he edge of town, trees were dark behind a body of water that was
platinum and still. Fish broke the surface with soft slaps in the
centers of expanding circles. Ansel Adams might have caught the many
shades of silver just before the lights went out.

The next afternoon Joe was across the Hudson, driving through the
mountains on roads that were more crowded than he remembered. There
were many new houses and the trees were larger. He stopped on the hill
by his grandparents' old house in Woodstock. Captain Ben had retired
during the depression to that rocky hillside and made a homely paradise
of gardens and fruit trees. A slow silent job. Emily was beside him,
canning, cooking, and mothering. They said you couldn't grow pears
around there. We ate a lot of pears, Joe thought. And plums, apples,
rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus . . . The house smelled of geraniums
from the solar greenhouse that his grandfather built onto the dining
room long before anyone ever heard of a solar greenhouse.

Captain Ben was a son of an old Virginia family who in better days had
owned Monticello. _Lee's Lieutenants_ lined a living room shelf.
Noblesse oblige came with mother's milk. You are born privileged; you
have an obligation. He had a company garden when he was serving in the
Philippines--men who got out of line did time weeding and afterwards
ate fresh vegetables. Once a year he would go to town and whip the
touring chess master who was playing 20 people at once. "Pawn to King's
four," he taught Joe, "control the center." Joe opened with pawn to
Queen's knight four, bringing a smile. "Learn the hard way, huh?"

He died when Joe was in seventh grade, and Joe spent his high school
years with his grandmother, well cared for, but living more or less
alone. She remarried about the time Joe graduated. The new husband
moved _Lee's Lieutenants_ to the attic and Joe moved out. The house
that Joe remembered had disappeared inside a gaudy renovation, but the
mountains hadn't changed. What is it about land, Joe wondered. It gets
inside you, deep as your loves, maybe deeper.

He ate dinner in town. He saw Aaron Shultis across the street, but
Aaron didn't recognize him after twenty-five years. Joe drove back into
the hills and parked by a narrow lane across from the one room
schoolhouse where he had gone to fifth grade. He fell asleep in a
cradle of memories: fucking Sally in this very spot . . . apple fights,
BB gun fights, the sound of the schoolh