"And I even told him to look,'' Chris says. Both DeWeese and Gennie comment on Chris's size. He becomes self-conscious and glows a little. They ask about his mother and his brother and we both answer these questions as best we can.

The heat of the sun finally becomes too much for me and I shift my chair into the shade. The marshmallow feeling leaves in the sudden chill and after a few minutes I have to button up. Gennie notices and says, "As soon as the sun goes over the ridge up there it gets really cold.''

The distance between the sun and the ridge is narrow. I'd judge that although it's only the middle of the afternoon, less than half an hour of direct sun remains. John asks about the mountains in the winter and he and DeWeese and the art instructor talk about this and about snowshoeing in the mountains. I could just sit here forever.

Sylvia and Gennie and the art instructor's wife talk about the house and soon Gennie invites them inside.

My thoughts drift to the statement about Chris growing so fast and suddenly the feeling of the tomb comes on. I've heard only indirectly of the time Chris lived here, and yet to them it seems that he's hardly been gone. We live in entirely different time structures.

The conversation shifts onto what is current in art and music and theater and I'm surprised at how well John keeps up his end of the conversation. I'm not basically interested in what's new in these areas and he probably knows it and for that reason never talks about it to me. Just the reverse of the motorcycle maintenance situation. I wonder if I look as glassy-eyed now as he does when I talk about rods and pistons.

But what he and DeWeese really have in common is Chris and me, and a funny stickiness is developing here, ever since the movie-star comment. John's good-natured sarcasm toward his old drinking and cycling companion is chilling DeWeese slightly, causing resultant respectful tones toward me from DeWeese. These seem to increase John's sarcasm in a self-stoking way and they both sense this and so they kind of veer away from me onto some subject of agreement and then come back again but this stickiness develops and they veer away again onto another agreeable subject.

"Anyway,'' John says, "this character here told us we were in for a letdown when we came here, and we still haven't gotten over this `letdown.'''

I laugh. I hadn't wanted to build him up to it. DeWeese smiles too. But then John turns to me and says, "Geez, you must have been really crazy, I mean really nuts to leave this place. I don't care what the college is like.''

I see DeWeese look at him, shocked. Then angry. DeWeese looks at me and I wave it off. Some kind of impasse has developed but I don't know how to get around it. "It's a beautiful place,'' I say weakly.

DeWeese says defensively, "If you were here for a while you'd see another side to it.'' The instructor nods in agreement.

The impasse now produces its silence. It's an impossible one to reconcile. What John said wasn't unkind. He's kinder than anyone. What he knows and I know but DeWeese doesn't know is that the person they're both referring to isn't much these days. Just another middle-class, middle-aged person getting along. Worried mainly about Chris, but beyond that nothing special.

But what DeWeese and I know and the Sutherlands don't know is that there was someone, a person who lived here once, who was creatively on fire with a set

of ideas no one had ever heard of before, but then something unexplained and wrong happened and DeWeese doesn't know how or why and neither do I. The reason for the impasse, the bad feeling, is that DeWeese thinks that person is here now. And there's no way I can tell him otherwise.

For a brief moment, way up at the top of the ridge, the sun diffuses through the trees and a halation of the light comes down to us. The halo expands, capturing every-

thing in a sudden flash, and suddenly it catches me too.

"He saw too much,'' I say, still thinking about the impasse, but DeWeese looks puzzled and John doesn't register at all, and I realize the non sequitur too late. In the distance a single bird cries plaintively.

Now suddenly the sun is gone behind the mountain and the whole canyon is in dull shadow.

To myself I think how uncalled for that was. You don't make statements like that. You leave the hospital with the understanding that you don't.

Gennie appears with Sylvia and suggests we unpack. We agree and she shows us to our rooms. I see that my bed has a heavy quilt on it against the cold of the night. Beautiful room.

In three trips to the cycle and back I have everything transferred. Then I go to Chris's room to see what needs to be unpacked but he's cheerful and being grown-up and doesn't need help.

I look at him. "How do you like it here?''

He says, "Fine, but it isn't anything like the way you told about it last night.''

"When?''

"Just before we went to sleep. In the cabin.''

I don't know what he's referring to.

He adds, "You said it was lonely here.''

"Why would I say that?''

"I don't know.'' My question frustrates him, so I leave it. He must have been dreaming.

When we come down to the living room I can smell the aroma from the frying trout in the kitchen. At one end of the room DeWeese is bent over the fireplace holding a match to some newspaper under the kindling. We watch him for a while.

"We use this fireplace all summer long,'' he says.

I reply, "I'm surprised it's this cold.''

Chris says he's cold too. I send him back up for his sweater and mine as well.

"It's the evening wind,'' DeWeese says. "It sweeps down the canyon from up high where it's really cold.''

The fire flares suddenly and then dies and then flares again from an uneven draft. It must be windy, I think, and look through the huge windows that line one wall of the living room. Across the canyon in the dusk I see the sharp movement of the trees.

"But that's right,'' DeWeese says. "You know how cold it is up there. You used to spend all your time up there.''

"It brings back memories,'' I say.

A single fragment comes to mind now of night winds all around a campfire, smaller than this one before us now, sheltered in the rock against the high wind because there are no trees. Next to the fire are cooking gear and backpacks to help give wind shelter, and a canteen filled with water gathered from the melting snow. The water had to be collected early because above the timberline the snow stops melting when the sun goes down.

DeWeese says, "You've changed a lot.'' He is looking at me searchingly. His expression seems to ask whether this is a forbidden topic or not, and he gathers from looking at me that it is. He adds, "I guess we all have.''

I reply, "I'm not the same person at all,'' and this seems to put him a little more at ease. Were he aware of the literal truth of that, he'd be a lot less at ease. "A lot has happened,'' I say, "and some things have come up that have made it important to try to untangle them a little, in my own mind at least, and that's partly why I'm here.''

He looks at me, expecting something more, but the art instructor and his wife appear by the fireside and we drop it.

"The wind sounds like there'll be a storm tonight,'' the instructor says.

"I don't think so,'' DeWeese says.

Chris returns with the sweaters and asks if there are any ghosts up in the canyon.

DeWeese looks at him with amusement. "No, but there are wolves,'' he says.

Chris thinks about this and asks, "What do they do?''

DeWeese says, "They make trouble for the ranchers.'' He frowns. "They kill the young calves and lambs.''

"Do they chase people?''

"l've never heard of it,'' DeWeese says and then, seeing that this disappoints Chris, adds, "but they could.''