish?”

I actually said that.

She laughs. I see that she likes to laugh. She says, “No. Mom sits near the fire and reads. She has an old beach chair she brings along that she likes better than the couch in the living room.”

When she laughs I can see she has good teeth.

Now that’s something a lot of guys won’t mention, but it ought to be one of the rules. Avoid women with bad teeth. It might mean they don’t take care of other stuff. That’s serious business.

I said, “A good chair is hard to find.” I meant it to be funny, but obviously it wasn’t. My mind was still reeling with my worries over what might be the problem with this woman that I couldn’t see.

She said, “Are you married?”

Bam. Like that. Out of the blue. And I told her, “No. Never did.” That’s all that came out.

I was looking for a little wit somewhere in the gray matter between my ears when she says, “How old are you?”

Cripes! But I told her. “32.”

She says right away, “Why aren’t you married. What’s wrong?”

I was backed right up in my seat. She was clearing a lot of trees real fast.

I said, “I made a couple of mistakes. That can use up a lot of time.”

She said, “That’s for sure…California?”

She could see through to that pretty easily. I said, “Yeah. And Florida.”

Now I was working up the courage to be as bold as she’d been. I didn’t want to say anything totally stupid. I just wanted to make sure she knew I was interested. But she spoke first again.

“I was married for two years,” she says. “I married a cook. Naturally. I might as well be blond. You know? He was sweet as pie when he wasn’t drunk.”

OK. My mother used to say, ‘Now you have the can of worms open, are you going to use them to fish or put them in the garden.’ I was never sure exactly how she meant it, but the question seemed to come up a lot in my life. I could see some benefit to both uses.

I wanted to just say, ‘I don’t get drunk,’ But it reminded me a little too much of ‘You can trust me. I’m not like the others.’

So I said, “That’s rough.” Just like in an old movie. ‘That’s rough.’ Does anybody even say that anymore?

We were in Springfield then and as the bus pulled into the station I stood to check on the Piece-of-work. He was sound asleep. Or he wanted to be.

Springfield is a short stop but it’s nice to stretch your legs. The girl stood up too. I could see I had about six inches on her but at least a hundred pounds. We just stood there a moment after some of the other passengers got off. It was pretty close in the aisle, with people standing on both sides of us. For some reason she wasn’t so bold now. She didn’t seem to know what to say.

Generally, I’ve never been at a loss for words. You know that. But I was a little lost then. So I fell back on what got things going in the first place. I said, “Harry has made a lot of mistakes. He’s really just trying to make up for it. I think the girl–Jean–she understands that much, anyway.”

Now this was pretty bold for me. There is no way she didn’t see the reference for what it was.

She took a breath at that. She didn’t look up at me. She just spoke right at the front of my shirt. “Jean’s a loser. She always makes the wrong move. Harry has to see that she’s just making another mistake. Why would he want to be just another one of her mistakes?”

Whoa!

Now, I had known this girl for a little more than an hour. Not much more. And I was like a brown up on the dock, flipping my tail.

So what do I say? I say, “I wouldn’t trade gold for every pound of stupid I owned just four years ago. I earned what I know the hard way. I’m not going back.”

Just like that. Then she looked up at me. She’s got that pair of eyes. Head on they don’t leave you any room at all.

And now, she doesn’t loose a beat. She says, “What kind of dogs do you like?”

I say, “Big ones.”

People were getting on the bus then and we sat down.

She didn’t say a thing for maybe fifteen minutes. I wanted her to speak first then. You know I can talk about me all day long because its so boring even I forget what I’ve already said and I get to repeat myself. I wanted to find out about her. It seemed like the most important topic I could think of.

Finally I said, “You have any brothers?”

Now, why did I ask that? You know why. It tells a lot about a girl if she’s had brothers. She knows a little something more about guys to begin with.

She says, “Three.”

I say, “Older?”

She says, “Two older. The younger one is in the Army. One of the older ones is a cook at another hotel in Saratoga. And one is an electrician. He works in Syracuse.”

“No sisters?”

“No.”

I say, “You’re one of a kind then.” It was lame.

But she laughed. She said, “How about you.”

I told her. “One sister. She works in real estate. Mostly up around Ipswich.”

For some reason that little bit of information caused another great silence. I waited.

She says, “What’s the best place you’ve ever been?”

Now that’s easy to say but then I’d be off talking about myself again. I had to keep that under control.

I said, “On the Cape. First week in August. Twelve years old. How about you?”

She says, “Where on the Cape?”

I said, “Eastham. On the Bay. What about you?”

She brightened a little with the thought. “Quogue. It’s on Long Island. Daddy had a job there every September with a family that lived like Croecus. It was his working vacation. He had to cook for their parties two or three times a week. They paid him twice what he got at the hotel. And we had a cottage all to ourselves on the property. I practically lived on the beach. It was the best.”

But her face lost the smile at the end. I guessed she hadn’t been back in a long time.

I said, “I was hoping to get down to the Cape again this year. I haven’t been in a long time. Twelve years. Maybe more. Have you ever gone back to Quogue?”

“No. That’s over,” she says.

I wondered, “Your dad lost the job there?”

She said, “Yes.”

I say, “Too bad.”

“No,” she says. “It was OK when I was a kid. I didn’t know what else was going on. I was free, and the world was perfect for three weeks every year. But when I got older, I saw what the deal was. It wasn’t pretty.”

I asked, “Why was that?”

“It was the way those people lived,” She said. “They didn’t respect my father. They didn’t respect themselves. He’d bite his tongue and keep his temper. Just for us. Just so we could play on the beach and have a taste of things he couldn’t afford to give us otherwise. It was tough on him. He’d start drinking before the desert was served and he could hardly walk by the time he got back to the cottage. My mother hated it.”

I thought I had a clear enough picture of that.

“I guess I was lucky then. My dad rented a cottage. Two weeks. No strings. Just fun. Dawn to midnight. Non-stop.”

She gave me one of those ‘wistful’ type smiles. “You were lucky.”

But I shook my head at the memory. “I couldn’t afford a two week rental now. It’s not the way it was then. I’m going to get a spot in the campground this year.”

She raised that eyebrow part way at me. “It’s the money. It always comes down to that.”

I shook my head again, but a little harder. “No. The money isn’t good or bad all by itself. It’s what you do with it. Anybody can get by, if they want to. You don’t have to sell your soul.”

She looks at me straight faced. She says, “What if you have kids?”

I tried to be a wise guy. I said, “I’ll stay away from Quogue.”

She comes right back at me. “You want kids?”

Now I figured we were about an hour and a half out. Maybe a couple of minutes more. In my head I hear her asking me ‘How many?’

But I said, “Yeah.”

She says, “How many?”

I looked up at that little light. But the bad part was that I actually knew. I had thought about this once before. In California.

“Three.”

She seemed at little puzzled. “Why three?”

I gave her a look. She was turned around so she could look right at me.

“I don’t know? I can’t remember. It’s just a number I’ve had in my head awhile.”

She asks, “Since California?”

I tell her, “Yes. And what about you.”

She raised both of those eyebrows up in great arches and turned her head a little to the side. “Well! I’ve never had a number in my head. I just thought I’d like to have kids until I couldn’t have them anymore. Something like that…Does that sound crazy?”

I had to tell her, “Yeah.”

She sighed. She says, “Yeah. Well. I guess it does. I’ll have to give it some serious thought.” Then she laughed again. “Right. Well, I think I’ve decided. Three would be just fine.”

I said, “Good.” Just like that.

She says, “Where would you like to live?”

I said, “I don’t know.” I didn’t. I hadn’t thought about that. I had thought about going places, but not where I was going to go from.

She said, “I like North Carolina. I like the mountains. I worked as a bartender there for a year when I left Saratoga Springs. That was after the divorce. I hated the job, but I loved the place. Asheville.”

So I had to ask, “How warm is it.”

She laughed. “It’s fine. It snows in the winter. Cool in the fall and spring. You’d like it.”

I said, “Fine. Something new. Something different.”

She nodded. “Change is good. And you can drive to the beach in two and a half hours. The biggest beach you’ve ever seen.”

I said, “Sounds good.”

Then the conversation stopped again. She was just sort of staring at the back of the seat in front of her. I think she was feeling a little shell shocked. I was. I know that. I wasn’t sure just then how all this had come about. I was going over it in my head, piece by piece, just like I’m doing now. And then a thought occurred to me.

I said, “What’s your name?”

She laughed a little loudly then. She held her hand over her mouth for a minute and closed her eyes. I could see a tear at the corner of one eye.

Then she says, “Ester. What’s yours?”

I told her the whole thing, “John Francis Kiernan.”

She says right away, “J.F.K.”

I said, “Unfortunately.”

She reached her hand over. “Ester Marie Hansen. Glad to meet you.”

I took her hand. I actually didn’t shake it at first. I just held it for a second. I don’t know if I could have shaken it.

Look. You have to realize that this was the first time I actually touched her. I could feel the muscles in my arm go soft. My brain went soft too.

She took her hand back. Her hand was warm and I still felt it after she took it away. She didn’t look happy.

She said, “This is serious.”

I said, “Yeah. I think so.”

She says, “You better be sure.”

I said, “I’m sure. It’s just that my brain has short circuited. I’m not real clear on what’s going on. But it’s serious.”

She sat back. I had maybe five minutes to get my head together. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I could only guess what she was thinking.

Then she says, “My Grandfather came over from Norway in the 1920’s. He got a job in New York. I don’t remember what. Something dirty. Day labor, at first. Then he got a job carrying bricks and mortar. He became a mason. He even worked on the Empire State building for awhile. He lived in a room with four other guys on the Lower East Side. He saved his money. When he thought he had enough—about 1930–he went back to Norway. Just for two weeks. That’s all. He went there looking for a wife. And he found her. In two weeks. And they came back and lived on Staten Island. They had six kids. Right through the Depression. He died when I was a little girl so I never got to know him. And Grandma died just last year. But she told me about it. She said he walked the streets of Bergen for a week just looking. He saw her for the very first time with her mother at the fish market. Then he walked right up and told my great grandmother that he was looking for a wife. Just like that.”

“What did your great grandmother say to that?”

“I don’t know. Grandma never told me. But my great grandmother invited him over for tea. I know that. And my grandmother agreed to marry him the very next day.”

I said, “That’s amazing. They were different back then.”

Ester look at me with both eyebrows up again but this time it was not the same as before.

She says, “Yeah. Different.”

I noticed she can put a nice sarcastic edge on her voice. Yeah. At least her grandparents had thought about it overnight. But I didn’t say that.

I thought about telling her about my uncle John. He’d been married six times. He usually got married less than a month after he met the girl. But I didn’t tell her about John either. I told her about my parents. That’s a harder story to tell. It took a bit.

The bus was at the Boston station about eleven. She had a reservation at the YWCA, she said, so we just walked over to Berkeley Street. She had two bags and I carried one because I just had my knapsack with me.

The most important thing that happened then was that I kissed her. Probably not the best kiss. We had been in a bus for almost three hours and talking. But it was late and there was no place to pick up any gum on the way. And I wasn’t about to leave without kissing her. So I did. Right there on the steps with a night watchman standing three feet away smoking a cigarette. I wrote my name and address on the back of the bus ticket stub. I didn’t have a phone at the time. But I told her I would call her in the morning.

And then I left. I wasn’t really walking. More like flying. Gliding. A little Gene Kelly. I was drunk on the moment. I was totaled.

I got half way home before I stopped. I already knew I was a fool. But I had walked away without saying the most important thing. Maybe because the watchman was standing there. Might have made me self-conscious. I don’t know. But I hadn’t actually said it.

Now, you understand, I’d only said it to three women in my life and one of them is my mother.

I practically ran back to the YWCA. I jumped the steps and stood at front desk and waited for the woman there to finish with some piece of paper she was working on and then she gave me a pretty cold stare.

I asked her if I could call Ester in her room. She asked me for the full name. I told her a second time. Then she told me they had no one by that name staying there. I spelled it out-loud a couple of different ways. The woman asked me when Ester had checked in. I told her about fifteen minutes ago. She gave me another cold stare. She said no one had checked in for the last hour. Then I asked her to check the reservations. She checked. There was no reservation. Then I looked over and saw the night watchman. He was sitting in a chair near the elevators, looking at me. I asked him. He smiled. He let me stand there for maybe a full minute before he told me.

“She went back out the door the minute you were gone.”

So there I was. On the street. The total fool. On a Sunday night.

I walked home again. I tried to walk. I felt numb.

There was a bar there on the way that was open. I decided I needed a drink. At least a beer. I needed something. I needed to think things through. Rule number eight, or ten, or whatever. A bar is not a place to think things through.

And there was the Piece-of-work. He’s with another guy. I didn’t even see him until I sat down at the bar. He taps me on the shoulder.

Funny thing. I knew exactly who it was before I turned around. He had this way of punching his fingers. Not a nice tap.

My hand went into my pocket without even thinking twice.

He says, “You wanted to talk to me outside?”

I said, “Sure.”

The Piece-of-work was a couple of inches shorter than me. But his friend had me eye to eye and maybe twenty pounds more.

The friend held the door. I went out, knowing he was going to hit me from behind, so I went sideways with my back to the building. The big guy barrels right after me and I hit him with everything I had, right in the ribs. He had no breath. He just doubled over right there and sat down. But my quarters shot out all over the side walk.

I figure the Piece-of-work had given the big guy a Benjamin to cut me down to size. He would have gotten his kicks in when I was down. But he looks at me for just an instant. Looks at all the shiny quarters on the ground. And then he dances away, but not like Gene Kelly.

I walked on home. Like I said, there was more dark in my head than there was on the street. And I’m practically there before I notice anything. I see the shadow on the steps. It’s that same shape, with her legs pulled up under her chin and her arms holding tight.

I stopped in my tracks.

She hardly moves. It’s just those great big eyes over the tops of her knees. She says, “Where’d you go? I tried to follow you. But you were gone.”

I didn’t have any words. I just took in about as much air as my lungs would hold.

She still hasn’t moved. I haven’t moved.

I had to take another breath just to speak. I said, “I went back. But you weren’t there.”

She said, “I tried to follow you. I didn’t know the way.”

I say, “But they didn’t have a reservation.”

She says, “Sure, they did!” Then she let go of her legs, and stood up with a real scare on her face. She said, “Oh, Lord. I used my married name. That’s what’s on my license. I never had the chance to get a new one. I had to use my married name.”

I said something smart like, “Oh.”

She says, “I am blond, you know. This is just black out of a bottle. I really am blond. Like a piece of pine wood.”

And I said, “That’s fine with me. Just so long as you like to fish.”

And that’s the story. Don’t let her tell you any different.