Act II - At Robert Werner's House

Setting: Robert Werner’s house, 31 May 1992; 9:15 PM

Scene: The gathered-together have all just arrived at the Poet’s house.  After a long and winding half-mile ride on the lane in from the Tannersville Road north of Wickersfeld they saw the house – familiar to all but Octavia – a modest split-level stone-and-wood structure ensconced in the wooded embrace of the surrounding hill.  The walls of each level are half shingled-pine and half floor-to-ceiling six-foot-wide glass panels, double-paned, providing those in the house with an open view of the woods at regular vantage-points.  Robert is the first to get out of his car.

“Here we are,” the Poet says as his guests emerge from their cars in the comforting dusking of the day.  The silence of the twilit surroundings – punctuated by the sounds of insects and various animals – embraces them warmly.

“Interesting house,” Octavia quietly comments to Geoffrey as she emerges from his car, “so part of the landscape.”

“I always think it appears to ‘emerge’ out of the hillside behind it,” Vincent observes as he comes up to stand by Octavia, “whenever I’m here.”

“Yes_,” Octavia allows, “I feel it.  _it is in communion with the landscape.”

“_'Rustic Modern,’ I think Robert calls it,” Geoffrey says to Octavia as they start to move together toward the front door, Lori Ann and John following behind them, enjoying the dimly lit scenery.

“C’mon in,” Robert quietly invites, pleased his guests like his place-of-dwelling in Earth & Spirit.  For Octavia, the newcomer, he explains as she comes to the concrete portico, “The house was built in the late 40’s and is in a ‘modern style.’  Sort of Wright, but nowhere near as artfully-designed.  I got it for a steal back in 19-73, as few people want to live this far ‘off the beaten trail.’”

“It is so secluded,” Octavia observes as she and Geoffrey come up to the door, enjoying its peace-of-place.  “The setting has an intimacy about it_ The road coming in, Robert, if you didn’t know it led to a house, you might think was just an old, abandoned country lane or field-side track.”

“I keep it like that hoping people won’t venture too far up it.  The only gate is right here at the entrance to the driveway, but I rarely lock it.”

Once inside, Robert turns on some low-lighting – using a switch by the coat rack – and then quietly offers drinks to which the gathered-together gladly acquiesce.

As their host goes to the kitchen for beers and wine, his three oldest friends show Octavia around the big open room in which they find themselves, admiring the artwork on the walls between the floor-to-ceiling windows which are now growing opaque against the fading light outside.  Through one door they point out the Poet’s library – stuffed bookshelves along every wall – and through another they see a smaller room with four deck chairs and two lounge chairs oriented toward the dark, un-curtained windows.  “Must be a great place to relax and observe Nature,” Octavia observes with an appreciative sigh, looking to Geoffrey as if to say, ‘would that we could relax here sometime, together, or in a place like this.’

Robert returns with a bottle of red wine and glasses on a tray, then goes back to the kitchen for an eight-pack of dark beer.  On his return, he asks his friends to all just ‘help themselves,’ which they do, as their host beams to Octavia about the art on his walls.  “It’s all by local and regional artists,” he says quietly with a certain pride.  “I’m a ‘local’ writer, and I know how hard it is to make it; to stay afloat—and get your work out there.”

As they move to get seated on the old ‘70’s style ‘wood-frame and cushion’ chairs and sofa arranged in a square in the middle of the open room, surrounding a rectangular wooden table, a voice is heard from the top of the stairs leading to the second level.

“Rob, is that you?” she whispers.

Robert strides to the foot of the stairs and assures his mother that it is and that he has guests.  He says he hopes she won’t be disturbed.  Everyone hears her answer her son, saying “No, of course not_ but you know sometimes Karl or Kevin will come in unexpected.”  And then, in a louder voice, “Hello down there_” to which the gathered all reply in kind from the main room.   “I wish I could come down and meet you, but I’m attired for bed.”

Lori Ann, stepping over to the foot of the stairs, says ‘hello’ to Mrs. Werner.  “Oh, so good to see you,” Evelyn replies with a smile, and then says, feeling tired, “Well, have a good night_ I’ll be back to bed now.”

“Okay mother,” Robert says, “see you in the morning.” 

“Good night, Evelyn,” Lori Ann bids.

 “Okay, now where were we?” Robert asks as he and Lori Ann re-enter the main room.

“We were talking about your family and other friends you had.  You were tantalizing me with stories about your emerging friendship over the next three years, after that Christmas dinner in ’46.”

“So we were,” John says, reflectively.

“I’m still thinking about the nature of this friendship you four have_ if you don’t mind,” Octavia says with a respectful nod and smile toward the four with whom she is in-company, now at the Poet’s house.

“Don’t mind at all,” Robert avows.  “Please, everyone, be seated!”

“I’m gunna sit here,” John says, seating himself with some relief in an old lived-in recliner, seeming very tired.  “This is a nice, big, comfy kind’a chair.”

“Ha!  That’s my favorite, John_ and you know it!  _You’re welcome to it.”

“Need some rest for my ‘old bones’_.”

With his friends’ sympathy, the conversation then resumes, Vincent prompting, “Where do you want us to go next?” _intrigued at being interviewed in such a personal way, oddly feeling he is asking Octavia the kind of question he used to ask Geoffrey during their interviews.

“Well_ could you tell me more about what happened after that first dinner and hike in ‘46?” Octavia suggests.  “I feel like we may have left that turning-point too quickly?”

“What happened_ is that we became ‘four,’” Robert suggests, thoughtfully reflecting.  “I don’t know how else to say it.”

“I’d agree_ we ‘changed’ – our relationship did – after that night,” Vincent agrees.  “We were all friends; then—all four of us.  I remember feeling ‘lucky’ somehow that we were so ‘togethered’ – to use another of Robert’s favorite words.”

“Through the rest of that season,” Robert then begins to recount, “there were walks and talks, as we’ve said.  … I remember us going up to the Iron Bridge once in the days after Christmas.  The four of us rendezvoused there_ that was our second walk, if I’m right_  The tracks were snowy and a bit icy, even before that storm?”

“That was quite a day!” John says.  “I’d walked out the tracks to meet up with you all there_ it was that day we’re talkin’ ‘bout, right?”

“I think so, John,” Vincent confirms.

“At the Bridge, yes,” Lori Ann confirms.  “We – Vincent and I – were at the Whittier House, and Robert was playing in the yard with some of the kids_ making ‘snow people.’”

“Gosh, do I ever really remember that?” Vincent muses.

“I do,” Robert allows, warming-up to the familiar story.  “I have a picture of it.”

“You do?!” Vincent responds with an obvious desire to see it as Robert nods affirmation, saying, “I don’t know who took it.”

“We had called John on the Whittiers’ new-fangled tele-phone – hah! – to ask if he wanted to get together,” Lori Ann continued, “and he said he did – he was at the railroad station – but he had no way to get out to Deer Hill.  So we told him we’d meet him at the Iron Trestle, if he wanted to walk down, and he did.  It was about two-and-a-half miles for him; a mile or so for us.  _We gathered Robert to our expedition and started hoofing it up the tracks.

“I remember feeling ‘closer’ to the two of you, and holding Vincent’s hand_ I think?”

“Just so,” Vincent acknowledges fondly, vividly recollecting Robert again as a boy.

“I gladly walked down,” John says, “glad as usual t’be in in’comp’ny with my friends!  And what an unexpected experience we had!”

“What happened this time?” Octavia asked, eager to know.

“While at the trestle, we witnessed what turned out to be a huge ‘Bluster’ that was coming in from the west,” John recollects, “and we stayed ‘til it’was on us!  There were these huge clouds – like sailing bulkheads; dark and gray – scudding towards us, seeming very fast.  And as the storm got closer, we could see the swirlin’f snow beneath’em.”

“You stayed at the bridge?” Octavia asks.

“On it_ we did!” Lori Ann avers.  “There was no time to get back to the Hill_  And we were mesmerized by the sight of that storm coming, I think.  I’d never seen anything like it!”

“I was a bit afraid, I remember,” Robert reflects.

“It was terrible-strong,” John remembers, “the wind was wild an’vicious; powerful ‘nough we had to hold onto the girders’a the bridge to keep from bein’ blown about.  It gusted in strong eddies_ and the snow nearly blinded us ‘til the storm passed!  _Which took a few minutes!”

“We were yelling into the force of the wind,” Lori Ann professes, feeling the thrill again.

“I remember Vincent picking me up_ and I clung to him_” Robert adds.  “_And there’s another sense memory!”

“What of?” Vincent asks, anticipating.

“_Your ‘aftershave, maybe?  And your hair in my face!”

“You don’t say,” Vincent smiles, trying to remember if he even wore ‘after-shave’ at that time in his life.

“You’re very sense-oriented, Robert.”

“I am, Ock_”

“Though I could have adduced that from your poetry!” she admits.

“We were exhilarated!” Vincent then says auguring back in time.

“The beauty of the storm was awesome,” Lori Ann revels.  “I never really stayed out in weather, on purpose, so it was a fairly new kind of experience.  I remember feeling we could well be in some danger, but we were holding onto each other and the girders, and bracing ourselves.  The swirling of the snow, the currents of wind, the white-ing-out of the world around us; all of this made a deep, lasting impression on me_”

“We were in an ‘aesthetic engagement,’” Robert posits, “a moment of perfect awe; not beauty—of the kind that engraves itself into_ not just your memory_  but your soul.”

“Do you like to be out ‘in weather,’ now?” Octavia asks the friends, wondering if the experience prompted a new interest in such encounters with the powers of Nature.

“O I do!” Lori Ann says.  “Over the years after that I’d go out and walk in snowstorms and I still like sitting out on the porch in thunder & lightning storms_ ‘til the lightning gets too close, of course_ you know?”

Everyone smiles significantly at this, each taking a drink of wine or beer and thinking of times they had each done likewise. Then John recalls, “after the storm passed, the tracks were covered in this ‘sheen’ of snow; they were all white.  Everything was white.  _And every step we took, on the way back down to Deer Hill, left our tracks clearly embossed in it!”

“Afterwards we spent the evening together at the Whittier House,” Vincent says to bring the story to a close with a sense of satisfaction. “It was one of those evenings, when you’re young, when everything seems fresh and ‘lit up.’  I don’t remember what we did.”

“Sat by the hearth,” John says, “and talked’bout_ who knows what!  Whatever it was, we were just glad to be together.  Later on, Vincent and I walked back into town on the tracks.”

“Do you all remember that night -- in the same season, after Christmnas -- when we went ice-skating on the pond up the way from Deer Hill?” Vincent queries.

“I sure do!” Lori Ann avers, her mind suddenly illuminated with the memory as it flashed to the surface again.

“Most of the Whittiers and their kids were there, Ock,” Vincent recollects.  “The ice was solid and there was no worry of anyone breaking through_”

“Except, Vincent, near that end where the cattails stuck up through the ice.”

“O yeah,” Robert says, “I remember being told to stay away from that end!”

“We’d all brought our skates, and together we went ‘round and around on the ice,” Vincent reflects, a smile brightening his face.  “Lori and I went hand in hand, as I remember.”

“We did_” Lori Ann agreed, smiling at her old friend, "swinging  each other 'round_".

"Rather wildly, as I remember!" Vincent adds, to which they both respond with a gladdening laugh.

“John would swing me around by my arms,” Robert recollected, “and I thought sure we were going to fall, but we never did.  He’d then swing me ‘round into him and I’d grab him with both arms until we stopped; turning and turning on the ice—then I’d skate away from him, always wanting him to do it again.”

John leaned back into the old familiar recliner, his hands behind his head, smiling at the memory.

“Do you remember the treats?” Vincent asks.

“Of course, what we would now call ‘s’mores, Ock,” Lori Ann says, “and boy did we have ‘some more’ of them!  Ha!”

“They had pots of some hot strong tea on a grate over the fire,” Robert recollects.

“And there was somethin’ like a bacon ‘wrap,’” John notes, “though I don’t ‘member what was in’t.”

“Small potatoes,” Vincent recollects, everyone then suddenly remembering and agreeing with smiles and nods.  “The bacon was wrapped around a real small potato,” he says to clarify for Octavia, "with a toothpick or some such thing in it, to hold it together, and then cooked over the open fire at the shore of the pond nearest the railroad tracks.”

 “I’m amazed at all of these memories coming back to you,” Octavia says.

“We are too!” the Four Friends each together agree.

“These are stories we haven’t necessarily told Geoffrey,” Vincent says, “though we’ve recollected and talked about them over the years since the Reunion.”

“It’s almost as if,” Robert speculates, “the four of us being together like this tonight, and being directed by you, Ock, is stirring our Cauldron of Memory.”

“Like you’re at ‘critical mass’ for remembering,” Octavia says.  “Being together?”

“And you’re the catalyst!” Vincent suggests.

“And it being the great day it’s been, for John!” Lori Add adds, “helps, too.”

“Here! Here!” John says, admiringly, of his friends.

Robert, feeling his mind and imagination full of old scenes, says.  “I remember the silkiness of that night; like there was a ‘texture’ to the darkness,” he laughs, “an impression perhaps facilitated by the smoke from the open fires mixing with the Moonlight in the air.”

“It was one of those early experiences,” Vincent agrees, “that helped us to bond ever more closely with one another.” Vincent pauses, reflectively, eyes locked with Robert’s. “Another thing I remember,” he then continues, “was the dinner at Epiphany that year.  Remember that?  It was our second dinner together during that Winter Solstice Season, and we talked up a storm, as I recollect.”

“This happened before the walk down to the Iron Bridge and the ice-skating,” Robert clarifies for Octavia.

“It did_ I remember havin’ the sense that the family were all watchin’ and lisnin’ to’s,” John says, smiling.  “We were the ‘center of attention.’ _They bein’ entertained by our gabble!”

“They saw our emerging friendship, I think,” Lori Ann suggests.  “They facilitated it, passively, but positively.  _If that makes sense.  You all know what I mean, right?”

“I think we became friends more easily in the company of the Whittiers,” Robert reflects.

“Oh I do too,” Vincent agrees, “they ‘embraced’ us and let ‘us’ happen,” giving an offhand look to Geoffrey, who smiles graciously back.

 “And then, after the Season was over,” John says, “we kept rendezvousing in town – the three or four of us – and I remember you, Rob, and your parents, bein’ on the train down to Spring Junction and once to Springborough _couple-a-times.”

“I recollect that too.  They knew you and I were getting to be ‘friends,’ and_ is that the time you invited mom and dad and I up into the cab with you?”

“I think or maybe one time later.  But I do remember ‘us’ – you and I – hanging out in Spring Junction, around the train, as we were waiting to start on the return run.  I was picking up freight from the depot to be delivered to Wickersfeld and then over to Milvale.”

“When were my folks talking with you in town here_ at one of the big, new stores that opened after the War … Which one was it?”

“Hm_ that doesn’t ring a bell, but your memory is better than mine_ Ha!”

“After that, Ock,” Vincent continues, “there were a lot of things we did together we haven’t mentioned yet_ besides nights at the Whittier House and camping out on Deer Hill, there were train rides and then_ Oh!  The Wickersfeld County Fair!  We went together to the Fair two years in a row_ Then there were movies we went to_”

“Oh, I remember that theatre,” Lori Ann says, caught in the power of a sudden recollection, “the cotton candy_ all over my dress!”

“The theatre’s gone now,” Vincent laments.

“Was there one about Dagwood and Blondie?” Robert asks.

“Yes!  And the original ‘Ghost and Mrs Muir,’” Lori Ann recollected.  “We also saw ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ there together.”

“Here in Wickersfeld?” Octavia asks.

“I still love that movie!” Robert exclaims.  “So that’s where I first saw it?”

“It was,” Lori Ann affirms, looking Robert in the eye.  “You cried when you thought Kris Kringle was going to go to jail.”

“Ha!” The Poet laughs appreciatively, not the least embarrassed at the emotion recalled.

“Yes, Octavia,” John then explains, “there were two theatres downtown at that time.”

“We went to the movies every couple-a-months,” Vincent says, “and we also went roller-skating in the summers.  Remember that?”

“At the ole Pinevale Rink,” John remembers.  “Yep_ that was a good time, too.”

“The Whittiers had a booth at the County Fair each year,” Vincent then recalls, “where they sold orders for furniture, got contracts for jobs and advertised the various branches of their Company.”

“You and I, Vincent, worked that booth with – or sometimes for – them, as I remember, two or three years in a row,” Lori Ann suggested to see if her friend would remember.

“I believe so,” Vincent says. “19-47 to 49_ the last time just a week or so before the Fire!”

After a pause at the mention of the collective tragedy that haunts these four friends, Octavia posits: “And through all these experiences you were becoming friends_” _she says, reflective and intrigued; thinking of the four of them and the age-range between them, going about together.

“It was just through doing things together,” Robert suggests.  “What-ever-things.  Though I was only 8 – 11 yrs old, the most important thing was just being together.”

“For you, Robert,” Octavia opines, “it must have been a formative experience.  It was probably the first time you had socialized with anyone older than yourself with whom you were not related.”

“I guess_  I was very close to Cordelia Whittier.  She was like my 'second grandmother.'"

“Did you actually socialize with her, or simply visit with her at the Whittier House?”

Robert pauses, then says, “Now that you put it that way, I didn’t ‘socialize’ with her in the same way we did.  I sat in her room talking with her – at her? Ha! – and listening to her stories.  The most I ever did outside with her was help in the house-garden; planting, weeding, bringing in vegetables when they were ripe_ that sort of thing.  … But you’re right, these three,” motioning to Lori Ann, John and Vincent, “were the first adults I’d socialized with beyond my ‘extended’ family.”

“For us,” John then observes, “to be around Robert; it may have been an intimation of what it might be like to have a kid someday. _Not that he made us treat him like one.”

“No, not at all,” Lori Ann interjects.

“I was always startled by the way he carried himself ’round us like a ‘little adult,’” John continues, “we never had to discipline him.”

“I think I ‘knew’ at some level that if I acted childish, you would treat me as a child, and I didn’t want that_ subconsciously at least.  I wouldn’t have ‘thought’ about it that way at the time, but in later years that’s what I realized.”

“This is what I mean by ‘formative experience,’” Octavia says.  “It seems to have greatly facilitated – even accelerated – your ‘growing up.’”

“Yep_ It did.  My parents later would tell me just how ‘mature’ I seemed at 14 or 16. ‘Older’ than ‘other boys’ my age.”

“We would stand together at the entrance of the movie theater or the rink or somewhere,” Vincent continued, discerning in memory, “and people would mistake us for cousins or some kind of ‘family.’  _Just as you did tonight!”

“Ha!  But then they’d hear Robert talking with us, and they’d be confused,” Lori Ann noted, still amused by the experience.  “He didn’t talk with us as he would have with a parent or authority figure.”

“‘He’s so smart,’ I remember one person saying to us, off-hand like,” Vincent recalls.

“Because he talked with you in a way that seemed as if he were more an equal, maybe?  A friend.” Octavia realized, smiling appreciatively.

“Exactly,” Vincent agreed.

“Friendship is always about equality,” Octavia says.

“Ha!” John exclaimed, “Wasn’t he once ‘mistaken’ for a ‘little person’ by someone?”

“He was,” Lori Ann said, nodding her head, “I’d almost forgotten that.  _A woman asked him how ‘old’ he ‘really’ was!  _and I knew exactly what she was implying!”

“Wow,” Robert says, “really?”

“I wanted to say, ‘he’s ‘little’ because he’s nine.” Lori Ann avers, remembering a sense of the awkwardness of the moment.

 “Ha-ha-ha!” Robert laughs.

“Speaking of family and children,” Octavia now queried, “How many of you have been married?  How many have children?”

“I’ve already spilled the beans on that one,” Robert says.

“I’m curious,” Octavia says, “about that.  You said your son was six when you and a friend adopted him?  Were you married?  Single?”

“I was in a relationship with a woman – a very good friend – and the foster home which would have taken Sheldon had we not adopted him, interviewed us and saw how attached Sheldon already was to the two of us.  _That Sheldon also knew my parents was another perk in our favor.”

“Oh of course_ Sheldon already had an ‘extended family’ right there in place.”

“Exactly_ they saw that – and how much affection he and my parents shared – and how much Sheldon and I liked each other – and so they just kept a watch on our situation.  The adoption was made formal after about six months.  _Neither his mother’s nor father’s people wanted to take him in, unless they had to_ too much of a story there.”

“I see,” Octavia said.

“Alicia and I were friends for about six years after the adoption,” Robert continued,” but we never married.  She married someone else.”

“Oh_” Octavia says, not sure what else to say.

“Lori and I have both been married,” Vincent then confesses in a sad voice.

“Okay,” Octavia responds quietly, hearing the tone in Vincent’s voice.

“It wasn’t happy for either of us,” Lori Ann states, with a nervous laugh, locking eyes with Vincent.  “But I have a son, my second son, Eric, who works at the Whittier Christmas Tree farms – as Robert and his parents did – and he also loves keeping the house garden at our bungalow on Deer Hill.  We now live at Norwest Farm, thanks to the Whittiers.”

“I know where that is,” Octavia says, “Geoffrey and I’ve walked Deer Hill Road half-a-dozen times.  Why wasn’t your having-a-son ‘happy,’ Lori?”

Lori locked eyes with Vincent again, with a ‘should I go there’ kind of query.

“O dear I’m prying,” Octavia says apologetically, “Okay I’ve over-stepped it_ I’m so_ so_ sorry.”  Pausing, she takes a long drink of the dark beer she had been nursing.

“It’s alright,” Lori Ann says, staying herself, holding up her right hand in a soft ‘stop’ gesture, as if to say, ‘give me a moment.’

“I’m a social historian, and sometimes I just get too caught-up people’s stories.  I want to understand social and familial relations.  This is no formal interview or anything_ I guess I’m just curious about the dynamics of your friendship; the four of you_”

“We’re really liking talking like this,” Robert affirms, speaking for his friends, who all agree, giving Lori Ann a moment, knowing the story she is about to tell.  “I think this is good for us tonight.”

“It feels ‘right,’” Vincent agrees.

“It does,” Robert concurs. “To reaffirm our friendship on the night of John’s emergence onto the public stage.”

“Ahhh_” John politely protests at the idea.

“Now I’ll tell you,” Lori Ann says, “why the unhappiness.”

“Only if you want,” the social historian says, offering room for an out.

“I’ve told Robert my story, and he wrote a story about it!   Called_ may I tell her?”

“Sure.”

“‘The Haunting of Lori Ann Grayson.’”

“Oh my,” Octavia says, pondering possible meanings.

“I met a man, soon after the Fire, named ‘Abel.’  I won’t tell you his last name.  We were married in 1950 and I bore our first-and-only son in early ‘51.  Our boy was ‘Eric Grayson the Fourth,’ for reasons I need not go into.  Abel had a small farm outside Wickersfeld, to the west of here, and he worked the fields along with men from neighboring farms; they helped each other with the various phases of the growing season and then the ‘down season,’ as he called the time between harvest and planting.  Work on a farm is never ‘done.’  We had a medium-sized farmhouse.  …  I was a ‘housewife’ at home_ but was already teaching in the Wickersfeld school system at the time; really loving it.  I’d done my certification in ‘48 and ‘49.  I don’t know how long we were happy, until things went … gray?”

“You cooled your heels,” John offers, in an awkward metaphor, though feeling genuine concern with her, as always, at hearing her story.

“Hm_ don’t know if I’d put it quite that way, but_ … However, in ‘57 – in the summer – Eric went out to, as Robert phrases it in his poem, ‘play at working with the men.’  They would take him along for the day when I was teaching, and when they couldn’t, Eric would stay with one of the other men’s wives.  One day, he just didn’t come back.”

“What?”

“_The men all came to the house after I got home, after they’d finished work on the fences at the boundaries of our property, expecting to find Eric at home with me.  We called out for him.  We searched the house, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found.  They thought he’d just ‘wandered home?’  He’d never done that! _As if he would do that!?  Their story was they were all spread out along the fences, and each thought Eric was probably with one of the others!  Abel called around to the houses of all the other men, to no avail.  They went back out looking for him; they were out for hours—until after dark_ and still didn’t find him.  There was a search party out until mid-night, and still no sign of Eric.  The next day we called the police to report it, and then all of our neighbors went out ‘beating the bounds,’ as we called it, combing the entire area, as far as they could.  Every field.  Every little wooded area.  Eric was nowhere.  He had vanished.”

“You were devastated, I’m sure,” Octavia empathized.

“I was, and Abel and I got hot with each other; we argued and argued about what to do.  He was struggling against feeling the blame.  ‘Why didn’t I notice he was gone?’ he’d scream in despair at his sense of his own irresponsibility.  After a few weeks, he vanished, too.  He left me.  He left me alone.”

“O dear god_ And I take, never came back?”

“Never.  He abandoned me_ and disappeared into_ Nowhere.  I’ve never seen him again.”

“When did you have your second child; the ‘Eric’ you spoke of?” she asks, tenderly.

“The next year.  I had an affair with_ I admit it_ you all know about it,” she said, referring to her friends. “I don’t want to say who the man was, but he was good for me_ and helped me through my grief_ he helped out a lot.  When I got pregnant, he was as happy for me as I was for myself.  But he wasn’t ‘free’ to be with me, and we stopped ‘keeping company’ with each other.  He couldn’t afford to be connected with me in any way while I was carrying, you understand?  Our relationship had been more or less ‘behind closed doors,’ but…  As the farmhouse had come to be in my name, I stayed as long as I could.  ‘Eric the Fifth’ was born, but as the years passed, I was weirdly haunted by my first son, and was in a very unstable state by the mid-60’s. … I had a brother named Eric,” she says, almost as an aside, “he was ‘the Third.’  Our father was ‘Eric the Second.’ …  Nobody seemed to be able to help me.  _The ‘haunting’ Robert wrote about concerns a storm in 19-67 and the effect it had upon me; thinking my first son – my little Eric – was visiting me somehow from the ‘otherside’ in the storm.  It was after that that I decided I had to get off the farm and into other lodgings, somewhere.”

“Which you did?”

“Yes, and slowly things got better.”

“I’ve often thought of that storm and her being haunted by her lost son,” Robert then said, “as a moment of catharsis?”

“That’s probably a good word for it,” the social philosopher agrees, in sympathy.  “Whew.  Okay_ Vincent, do you have a story for me?”

“Yes, but not anything as extreme as Lori’s.  … As background_ After the Fire I graduated and then went to Wickersfeld College in 1950 for a BA in History and then on to Springborough University in ‘55 for a Masters-in-Labor-Relations.  I returned to the Wickersfeld area in ‘58 as an arbitrator and did a certain amount of work for Potter Coal.  I have long worked as a union organizer all around Ross County.  I still live in the family house where I grew up.  My mother died in ’64 and my father in ’75.  My father ran the Wickersfeld Hotel – right across the way there from the railroad.  You probably saw the building today!  After the railroad closed in ’69 we struggled along until dad died in ’75, after which I inherited the hotel and the family house.”

“I see_”

“Now, this is all background to my marriage, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I met Sophie in ‘71 at a labor rally in Spring Junction.  She was an activist, and we fell head-over-heels in love.  That had never happened to me before.  We were married by the Fall and she moved in with me and dad at the house.  She did consulting work and also held down a job at one of the Five-and-Tens downtown.  I was starting to work at the Wickersfeld Historical Society by that point and doing arbitration work whenever called upon_ union organizing where I was needed_ all over the five-county area.  She and I lived together well, for a time, but soon began to realize how different we were from one another.  I don’t want to go through all the grubby details, but we ended up estranged by the end of ’76.  By then dad was gone.  She was still living in the house with me, but essentially in her own ‘apartment’ on the second floor, to which she had access by way of the fire-escape and back-stairs.  She would come down to eat meals with me, especially on the weekend, but that was about it.  She met another man in the Spring of ’77 and moved out.  We divorced in ‘78.”

After a short pause, Octavia observes, “This is a very ‘cold’ rendition of the events, Vincent.”

“When we took our hike down to the old house,” Robert intervenes, “at the end of October in ’79, Vincent had been divorced for only a year and three months.  He was still broken up about it.”

“Oh-come-on, Rob_ I wasn’t ‘broken up.’”

“Yes Vincent, you were,” Lori assured him, locking eyes with his, which seemed to be getting red, she noticed.  He held her gaze for a few moments, and then nodded agreement.

Octavia registers the conciliatory tension between Lori and Vincent, and then says, “I’m almost afraid to continue down this road, but now_ John?”

“I don’t have too much to say.  I’ve never been married; though I’ve had plenty of girl_ and women_ friends.  Some serious; a couple almost went to the altar with me, but never quite got there.  I guess I’m ‘difficult to live with’_ I don’t have any kids and will die as alone as I was born,” he states, almost flippantly.

“John, no!” Lori remonstrates.

“You have us, John,” Robert professes.  “And now, like it or not, you have a public that knows you and likes you_ and will no doubt mourn your passing from this world.”

“Bah!” John barks, “At least to the latter.  _But I know I have the three a’you, and always will, here in this world, and no doubt beyond.  Sorry for m’jest_ T’was all it was.” he affirms, smiling, feeling a certain satisfaction with his life.  “I proposed to a girl, once, and was engaged to another woman, in late ‘67 or early 8, but it fell through each time.  For a long time, many, many years, I’ve thought’f the men at the Merchantman Hotel where I live as somethin’ like family, but not ‘til I got that call, that night in ‘79, from Robert, did I ever think I’d be friends with you three again.  _Though my love for you-all had never faded-away!  It just got chucked into the ‘remember when’ box, if ya’know what I mean?”

“That touches how I often felt during those thirty years we hardly ever saw one another and never really got together_ maybe as two, now and again, but never as the four we really are.”

“You never got together – the four of you – in all that time?” Octavia queries.

“At first we did, a little,” Vincent says.

“To talk about this,” John intercedes, “we should talk about the last 2 years at the Whittier House, first.  You think?  That was when our friendship matured into somethin’ lastin.’”

Robert, looking to the old engineer, avers “It was nurtured near the Whittier Hearth.”

“Yes, the Hearth,” John agrees.  “We were!”

“So much of our story is tied up with the Whittiers,” Vincent avers.

“I can see that_” Octavia agrees.

“It was at that house that we met and came together,” Vincent explains.  “It was near the Hearth during the Yule; at Winter Solstice and Christmas each year – that we were warmed into ‘friendship’s troth’ – as Robert would put it.”

“The Whittiers gave us berth – b-e-r-t-h – a space in which to flourish,” the Poet affirms.  “And when that was gone_”

“We fell apart,” Lori Ann says.

“We ‘drifted’ apart,” Vincent ‘corrects.

Lori Ann softly admonishes, “But there was ‘falling,’ too.  It wasn’t just because I started teaching school and got married_ and then you went off to college.  It wasn’t just that John’s run got changed_ and he started going over to Milvale and beyond, instead of down past the Whit_” Lori Ann almost chokes on this word.  “The Whittier house, which wasn’t there any longer.  The Whittiers were gone_”

“What happened to them?” Octavia asks, concerned, looking to Geoffrey and then back to the friends.

“Our family moved away from the Hill after the Fire,” Geoffrey elucidates.

“You’ve told me something about that_” Octavia recalls.  “So sad.  Displacement and estrangement.”

“Homelostness,” the Poet avers, touching on one of his ever-repeating poetic themes.   “Every poet poetizes out of a single poetic theme, Heidegger said.  And I suppose my theme is the loss of home after the Fire_ and friendship being the background that holds everything that remains together.”

“The Fire made a deep cut in your lives,” Octavia suggests, empathizing.

“Yes_ and the ‘deep cut’ for our family,” Geoffrey laments, “was felt most severely in the death of those six little kids who died – who were consumed – by the Fire_ “up in the attic in the middle of the night.  What-ever were they doing up there?”

“The tragedy began before the Fire,” John then notes.

“How’s that?” Geoffrey cautiously queries.

“When would you say, John?” Octavia asks with care.

John looks to Geoffrey, who then nods – knowing where John is going – and lets the old engineer explain.  “Have you ever heard of Julia Rebecca?”

“I think so,” Octavia says, recollecting the name and looking to Geoffrey. 

“She died the year before the Fire, in October of ‘48,” Geoffrey notes, “the whole family sank into deep grief and long-tethered mourning.”

“Who was she?” Octavia queries, having only a vague recollection of tid-bits she’d heard.

“She was the sister of Jonathan Whittier, who was the father of John Cabot who married Cordelia Grayson.”

“Cordelia being the ‘Matriarch’ of the house, as two or three of you have said, after her husband died.  _I got it, now.”

“Yes. Julia Rebecca was very old in the 19-40’s; she’d been born in 18-53, just before the Civil War, and she died in 19-48.   Even in her nineties, she was still ‘kicking up her heels,’ as I’ve heard my father say; she had helped run the Orphan House, here in Wickersfeld, and was involved in various other charities.  After Jason Whittier – a preacher – died, she took over his position at the little independent church that was down toward Sommerston from Deer Hill; down below the Mill—ministering, teaching and preaching.  She had helped her father, Jacob, as a girl, in the trafficking of runaway slaves up through Ross County.”

“Really?” Octavia says.

“Yes.  Evidence indicates they sheltered them in the basement of the Whittier Mansion, until they could be moved to safer places further north. They were given clothes, food and medical attention.”

“At the Historical Society, Ock, we have an exhibit documenting the Underground Railroad in Ross County.  We’re trying to better integrate the role of local families – into it.”

“I’d like to come and see that, Vincent.”

“_Julia Rebecca,” Geoffrey continues, “was always a force for positive social change, being involved in activism for women’s suffrage to what was called the ‘Movement for Universal Liberty;’ liberty for all people.  She was a supporter of the World Peace Movement, and she was also a ‘Marian mystic,’ whatever that meant.”

“Have you ever told me about her death?” Octavia wonders.

“Perhaps not_ It’s a strange tale_ because of how she died,” Geoffrey cautions.  “She was found collapsed in the springhouse just down from the house, near the railroad tracks.”

“Did she pass out?”

“Evidence is she_ drowned,” Geoffrey says flatly, shaking slightly, Octavia could see.

“It was so bizarre, hard to understand,” Lori Ann continues.  “If she drowned, why was she ‘found’ beside the spring?  She wasn’t in the water.”

“Good question,” Geoffrey allowed, having gone over this story so many times without getting the answers he needed until recently. Yet he professes_ “That was never resolved.”

“We also heard that there were some signs of ’scorching’ around the interior of the springhouse, as if there had been a ‘fire?’” Vincent added in a tone of weird curiosity.

“There was certainly evidence pointing to that,” Geoffrey confirmed, “though no good explanation was ever proposed.”

“What did the authorities think?” Octavia wanted to know.

“Now there’s a question!” Geoffrey allows, clearly uncomfortable at being confronted with it again.  “From what I have been able to gather, the death was declared “accidental drowning.’  I don’t know if ‘the authorities’ were ever told about the anomaly of where her body was ‘found.’”

“I see,” Octavia mused.  “Perhaps…Hmm.”

A still moment later, Geoffrey continues, “After this_ all plans for the move stopped, and the family turned inward for solace and strength.  …  It was during the Winter Solstice Season in 19-48 that these Four had their first ‘finest hour’ as far as our family was concerned.”

The friends felt the complement, leaving Geoffrey to continue. “Many of the stories I’m including in The Whittier Hearth for Yule that year revolve around them, as they were young, flexible, and able to cope with the death of Julia Rebecca in a way that the family could not.”

“We were told we were like ‘godsends,’” John remembered.  “They had undergone a great loss, and we were somehow able to help’em’nitiate the Yule celebrations and generally console the grievin’ family when they couldn’t see far enough beyond their loss to inspire themselves to get into the ‘Spirit’ of the Season.  They thanked us at ev’ry stage along the way_ and they enjoyed the Yule as’swell’s they were able.”

Lori Ann then said, feeling deeply moved, “I felt so bad for the whole family.  They were living like sardines in that house, and then – just as they were about to solve their ‘over-crowding problem’ – Julia Rebecca died; and under such confusing circumstances that it was even harder to deal with than it might have been otherwise.  As I have seen it in retrospect, from this vantage-point, the four of us approached Yule that year like ministers of quiet joy, softly coaxing the family into decorating, when they could handle it, Yule Tree hunting and other basic rituals associated with the Season that they could not, owing to their grief, initiate.”

“What they couldn’t do,” Vincent added, “we did for them, with their permission or at least at their allowance.”

“Our philosophy has always been,” Geoffrey interjects, “that life circles around from Winter Solstice to Winter Solstice, and – I always think of that cartoon when I say this, ‘You can’t stop the Yule from coming.’  So no matter what we’ve gone through, during the year, when we come to the thresholds of the Winter Solstice Season, we enter-in willingly, seeking a new start or a renewed path.  _As we are able.”

“Wow,” Octavia says, appreciating the idea, though not knowing what it would be like to put into practice.

“We walked around on crushed ornaments for a while, that Yule,” Lori Ann concludes, “but then – by the Solstice – the family were perhaps enjoying the Season on their own terms, though still travelling through their own grief-journey.”

“It sounds like they were fortunate to have you around,” Octavia says.

“They were,” Geoffrey affirms with gratitude.  “I’ve been told so_ many times!”

“If I remember a-right,” Vincent then recollects, “we four hung out together as much as we could, to ‘recharge our batteries,’ as we might say today.  We three rode on the train; up in the cab with John_ a number of times that Autumn – and on into the dusky gloom of Winter’s Solstice. We went on a number of hikes – the four of us – all over Deer Hill, also venturing out into the surrounding countryside.  It was beautiful; and it was the last time we ever had a chance to keep Yule that well.  _Until after your Reunion, Geoffrey, and your family’s return to that place where it had all begun, for us.”

“My family – my grandparents’ generation – owed what joy they were able to muster – during that last Yule at the Old House – to you four,” Geoffrey affirmed, looking to each of the friends in turn.  “As they have often said_”

After a brief pause, Octavia asks, “What happened after that?  _It was the next year that the house burned, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, by February ‘49 the house-hunting was on again,” Geoffrey continued, “and the general plan was for three of the four brothers and their families to move out to new homes before ‘Harvest Faire_’”

“Which was?”

“That’s what our family used to call ‘Halloween,’ ever since the time of Jacob Whittier.”

“I see_”

“The idea was that they could then all get settled-in before it was time to prepare for another Yule.  They would all come back to the House on Deer Hill for Yule, you see, each year_ it was imagined.  That’s what was intended.  These plans were tragically disrupted, of course, when the Fire swept the house away during the night of 9 October 1949.  Just one year after Julia Rebecca’s death.”

“That’s interesting,” Octavia acknowledges, noting the macabre coincidence of date.

“The Fire devastated the family.  It undermined their spirit.  As they pulled themselves together in the weeks afterward, they decided that the best thing to do would be to ‘get on with life.’”

“A good choice, eventually, when you’re ready,” Octavia allows compassionately.

“The house was gone, along with the precious lives of six children,” Geoffrey emphasizes, “and no one saw any reason for everyone to live in hotels until a new house could be built on Deer Hill.”

“Understandable_”

“During this ordeal these four here were involved in the whole process of consoling the grieving, as well as in the practical aspects of transplanting lives to new places of dwelling.  Robert’s family helped plan the funerals of the six who had died in the flames and performed the essential task of keeping the Christmas Tree Farms running and well-managed as the Yule began and the annual cutting and selling took over their lives.  Robert, though only eleven, visited with Cordelia – who stayed as a guest at his house between the fire and the funerals – and helped comfort her by his “bright spirits,” as she wrote in her journal.  He would later come with his family to Weston and Forsythia’s new house in Wickersfeld and play with ten-year-old Evan and eight-year-old John Reginald, who had lost their two younger sisters in the blaze.  Robert helped them loosen grief’s hold a bit by getting them out playing in the snow for a while.”  Geoffrey takes a breath, and then continues his recital of the details of a story he knows all too well.  “As for Lori Ann, John and Vincent, they helped with the fatiguing process of moving the families into their new homes.”

“Every day was a new trial,” Vincent remembers, “as the very aspect of moving reminded the whole family of what they were leaving, and why they were doing what they were doing.”

“All through November I helped t’transport whatever belongin’s could be salvaged from the old house,” John remembers.  “I went to Deer Hill with some’a the younger men – including Ned, Thomas Michael, Barry Meriwether Scott – that was Nancy Arlene’s husband – and Johnson Jameson Morgan – Mary Igraine’s husband – when most of the rest’a the family was too distraught or numbed-out to go near the place.”

“They went to the burned-out house and collected what they could of the artifacts of the family’s half-century of dwelling there together,” Geoffrey affirms sadly to Octavia.

“I don’t think Ned or Mr. Thomas – in particular – could’ve gone back there without comp'ny,” John asserts. “I told William that if he wanted me out there, I’d be there for him, too.  He welcomed me and shook m’hand heartily.  I must’ve spent two weeks or more, going every day, helpin’em sort through the debris, redeeming what could be rescued.  It was so sad, as what was lost in the Fire had belonged mostly to Theodore and Laura_ as they were designated to stay in the Old House.  Their furniture and possessions had not been moved out, as had the possessions of the other three families.  I went into the burnt-out hull’f that house time and time again, side by side with’em, watchin’ how they mourned as we came to this object and then that_ the physical objects recollectin’em in memories of life before the Fire_ and I held’m-up when they wept.”

“I was often at the house of Weston & Forsythia during the aftermath of the ordeal,” Vincent recalled, “and even helped manage the furniture store in Wickersfeld during November and December.  I was told I showed a ‘real aptitude for business,’ especially for someone of my age.”

“How old were you?”

“Almost 18.  _It was Weston told me that.  Lori Ann was often at the store with me, and we were heartily thanked as they would almost certainly have closed-up the store during the most lucrative season of the year.  When I wasn’t at the store. I was helping Weston and Forsythia move-in and set-up-house at their new address.”

“And that was the end, wasn’t it?” Lori Ann says.

“It was,” Geoffrey agreed.  “And as if an omen of the future, the various branches of our family failed to get together in one place for the Yule that year.  They would’ve all gone back to Deer Hill for the Winter Solstice Season, but of course_ …  While grief might well explain this failure of custom that first year – just two months after the fire – this neglect was to set a precedent for the next 30 years.  All four families moved away from Deer Hill, and in many ways, became ‘separate’ from each other in spirit as well as geographically.  They still worked together; the Whittier Company functioned ‘like a well oiled machine’ as my dad would say_ but in their personal lives they were somehow ‘lost’ to the way they had been.”

“This ‘failure’ was also experienced by us,” Robert laments.

“How so?” Octavia asks.

“The four of us seemed to drift apart as we helped the Whittiers keep it together.  … Without the Whittier House, I was ‘stuck’ on Deer Hill with my family.  John came to see me, half a dozen times, at least, but without Lori and Vincent there, it felt awkward, somehow; no_ not awkward_ we felt ‘incomplete.’”

“That’s the word, Rob, fersure,” John agrees.  “And as I was on the Wickersfeld-to-Milvale run, Ock, I had’ta go down to see Robert when I wasn’t scheduled.  _I walked down the line to Deer Hill three or four times, I remember.  It was being 'lonesome'_ that hike_ which so resonated with me, y'know?  _Other times, I had the engineer on that run drop me off at the Hill and then pick me up later, on his return run.”

“My parents appreciated you coming, they later told me.  We would sit up in my room and talk and_ grieve together_ as I now realize, that was what I was experiencing with you.  One time, we went into town together to see Cordelia at her new house, remember?  _And we stayed for several hours, talking and drinking tea and eating her homemade cookies and biscuits_”

“I remember that,” John warmly assures his friend, then laughing a bit, “I came and picked you up on a handcar!”

Robert exclaims to Octavia.  “I guess there wasn’t a scheduled train!  _And we pumped our way into town!”

“Neat experience, I bet!” Octavia marvels.

“It was!”

Lori Ann then says, feeling her frustration all over again, “I was out of school and starting my teacher’s training that Fall.  I was caught up in classwork, still all-mixed-up with my grief.  Vincent was_”

“I was devastated, yet helping the Whittiers out as I could_ as I’ve said.  And I did see Robert a couple times.”

“You did_ but John wasn’t there with us,” Robert reminded him.

“Right, I remember us talking about getting together with John and Lori_ but we could not seem to arrange a time.  I was still in High School that Fall, and Lori being at the Normal School meant that we didn’t have a schedule that allowed for much meet-up time.”

“We managed it,” Lori asserted, “but_ as Vincent says, getting together was hard enough_ and getting out to see Robert was harder.  I managed to go three times, I think,” she says, looking to the Poet for confirmation.

“You did, I’d say_ and one time, do you remember?  Vincent had just been there earlier in the day?”

“O yes_ I remember that!   I was teaching in the Wickersfeld schools by the next spring and Vincent was then working for his parents at the hotel.  I wanted to go visit Robert again.  Vincent did, too, and once we almost did.  I called him on the ‘new-fangled voice-box’ – ha-ha! – as my mother always called it, to the day of her death_ and talked with his mother, as Robert was out ‘playing.’

“Adventuring,” John said.

“Probably!  I was so sad I’d missed that call, but we only had your parents’ phone number, and while my mother called_ somehow you never got the message.”

 A profound sense of sadness began enveloping the room, until Lori Ann continued_

“Then, I got married.  Next year I had a kid.  Vincent started college and wasn’t around anymore.  Yes, he and I managed to get together now and then, when he was home on breaks, but the loss of the Whittier House and everything it had meant, you realize, left us without the hub of the wheel within which our four-fold friendship were the spokes.  I don’t think we ever made it out to see Robert_ together, again.”

“It was our touchstone,” Robert sighed, “that house.”

“_Our sanctuary,” Vincent confessed, “and, as I realized later, we became a bit like ‘homeless wanderers’ after the Fire.”

“Couldn’t you have found another ‘sanctuary?’” Octavia asked.  “For the four of you?”

“Possibly,” Lori Ann avers, “but how do you know to look for such a thing from the depths of loss?  We were too young; we were just finding our footing_ and then, I think_ it was torn out from under us.  We could have moved on and established another ‘foundation,’ and we each did_ to a point.  I sometimes wonder, ‘What if the Whittier Reunion never happened?’  Would we ever have come back together as ‘Four?’  We might have_ our dinner at Vincent’s that night in ‘79 might have still happened_ but would we have continued to get together had the Whittier’s not moved back to Deer Hill?”

“Insightful question,” Octavia urges.

The Four Friends remain quietly reflective for a moment.  Robert then observes: “Most friendships, formed in public school, tend to be strained, I think, after graduating and moving out into the larger world.  But ours had an added ‘force’ working upon it.  The Fire; which I always write with a capital ‘F.’”

“So true,” Octavia agrees.  “You’ve all gone through a major personal trauma; as friends and individually—and in your relationship with the Whittiers.  You have your deep love for one another – which I’ve sensed in your company tonight.  But then you have the loss of that ‘place of significance’ that made it possible for you to come together.  It’s no wonder the loss of it so deeply affected your friendship?”

“It clearly did,” Vincent allows, somnambulating the reality of it in his Heart, reaching for the red wine bottle to re-fill his glass.  “Anyone else?”

“The two have always been ‘in tension,’” Robert says.  “Yes, I’ll have some more, thanks.”

“Look, friends,” John says, getting animated, “at this whole confab this eve'nin!  How many times’ve we been pulled back to the Fire?  The Whittiers?  Don’t it all circle ‘round that?”

“Are we ‘in orbit’ around the Fire?” Robert asks his old friend adroitly.

“Not just the Fire, but_ why do I want to say this?” John adds, “The Fire in the Hearth, too?  _That’s what we lost, didn’t we?   Vincent, can you hand me another beer?”

“Sure.”

“Lost it_ symbolically,” Robert laments, “as well as physically.”

There is a significant pause, and then Lori Ann offers, “without getting too metaphorical, I think John may be trying to get at something ‘organic’ about it all_ as I did with the wheel metaphor_ about our experience.  …  We cannot – without a kind of self-betrayal – extract ourselves from the presence of the Whittiers in our lives.  They are part of us_ and we are part of them.  _Geoffrey, I hope you don’t mind my saying this?”

“By no means.  It_ it’s true,” Geoffrey affirms, refilling his wine glass.

“Our friendship is part of that, too_” Lori Ann continues.  “We are in part what we are because of the Whitter House where we first met and the people there who nurtured us; who – here’s a word I keep hearing – ‘facilitated’ – our growing love for one another by being so accepting and open to such a possibility as us.  As the Four we were becoming.”

“Why us?” Robert asks.

“Because of how unusual we are,” John says, and laughs.

“We’re not ‘special,’ John,” Vincent cautions.

“No, we’re not.  We’re un-usual,” the old engineer avows.

“How do you mean?” Octavia asks, invitingly, “Explain that_”

“I’ve always known it_ ever since I met you three.” John affirms.  “Someone like me, comin’ from a coal family and learning to be a trainman_ meeting kids like you three?  And you Robert, as a boy_ becoming friends with a grown man_ an’also two teen-agers.  Friendships like ours just don’t crop-up very often!”

“As an outsider,” Octavia says, “this is why I started asking you questions at dinner; once I realized who you were_ Not just because of the role you played in Geoffrey’s family returning to Deer Hill and all.  I sensed a deep connection between the four of you as we walked into the diner_ and then, seeing your age differences, realizing you weren’t ‘related’ I_ I couldn’t help wonder_ be in wonder_ about you.”

“That so?” Vincent asks, a bit thrown by the confession.

“You’re right, Vincent,” Octavia continues, “you’re not ‘special’ in that supercilious sense that is bantered about in our culture all the time today_ but you four are un-usual.  You have a unique life-experience.  For this to have happened; for the four of you to have been friends over all this time_ is beyond the pale of ‘ordinary’ experience, for most people.  Most great friendships in our culture are amongst peers; people within a couple years of each other or so_ usually people of the same age.  Because that’s how we go through life in this society.”

“Explain that?” Vincent asks, curious.

“We all start life associated with others born at the same time, our birth notices are in the newspaper usually no more than days to months apart.  We then go through school with people the same age as us, and when we’re old we’re all looking at the obits every-day to see who’s died; because everyone we’ve known will no doubt show up there in time.”

“Including us,” John jests with sincerity.

“I see it_ And that’s something we don’t usually recognize,” Vincent says, nodding understanding.

“No_ for people immersed in their culture, its tropes are not often obvious,” Octavia affirms.

“You could go through your whole life,” Robert avows, “without seeing the built-in social codes, behavioral themes and underlying assumptions that give structure and a basic direction to your life.  Unless you have been ‘awakened’ in some way; jostled into wakefulness by experiences outside the ‘normal’ run of things, or by a critical, spiritual or philosophical education.  _Any or all of these!”

“Did the Fire ‘wake us up’?” Lori Ann suggests, pondering the idea.

“In a sense,” Robert says, then cautions, “we were already awakened in one another’s presence; to one another_ and there were other factors.”

“You four,” Octavia continues, “have a span of just under 20 years from the oldest to the youngest.  Now, most relationships in our culture between younger and older people – if they aren’t familial – are mentored or mentoring relationships.  Do you mentor each other?  Have you been mentored by one another?”

The four friends immediately indicate their answer with slow shakes of their heads, looking to each other for confirmation.

“I’d say ‘No,’” Robert avows. “We accept one another; we respect what each other does or has done in their lives.  We share what we love with each other_ that’s not the same as mentoring.”

“I’m a teacher,’ Lori Ann says,” but I have never ‘taught’ these guys anything, not as a ‘teacher.’”

“Yet I have learned so much from knowing you-all,” John confesses.

“As have I,” Vincent agrees.

“And me, as well,” Robert avows. “But it’s a matter of learning through knowing-one-another, through experiences we’ve had with one another and what we have undergone; together as this ‘Four’ that we are and in our own personal experience as individuals.”

“You see,” Octavia explains, “you don’t have the peer pressure people do who are friends with others their own age.  You don’t feel that need to ‘compete’ as many people do with their friends and acquaintances.  _Or to ‘conform.’  You have_ ‘sidestepped’_ such cultural norms and become who-you-are in another socio-psychological context.”

“We ‘stepped out’ in some way,” Vincent agrees, reaching for understanding, “by becoming friends with people who might not ordinarily consider one another ‘friends.’   Could you say there is a ‘context’ we have created for ourselves, by way of our friendship?” Vincent offers, with a certain confidence.

“Probably_ What is that context?” Octavia asks.  “Can you put it into words?”

“It’s what John was alluding to earlier,” Robert now affirms.  “It’s the context in which this four-fold friendship – to use Geoffrey’s nomenclature – germinated and was nurtured for four years.”

“The Whittier House!”

“The Whittier Hearth!”

“Deer Hill!”

“Amen,” Geoffrey says, and everyone laughs agreeably, as if a ‘light’ that has always been lit comes to be recognized.

Octavia smiles affirmation, looking to each of the Four Friends who are, themselves, reflecting on the very unusualness of their togetherness; having been gathered into this friendship by natural attraction, then love, then the deep bonding of their souls, rooted in the lovingkindness of the Whittiers at their old house back in the ‘40’s.

“’Tis a wonder we all don’t just move back to Deer Hill, ain’t it?” John jests, experiencing a subtle, personal ekstasis.

“I have,” Lori Ann professes, satisfied with the idea and grateful to the Whittiers for making it possible.

“Robert could,” Vincent then notes, looking to his old friend.

“Yes, Robert, you could,” Lori Ann says fondly.

After a pause, the Poet says, tentatively, “Sure, I could.”

“Your house is right there,” Lori Ann says, “Every winter I can see the rooves from my bedroom window at Norwest; _it’s kept up – had been kept up by your parents and continues to be kept up by you and your mother.  You have people renting it from time to time?  _Attendees at the different ‘weekends’ Daniel and his mother hold.  I see the workmen repairing this and that, when I walk by, and you’ve had one of the young Whittiers – I’m not sure who -- mowing your lawn for at least a couple years, now_  Before that, I don’t know who did it; but someone must have.”

“I know, I know,” Robert pleads.  “We’ve thought about it.  Sheldon, Veronica and I have visited the house from time to time.  We had a picnic there summer-before-last, and we almost took the plunge.  The grandkids seem to love the place.”

“Robert_ No pressure, okay?” Geoffrey says solicitously, “But now that this has come up_ we’d love to have you living on Deer Hill with us.  You know, they basically begged me to move out to Westfarm, offering to create that 2^nd floor apartment for me above the barn as the enticement.  I hesitated as long as I could_ but have not regretted it for one minute.”

Robert sighs, close to tears, and then says “it’s getting too late for this, but if the Family Historian can live on Deer Hill, I suppose a Poet could, too.  I could be, what?  ‘The Poet of Deer Hill?’  Ha!”

His friends softly applaud the idea with a deep-felt loving looks.

“Hell, I’d move to Deer Hill in a minute,” Vincent says, encouragingly.

“And so would I,” John agrees.

“Okay_ okay_ I know the majority is all for it!” Robert jests and throws up his arms, laughing.  “I’ll talk it over with Sheldon, Veronica and the kids again.  Will that satisfy you?”

“Oh yes,” Lori Ann says, mock satisfied, still believing it will probably never happen.”

“Just what will I do with this old pile?”

“Sell it!” Vincent insists.  “I know three or four people right now who might be interested.  This is a peach for anyone who likes solitude!”

“That’s it, you see_ On Deer Hill, I’ve thought, I would not have the seclusion I have here.  I feel I would be a part of a community in which I would have to participate more fully_ all the time_ without this retreat to return to.”

“But you do that now, my friend,” Geoffrey says, apologetically.  “You and I’ve worked on Egbert’s old book together and you’ve helped me with the texts of The Whittier History and The Whittier Hearth.  You’re at Westfarm and at the Gables or in my apartment several-times-a-month.  You give poetry readings during the Yule at the different houses and at other times.  You come to the seasonal dinners_”

“I know_ I know_ but I can always come back home and be out in the woods,” the Poet pleads.

“There’s certainly an attraction in that,” Octavia states with conviction.  “When you’re in academia there is no sense in which you are ever ‘off duty’ much less ‘alone.’  This is one reason why so many academics burn-out, I think.”

“Robert,” Geoffrey says, “we would respect your need to be alone.  I’m left alone when I’m writing; everyone at Westfarm knows I like to spend hours and hours at my typewriter or word processor; preparing lectures, researching and culling research into papers and proposals.  They respect Daniel’s privacy, too.  When he’s writing a new horror novel, we hardly ever see him!  And Susan Jean’s_”

“Point taken,” Robert says, holding up a hand and sighing pleasantly; feeling deeply overwhelmed at being wanted and loved by those whom he loves so well.

“And we’d all love to have you in the Deer Hill Literary Cloister.”

“O god_” Robert exclaims, “I think we’ve all had too much to drink!  Ha-ha!”

Laughter all around opens to Lori Ann saying, “This of course makes me think of the Reunion, that it isn’t quite complete yet?”

“The Reunion,” Robert sighs and reflects, a tear welling up in his eyes, everyone can see.

“That’s what brought us back together,” Vincent affirms.

“Your Reunion” John says, looking to Geoffrey, “is what has given us this second chance as well,” John affirms.

“Second chance, John?” Octavia suggests.

“Of course!  I mean, t’think where we were in 19-79 before that strange night_”

“I was working at the Historical Society, as I’ve said,” Vincent reiterates, “trying to keep the house with what little I was being paid, from commissions for labor arbitrating, and from rents from the old hotel.”

“I was still teaching as a sub, anywhere I could,” Lori Ann says, “and taking care of Eric, who was depressed – and somewhat lost – most of the time.  He couldn’t get decent work for anything, and he was suffering, mentally and emotionally.”

“And I was just living out here with my family, going to conferences and giving papers, and publishing,” Robert sighs, knowing he had been the best-off before their Reunion.

“We were all glad of your success, Rob,” Lori Ann honestly avers.

“We still are,” Vincent agrees, reaching out and grabbing Robert’s shoulder in a friendly caress, smiling at ‘this Poet of my long acquaintance.’

After a moment’s pause, John says to Octavia, “I guess I saw Robert a few times over the years, after those first few years.”

“I think the first time was in about 1972, John_ after I published The Way of the Poet.  We ran into each other at my book-signing down in Springborough.”

“That was it,” John agrees, smiling warmly at the memory.  “At the Mall when it was new_ And I have long reveled with him in his various successes, Ock.  Always proud of m’old friend,” he said, smiling toward Robert.  Then_ “Ha!  It was always an ’event’ when Robert – this ‘ed-u-cated gentleman’ as m’friends called him – would come visit me at the Merchantman.”

“I liked your friends,” Robert avows.

“I know you did, but half the time they didn’t know what to say to you; much less what to make of you.”

“Ha!  Sensed that, yep.  But they were always accepting.”

“‘Cause you see, you ac-cepted them for who they were, and they felt it, man!  So they ac-cepted you, as best they could, given their life experiences.”

“Good men.” Robert said with respect.  “They had been hardworking_ and hard worked_ all their lives before retirement.”

“They had_ which they knew you understood,” John confessed.  “I’d told’em you’d worked on the Whittier tree-farms in the 50’s and ’60’s and had known “the sweat and the pain,” in your own way.  That was a W-R-R expression, Ock.  'Twas how we oft used to express our experienced labor.”

“I see.  … When did you retire, John?”

“Early_ in ’71.  I’d worked ‘round the yard and on the lines after The Closing, helping keep track up and the engines in runnin’ condition_ There was a small remnant ‘team’f us.  The railroad owners were tryin’ to sell off rollen-stock and wanted it kept in as good’a condition as could be.  _I was lucky to get my full pension.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I moved to the Merchantman, but soon_ wasn’t well.”

“Oh?”

“I_ struggled with a cancer through the ‘70’s.  Lungs mostly, were ailin’.”

“Did you have treatments?”

“O yeah_hospitals and pills.  It went into remission and then came back_”

“That must have been awful,” Octavia sympathized.

“Yeah_ and on the night of our ‘famous walk,’ I was in pain, though I didn’t let on.  Ha!  When they agreed to my suggestion of a walk down my old line to the burned-out house, in the dark, I wondered if I would make it!  I also wondered if it would be my last walk down those familiar old rails_ to the Hill and the ruins of the past.”

“But you went?”

“Did_ an’it was one’a the better decisions of my whole life.”

“Are you okay, now?” Octavia asked.

“Now there’s a story!  The cancer went into remission again in early ’80 and then_ has never come back_ cross m’self an’ hope to tell no lie!  _I stopped ke-mo and then the pills by late that year, and was declared ‘clear’ by my docs in ‘81.  I’ve been cancer-free ever since.”

“You’re a survivor,” Octavia says, congratulatory.

“Am_ an’I‘tribute it to our Reunion; the Four of us – and to the positive turn in our lives resultin’ from the Whittiers returnin’ to Deer Hill, rebuildin’ their House and then those other houses bein’ built.  It just seemed such a ‘positive’ thing.  There was such enthusiasm in the air_”

“Not that any of us became ‘rich-and-famous’ or anything,” Vincent mock-jests, alluding to a current cultural motif he detested.

His three friends nodded, affirming the observation.

“’Life-styles of the_’” Lori Ann mocks astringently, “what an awful ‘myth!’  _In the bad sense of that word!  An aspiration foisted on the country by those who were already wealthy.”

“A sort of ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ mentality,” Vincent says, and then wryly, “Have you ever tried doing that?”

Everyone laughs knowingly.

“But it wasn’t about that,” Robert strongly avers, “for us_”

“Or for us,” Geoffrey affirms, alluding to those of his family who had returned to Deer Hill.

“It took a lot of work to move back out there,” Octavia allows, “as you’ve told me.”

“And a lot of money,” Geoffrey says.  “Fortunately, two divisions of the family company were in construction, Allan’s and Angus’s – and it was they who decided to build the first two houses.  Members of other branches of the family – who weren’t moving back to Deer Hill, also helped out financially.  For them, I think, the Whittier House was an icon; which they would get to visit during the Yule at at other times.  _But beyond – or perhaps before – the work and investment – was this strange sense of returning_ but not to the past.  Rather_ I’ll use a word that Hildegard uses – ‘spiraling’ around to places you have been before, but at a new level of consciousness.  A new stage of self-awareness; of depth.  We weren’t trying to ‘re-create the past.’  We were attempting to find a new beginning; somewhere from which to go forward_ to live with refreshed meaning and purpose.  Of course, the boom economy of the early ‘80’s certainly aided and abetted our intentions.  Whittier Construction had some resources available, and then when the new houses were finished, their old houses in town sold like ‘that,’” Geoffrey said, snapping his fingers.

After a pause of a few seconds consideration_

“We were involved in your Reunion, Geoffrey,” Lori Ann says, “but also in our own Reunion as ‘the Four Friends.’”

“You initiated our Reunion,” Geoffrey exclaims, admiringly and grateful as always.  “You_ personally.”

“I guess.  _I was the one who contacted members of their family, Ock, and got them thinking about a Christmas gathering that year, after our trek down to Deer Hill that night.  And then the idea of returning to Deer Hill just started being talked about.  But more than that_ as things started moving toward the possible re-building of the Whittier House, we four started getting together, fairly regularly, for lunch or a dinner_ for a walk in the woods_”

“We went up hiking on Bear Ridge once or twice, at least,” Vincent recalls.

“We did,” John says, “and we also visited this house, together_ three or four times.”

“You did,” Robert agrees, fondly remembering those early visits with his old friends.

“We hung out at Vincent’s house, too,” Lori Ann says, “looking at the old photos he’d collected of the Whittiers and the W-R-R_ and those he had of us!”

“That may have been what lit-me-up and led to my collectin’ all those art-e-facts for the book_” John affirms with gratitude.

“_And to this day, too!” Robert avers, smiling appreciatively at his friend.

“It may’ve_ and I remember, too – ha-ha – you bringin’ Vincent and Lori Ann down to my rooms!”

“Oh yes,” Lori Ann says to Octavia, “we went to a dinner, somewhere down there, didn’t we, John?”

“We did_ gad!” John exclaims, “And I ‘member Petey saying, ‘Ah boy_ that artist’ – he always called Rob an ‘artist’ not a Poet, poor man, he’s gone – ‘brought along a couple who also be friends of John.’  Ha!  That was a night.”

“Of course,” Lori Ann says, amused, looking Vincent in the eye, “they thought we were married.”

“Yep, of course,” Vincent smiles.

“Oh,” Lori Ann says, “I remember that day in the summer of ’80 when Allan Scott Whittier announced that he was going to build a house up on top of Deer Hill_ up where the old Henry Farm had been in the 19^th century!   _Up there where we’d been in ’46 on our first night-hike!?”

“He said,” Geoffrey recalls, “that he was not going to be outdone by his cousin rebuilding the Whittier House!  He was going to build a house of his own!”

“Imagine that,” Octavia says.

“That’s what inspired a lot of the building,” Geoffrey says.  “Friendly, brotherly – and later ‘sisterly’ competition.”

“And it was there that we were first called ‘the Four Friends,’” Lori Ann posited.

“O really?” Geoffrey says, musing at the revelation.

“I remember it distinctly.  We were standing together near the front of the family gathering, and Allan called us out, standing by those old foundation stones, and said something like ‘if it wasn’t for these ‘four friends,’ you know?”

“I remember that,” Robert then recollects.

“We were invited to be there, too,” Vincent adds, “at the first dinners at each of the houses, once they were finished and one branch or another of the family had moved-in.”

“Allan’s was finished in the Fall of ’81,” Geoffrey notes.

“And by then my cancer was declared ‘cured,’” John testified.  There was a pause, after which the old engineer continued, “I think it had something to do with good friends; being reunited with you three‘n the hikes we took, the lunches and dinners we had, the places we went together.  I really do,” he avers, again with deep gratitude.

“I know it shook me out of my doldrums,” Lori Ann says.  “_My son Eric came with me to one of those first dinners at the New House, and he was invited, on the spur of the moment, I always think, by Kendrick and his family – who were running the old furniture store in Wickersfeld by that time? – to come in and help-out with the stock and such.  They just offered him a job!  First time they’d met him!  Eric took it, worked there for a while, but then got a job on one of the Christmas Tree farms.  He long worked at the farm just outside Wickersfeld there, to the west.”

“Is that how that happened,” Geoffrey muses.

“It is_” Lori Ann affirms.  “With him actually working, we were able to better afford our apartment and slowly paid off some of my debt.  My pension from the school system wasn’t_ ‘enough,’” Lori Ann admits.  “We started doing a bit better.  But then he got married, too – to a wonderful girl; Abelene Marsh_ you all know her_ who worked with him at the tree farm!  By the next year they had their first son, Theodore Dietrich!  But Abelene continued to work, and so, between the three of us each working, we got by even better.  We lived like sardines in that apartment!  _And we loved it!  I guess I’d learned from the example of the Whittiers back in the ‘40’s; to pack ourselves in and still be able to live as fully as we could, y’know?  Eric and Abelene absorbed the ideal, somehow, I think, though me and my stories.”

“I loved all that we did together,” Vincent professes, almost dreaming in reflection.  “It was our Reunion, too!  I started taking better care of my old house; you-all helped me clean and re-paint, remember?”

“We did,” Lori Ann affirms.

“I did a lot of the repair to stairs’n’railings,” John says, “and cleaned your rugs!”

“That was a big help,” Vincent said thankfully, “believe me!  _I started taking a more active interest in the old hotel, at that time, too.”

“Do you ever think you’ll re-open it?” Geoffrey asks.

“I don’t know_”

“Now that the railroad’s runnin’agin; Vincent_ if it’s a success,” John says encouragingly, “it’ld be a great place for railfans and others to stay, don’t’cha think?  It’s right there, practic’ly’cross the street from the station.”

“You have a point,” Vincent says, smiling, “I was actually thinking about that today.”  Though this brought to Vincent’s mind the pain associated with closing it down in the last years of his father’s life, the hotel having gone bankrupt; but now, suddenly_ how much his father would have liked – were he alive – having new life breathed into the old hotel a third time in its long existence.

“Next weekend, when the W-R-R is open for three whole days, maybe we’ll look in at the hotel,” John says.  “Heck, I could rent a room for the weekend and not have’t drive back and forth to the Merchantman each day.”

“Yeah_ you could do that,” Vincent says, his spirit rising.  “The rooms are never fully booked.  It’s always about half empty.”

“You still own it?” Octavia asks.

“Technically yes.  We went through a lot of legal rig-ma-role after it closed_ I’ve had a manager for almost 18 years who keeps track of the residents.  Five of the larger ‘areas’ are rented by local businesses as offices, though; that gets us most of our revenue—like the old ballroom and the one dining room where wedding parties and such used to be held?  But it hasn’t been a ‘hotel’ since 19-70.  …  I would frankly love to get that name back up on the façade and run it proper,” Vincent says, experiencing something of a subtle rush of hope.

“Next weekend is gunna be the test,” John avers, “of whether or not this railroad’ll ‘fly’ a’gin.  I’m gonna have’ta be there_ mannin’ m’table.  Prob’ly all summer!”

“Will they have you pilot any of the trains?” Octavia asks.

“I don’t think so.  My age.  They were afraid, y’know; what if I ‘passed out’ from the heat on the way down to Sommerston this morning, or something.  That’s why they sent that kid with me!  Hah!”

“He was a fan, though, wasn’t he?” Octavia asked.

“Yep_ a railfan who trained up as a hostler and now an engineer.  Just like me_ He has his license!  He knew everything he needed to know, and I could’ve turned the stick over to’im at any point.  _I assume he’ll be on the stick on my old engine from now on.  _He deserves it,” John said with a sad sinking feeling of surrender, “he does.  I’ve had my run.”

After a pause, Lori Ann says, “I will certainly be-there next weekend, and if Eric and his kids aren’t busy at Westfarm Nurseries or in the house gardens at our place, they wanna be there, too.”

“There’s no way I’m staying away,” Robert says.

“Nor I,” Vincent affirms.

“We’ll be Four again, as we always are, now,” John avers, that subtle joy filling his heart as it always does when he thinks of himself and his three friends as ‘Four.’  He yawns, deeply satisfied.

 “Ohmgosh, it’s getting late, isn’t it?” Lori Ann then sadly points out, looking at her watch.  She yawns, unable to suppress it.

“I guess it is,” Robert said.

“I don’t it want it to be ‘late,’” Vincent protests, yet realizing that it could not be helped.

“Would that we could just stay up all night and talk, just like this,” John says, “but I admit I’m getting very tired.  _And I have a long drive_”

“No_ you don’t,” Robert insists. “You can stay here.  You all can stay!  We have an extra bedroom with two twins for you two if you want_” he says, looking to Vincent and Lori Ann  “_If you don’t mind staying in the same room and sleeping in your clothes?”

“Nope, I don’t,” Vincent allows.

“Neither me,” Lori Ann agrees, imagining it to be like when they would sleep over at the Whittiers’ when they were young, on couches not too far from one another.

“And I won’t sleep in my clothes, Robert_” Vincent says.  “_As I always pack an extra set whenever I’m going to an event_ just in case, y’know?”

“In case you need a change?” Lori Ann queries, knowing, as she says, “I do the same.”

“And I can just sleep in this recliner, Robert,” John says, faking presumption, pushing himself back into the full-recline position, with an “Ahhhh_” of restful expectation.

“Okay, Old Man!” Robert jests.  “Do as you will,” each laughing at the gesture and the retort.  “But hadn’t you better go to the bathroom first?”

“Oh_ probably a good idea.  Where is it?  I always forget_”

“Out in the hall over here, to the right,” Robert directs, and then remembers, “_And John, that set of hiking clothes of yours from last summer is still hanging in the closet in the hall back there where I hung them, all washed,” Robert directs.

“Good, good_ I guess we’re all packers when it comes t’trips; I've an extra set of clothes in the car, too, don’cha’know!” John avows.

“Good!” Robert exclaims, “I guess you all came prepared!  You can shower first, tonight, if you want.  The shower room is down the back stairs.”

“Thanks, we will!” Vincent replies.

“There are plenty of towels in the cupboard outside the shower-room,” Robert affirms.

 “Robert,” Geoffrey then says to his host in a tone of regret, “Octavia and I should probably go.”

“Oh, why?  You can stay, both of you!” Robert urges, “I don’t intend to send you away.  You don’t have classes or meetings this week, do you?”

“Not ‘til Wednesday,” Octavia says.  “But we don’t have changes of clothes or anything.  _And I wasn’t assuming you were going to put us up_” she then said, feeling that, as she was not part of the inner circle of these four friends, that she would be presuming too much on their so-recent acquaintance.

”Non-sense_ I want you to stay, if you want_ there’s our game-room on the level below, I was thinking, down the stairs over there.  There are two cots and a couch.  You’re both welcome.”

“Okay, but we have no changes of clothes, and I’m pretty ‘grimy’ from the day,” Octavia explains.

“How about you go and get clothes and come back?” Robert suggests.  “Then, we can all have breakfast together.  You live near campus, don’t you?”

“I do_ its only five minutes away from here.  Deer Hill is a little further,” she says, looking to Geoffrey.

“But I’ll do it_ I’m up for a sleep-over!” Geoffrey agrees, feeling the kid in him wakening again, as a ghost not unknown to the middle-aging man.

“Then we can all get up together here in the morning,” Robert says with a certain hopeful glisten; satisfaction welling up in his Heart.   Mother’ll be glad to see you, too!”

Geoffrey and Octavia look to one another, agreeing instantly, and then, “So here we go,” Geoffrey concedes, he and Octavia shaking Robert’s hands glad in turn and then heading for the front door of one mind, smiling at the thought of staying overnight at The Poet Robert Werner’s.

“We’ll be back in half-an-hour!” Octavia whispers, quietly optimistic, smiling back at the Poet as she follows Geoffrey out.

Octavia and Geoffrey leave as if ‘on a mission’ as Robert’s three friends are gathering themselves up, stretching, finishing the last of their wine or beer, then taking turns going to the bathroom.  Robert expresses his delight at having house-guests_ ‘friends sojourning together for a night!’ he exalts in his Heart as he walks Lori Ann and Vincent to the guest room.

Coming back out to where they had all been gathered, he finds John getting comfortable in the recliner.  As the host he is, he collects glasses and bottles from around the living room, takes them to the kitchen, cleans and sets them to dry in the drainer.  While waiting for his last two guests to return, he goes to the vestibule between kitchen and living room and puts five Clannad CD’s in the changer.  He sets the player on ‘repeat’ and on ‘low’ volume; just loud enough to be ambient in the background as everyone sleeps.

Geoffrey and Octavia return in just 28 minutes.

“Oh_ Clannad?” Octavia quietly observes when she hears the mystical music.

“Yes_ one of my favorite artists,” Robert admits.  “Great to dance and meditate to, but also good for sleeping and having faery dreams.”

“I see,” Octavia says, musing on the idea of ‘faery dreams.’

Robert then walks Geoffrey and Octavia downstairs to their assigned sleeping area. 

“Oh wow_ there is a game-room,” Geoffrey exclaims, seeing a very large table; about 15 x 7 ft – which dominates the middle of the room – with maps and modeled landscapes on it for fantasy role-playing.

“There is a swing!  There is a swing!” Robert exclaims, laughing playfully; Octavia and Geoffrey each catching the reference.  “Is it everything you thought Kris Kringle would bring you?” Robert finishes the allusion, to which his guests knowingly reply that “oh yes_ it most surely is!”  Octavia then playfully asking, “But where’s Kris’ cane?!”

“Ha!” Robert laughs, amused at the reference to the old film he still loves.  “You can shower and change before you bed-down for the night if you want,” he then suggests.  “There’s the shower over there and the cupboard beside it has an ample supply of towels and washrags.”

“Thanks,” his guests gratefully reply.

Robert bids them goodnight and then goes off to bed, happy at having his friends as guests ‘at home’ with him.

As the house quiets down, Lori Ann comes out from hers and Vincent’s room and finds the phone, calls her house, letting Eric know where she is and that she’ll be staying overnight.  As Vincent had no one to call, he remained in his bed. 

She then returns to her bed, and all is well for the night.