Housatonic Valley Regional High School

Miles from HVRHS I sit by the Salmon River. The sky is the same insulating gray but I don't care. With my hiking stick hooked on a bag, I pull water up from the river. All this rain has made the rivers alive with preindustrial force. Slipping in would definitely change more than the dryness of my socks. A passing man says the S word for Wednesday. He knows by my looks that I'm one of the few people that care more than him.

Houstatonic Valley Regional High School was the Disney movie in which the victor returns home, and everyone is proud and equally as alive as he is. I started in the main office. I smelt like dark leaves, and I was shy a few shaves. It's rare for women not to get flushed for the occasion, but it's not me. I understand that. They see adventure, and romance. Men, well, they see themselves. And women see their men, or at least some Ralph Lauren likeness. Truthfully, though, I am vintage and new. I am given many names and shake hands many times. The names fill up my arms and lodes, and I drop them all but Cindy in the office and Karen in the library. These two women move things from their desks and open their days. Karen in the library shows me a computer but I am 42 and it is 2. I type letters on the keyboard but the screen stays the same, and then nothing. Karen gets up and quietly gets help. She brings me a cup of green tea with honey. In no time, I am sending notes to everyone that pops into my mind.

I leave the high school and say hello to John Kahn's son, Jake, who is reworking the slate on the high school roof. For this one minute, it is a small world. I worked for Jake's father years ago. My walk becomes a quick sketch, and then I am all pulls and pack leaving my old school, the White Oak.

Lime Rock is warm homes en route to my old home at Hotchkiss Preparatory School. I lived there for four years when I left home at 15. But HVRHS was my school. It is good to think of the maze of brick and presidential facades but really I was the cook's helper and lived under the kitchen. Even with the romance of memory and its limitations, I know that I was so blessed. Hotchkiss saved my life. I stepped away from poor beliefs and began to hear voices that were educated, original, and alive. Someone asked recently if I was treated as an outsider there. It was a great question, and I was fortunate to have a great answer. The answer is never; they enriched my life.

Buses run from the high school. I've made the best meal I can remember. But then again, I'm cold and I've walked far. I've cut a branch and mashed coffee beans in my titanium cup. I flip veggie burgers and watch my lemon noodles soak in the oiled water. Cups, food, woodsmoke all dance around me in a children's song as I laugh aloud like an odd old man. This is so simple, yet so beautiful to me. I need to be only here. The French press is done. I push down the beans, unscrew the stainless steel rod, and my first trail coffee is ready. It is too good, and I singe my tongue, but I don't burn it enough to prevent me from doing it again.

Climbing the new tar over Wells Hill into Lakeville, I break away from Hotchkiss. My brother's waiting for me in Lakeville. It is 1983. I'm on leave from the army, having completed training, and I will never see him again. I buy red peppers and strawberries at LeBon's in Salisbury, and Steve takes me on his Honda 500 dual sport to meet all of his friends for the first time. Until that day all of his friends were the same as his possessions. I wasn't allowed, and it was never necessary to put this in words. Later in the sun of the day, we went swimming in a secret swimming hole down behind the Lakeville school, and I noticed he'd finally learned to swim. Steve was late to swimming, being less brave in some areas than I was. Now he swam beside me, dove from the footbridge, and effortlessly moved with me as if we were running slow. He had grown into a likeness of our father, who he hated. He had the same cutting nose, and the same sharp Adam's apple. I was a year younger than my brother. I was always promised the new bike, the special trip, the graduation party, etcetera, when I reached his age. But it was a faux rabbit to keep this dog running.

Of all the days of my life, this is the one that was most glorious. I touch it often in memory. It was the day I caught the rabbit. We caught the rabbit. We are brothers now. We are no longer in love with the same woman, we no longer trade brags, we are smooth-skinned and out of the rabbit hole. Steve is proud of me outside of words, and I know that we will never be the same again. At the end of the day, when we have waited too long to say good-bye and let it feel less like a stab, Steve finds enough macho to make me laugh by riding a wheelie past the White Hart Inn in a mid-afterloon salute and I never see his eyes move again.