Prelude

Setting: Wickersfeld Railroad; 31 May 1992

On the day of the Re-Opening, before the first train left the station, John Smith was awarded – at a ceremony in front of Engine # 15 at the Station at 9 AM – with a membership in the Railroad Founders Club and was given a cash gift for his work in documenting the history of the railroad.  A month before this, he had been invited to join the Board of Directors as an honorary member.  While he accepted the RFC membership, he declined the honorary seat.  He thanked the Board for the gesture and said he would always be available as a ‘consultant,’ but he had been an engineer and a hostler all his life and didn’t own a suit!

John Smith – 72-years old and “still going,” he would say, “like one of these old steam engines,” – was a guest-of-honor on account of all he had done over the previous decade to generate interest in the railroad, leading up to its re-opening as a tourist attraction.  “This day may never have become a reality, were it not for you,” the Master of Ceremonies had said to him in front of Engine # 15.  John had collected (1) photos of the WRR in all of its workings, from its opening to its closing, (2) newspaper articles from the century and a half of its history and (3) oral accounts of life on and around the railroad from survivors, like himself, who remembered it and the role it played in their lives and their community.

He had arranged these artifacts into a coherent collection, with appropriate labelling, and had them printed; first in two 8 ½ x 11 gum-bound ‘packets’ which had then been handed out to anyone interested in the WRR.  He next published a book-sized manuscript in 1984.  His early photocopy editions were printed by his old friend Robert Werner, and the book that evolved out of that earlier form – Remembering the Wickersfeld Railroad (Volume I, 1984; Volume 2, 1985; Volume 3 1988) was published and distributed for sale around Ross County and regionally by Robert Werner’s New York publisher, Jeremina Hawks.  This documentary history focused on all elements of the railroad, from business to pleasure; from the workers in the roundhouses and machine shops to Management and the Owners; the Ross family of Milvale and Wickersfeld.  Throughout this process John saw himself as a collector rather than a ‘writer.’  “Let the documents speak for themselves,” he would say.

After this ceremony was concluded, John was ushered by the new WRR Operations Manager up into the cab of Engine # 15, which he then piloted down to Sommerston and back; part of his old run back in the 1940’s.  Because of his age, a co-engineer – Rudolf Petrie; a fan of the old engineer and his book – accompanied John in the cab.  They “talked tomes” on the run together, John later reported to his friends, as Rude – which he preferred to be called – was also a trained hostler in addition to being a recently certified engineer, like John.

The engine pulled three passenger cars, a coal car, two open box cars and a double-caboose; every car – except the coal hopper – being filled with the first paying customers of the day.  John’s three oldest friends – Lori Ann Grayson, Vincent Lyman and Robert Werner – were all on the train, memories of their early years together in the 1940’s being lit-up as the train rolled along on the refurbished tracks, taking them past well-remembered vistas. 

They were thrilled at their friend receiving such genuine appreciation from the WRR and when other passengers heard them mentioning John, conversations ensued, during which these three of the ‘Four Friends’ related vivid memories of their time together in the late 1940’s; including their riding the train together – interspersed with passionate expressions of their gratitude for having been friends so long.  They allowed the other passengers to take pictures of them and by the end of the run were returning to Wickersfeld “aglow in the aura of renewed fortune,” as Lori put it, by which she meant the ‘fortune’ of having had good friends.

After their return, and for most of the rest of the morning and all of the afternoon, John and his three friends sat together at John’s kiosk outside the Wickersfeld Station where railfans and other interested persons came to talk with the ‘author’ and purchase signed copies of the newly published, hard-cover version of The Wickersfeld Railroad Remembered in 3 volumes.  Printed copies of some of the most spectacular photographs from the book as well as paraphernalia (t-shirts, mugs and small-scale models of the engines and certain classic passenger cars; all provided by the WRR Store) were also available for sale.  John signed so many ‘complementary’ photos of himself from his engineering days that his hand began to cramp-up whenever he picked up the pen!

After the last trains returned from their runs, and while the rolling stock was being put to berth in the car barns and roundhouse, John decided, while clearing the merchandise from his table and closing-up his kiosk, that he did want one of the t-shirts with an artist’s depiction of Engine # 8 on the front and back; his old favorite “ironsides’ in the decades before the railroad shut-down.  He went inside the station to the counter and, preparing to pay, was told by the store clerk that he was allowed to have it “free-of-charge.”  He thanked the young woman and went back outside, where the WRR Manager asked John for a couple publicity pics for the new WRR Newsletter, to which the old, retired engineer humbly submitted, though never fond of having his picture taken.

 

For this, they walked over to the roundhouse, and this is where the present story begins_

 

 

 

Act I - Rendezvous at the Railroad

        Setting: The Wickersfeld Railroad, Sunday 31 May 1992; 6 PM

Scene: The Roundhouse.  John is waiting with the General Manager and his photographer at the side of the Roundhouse nearest the parking lot, as they talk betwixt themselves about the shots they want.  Lori Ann, Robert and Vincent have walked, John sees, around to the far-side of the roundabout, where they are taking pictures of the refurbished buildings as well as of each other posed in various places.  A brakeman and Rude are talking at the far side of the Roundhouse’s concave front; all of the doors of which are open—revealing the steaming engines inside.  Rude sees John and waves, smiling graciously.  John lifts a hand to wave back.  The General Manager and the photographer, having decided on what they want, still talking, then start out toward the roundabout, motioning to John to follow them.

“Okay, now, where d’ya want me?” John asks as he follows the General Manager and the photographer out in front of the open portals of the roundhouse; where the faces of the nine old steam engines – still cooling down – can be seen in their “rustic glory,” as a WRR promotional pamphlet calls it.  It’s been a long day, but John still has some strength in him; he tells himself.

“How ‘bout standing in front of one of the engines in its bed?”

“Sure ‘nough,” John allows, stepping over the sun-soaked rails and getting situated in-front of the massive hulk of iron that is # 14, which is in the middle berth and still rumbling and coughing as it cools.  The heat coming out of the roundhouse makes the warmth of the late May afternoon seem chilly by comparison.  John revels in a memory of his engineering days.  He is sweating and hungry from his long day of ‘hawking his wares’ at the kiosk and yet surprisingly still alert and ‘zooming’ – as Robert Werner would call it – over all of the attention he has received, his conversations with fans of the railroad and the too-frenetic activity surrounding all of these experiences.  _He knows he will probably ‘pay’ for this excitement in the morning.

“That’s good!” the Railroad Manager says as John positions himself as requested, simultaneously nodding to the photographer he has in tow who then takes three or four shots of John, stepping to one side and then to the other to get a slightly different angle on the ‘celebrity’ for each photo.

“Any more?” John asks, sounding just a bit weary.

“If you can stand it_ my wife was thinking about one of you on the roundabout?”

John nods compliance and then waits as the General Manager and the Photographer walk officiously to the far side of the “engineering phenomenon,” there getting re-situated for the desired shots.  John walks out away from the roundhouse’s scorching brick face and onto the contraption itself; a track on a turn-table that allows each engine to be brought out from its berth at the appropriate angle, then ‘turned’ to allow it to start out through the yard where, putting on a bit of steam, it would then roll past the Blacksmith’s shop and Carpentry Barn to where it could be switched onto one of the main tracks.

The turntable can rotate a full 360-degrees on its base in a concave pit. That morning, John recalls, two strong workers gave a demonstration for railfans and others interested in the railroad, showing how well-balanced the roundabout was.  “Though weighing tons, two relatively strong people can move it with no problem,” the Roundhouse Master had declared at the demonstration, “one at each end of the mechanism.”

The turntable wobbles a bit as John walks out onto it, necessitating his gently grabbing-hold of the railing on one side of him and then the other to stabilize himself at each step.

“Ok John_ pose for us_!  And try not to shake the platform while we get the shots.”

John does as the Manager bids, balancing his weight with a day-weary hand gripping the railing on his left.  After a half-dozen pictures are snapped, he asks “what about one with me facing the photographer?”

“I know what I’d like,” the woman with the camera says, “one as if you are walking towards me; then freeze while I click off three or four shots?

“Sure,” John says, and gladly does as suggested.

“Oh_ those’ll be good,” she avers, reviewing them in her camera’s display window, and then says to the Manager, “that should be enough.  I got shots of him in the cab this morning_ before his run down to Sommerston and after he got back.”

“Okay_ thank you John!”

“You’re welcome!”

“Thanks for everything” the Manager then adds, with a wave, genuinely appreciative.

John nods and smiles a ‘you’re welcome,’ and then, as he comes off the turntable at the far end, is met by Lori Ann, Robert and Vincent.

“So, ‘Old Man,’ ready for dinner?”

“Sure ‘Kid,’” John replies, scraggling the 54-year old’s hair with his still strong yet wrinkled hand; the touch suddenly evoking a memory of the Poet as a boy in the ‘40’s.

They laugh, enjoying the gesture, Lori Ann saying to John, “I think you and your ‘guests’ have been set up for a free meal in the diner behind the station over there.”

“Well let’s go then,” John says enthusiastically, and in jest, “Hows'bout I just invite everyone here as my ‘guest?’”

“That would be wonderful,” Vincent says with an ironic laugh, as if it could happen.

“Free dinner for everyone!” John boasts loudly.

“O now John,” Lori Ann mock remonstrates, smiling at his bravado and throwing her arm around her old friend’s waist, walking on with him like that across the dusty parking lot, enroute to the diner.

“Ha-ha!” John agrees, smiling, throwing his arm over Lori’s shoulder in a near-exhausted euphoria after his ‘big day;’ holding Lori Ann close and then reaching his other arm out around Vincent, who complies, then throwing his arm around the shoulder of Robert Werner, drawing him in for a brotherly hug.

Together they walk across the street separating the roundhouse and the yard from the station and the diner to which they are destined by the satisfying hunger resulting from a day’s vivid and demanding experiences.  They only break their familiar embraces as they reach the entrance, where Lori Ann pulls back the old wood and glass door for her ‘three men.’

“Oh_ Geoffrey!” Robert says, startled, then shaking the hand of another old friend – the Whittier family’s historian, an earthen philosopher and fellow writer – in the entryway of the diner.

“Gad,” Geoffrey exclaims, “Hello Robert!” cheerfully shaking the Poet’s hand, and then greeting John, Lori Ann and Vincent in turn.

“Didn’t know you were here today,” Vincent says, delighted to see the fellow historian.

“I think I saw him in the crowd a couple times,” Lori Ann proffers confidently.

“You probably did, we’ve been here since 8-A-M!”  Then, turning to the woman beside him, “this is a friend of mine, Professor Octavia Winslow.”

“O_ pleased to meet you,” Robert says, stretching out a hand, hoping she will accept it.

“Pleased, too,” offering her hand in return.  “Aren’t you Robert Werner?”

“I am_” Robert allows, always still slightly bashful – even after all the years that have passed – at being recognized without an introduction.

Vincent, John and Lori Ann then shake hands with the professor, as Geoffrey says, “Ock teaches philosophy and social history at W-C.  We’re ‘office mates.’

“Cool,” Robert says, admiringly.

“I’m a real railfan at heart,” Octavia confesses with pleasure, “so couldn’t pass this up.”

“Were you two goin’ in to dine_ or just leavin’?” John asks.

“Going in_” Geoffrey says and waves a hand in an inviting gesture indicating they should all enter the diner-proper from the entryway ahead of him.

“It’s a buffet,” Robert says, sharing what he heard earlier in the day.

“That’s fine by me,” Lori Ann says, her empty stomach stirring.

“Let’s all go, then_” John urges, laughing, as if herding cats, “before anyone else passes us and gets ahead in the line.”  Looking to Geoffrey and the professor, “You want to have supper together, maybe?” John invites as they go through the door, seeing the line of people waiting to be seated.  “I’m allowed ‘guests’ for free,” he says, with mock importance.

“Sure, we’d love to,” Octavia accepts, looking to Geoffrey for confirmation, nodding and smiling, knowing he would not object.

“Done deal,” Geoffrey agrees with a nod and a warm smile.

“After you, Octavia,” Vincent says, as they move to go in at the same time.

“Oh please, call me Ock!”

“O-kay, ‘Ock!’” Vincent says, pleasantly amused at the handle, being politely let through the door ahead of the professor.

Casual converse passes amongst them as they stand in-line and then get their buffet tickets.  They get shown to a table and when the waiter brings the water, he asks, “how many and who gets the bill_ or bills?” then adds, drolly hesitant, “please don’t tell me you all want separate bills_”

They laugh, sharing in the waiter’s feigned dread.  John then identifies himself and says, “I think I have a free pass?”

“Oh yes, ‘Mr John Smith,’” the young waiter confirms, saying the name officiously, “we’ve been expecting you_ glad to meet you.  And these are your guests?”

“They certainly are!”

“Good-Good.  _Go and help yourselves.”

Together they go to fill up their first plates and return, complimentary carafes of coffee having just been brought to the table.  “Could we maybe have hot tea instead?” John asks the waiter when he returns, knowing his friends’ preference.  “Octavia_ tea for you, too?”

“O yes_ I’m a tea fanatic!”

“Of course_ I’ll take these and be right back,” the waiter obliges with a smile.

They sit down and begin to eat.  As they do, a casual conversation begins to unfold, during which Vincent says to the professor sitting across and down at the other end of the table from him, “It’s a wonder we haven’t crossed paths, Ock_ I work at the Historical Society, my focus is labor and local history, among other things.”

“A kind of social history I’m very interested in, Vincent_ or Vince?”

“I prefer ‘Vincent.’”

“But yes, I’ve used the Historical Society in town when working on a couple of papers.  I don’t think we have ever crossed paths_”

“Perhaps_ if you want_ we could have a ‘chat’ sometime.”

“I’d like that.  I’ve only been here about five years, and it’s difficult making relevant ‘town’ connections when you’re ‘campus.’

“Here_ here,” Geoffrey politely protests.

“Well,” Octavia pleads to Vincent, smiling mock-irritated, “Geoffrey is ‘town,’ but he’s also ‘campus.’  So that’s not the same thing.  He doesn’t get it!”

“Too true, I admit,” Geoffrey agrees with a laugh at the distinction he has always felt to be an unnecessary artifice.

“And you folks,” she then inquires, “are you_ related?”

The Four Friends start politely shaking their heads, smiling and amused to once again having been mistaken for being ‘family’ in some way.”

“Nope_” Robert says, proud of the fact, “we’re friends.”

“We’ve been friends a long time,” John adds.

“Oh_ how long,” Octavia asks, curious at the confession, buttering a dinner roll.

After a fecund pause, John establishes “since around 19-45.”

“Nineteen forty-five,” the professor repeats, nearly incredulous.  “Really?”

“Yep,” Vincent affirms.  “We all met back at the First Whittier House in the mid-nine-teen-forties.”

“The Whittier House?  _Geoff?” looking to her friend across the table from her.

“Yep,” Geoffrey confirms.

“I’m acquainted with what you mean by the ‘First House,’” she admits to her new acquaintances at the table.  “Geoffrey’s told me so many stories about it_ and the Fire that destroyed it.”

“We remember it,” Lori Ann says, a vivid old memory – one of many she curates – flashing across her mindscape.  “_That night.”

“The Fire?”

“Yes,” Lori Ann affirms.  “And then, in those days after the Fire, we_” gesturing to each of her friends, ‘drifted apart.’”

“For thirty years,” Robert laments, repeating the oft repeated glyph of one consequence of that night.

“Until we got together one night in 1979 and took a walk down to the old burned-out house,” Vincent finishes, repeating the mantra he and his friends so often employ to describe themselves and their relationship to others ‘in the know’ about the Whittier’s and the infamous Fire.

“O wait!” Octavia says, eyes widening with recognition, “then_ you’re the ‘Four Friends?’”

“Yes,” Geoffrey affirms to Octavia, looking her straight in her astonished face.

“Yep, that’s us,” John says, reaching across the table and grabbing Vincent’s spontaneously outstretched hand, Robert and Lori Ann simultaneously engaging in the same complementary gesture.

Just then, the diner’s Manager, having heard that John Smith and his party were in the house and eating, comes over and asks, “How are things?  Everything satisfactory?” _to which John and his guests respond sincerely in the affirmative.  The Manager had been touched by the gesture he’d witnessed just as he approached, but then, recognizing Vincent Lyman, he says, a bit surprised, “Well hello Mr Lyman, what are you doing here.” 

Vincent laughs and responds, playfully dismissive, quick-swallowing a bit of gravied biscuit: “Don’t worry, man, I’ve not come to organize your employees or anything.”  They both laugh, the Manager a little more cautiously, Vincent then assuring him, “I think from what I’m hearing labor and management here are off to a great start.”

“We certainly hope so!” the Manager says, smiling now more open-heartedly at Mr Lyman; a well-known dispute arbiter and union organizer around the five-county area.   “We believe in full participation,” he nods confidently, turning away and walking with a somewhat proud step back to the kitchen.

Eating and casual conversation resumes, those at-table smiling in a growing mutual satisfaction at being together.

“Mr Smith,” says a middle-aged man at the next table, turning to speak.

“Just John.”

“Thanks_ I just wanted to say how much we appreciate the book and the ride we had this morning.”

“You’re welcome,” John says, at which the man turns back around to those at his table, and, thumbing over his shoulder, is telling his tablemates some anecdote connected to John.

“The food is good,” Vincent avers; the gathered-together all agreeing.

After a minute or two, as everyone at the table continues to enjoy the well-deserved meal, Octavia, who has been quietly reflective since discovering who four of her dinner companions are, asks “If you don’t mind me asking_” and then, after a brief pause and a swallow of her hot tea, “how did the four of you become friends? I know that’s bold of me_ It’s just, seeing you sitting here at table with me, I’m suddenly impressed with a fact I hadn’t known.”

“What’s that?” John asks while cutting up a baked potato, preparing it for butter.

“That you are not peers_ I mean_ there’s a significant difference in your ages.  Am I right?”

The Four Friends look back and forth across the table at each other, knowingly, and John says “There is.  I’m 72 right now.”

“I’m 62,” Lori Ann says.

“I’m 60,” Vincent says.

“And I’m 54,” Robert concludes their confessions.

Octavia, doing quick calculations in her head, then surmises, “Then that means you were a boy, Robert, when you met John?  _If you met in 19-45, as you said.”

“_Lori Ann and Vincent were teenagers,” Robert beams and continues the deduction, “when I first met them.  John was in his mid-20’s and already working on the W-R-R.”

“You got it,” John affirms, smiling as always at the wondrous fact of their friendship.

“How did you all become ‘friends.’”

“Long story,” Lori Ann says.

“Good story,” Geoffrey insists.

“Hm_ I mean,” Octavia continues, “How did a young boy come to be friends with a twenty-something man?  I’m not saying it’s a ‘bad’ thing_ it’s just unusual.  Most of my friends are peers; you know—we’re all around the same age.  _Like you and Vincent, Lori.  Were you in school together?”

“It did sort of start with us,” Vincent says, smiling at Lori as he cuts up a stuffed pepper.

“We had met in school_” Lori Ann begins, “and at that time I was sitting the Whittier kids out at the House_ when a lot of the adults were away at meetings or social functions in the evenings or sometimes away on weekend trips.  Vincent would at times join me on those nights.”

“I was one of the kids,” Robert interjects.

Octavia’s eyes open wide and, holding a meatball stationed on her fork in mid-air, “She was your_ ‘babysitter’?”

“Ha-ha!  Yep,” the Poet acknowledges, and everyone laughs.  “But after a couple years we started to be more like ‘friends.’  I mean_ I started hanging-out with Lori and Vincent – when he was there – and talking with them in the evenings when she or they were sitting_ that was in about_ 19-44 or 5?” He looks to his friends for confirmation, who nod agreement.

“Hm_” Lori calculates, “Vince and I knew each other at school as early as 19-40?  41?

“That’s what we’ve figured, yes,” Vincent concurs.

“And he started coming out to the Whittier House with me in 19_ 42?”

“You were fifteen, Lori, I was thirteen.”

“And Robert?” Octavia queries.

“I was four that year,” the Poet says, cognizing the distance.  “Ha! I can barely remember anything about us before 1945-or-6, though.  But I have a few memories of being­ there, playing with the Whittier kids.  I have a vivid ‘impression’ of Lori Ann; from one time – me sitting on a pillow on the floor with her.  But as Yeats says, somewhere, one’s memories from childhood are ‘brittle’ things to try and lean on.”

“Too true, unfortunately,” Octavia agrees.  “How did you come to be sitting for the Whittiers, Lori? _if you don’t mind me asking_”

“I’m related to the family,” Lori Ann confesses, rolling spaghetti on her fork, “through my mother’s sister, Cordelia.  She was a Grayson, and she and I had become close; she was the Matriarch of the Whittier family at that time—and she asked my mother if it would be possible for me to come and sit now and then_ and that’s how it happened.”

“I’d also become friends with Cordelia_ and with the family through her,” John says, relishing and recollecting the memory, once again.

“How did that happen?”

“She’d given talks in our school ‘bout her trips to England, an’ ‘bout the role of’er family in the local economy,” John explains, “I was taken-in by her stories.  And then, when I was riding the trains with m’dad, learnin’ the ropes – playing; seriously – at becomin’ a good ‘up-and-coming’ fire ‘n’ brakeman – she and I would get to talking. Then she invited me out to Deer Hill!  I couldn’t refuse!  _What an invite!  When I told my parents, they were thrilled.  I rode the train down and my dad would leave me off.  The first time there, I got ‘the tour’ of their house and got introduced to others in the family.  After which we sat in her ‘office’ – that’s what it seemed – and talked‘bout history, local events and my ‘work’ on the railroad.  Then we walked around outside, through the house garden, and she gave me a couple tomatoes to take home, as I remember.  I rode back on the return train with dad.  Other visits followed, Cordelia and I would sit on the porch – it was summer – and her husband John Cabot would come out’n’ join us.   He soon asked me to go fishing with him; which I did—a number’a times!”

“He was known as “The Angler,” Geoffrey punctuates.

“Yep, he was!” John remembered.  “He died_ I forget what year_”

“19-41,” Geoffrey, the family historian, says.

“And it’s a wonder – as Lori and I have often mused – that she and I didn’t meet earlier than we did.”

“_Because_ we were both out there at the house, you see, though not at the same times, I guess,” Lori notes, pausing, scooping up a soup-spoon-full of macaroni salad.

“But we did meet, in 1945, on the train, twice or so,” John avers.

“I didn’t come out to the house with Lori Ann until ’43, I think,” Vincent revises.

“You may be right,” Lori agrees between them, knowing how hard it had been to pinpoint the beginning of Vincent’s sojourning with her at The House.

Just then, a boy – of about 10 years of age – walks up to the table where the friends are reminiscing, holding something against his chest.

“Well hello, young man,” John says.  “What can I do for you.”

“My name is Jimmy.”

“Hello Jimmy,” everyone around the table says, nearly embarrassing the boy, who then looks back to John and holds out what he had been clasping to his chest.  It’s a tattered copy of one of the earlier print-shoppe editions of John’s book.

“You want me to sign it?” John suggests, tentatively.

The boy nods quickly in the affirmative and hands the book to its ‘author.’  John pulls back the plastic cover on the old 8 ½ x 11 edition, takes a pen from a pocket in his overalls and signs it.

“Thank You!” Jimmy says and rushes back to his table where the gathered friends can see him showing it off to his parents and siblings.

Returning to their conversation, John says, “I was training to be an engineer in ’45,” remembering the thrill as well as the hard work.  “I was about 25 and had been working on or around the trains since I was twelve.”

“Did you come from a railroad family?”

“N-o-o_ my uncles and cousins were all coalminers.  They worked out there in the shafts beyond Tannersville.  My father was the step-out from that.  He started as a coalman on the trains, then got’imself trained-up as an engineer and never went back to the mines.”

“Did your uncles stay in the mines their whole lives?”

“They did.  Uncle Hoss died of lung cancer.  Uncle Melvin died in a cave-in.  Three men were trapped.  No one got to’em before they suffocated.”

“Sad,” Octavia sympathizes as John takes a long swallow of water.

After a pause, Lori Ann continues, between bites of hot sausage, “During that summer, in ’45, I began to see John on the train more often, going out to Deer Hill and on my way back-in-to-town.  _This initiated our coming together.  _This is what we’ve agreed on, John, yes?”

“Um-hm,” John gestures, “I think there was one time, then, in the Fall.  My parents had been out to the house as guests a number’f times; we were at dinner together, and stayed afterwards.  You came, to sit the kids, as many of the Whittiers were goin’ out_ probably to meetin’s or social functions_ or just to entertainments_ and I saw you, Lori_ and we just started talking, I think.”

“It was spontaneous,” Lori Ann agrees.

“Then you stayed behind, John,” Vincent adds.  “I remember, 'cause that was the first night you talked with us while we sat the kids.  I was there, too.”

“You were,” John affirms, seeking confirmation in his own memory.

Lori Ann then confides to Octavia, “We’ve talked about all this quite often, Ock.”

“I can imagine_” the professor offers with a sympathetic understanding.  And then to the storytellers, “Please, continue_ I’m intrigued.”

“Hm_ I remember always liking talking with the two of you,” John admits. “I remember feeling, ‘if I could I would like to’ – as we would say now, ‘hang out’ with you.   Don’t know ‘why.’  I would look for ya both on the train when I was goin’ down that way, past Deer Hill, on the run down through Sommerston; like today—but on to Spring Junction or Springborough.  You were sometimes ridin’ out to Deer Hill together_ to sit for the eve'nen.”

“And the couple times we saw you, we thought of asking you to stop off with us.” Lori Ann avows.

“I’m always pleased to be told that_ you’ve oft reminded me.”

“_I remember wanting to ‘run into’ you, too,” Vincent agrees.

“Interesting,” Octavia confesses.  “When did you four all come together?”

“Well, the first real moment, I think, for the four of us, in all of this, was that Yule dinner in ’45,’ wasn’t it?”

“It was, Lori!” Vincent agrees, going over their story in his mind, just as they had discussed it so often together and with Geoffrey.

“Or perhaps the next year?” Lori then suggests, summoning to mind the chronology of their friendship, once again.

“It was ‘46,” Robert urges, “‘cause I remember it.”

“How old were you then, Robert?”

“Eight, almost.”

“But he was no ordinary eight-year-old.”

“How do you mean, John?”

“Well Ock, when we talked with him, he seemed to be ‘present’ to us in a way another kid his age might not be.”

“Explain that, will you?” the social historian asks.

“Let me go back, first, to the Yule dinner in ’45?”

“Okay Lori,” Octavia agrees.

“You see, that was the first time we were all seated together at dinner at the Whittier House.  We were all along one side of that long, main table.”

“Oh_ that’s what I was thinking of!” Robert confesses, “_in 45_”

“I remember too,” Vincent interjects.  “You were to my left, Lori, John was to my right_”

“And little Robert was to my right!” John remembers.  “He talked my ear off!”

“Ha_ I suppose I did.  My parents always said I would openly talk with anyone.  But honestly, what I always remember most about that first night was the smell of coal smoke and oil on you, John.  I can still smell it, sometimes, when I’m in memory-mode.”

“It’s a ‘body-memory’?” Octavia suggests.

“Yes_ I guess, I call those ‘sense’ memories, but I think that’s the same thing?” he says to Octavia, who nods acceptance of the comparison.  “Very powerful.  And I remember Vincent and Lori talking on the other side of John, and I was so drawn to them.  I wanted to talk to them, too.”

“Ha! You would look around in front of me, Rob_ almost standing up at your seat_”

“I was trying to get their attention, probably_ if I remember!”

“After that night,” Vincent continues, “there began to be a growing ‘connection’ between us; that deep desire to know an-other; to connect with another person.  You know?”

‘Hm, do I?’ Octavia mused quietly to herself, a little sadly.

“Over the coming year, we did ‘hang out’ more.” Lori Ann says.  “John would come by on nights Vincent and I were there, Ock, and he’d stay until the kids were all abed, after which we four just talked quietly ’til the Whittiers all came home.”

“Since Robert lived right up the lane, at his house along the north flank of Deer Hill, he started staying up with us,” Vincent fondly remembers, once again, “after the Whittier kids all went to bed.  Previously he’d just go to sleep on one of the old plush chairs in the social room until the family were back, and then someone would walk or drive him up home.  But in that year, he started staying awake and sitting with us, near us, listening and sometimes talking with us, when he could get into the conversation.”

“He’d steal the conversation,” John abjures with a smile, “if we let him!”

“He would,” Lori Ann agreed, smiling across the table at the Poet.

“O god I probably did!” The Poet allows, moving in memory’s vestibule.

“I remember sometimes walking Robert up to his house, like_ after midnight?” Vincent says, suddenly recollecting images and sensations from those walks.

“I don’t know how to describe what it was like t’know Robert at that age_” John began, with mixed respect and amusement for the man sitting catty-corner across from him.

“I’m sure I don’t know what it was like,” Robert exclaims, always bemused at trying to recall himself as a child.  Amidst the quiet amusement of his friends, he continues, “I just remember liking talking to these ‘older’ people, Ock.”

“Were you naturally gregarious?” Octavia asks.

“No_ I wouldn’t say I was_ but it’s hard to know from this vantage point.”

“I mean, you were talkative?”

“Yes_ as I’ve said.  I’d talk to anyone.”

“Hm_” Lori Ann interjects.  “I’d agree you weren’t gregarious, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Not really_ you were always something of a loner, though you liked other people.  You were very quiet, like when you were playing with the Whittier kids.  You liked playing with them, you liked them, we could tell, but you weren’t ‘outgoing,’ I always thought.”

“Takes one to know one,” Robert softly observes, smiling across at his old friend.

“Oh yes, I know,” Lori Ann admits and smiles.  “But when you got gathered into our company, you then became a great talker.  We were an ‘intimate’ group; at first the two – or then three – of us_ and then four_ with you!”

“I think I know what you mean,” Robert muses.  “I’ve always liked small numbers of people together; intimate numbers.  Not large crowds.  Being in a crowd, no matter how exciting the moment, doesn’t do a whole lot for me.  I tend to become talkative with one or two other people; that would have gone for other kids, too.  I’m no good at parties, unless I can connect with two_ maybe three_ people at a time.  But I would get quiet as the intimacy diminished.  _Not that I didn’t ‘like’ being in a group.  _It just didn’t excite me as much.  Still doesn’t,” he admits, and shrugs.

As his friends reflect on this self-description, Octavia asks, “Did you have a good home-life, Robert?  _Again_ if you don’t mind me asking?”

His friends look softly to Robert to see what he would say, knowing his history.

“It’s hard to give a simple answer to that.  It was happy and yet difficult – a lot of hard work – and then ‘tragic.’ Our parents worked for the Whittiers – on the Christmas Tree farms – and were good friends with the family as well.  The Whittiers actually helped my grandparents get our house built back in the ‘20’s, there on Deer Hill.  They wanted us as neighbors and friends and not just as employees.”  Looking to Geoffrey appreciatively, “The Whittiers were always like that.”

“We still are, I hope.” Geoffrey proffers with an open-hearted humility.

“I ended up something of an ‘only child,” Robert says and pauses for a swallow of water.  “I had three sisters; all younger than me.  Lesley Eve died in ‘45.  My other two sisters died in the 50’s, which is what led my parents to finally give up the house on Deer Hill and move into town.  We continued to work on the tree farms, but they couldn’t keep living on Deer Hill any longer; not after the Fire and then my two remaining sisters dying.”

“I understand that, certainly,” Octavia says with a sudden sympathy for the Poet.

“As for me, my folks recognized my ‘imaginative’ nature very early and fostered me – as best they knew how – toward a ‘creative life,’ I suppose; though they didn’t know what I would become or what I would do.  They loved – they later told me – my stories of ‘adventures’ on Deer Hill and in imagined places as I grew up, and_ I always remember_ they started gifting me with tablets to write things in.  That made a big impression on me!  I began ‘work’ on the tree farms with mom and dad in ‘48, when I was 10, just doing small things and hanging out with them, but they always allowed me room to explore my creative aspirations, which I’d had from as young as I can remember.  I was ‘born imaginative.’”

 “That’s amazing.  You’re very lucky.” Octavia asserts.  “Many parents don’t see the specific potentials in their children_ and may not facilitate them if they do.”

“Too many try to make carbon copies out of their kids,” Lori Ann laments quietly.

“_I’ve tried to do for my son what my parents did for me,” Robert then affirms with a little humble pride.

“You have a son?”

“Yes.  A friend and I adopted him in ’66 after his parents were killed in a car crash.  He was 6.  They were neighbors, and Sheldon had already thought of me as an ‘uncle.’  He came to me immediately when he found out his parents had died, and he wouldn’t leave me.”

“I see.  Is he_ here today?” Octavia asks, hoping to meet the son of the Poet.

“Nope, he’s down in central P-A.  He’s an architect, and he needed to be on-site at a construction job early, tomorrow morning.  So_ he had to miss this.”

“Too bad,” Octavia says, admiring the Poet.  “Where does he live?”

“He and his wife – Veronica – and my mother – Evelyn – all live with me. Sheldon and Veronica have four kids, three daughters and a son.”

“Your grand-children,” Octavia says, reflecting on the parallel with Robert’s own siblings.

“Yes,” Robert affirms, beaming with pride.

“A very good way to bring up children, I’ve always thought,” Octavia offers, “that is, ‘in a multi-generational family.’”

“I grew-up in an extended family_” he affirms, “with my folks and the Whittiers; who lived three generations together in that old house.  _I agree with you.  It can be a good way to grow up.  Every way of living has its problems, but for us, living all-together under the same roof was as good as it could be_ without being ‘idyllic,’ of course.”

“I think is it time for seconds?” Geoffrey then suggests.

Everyone readily agrees, getting up to go to the buffet for refills.

Returning to their table, they comment on how much they are enjoying the ambience of the newly refurbished ‘old diner,’ Octavia feeling strangely ‘at-home’ with these Four Friends. She has, she then realizes, a genuine sense of being included in their table-fellowship.  She observes, “You all seem to remember that time very clearly.”

“We do,” John says.

“I think we all cherished those short years together, before the Fire,” Lori Ann muses, “and then, after the Reunion, Geoffrey had asked us all our stories_ and got us remembering things we might not otherwise have ever thought of again.”

“I can imagine_ Geoffrey’s like me,” Octavia observes, “we both love gathering stories and listening to people relate memories and reflecting on how they have lived.”

“Geoffrey’s interviews with us after our ‘famous walk’ in ’79,” Vincent adds, “stirred up many memories – for each of us – and brought things to the fore_ into the brighter light of recollection and personal resourcement.”

“As your old photo-albums also did, Vincent,” John affirms, remembering that night before their ‘famous’ walk, at Vincent’s house.

“I know_ sharing that album with you guys that night, sparked your desire to go down the old house, John_”

“In the dark!” Robert added emphatically, flushed with the powerful memory of that wonder-filled night.

“I think we all remembered and cherished that time together before the Fire,” Lori Ann poses, her friends each agreeing with affirming nods as they start in on their seconds, “and I know I often rehearsed memories from those four years or so when I needed encouragement or a touch-point with deeper love in my ‘after life.’”

“Life after?”

“After The Fire,” Lori punctuates.

“And we’ve often talked together,” John adds,” over the last 12 years, ‘bout our early years’s friends and what that’s meant to us_ to each’f us.  So_ I remember those years better than perhaps any others I have lived, until recently, at least, since the Reunion.”

“I see,” Octavia says.  “It’s become a kind of grounding narrative for you.”

“I think I get what that means,” John allows, reflecting on the expression.

“It’s our ‘core story,’” Vincent offers.  “_A term Geoffrey has used for it.”

“And I know what you mean,” Octavia smiles respectfully.

“We have all rehearsed so many experiences from those four or five years that they have become ‘familiar’ to us to the point that we_ I, at least – can ‘live in them’ at the slightest impetus.”

“You actively ‘relive’ your experiences from those times, Vincent, would you say?” Octavia asks, at which Vincent nods in the affirmative while buttering a third dinner roll.

“They are ‘our story,’” John adds.

“I get it,” Octavia says and nods, comprehending.

After a brief pause, each of the gathered-together quietly eating and reflecting, Robert says, “As for me, I drew on my experiences from the late ‘40’s for my early – novice and apprentice – poetry.  My parents actually helped me re-member things I’d did and said in the years before I started writing.”

“Like what?”

“Oh for instance, one of the earliest stories I published, called ‘The Bear in the Cave of the Heart,’ was based on a story my mother told me about an experience I’d related to her about encountering a bear at the mouth of that cave in the south cliffs along Deer Hill?” the Poet explains, glancing to Geoffrey beside him for recognition of the place.  “I don’t know – from this vantage – whether I ever saw that bear, or whether I dreamed it, but_” Robert stops in mid-sentence, thinking about what he was saying and what he was trying to say.

Pondering what Robert was thinking, and wondering where their conversation might now go, they all eat and chat a bit about their day at the railroad until Octavia, still curious about her dinner-mates, puts her question anew, “If you don’t mind_”

 “_If you keep askin’, we’ll keep talkin,’” John says politely, cutting up his third roasted potato.

“Please do,” Octavia invites appreciatively. “_Back to ‘what you were all like’ at that age, when you became friends?”

“What does that question mean?” Vincent muses.

“Perhaps_ tell her about experiences you had,” Geoffrey suggests.  “That might reveal ‘what you were like’?’”

“That’ll do it,” Octavia agrees.

As Vincent thoughtfully pauses, John begins, “Well, I will never forget that Christmas dinner in ’46. _I frankly looked back to it many times in the years after the Fire_ I got seated with Robert down at the end of the table.  He was 8.”

“Almost,” the Poet clarifies, smiling at the anticipated old story.

“Lori and Vincent were seated half-way up the table, each with their parents, and so, unlike the previous year, we didn’t all talk together as the ‘four’ we were becoming_”

“And we were yearning to!” Lori Ann interjects.

“Too true,” Vincent agrees, recollecting the feeling he’d had that night as well.

“_I assume I must have initiated a conversation with Rob,” John then says, “just to try and be sociable, y’know, as the food was being served and dishes passed-round.  I thought, ‘oh no, I’m gonna to be stuck talking with this kid all afternoon!”

Everyone laughs, including Robert.

“_But it was good.  We chin-flapped, I guess_ and then, once he got goin’ he just harangued me the whole-rest-of-the-time with one ‘maginative story after a-nother.  I barely got a word in edge-wise!  Ha!  I loved it!”

“Stories of?”

“Oh_ his dream-adventures!  Like the bear-in-the-cave story!?”

“What got me going,” Robert now says, “is that this man – John – was interested in me.  Over the years I have thought about that night a lot, and what it meant to me.  I reveled over that dinner in the days and weeks afterwards. Still almost a ‘total stranger’ – and an adult; and not a family member, you understand! – he was interested in what I might say.  And so, I guess, I gushed!”

“I thoroughly enjoyed it, Robert,” John affirms, once again, to his old friend.

“As you’ve said many times,” Robert replies with deep affection.

“What were these dream-adventures?”

“O just the usual kid stuff, I guess” Robert deflects, “running around imagining you were in some other world, meeting unusual characters and fighting monsters and_ other stuff.  I remember I used to go out-of-house, to walk all over the Hill and explore it.  In all seasons_ I think that started about a year before this dinner we’re speaking of.”

“I don’t know if that’s ‘usual kid stuff,’ but I’ll give you that, for now.  You were 6_ 7_?” Octavia asks.

“Right about there, yes.”

“And your parents allowed you to be out by yourself at that age!?”

Everyone quietly smiles, amused, knowing Robert as they do.

“They did,” Robert affirms, “they later told me they had trusted me to my own devices, as I was ‘so responsible.’  I guess I was_ they thought I was capable enough to be off on my own.  _And the Hill was a fairly-safe-place.  There was just the Whittier House and ours, and no other access to the Hill besides the road coming in off Route 1-91.  There were lots of deer and the occasional black bear I’d see.  And snakes, but my dad had made sure I knew to watch for them as I walked.  He had taken me for walks from I don’t know how young.”

“I’ve often thought that may have jumpstarted your fascination with the woods, and being out in them,” Vincent observes, rolling up some spaghetti noodles on his fork.

“Probably _And I know mom and dad were keeping an eye on me,” he assured Octavia.  “My father rendezvoused with me a number of times when I’d been gone ‘too long’ for their comfort, y’know?  He knew my haunts.  _When they wanted me ‘home for supper’ or something.”

“They were worried about you.”

“Hm_ ‘concerned’_ in the first year or so.  Not so much as I got older.  I mean, at first, I wouldn’t go very far away, but over the next couple years I got to exploring the entire Hill. 

Octavia reflects on this revelation, wishing she had had such ‘trustful leniency’ when she was growing up.

“And then the Fire_ which left us all alone on the Hill,” Robert laments, feeling the familiar sadness in his Heart again, “My hikes after that became melancholy.  I remember staying away from the burned-out house, I realized more fully later, so as to avoid getting sunk in all my memories of that wonder-filled place, which was no more.  It was then that I started writing a lot more poetry.  Odd how tragedy oft brings the Muse to your shoulder.”

There is a pause.  John takes a drink of hot tea – cream-and-sugared – then takes up the slack with a deep breath, affirming_ “It was after that dinner in ‘46 that we really became ‘the Four Friends’ for the first time.

“You bet,” Vincent heartily agrees.

“It sure was,” Lori Ann says with assurance.

“Tell me about that,” Octavia invites, working away at her second helping of steak-tips-and-onions, “What happened?”

“It started at that dinner_ Vincent and I,” Lori says, stirring, once again, her cauldron of memory, “wanted to get out by ourselves for a while.  Our parents were all having a good time talking with the Whittiers and we were drawn_ desiring to be togethered with John and Robert; as John said_ all through dinner, regretting having been seated so far apart.”

“I was drawn to John and Robert down there,” Vincent interjects, “‘what were they talking about?’ I kept wondering.”  After a short pause, he adds, “Dinner with your parents was never as good, at that age, you know, as being with your friends.”

Everyone smiles at the truism, Octavia remembering her own adolescent friends and their time together in a few brief flashes that were trying to say something to her, though she could not quite hear it.

“So Lori and I decided to go out somewhere together,’ Vincent continues. “We got up and made our way down the table, there asking John if he wanted to come along.”

“And I accepted.”

“And then Robert eagerly asked if he could tag along,” Vincent added.

“Brat!” John says, smiling and looking up at the ceiling. 

Robert breaks up laughing in recollection's joy, and says “Who ordered this nostalgia trip anyways?”

Everyone laughs, enjoying the ‘mock aggravation’ at going deep into memory’s troth.

“Oh, it’s my fault,” Octavia owns, smilingly apologetic.

“And we don’t mind,” John says, leaning out and around Lori Ann, looking with openness and respect at the querent. “It’s been a while since our interviews with Geoffrey ended_”

“About ten years,” the family historian estimates.

“_And I feel like_ talkin’ ‘bout these experiences agin is ‘wakenin’ me, somehow.”

“Re-awakening us,” Robert agrees, ‘to who we … are.”

“I’m so in memory-land,” Lori Ann acknowledges, “as I oft am when we recollect that time_ and it’s always revivifying; to be revisiting all these things all-over-again.”

“Just as we did in our interviews with Geoffrey,” Vincent recalls.

Just then Jimmy walks by and waves to John with a smile as he heads towards the exit with his brother, sister and father.  The mother, coming by a few seconds later, stops and, once her family is out of earshot, says sincerely, “Thank you so much for the autograph, he’s over the moon!  He loves trains, and your book is a treasure to him.”

“Glad to hear,” John says, and nods humbly.

“He would like the big hardback, but we couldn’t get to your table this afternoon, and_ it’s a little ‘much’ right now, you know?  Perhaps next week, though, okay?” she affirms apologetically with a smile.

“I totally understand_” John says with sympathy.  “I’ll be here.”

“So_ thank you again, and good evening, everyone,” the mother says gracefully, then walks away toward the exit.

“That was nice of her,” Vincent observes.

John then gets up and says, “I’ll be right back.”

“Where’s he going?” Geoffrey asks as John strides toward the main exit.

“You’ll see,” Lori Ann says with a glint of her eye.

The gathered-together ponder the mystery in their hearts, continuing eating in suspense, until John returns.

“You did, it, didn’t you,” Lori Ann gleams lovingly at her old friend.

“I did,” he admits, shrugging his old shoulders. “She said it would make her boy a great Christmas present.”

“Good man,” Robert says admiringly.

John reseats himself as the waiter brings another cart of carafes of hot tea to the table, replacing the empty ones.  “Anything else I can get for you?” the thin 17-year-old asks, to which those at table together reply that they have all they could possibly want.  There is a warmth of Heart in this observation, shared around the table, as they each realize it refers to more than just the waiter’s proffer.  They get refills of tea – noting the black-and-white image of one of the old steam engines on each mug -- and then, after a couple minutes of quiet eating, the conversation is reignited by a question.

“Well, what happened then?” Octavia asks. “Did you go out?”

“I asked Robert’s parents,” Lori Ann says, picking up the narrative thread, “if we could take Robert with us outside, and they said surely we could.  So we did!”

“We togged up good, as it was cold and snowy, and went out _into the gray post-Solstice night,” Vincent remembers poetically. “We started up the road towards Robert’s house, and it was lightly snowing.  Like a fine, cottony mist.  It was a crisp night.  Lori took my hand.”

“And Robert reached up and took mine,” John noted.

“I remember that,” the Poet says, “so vividly I can almost feel it.”

“You’re not holding my hand, Rob!” John jests playfully at his friend, wagging his finger at the man and smiling widely, at which everyone laughs freely, including Robert, who avers, as if he had been intending to grab the older man’s hand, “Okay, I won’t!”  _then reaches over and firmly shakes hands with his old friend.

After the good-hearted-laugher falls away, Vincent continues, “we all talked about god-knows-what_”

“The beauty of the woods,” Lori Ann suggests, “the world_ the War had just ended.  We reveled in the Yule and all the stories we knew from the Whittiers about the Season_ we were each immersed in the Magic of the Winter Solstice Season; celebrating it along with the Whittiers; how they imagined it, as we always did_ …  We didn’t have much_ my folks and I_ but I remember having received this beautiful dress that they said Saint Nicholas had brought for me_ for wearing to my Graduation Party in the Spring, and I told you all about it.  _That was in my journal!”

“You have a journal from those days?” Octavia asks, amazed.

“Sure_ I picked up that habit from the Whittiers; they all kept them, and still do_”

“True, we do,” Geoffrey affirms.

“You would occasionally see one of the family sitting somewhere around the house, relaxing after work or before breakfast, writing in one of those old black-covered, gum-bound volumes that were their journals.”

“Interesting,” Octavia says.  “Geoffrey has referred to that wonderful practice_”

“It’s where we got most of the ‘data’ to reconstruct our family’s history,” Geoffrey says.

“As a social historian, I’m always in favor of people keeping journals_ And I know all about the Yule – the ‘Thirteen Days,” she says, looking to Geoffrey, who confirms her knowing with a nod.  “_And the stories of Nicholas and the Elves_ and everything.”

“Great stuff_” John says.  “We were steeped in all that wondrous fantasy!”

“Yep, Nicholas and the Elves!” Vincent affirmed, almost childlike.  Then continuing, “And we talked about our lives, too_ that night, what we wanted to do, maybe,” Vincent suggested.  “Lori was close to graduating, as I would be in a couple years.’  Then, waxing lyrical, “But what I remember most was a sense of ‘connection’ to the woods in which we were being gathered more and more closely together, fir and hardwood trees all around us, silhouetted against the snowshine – as we moved away from the house and outbuildings around it _into the darkness; illuminated by the snowshine_ deepened by the sense of solitude_ in which we were all together and yet all alone_ even little Robert.”

“I was never ‘little,’” Robert protests playfully.

“Oh yes you were,” Lori avers, smiling as matter-of-fact as she could with a loving smile at her old ‘boy,’ as Vincent continues_

“I felt that feeling you only have when young, I think, of loving the people you are with.  And it was so quiet.  The snow falling.  _And then, as we passed on up by Robert’s house, we turned onto a path that led in the other direction_ up to the top of the Hill, where the old Henry Farm used to be back in the 19^th century.  The Whittiers kept it cleared; an open field – in the midst of which were the remnant stones of the foundation of the old farmhouse, standing-up out of the browned field-grass with the white glistening of snow over them_ as if to affirm that there had once been a place of human dwelling up there.”

“And there is again, isn’t there Geoffrey?” Octavia asks.

“Sure_ that’s where Allan Scott and his family built their house after the Reunion.”

“Of course,” Octavia now agrees, having seen it on one of her visits to Deer Hill.

“We stopped at the remains for a while,” Lori Ann avows.  “Robert was full of energy, walking around the old foundation – and standing up on one weathered stone after another.  We were all looking at everything as if with new eyes.”

“‘New eyes_’ Can you unpackage that?” Octavia asks.

“That’s just how I remember feeling_ that my eyes were ‘open;’ in a way they hadn’t been 'before,’ in my life.  There was something about sharing the experience with John and Robert, as well as Vincent_ that made me feel like I was awakening, somehow.  Does that make sense?  Vincent and I walked all-over together.  But being out with John and Robert too, was … made it ‘something else.’”

“I agree,” Vincent says, pondering the feeling in his sudden vivid re-living of it.

“I’ve reflected a lot on that walk over the years,” Robert then admits, “and I think for me – what made a difference – was in part the fact that you three were willing to have me with you, in addition to the beauty of the night being so poignant that I can almost still see the scene!  _As I sit here!  The snow, as Vincent said, so softly falling, and the stillness was … liberating?  To be out in the woods at night, with people I liked_ it was wonderful to me.”

“We could’ve sung ‘Silent Night,’” Lori offers her friends for consideration.

“Except that that would have broken the silence,” Robert solemnly notes.

“True,” Lori wholeheartedly agrees.

“Remember what happened next?” Vincent prompts his friends.

“A stag wandered into the field,” John then recounts for Ock, “and we froze!”

“Except for Robert,” Lori Ann notes.  “He stood up on the old cornerstones to get a higher vantage_ and actually waved, albeit cautiously_ at the Stag!”

“Ha!  Yes, he did!” Vincent concurs.

“I did, ‘cause I thought of the deer on Deer Hill as my friends; perhaps as ‘ancestors’ in an emergent, poetic sort of way.”

“Interesting,” Octavia says with a smile at the Poet.

“It was a huge male_ big hinds and those black eyes!” Lori recollects.

“It strode over toward us, cautious, but not aggressive.  It must have seen us_ four human silhouettes against the whited background?” Vincent suggests.

“It came quite close,” John recounts.  “Perhaps 15 feet away_”

“And it stood there with its huge black-orb eyes, and its tree-like rack, just looking at us!” Robert recollects, viscerally affected by the remembrance.

“We could feel its power,” Vincent avers, “_its heat_ its physical strength!”

“We all spoke to it, then, quietly,” Robert recollects, “after which it bowed its head a bit and then turned and strolled away, down in a direction toward my house!”

“What a neat encounter,” Octavia says, bemused.

“After this we left the heath and walked down a trail to the south, which took us through a thicker stretch of wood, out onto a road that led out to the ruins of an Old Mill, which had just burned a few days earlier.”

“That’s sad, why’d you all go down there, Vincent?”

“Someone had been killed there, I think, some years before.”

Eyes turn to Geoffrey, who says, “the miller, in 19-24.  He was killed, mauled, by some wild animal, and the mill apparatus was … ‘dislodged from its proper alignment,’ as I remember the ‘official report’ putting it.  The Mill never re-opened and then it burned in a fire accidentally set off by some hunters on the 20^th of December 19-46.  I have a poem about that_”

“Just days before we were there,” Vincent muses.

“You are the family historian,” John says appreciatively.

“Yep,” Geoffrey says, smiling acceptance of his fate.

“Hunters?” Octavia asks, looking at her colleague and friend for possible knowledge.

Actually_” Geoffrey confesses, “it was Ned Whittier and some others from the Whittier House.  They were out hunting a buck – for Christmas dinner – in the woods over beyond Thompkins Ridge – and had stopped at the ruined Mill to rest for a while before returning home; they had had no luck—they were empty-handed and tired.  Their oil-lantern got knocked over, a fire started, and quickly spread, raging out of control.  I’ve been told they stayed for hours watching it burn, only leaving and returning home when they were sure the fire was going to burn out.”

“We’d heard about the Mill,” Vincent says, “and as we were heading down that side of Deer Hill, we decided to go down and see it.  Well, you know how you are at that age?  We were curious.  It was ‘something to see.’”

“We’d also heard the story of the miller,” Lori Ann says gravely, “and there was a macabre attraction in that as well.  You know how fascinated young people can be with mortality, yes?  We told John what we knew about it as we walked down the old access road.”

“We talked about ghosts and other things, too,” Vincent remembers.

“Robert, do you remember this?”

“I remember going, Ock.  I remember the smell of the burned timber as we walked up to it, and the look of it, all black and charred, staring out from under the leaden white snow, but I don’t recall anything of the conversation these three had.  Though_ ten years later, I wrote a narrative poem, simply called “The Mill.”  It was a kind of ‘biography’ of a place; a human structure.  Kind of a Frostian thing_ I’m sure it was influenced – even inspired; subconsciously at least – by our experience that night.”

“You remember what happened?” John urges his friends cautiously.

“I do_” Vincent confirms.  “I was going to leave that out!”

“Please don’t,” Octavia says, wanting to hear the whole story.

“Let me tell it_” Lori Ann requests, and then takes up the tale, “As we approached the Mill, I thought I heard something off in the woods.  _But didn’t think too much of it. Another deer, maybe _but we’ll never know for sure_  We got to the Mill and stood in front of it, on the road, and then, more daring, walked right up to it.  We sojourned there for a while, didn’t we?  Smelling the cold boards of the ruined structure_ and the pungent scent of the burned matter, looking curiously at the rusted old iron-workings?  _Imagining the fire as well as the ‘killing’ from a time before our time.”

“A nearly bare skeleton of the place, it seemed,” Vincent posits.

“And the grinding-wheel, part of which was just visible under some of the fallen structure,” John says.  “And then that sound,” he says, wincing for a second, having a ‘sense memory’ of it.

“I do remember that_ and of being afraid_ me as well as you three,” Robert acknowledges.

“There was something ‘big’ and ‘alive’ inside the ruins,” Lori Ann posits.

“Dear god!” Octavia exclaims in sympathy.

“That’s what it seemed_ it got us freaked_” Vincent admits, “_we practically ‘jumped’ back away from the ruins, got to the road, and started walking away from the Mill and the un-earth-ly sounds coming out of it_ as stealthily as we could, without running_ hoping not to be heard_”

“Or attract attention to our flight!” Robert suggested, clearly feeling the effect of the experience, in the hearth of his soul-house, once again.

“Geoffrey,” Octavia suddenly noticed, “You’re shaking.”

 “I_ I’m a little chilly,” Geoffrey said.  “I’ll have s’more hot tea_ maybe that will warm me,” he says, reaching for the nearest carafe.

“It is a bit nippy in here,” John agrees, “with the air conditioning still blasting.”

Vincent then continues, “We hiked back toward Deer Hill and felt more or less ‘safe’ within a few minutes, though Lori, I think, continued to be spooked for a while.”

“I was.  I always think I remember having heard ‘chewing sounds,’ from within the ruins.”

“E-gad,” Geoffrey says, and laughs a bit nervously to diffuse his stress.

“Geoffrey,” Octavia queried, “do you know something we don’t_ about this?”

Geoffrey waves a protest against answering, then says, simply, “I just always found that place strange.  It long had a ‘haunted feel’ about it,” he deflects.  “I’ve written two poems about it_ you may have read one in the that draft I gave you of The Whittier Hearth?!”

“I did, now that you mention it.  That was about that place?”

“I heard something weird, too,” John adds.  “But I don’t know how ta’describe it.  Nevertheless, that experience led me t’goin’ back down there a couple’a’times and more_ at least once before the Fire and there were times after_ but not ‘til the 60’s, just amblin’ ‘round the Hill and its environs.  The place had a strange attraction to me, though I never had another weird experience there_”

“That new Mill – reconstructed and re-opened last year? – is that where this Mill was?”

“It is,” Geoffrey confirmed.  My cousin Stephen Morgan-Whittier and his family are the custodians, managers and ‘historical performers’ in the venture.  They’re going to run it as an operating ‘period’ Mill, actually grinding flour – on a small, contract basis – for local farmers and such.  They’re under the auspices of the Wickersfeld Historical Society.”

“I thought so when you were describing where it was.  I was just down there a week or two ago.  Wonderful place.  I met Stephen-Sheldon.  Charming man!  I love historical re-enactment places, too.” Octavia explains.

“Ahem,” Vincent says, behind his hand, “we have a waiter hovering.”

“Oh_ it’s almost closing, isn’t it?” Geoffrey discerns, looking to the young man.  “You need us to leave, don’t you?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind, in about fifteen minutes?”

As the gathered-together look around, they realize they are the last customers still seated.

The Manager, seeing the situation, comes to the table and says, “It may take us up to close-on-an-hour to completely clean and lock the doors_ it’s our first night_ so if you want to stay for a while, and talk, you may.  You seem involved in deep conversation.”

“Thank you,” John says appreciatively.  “We’ll try and be out-of-here way before that.”

“If Jed, here, can just clear your table.”

“Fer sure,” John offers.

“We’re not in the way?” Octavia asks.

“By no means,” the Manager assures and smiles at the honored guest and his friends.

The waiter starts clearing their plates and glasses and asks if they want another carafe or two of tea, to which they say that they would enjoy it if it’s no problem.  Jed tells them they will just have to dump it, if no one drinks it, at which explanation they gratefully accept the offer.

Jed goes and returns with the last two carafes of the fragrant beverage.  Vincent and Lori Ann take a bathroom break.  Jed then comes back to the table behind them, carrying a book.

“May I ask?” he queries, with adolescent hesitations, addressing John.

“Depends on what you want to ask,” John replies, smiling knowingly.

“I know it’s late, but could you autograph this copy of your book for me and my sister?  I couldn’t get to you outside the station, as I’ve been working since 10 AM this morning.”  He’s holding the first volume of Remembering the Wickersfeld Railroad.

“Sure, hand it over.”  John graciously takes the book from the young waiter’s hands and asks, “to whom?”

“Jed and Jessy, that’s j-e-s-s-y.”

“To Jed and Jessy,” he says as he writes the words on the fly page, scribbles a bit more, then signs it.”

“Thank you thank you,” the slim young man, now with brightened eyes, says.  “We’re both like, railfans, and we love your book!” He then offers a quick “good night” to all at the table, a bit abashed at his professed love, and retreats to the kitchen with his treasure.

 “How do you do it, John?” Vincent asks him with tongue-in-cheek aplomb, referring to John’s engagement with his newfound fans.

“Easy enough,” John smiles, “I guess_”

“Why don’t you give him the other two volumes?” Vincent suggests in wry appreciation.

“HHe may have the whole set. I dunno_ but by the sound and look’a’him, he comes from a well-heeled fam’ly.  They can afford it.  Jimmy’s parents can’t.”

Octavia gulps down the last of her tea and marvels a bit at John; wondering if she were that forthright_ to say what he said, so matter-of-factly.

Half-mugs of tea poured fresh all around, they turn reflective again, wondering what track their conversation might take from this wye.

“So that night was the beginning of your friendship,” Octavia prompts.

“It was,” Lori Ann confirms, after a moment.  “We’ve all agreed to that.”

"It's the touchstone  of our friendship," Vincent adds, "though we'd been becoming more and more acquainted in the year or two up to that night." 

“I see that,” Octavia understands.

 “_And then what a time we had over the next three years,” Vincent elates.  “I’ve never known anyone else like I’ve known these three.”

“Perhaps one doesn’t, normally?” Lori Ann reflects.  “As you get older, do people usually find themselves in such a ‘deep current’ with new friends?  I don’t know.”

“There are people,” Octavia says, “who meet up with their soul-mates in middle- and even old- age.”

“I suppose_” Lori Ann allows, though knowing it has not happened to herself.  

“It was that slice of time that made me a Poet, I believe,” Robert avows.

“Really?”

“Yes, for real.  When I think back over the best of my poems, Ock, most of them seem to be struggling-with or reveling-in something from that brief period, from 19-45 to 19-49.  Themes.  Touchstones.  Characters.  _I tend to think my vocation was born out of the contrast; the juxtaposition—of those wonderful four or five years and then the tragedy of the Fire and what happened to us – to me – afterwards.  You know?  Trying to hold-on to the dream that was us,” gesturing to his three friends, “enduring the years of forgetfulness_ if that's what you can call it_ that we went through afterwards.  Not really knowing why.  Not really accepting, either_ but not able to do anything about it.  Somewhere, in that vortex, I was ‘born again’ as a Poet.”

“After hearing that, I’m going to have to re-read your books, Robert.”

The Poet smiles appreciatively in surrender to the professor’s intended aspiration.

After a moment, Vincent offers, “The stories we could tell you about those three years, Ock.”

“I would love to hear some!”

“Geoffrey’s gunna write all-about-it,” John says admiringly.  “Those years; our bein’ friends.”

“Oh_ he is?” Octavia says, looking to her colleague with appreciation.

“In the next – hopefully last – edition of The Whittier Hearth, which I’m working on right now.”

“I have the 3^rd edition, from_ ‘85, don’t I?”

“You do, though the story of the Four Friends isn’t really there, yet.  They’re mentioned, but there’ll be a whole ‘part’ in this next edition dealing with their experiences.  A lot of the Yule stories from 1948 are about them, because of their role in our family’s celebrations that year.”

“We’re gunna be enshrined,” John exclaims playfully, full of a genuine pride.

“You bet!” Geoffrey warmly avers.

“But those stories will all be about what went on during the Yule, won’t they?” Octavia questions.

“Yes, just during the Yule,” Geoffrey agrees.

“There are lots of stories we could tell that happened outside of that poetic, mystical season,” Robert reflects.  “And Geoffrey, you don’t have many of those recorded, I know.”

“Any you can tell me?” Octavia asks.

“Sure,” Vincent asserts.

“While we grew together as friends around the ‘Whittier Hearth;’ symbolically as well as actually,” the Poet affirms, “we wandered far and near, getting to know one another.”

“Far and near?” Octavia asks, musing the expression.

“There were our campin’s-out, right?” John prompts his friends.

“Yep_ and there were the hikes we took over on Laurel Ridge and up on Bear Ridge,” Vincent adds.

“What about hanging out at the Christmas Tree Farm where Robert’s folks worked?”

“O yeah_” Robert exclaims, “that was so cool.”

“So_ tell me about some of these things, and how you ‘grew into friendship’ through them?” Octavia asks.

“If you really want to hear?” Lori Ann asks.

“I assure you I do!  _Where and when did you camp-out?”

“At first, probably in late summer of ‘47_” Vincent begins, “we got hold of a small tent and some old blankets and stuff – from a Surplus store in town – and went up atop Deer Hill – to the old Henry Farm property, where we’d seen the Stag that night? – and spent the night together.  What I remember about that first camping-out was the wondrous smell of the fields and woods_ and sitting around a little fire we built, talking about everything.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know_ spilling your life stories with friends who are spilling theirs as well.  We’d done some of that at the Whittier House, and over the course of the Spring, here and there_ but out there—up there—on our lonesome_ we felt free to just open-up, I guess.”

“We had the time_” Lori Ann says, “and we used it, to get to really know one another.”

“I remember that camp-out so well,” John says.

“You’re never freer than when you’re known by someone else,” Lori Ann opines.  “Really known; not the surfaces but the real, deep, inner-you.”

“I remember that first camping trip a little differently,” Robert says.  “I recollect hearing you all talking about your lives; I don’t know how much I comprehended, being almost 9_ but I felt like I ‘belonged’ with you three.  I remember it was a full moon that night!”

“That’s right!” Vincent remembers.

“We chose a full moon night to go camping,” Robert continues, “and I’d never been up there at night on my own.  I think I remembered the stag from our hike back in December, and I think we went walking in the woods before we lay down to go to sleep in our little tent.  It was Army surplus, wasn’t it?”

“Military, fer sure,” John says, “but I don’t ‘member what branch it came from.”

“It took forever to unpack it from that heavy canvas bag it was in,” Lori remembered.

“We had blankets, rather than anything like ‘sleeping bags,’ back in those days?” Vincent puts out for renewed confirmation.

“We did_ that’s right,” John says.

“I remember sitting by the fire,” Robert continues, “feeling really like I ‘belonged’ there_ as I later thought of it_ and there was this Praying Mantis looking at me_”

“Ha!  You remember that?” Octavia asks.

“Yes, its vividly impressed upon my mind’s tablet!  It was perched on the stalk of a Milkweed I think, just at the edge of our little fire circle.  _I used to reconnoiter that image, after the Fire and before our Reunion, and didn’t know where it came from.  Then, Lori told me one time – a few years ago, that it happened on that first camp-out.”

“I had written about it in my journal,” Lori Ann confesses, “And when I came across the account, I told Rob, as he’d mentioned it a couple times when we were talking about those days.”

“Amazing_” Octavia says.  “Was there anything else in your journal about that night?”

“_Not that I can remember off-hand,” Lori Ann admits, “but now I think I’ll get it out again.”

Her friends affirm her intention, wondering what stories might come from it.

“Remember that time we camped over on Thompkins’ Ridge?” Vincent asks.

“I do!” Lori Ann says in a slightly ominous tone.

“So do I,” Robert avers.  “After that, I started hiking over there myself.  My folks trusted me, but I don’t know what they would have thought of me leaving the Hill on my hikes; alone—at that age.  _I didn’t tell them,” the Poet says, shyly admitting it.

“Was that the time…?” Lori Ann asks, reaching for the memory.

“The time, what?” John prompts.

“No_ nothing.  I can’t catch sight of it_.”

“Someone walked through our camp,” Vincent then tells Octavia.  “I think that’s what she’s struggling toward remembering.”

“O great scott!” Lori Ann then exclaimed.  “You’re right_ someone came upon us in the night and stood right in our midst!  We feigned being asleep.  He_ I think it was a man_ stood near our fire pit; the fire had smoldered down to warm, red ash.  He had heavy boots on.  He didn’t say anything_ just turned and looked at each of us_ and then walked away.  _I feigned being asleep_ but kept one eye open to peer out under the edge of my blanket.”

“A lot of strange things have happened around you guys,” Octavia observes.

“Too true,” the old schoolteacher agrees.  “I mean_ remember what happened out at the burned-out Old House, that night, on our ‘famous walk?’”

“I know,” Octavia says, “I’ve read Geoffrey’s story.”

“’The Four-Fold Remembrance,’” John recites the title with fondness.

“There was a gunshot, just as we left the old house property and got back up on the tracks,” Lori Ann couldn’t help recounting, with a slight nervous laugh.

“But things like that didn’t happen but once in a while,” Vincent affirms with confidence, looking Lori softly in the eye for agreement.

“No, you’re right,” Lori Ann agrees.

“Most of the time it was just wonderful to be out somewhere with the three of you; hiking or fishing or camping_ going into town for one thing or another,” Vincent affirms.

“There were lots of nights we spent camping-out over the next couple years,” Robert remembered.  “There were also the couple times you-all came out to the Christmas Tree Farm_ met me there.  _I’d invited them,” he says to Octavia.

“Because you had to ‘work.’” John said.

“I was just doing little things, Ock!”

“That’s okay_ I know you’re not saying the Whittiers were forcing an 8-10-year-old-kid into hard labour!”

“Ha!  No!  I was ‘in training,’ though, you could say _doing things around the office or learning to trim trees.  _All at my own speed; according to my own volition.”

“You were trimming!?”

“I and my father and maybe one of the Whittiers.  I mean_ I carried clippers or ‘helped’ push the wheelbarrow in which we kept bigger tools.  They would reach the higher branches of the trees, and I was trained how to go around the bottom and ‘edge’ it_ so the branches hung well_ in the ‘right shape’_ once they were cut for sale.”

“I see.”

“John often came with me, and dad would show him how to do things, like ‘tip and prune,’ as the expression was,” Robert explained.

“Vincent and I helped in other ways,” Lori Ann recollects.  “I set-up merchandise in the shoppe and washed windows, and Vincent volunteered to mow some of the tree fields.”

“I think I spent three or more hours doing that one time!”

“And then we all got together at supper time, cleaned up ‘n’ shared the eve’nen meal with Huson an’ Morganna, there at the office,” John concludes.

“Doing things together helps bring people’s souls into sympathy,” Robert avows.  “I remember that day well_ working alongside both John and my father.  After that day, when we were together at the Whittier House, I felt like there was something ‘different’ about us.  Looking back, I think it was getting to know one another by how we did things together and how we worked together_ and not against one another, as so many people fall into doing.”

“It was a time for growing_” Vincent begins.

“Growing up!” Robert interjects.

“_and Together,” Vincent urges.  “That’s what our friendship is about for me.  We grew together; and there was so much hope_ such hope_ we felt the world was open to us, and we shared our dreams and passions and wanted to participate in each other’s lives so fully.”

“We reveled in one another,” John asserts boldly.

“Though I was just a boy,” Robert continues, “I was drawn, in the best possible ways, to spend time with these friends of mine, Ock.  I knew other kids at school and did things with them, and I had a great friend when I was nine – a boy named Alan – and we played together a lot.  But when it came to getting together with Lori Ann, Vincent and John, there was a different ‘vibe’ there.  And while I would never have neglected my school-age friends, our friendship took me strides beyond where I was with Alan and others.”

“How long did you remain friends with Alan or any other of your ‘same-age’ friends?”

“Into Middle School and even after High School, I think.  _Alan ended up being a pilot.”

“Commercial or Military?” Octavia asked.

“Commercial,” Robert affirms.  “I still hear from him occasionally.  He married bad the first time and then married again later, and their kids are now in college.  They settled down in Hawaii about ten years ago.”

“Hm, so he flies the Pacific routes,” Octavia surmises.

“Yep_ back and forth in both directions, to Japan and to California, and other places.”

“Do you ever see him?”

“Nope_ haven’t since the mid-sixties, but we try to keep in-touch.”

“Like so many people,” Octavia laments.  “You lose track of each other_ the world pulls us apart.”

“As it did us,” Robert sadly confesses, referring to his three friends at table with him.

“For thirty years,” Lori Ann reflects in deep sympathy.

“How would you characterize those last three years before the Fire?” Octavia asks.

“Like a cornucopia of touchstones of who we now are,” Robert says.

“As a Garden to which I oft return,” Lori Ann says.

“As the best days of our lives,” John says, “until the Whittier Reunion.  Life’s been gettin’ better ever since!”

“_All those things,” Vincent says.  “And more.  It was not just about the experiences we had – camping, hiking, hanging out at the Whittier House – it was about the intimacy; the growing mutual respect and being able to walk into adulthood with people you cared about_ and who cared about you.  Of course, our families cared about us_”

“Speak for yourself,” John gently interrupted.

“Well at least for Robert and I?”

“True enough for me as well,” Lori Ann says.  “I would say my family cared for me as well as they could.  But they had their troubles, of course, financial and personal, and so I was often on-my­-own even when at home with mum and dad.”

“Do you remember that ‘cabin’ we found one time, over on Bear Ridge?” Vincent prompted.

“Yep, I do,” Lori Ann affirms.  “That was the next Spring, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Robert affirms.

“We were out on one of our first walks since the snow melted, right?” John asked.

“I think so,” Vincent allows.  “It was March.  I remember those yellow flowers we saw, and how Robert told us they were not Dandelions, but_ Coltsfeet?”

“They are.  Dandelions bloom in the late Spring and into Summer,” the Poet confirms.

“That’s right_” Vincent says.  “Every March when I see them, right around the Equinox, I think of that hike.  _And others like it.”

“What about a cabin?”

“Well,” Lori Ann began, “we had gone down along a side-ridge we had rarely explored and it turned in a way that did not take us back to where we intended to be!”

“To where we’d parked,” John clarifies, expressive of the frustration he’d felt.

“John was our chauffer,” Vincent smiles, remembering.

“I was_,” John acknowledges with a certain pride in the recollection.

“And as we were walking this small, not-very-oft-trodden foot-trail,” Vincent continues, “we came out along the ridge eastward and then northward again_ I know because I’ve often walked that way in recent years_ and there we saw, perched across a small ravine with a little crick running down out of it, an A-frame cabin.”

“We could’ve walked right off the edge of that little ravine!” John exclaimed, remembering, “it blent’s’well into the far-side_ if you weren’t watchin’ closely.”

“And there was a large, old tree, hanging onto the edge of the ravine where we came up on it,” Lori Ann added.

“Yep!_” Vincent agreed and then continued, “We were curious as to where we were on the ridge and thought if anyone was ‘at home’ at that cabin they might tell us the way back to town_ and to John’s old car!  Well, we got to the cabin, and before we even got close, we knew it was abandoned.”

“Unfortunate for you,” Octavia observed.

“But there was this little access road,” Vincent continues, “a-bit grown-up, leading away from the cabin_ and we decided to take it, as we reckoned it led in the general direction back toward town.  It did _and we came out of the woods about half-an-hour later by a lodge where there were people living and_ walking down their long driveway, we came out on Maple Avenue Extension!  _To the west of town!”

“I know where that street is,” Octavia acknowledges.

“Well_ we walked back up that street_ from there and got over on Willow_ to the street up where you head to the woods_ on one of the hooves of Bear Ridge!” Vincent finishes.

“That’s where we’d parked,’ John says.

“Was it just some old hunting cabin, or summer place?”

“Perhaps, Ock,” Robert allows.  “And it may have belonged to the family at the house down on Maple, we thought_ but the strangest thing is, we’ve never been able to find it again!”

“O you’re kidding me!”

“Nope,’” Lori Ann affirmed.

“I walked all-over Bear Ridge,” Vincent explains, “back in those days, and even_ I remember_ taken the path onto which we got misdirected that day_ and still I could not even find the ravine with the little crick running down through it, much less the A-frame!”

“I talked once with the folks at that house we passed,” John explains, “a few years later.  They were new residents; a young family_ and they told me they didn’t know of any ‘A-Frame’ up in the woods!”

“It had to have been there!” Robert says, perplexed.  “It didn’t just vanish.”

"Best explanation," Octavia offered, "is that the owners had it torn down?"

“Could’ve been,” Vincent allowed.

 “Once, after the Reunion, I walked up that way, the way we came down,” John confesses, “but the old, by then overgrown, road just veered off along the creek, though it did lead into a little ravine_  Yet I saw no cabin up above it.”

“I remember details from the A-frame,” Lori Ann says, “there were chairs stacked up along one wall, some kind of light fixture hanging from the top of the A-frame down into what might have been a general ‘living room.’  There was a picture on the back wall inside; I thought it was of President Roosevelt.”

“You looked in?”

“The front of it was all glass,” John explains.

“We held our hand cupped to the glass to see in_ to make sure no one was around,” Vincent explained. “_Of course we did; we were just curious kids, right?”

“Hm_ now I’m curious,” Octavia says.  “I’m going to go out and try to find it!"  The friends all smile, appreciative at having someone else interested in ‘the mystery of the lost A-Frame.’  “Always something strange with these ‘experiences’ you four have had,” Octavia observes.

“Not really,” Robert counters.  “We had plenty of walks in the woods, plenty of experiences, but without the ‘unusual’ element or something beautiful or sublime or significant in what happened, those experiences don’t stand out as much.”

“There’s no ‘story,’” Octavia agrees.  “_I understand.”

“As I think_ it was Longinus who said,” Robert continues, “That it is the unusual that always excites our wonder or our awe, raising us to the spiritual level of awareness.”

“Or the mystical,” Geoffrey adds.

“Or the mystical,” Robert agrees, affirming.

“This idea always reminds me of what Wordsworth called ‘Spots of Time,’” Lori Ann says.

“What’s that?” Octavia asks, curious.

“They were key moments in the history of his imagination’s development; ‘spots’ in his life that stood out as ‘root stock’ – I would call it – on which to build interpretations of his life, as well as his understanding of himself as a Poet.”

“So_ you’re saying these experiences you are relating to me are your ‘spots of time?’”

After a few moments of quiet reflection, Robert says, “That’s very interesting, Ock!  Lori, I love Wordsworth, as I know you do, but I had not thought to connect our ‘touchstone experiences’ with his ‘spots.’  I’ll have to think about that!”

Lori Ann nods to the Poet, smiling.

“I like that,” John then muses, “’spots of time.’”

“They are especially mentioned in The Prelude,” Lori Ann offers.

“Hm_ maybe I’ll have to try reading that one?” John says with a certain cautious anticipation.

“So_ when an interlocutor – someone I’m interviewing – says, ‘I remember…’ or ‘that reminds me of when…’” Octavia thinks out loud, “perhaps they are all recalling these_ their own_ ‘spots of time’?”

“Some might be,” Robert says.  “Of course, tragic and horrible experiences we have had also stand out_ because of the trauma they cause.  And those might be ‘spots of time’ in Wordsworth’s sense, but I wouldn’t want to lump every potent remembered experience related by someone as under that ‘term.’  _I don’t think so, at least.  Most of our experiences, I doubt, would actually function as ‘spots’ in William’s ‘technical’ sense.  Ha_ if he had one!  Most of ours are moments of ‘the unusual’_ moments that stand out from the background of the ordinary.”

“They help to make us what we are_” Octavia says, hoping to be in-agreement with the Poet.  “At least, as we remember them, they help us define who we are_ either for or against the experiences.”

Robert muses for a moment, and then agrees, “Probably_ something like that_ pretty close at least!”

After a brief pause for thought and a last drink of their tea, another recollection comes to the fore_ as if from a dream.

“Do you remember that time we were fishing,” Vincent prompts, “down along Willow Creek below Sommerston somewhere_ where the creek is wider and deeper than it is where it flows by Deer Hill?”

“Which time?” John asks.  “We were down there quite often, as I remember.”

“The time we saw that huge trout?”

“Yep!” Lori Ann avows, her memory scroll unrolling to the event.

“It was huge!” Robert then recollects.

“Bigger than any I’d ever seen,” John says, musing in his mind.

“Did you catch it?” Octavia asks.

“No,” John says in their defense.  “We’d all bin fishin’ and caught a few smaller fish, which we were then gonna clean and cook_ intendin’t’stay there together inta’the night.  We then heard, in a deeper pool formed by the current in the rock-bed of the creek – just up the way from where we’d been casting – something’ splashin’ about_ and so we went up_ what was making that sound? It was a trout 'bout two-and-a-half feet long_ and it was caught in the current in that wide pool.  It couldn’t seem to get up over the edge’f it and back into the flow of the stream below.”

“We all pulled our hooks out of the water, set our poles aside and went up to that higher pool,” Lori Ann explains.  “Vincent was the one who saw it first and he was astounded by its size!”

“I was,” Vincent confirmed.

“We walked over to where it was stuck swimming,” Robert recollects, “‘round and ‘round_ that pool was probably a good ten feet long, three or four feet or so wide and I’d guess about a couple deep_ or more?”

“Water was coming in at the upstream end,” John explains. “And the nature of the pool was that the water rushed around in it_ carrying that trout up and down and around_  then spilling out at the bottom end.  Too shallow for the huge fish to cross-over.  It was almost amusing to watch.”

“How did it even get in there?” Octavia muses.

“I felt bad for it,” Vincent said.

“As did I,” John concurs.  “We could’ve just picked it up and took it back to our campfire an’ate it.  But we didn’t.  _It didn’t seem like t’would be a ‘fair’ catch.”

“Speaking of the mystical,” Geoffrey prompts.

“O yes,” Robert agrees, “it was a ‘moment.’  We stood there watching it and ‘felt’ that it was watching us.  We anthropomorphized it_ y’know?  _Making it seem ‘human’_”

“Like it was beseeching us to help it,” Lori Ann interjects.

“But how’d it get there?” Octavia mused, almost to herself.

“We were ‘communing’ with it_” Robert continued, searching for the right words to describe the experience, “if that’s not too strong a way to put it.  I of course now think of the old Celtic stories about trout – or was it salmon? – as conveyors of wisdom_ that if you held one up to your ear and listened_ it would whisper wise things to you!  _A mystical communion to be sure_ But I didn’t know the story of Ceridwen and Gwion at that time.  We did, however, I believe_ enter into a kind of mystic state.”

“It was really neat!” Vincent says.  “It was like_ like_ we were becoming ‘one’ with the trout_ with each other?”

Everyone laughs, touched by Vincent’s enthusiastic description.

“But I mean_ isn’t that like what we said at the time?”

“Not at all, Vincent,” Robert recollected sympathetically.

“I think we have reflected on that experience in recent years,” Lori Ann suggests, “resourcing it in what we know now_ about myth and the mystical element in life.”

“You’re probably right,” Vincent allows.  “I am reading a more recent recollection into an earlier ‘moment’ of the unusual.  The Pool of Segais, and all that!”

“I would say,” Robert tried again, “that we entered a state of ‘suspension.’  None of us said a thing.  We quieted down and watched the trout being propelled ‘round and around that pool by the current. The sounds of Nature_ all about us_ became ‘loud’ in comparison with our stillness.”

“What did you do?” Octavia asks.

“What happened is we eventually decided to pick the big’ole fella up,” John explained, “and hoist’im into the main flow of the stream below the pool!”

“Did you?”

“Yep, we did,” Vincent says.  “But not after standing around that pool_ watching it for like_ at least_ half-an-hour?  And it was the strangest feeling_ touching that large of’a trout after having – I’ll say it again! – ‘communed’ with it.”

“You’re all laughing at that word,” Octavia says, a bit amused.

“We are, but we shouldn’t,” John cautions.  “We all felt ‘something’ that evening.”

“It was an unusual encounter,” Robert avers.  “I think we’re laughing at the idea of ‘communing’ with the fish as it doesn’t do justice to what we felt.”

“It was almost ‘alien,’” Lori Ann suggests.

“Howso?”

“I think we rarely realize how strange Nature is, Ock,” Lori Ann says, “_how unique other creatures are_ and so unlike us.”

“Yeah,” Octavia says, “I get that.”

“That gigantic trout was just_” Vincent says, grasping at words, “Beautiful_ strange, ‘other,’ _yeah I like that, Lori!  _an ‘alien’ being.”

“It was ‘not us,’” Robert avers.  “And though we’d fished and caught many Bass and Trout and Catfish, among another things_  We didn’t want to just take it and eat it_”

“We ‘respected’ it’s ‘existing,’ somehow, no matter how that sounds,” John posed.

“I think I understand.” Octavia says.  “Nature is so often ‘normalized_’ as part of the ordinary background of our experience.  It’s always ‘there,’ and so we don’t ‘notice’ it.”

“Right,” Robert agrees, smiling.

“And then something ‘stands out’ from the background – jolting us out of the ordinary – and we see it as it is, as if for the first time.  _And it’s damn strange!  That’s what happened between you and that trout, I bet!” Octavia suggests.

“It wasn’t something in the creek for us to catch,” Vincent then avows, feeling his way toward a revelation, “but as it was in an unexpected place_ we interacted with it differently.  Would you say?”

“That’s close to it, I guess,” Robert says and nods, “and the mystical element is there; we experienced the Mystery of What-Is in that one creature.”

“I love experiences like that,” Octavia exclaims. “What happened to it after you hoisted it into the stream?”

“It just swam quickly downstream_" Lori relates, "going past the place where we’d been fishing.”

“Interesting,” Octavia muses, still wondering how the fish had gotten into that pool in the first place.

 At this point they see the Manager coming, supplicating towards them, and Geoffrey says before the Manager can address them, “I guess it’s time to leave now?”

“Thank you, yes.  It didn’t take as long as I’d thought_ We’re going to lock up.”

“It was a wonderful feed,” John affirms, standing up, his friends all agreeing verbally and getting up from their seats as well.

“Glad to hear it!  It’s our first night!” the Manager states again, reveling in the fact.

As everyone stretches, readying themselves to leave, John slips a twenty under one of the carafes and points to it, to which the Manager says, “Jed's gone home, but I’ll make sure he gets that!”

“Thanks!” the retired engineer says.

The Manager puts the carafes and mugs on a cart sitting nearby and starts wheeling it back to the kitchen as the gathered-together – beginning to depart from their table – say their 'good nights' to another young waiter standing nearby.  “Good night,” he replies, smiling; as pleased as surprised to have been spoken to.

Moving toward the doors by which they entered, Vincent says, “this was great.  I’m sorry it has to end so soon.”

“I’m so elated,” Lori Ann says.  “I’m so on.”

“Is there somewhere we could go to continue talking?” Octavia proffers, in case there was a chance of continued togetherness.

“Hm_ Are we up for being up late?” Vincent hesitantly hints, vibrant in anticipation.

“I am,” Lori Ann affirms, John and Robert asserting their agreement as well.

“How about you all coming out to my place, then,” Robert offers.  “John, you don’t have to drive back to the Merchantman to-night, do you?  You can sleep-over at my house.”

“Thanks, man_ I don’t think I could drive all that way at this hour.  This has been an exhaustin’day.”

“Sheldon and Veronica’s kids are with them, and my mother’s a sound sleeper,” Robert avers, then turning to Geoffrey and Octavia.

“Thanks for the offer, Robert,” Geoffrey says, and then to Octavia, “how about it?  Do you want you go out to Robert’s?”

“Sure_ we’re out of semester and I’m eager to hear more of your tales!”

“Let’s go, then,” Vincent says.

“It’s just out beyond the railroad tunnel north of town, you know where that is, right?  _Off the Tannersville Road,” Robert directs Octavia and Geoffrey as his three oldest friends get to their cars; the last cars remaining in the pole-light-lit WRR parking area.  “Follow me!”