Warning: weird little story, possible hanky alert, depending on how you react to things. But it ends happy, I promise!

          Cold. He could never seem to get warm any more. He’d asked for the heavy drapes to be pulled back so he could see the night sky, brilliant as a phosphorescent sea, but the dark void of the window sucked the heat out of the room. Perhaps he should call Mrs. Banks or one of the boys and ask for another log on the fire. But it didn’t seem worth the trouble. He would still be cold. He closed his eyes and thought of warmer places.

          Mexico. Hot enough even for Artie, who was always cold. It was one of the few things they argued about. He was hot-blooded himself, wanted the windows open even in the dead of winter. Artie made a nest of quilts and blankets and complained about the draft. Sometimes Jim sighed and tweaked the window down an inch. Sometimes he laughed and threw off all Artie’s covers and showed him other ways to stay warm. Sometimes, there at the end when it was obvious that nothing could ever really warm Artie again, he had lifted Artie into his arms and held him tight against the heat of his own body, and turned his head away so Artie couldn’t see his tears.

          They had been in Mexico when Artie got sick. He wouldn’t think of that.

          There was the month they spent in the still young and raw state of Florida. A man named Hart was running excursion cruises to the little resort town of Silver Springs, where you could ride in a rowboat with a glass window built into a box, and watch fish and crabs and turtles swimming in the crystal-clear waters below. Artie had been fascinated with it, had wanted to take the tour again and again. Jim could still see his bright and mobile face looking up from the viewing box in amazement, could hear him saying, “Jim, just look at this!” At night, they went back to Bishop’s Hotel and made love, tender and wild by turns. Yes, Florida was a good memory.

          Actually, they had been in Florida the first time they had sexual relations, all those years ago when they were still Secret Service agents, almost another lifetime. He could hardly remember the man he had been then. But he remembered Artie. Artie had been a mystery to him even after they had worked together for years, like one of those trick boxes whose layers you could unwrap one by one, each one a different color or texture, until you finally got to the one with the gift in it. But with Artie, the innermost box was only a blank unyielding core. He wasn’t certain he had ever known Artie all the way to the bottom, even in those final days when the rambling half-coherent voice told him things about childhood and family that Artie had never revealed in his right mind. But he had figured out one of the mysteries, and it made him smile all over again to recall it.

          Why had they been in Florida, thousands of miles from their usual territory? He couldn’t quite remember any more. But he remembered Artie’s growing silences, the increasing remoteness of his expression, the feeling that Artie was going away from him. The sense of abandonment shook him right down to his boots. The only other time he had felt so alone was when he realized that his mother wasn’t going to get better, when the aunts took him away for a week and brought him back to a dead, empty house, with an empty shell of a father walking around in it like a dead man. Artie was leaving him, even if only in spirit, and he couldn’t figure out why.

          “You aren’t sick, are you?” he had asked finally. He couldn’t bear to hear the answer, but he could bear even less not to know at all.

          “Sick?” Artie said in obvious surprise. “No, of course not. What makes you ask that?”

          “You’ve been quiet. Not like yourself.”

          Artie grew still. “Sorry,” he said finally. “I didn’t mean to shut you out.”

          Jim moved closer to him, needing the reassurance of his physical presence. “What’s wrong, then?” he asked, still puzzled and distressed.

          To his surprise, Artie shrank away from him. They had never been reluctant to touch, and this apparent standoffish-ness hurt him. He stuck out an arm and pulled Artie back. “C’mon, Artemus, what’s going on?”

          “Nothing’s going on,” Artie said, sounding irritated. He disengaged his arm and moved over to look out the window. “I’ve just been thinking.” After a moment, he added, “Thinking about the future.” There was another pause, and he said, “I don’t really want to talk about it right now.”

          Almost frightened by his aloof manner, Jim said, “All right. All right, Artie. But you’ll tell me if something is wrong?” Like the child he had been all those years ago when no one would talk to him about his mother, he demanded, “Promise me you will.”

          “Of course I will,” Artie said, with a laugh. “Don’t be so morbid.” He gestured out the window. “Look out there. What bright sunshine they have here! It’s a beautiful day.”

          Jim turned away, unhearing, knowing only that something was terribly amiss and that Artie would not tell him what it was.

          That evening he found a book on the arm of the sofa, as though forgotten or carelessly discarded. But Artie didn’t leave things lying around without a purpose. A burgundy ribbon hung from the spine, and he opened the book at the marked passage. He found three poems on the right-hand page, the first entitled “Among the Multitude.”

Among the men and women, the multitude, [it read]
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine
         signs,
Acknowledging none else–not parent, wife, husband,
         brother, child, any nearer than I am;
Some are baffled–But that one is not–that one knows
         me.

Ah, lover and perfect equal!
I meant that you should discover me so, by my faint
          indirections;
And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the
         like in you.

          Curious, he turned back to the title page. “Calamus,” it said.

          Walt Whitman again. Artie was always reading something of his. Jim had glanced at one of the volumes and found it a little too raw, too disturbingly explicit. He didn’t really care to read poems about sex, and poems about love ought to be more tastefully expressed. But Artie obviously meant him to read this, meant him to find some meaning in it.

          To you many things to absorb, I teach, to help you

                        become eleve of mine;

          Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins;

          If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not

                        silently select lovers,

          Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine?

          That one was even more perplexing. He could see some vague references to himself and Artie in the first poem, assuming that was what Artie intended him to find. “Acknowledging none else–not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am…” He and Artie were that close, certainly.

          But the second poem–what on earth was he to understand from that? “Eleve.” The present tense of elever. “To raise,” if he recalled his college French correctly. And the subjunctive too. “To be raised.” But neither of those fit here. And what could be meant by “If blood like mine circle not in your veins…”

          Puzzled and vaguely disturbed, he went on to the last of the three poems on the page.

          O You Whom I Often And Silently Come

          O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are,

                        that I may be with you;

          As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the

                        same room with you,

          Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your

                        sake is playing within me.

          That one, at least, seemed to have some connection to their current lives. Artie had kept close to him lately. Withdrawn and silent, but near. “I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you…” Powerful, exalted words, like one of the Psalms. But there was nothing Biblical about the last line: “…the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.” That was pure Whitman, he thought, not just suggestive, but downright erotic.

          He glanced at the words again. “As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you…” A not very subtle electric shock swept over him. Was Artie saying he felt that kind of sensation in Jim’s presence?

          He closed the book with a snap and laid it aside. Artie must not have intended him to read it. He’d just forgotten to put it away. The words nagged at him, though.

          “Ah, lover and perfect equal!” He recalled a conversation they’d had, early in their acquaintance, about women, and love, and how one would know one’s true love. He would just know, he had averred. He would feel something different for the right woman, something special.

          Artie had chuckled. “Such a romantic!” he had teased. “Suppose you feel that way about someone who’s completely unsuitable for you. Or unavailable, if it comes to that.”

          “You have a better idea?”

          “I believe the perfect relationship is one of equals,” Artie had said seriously. “If all you have is a feeling, what happens to love when the feeling fades? If you don’t love her for who she is when you first meet, you won’t love her when childbirth has made her stout, and care of you and your children has put lines in her face.”

          He had spoken more emphatically than was usual in their discussions, and Jim thought he might have some insight into why Artie flitted so indifferently from one woman to another. If he was looking for an equal, however, he was looking in some mighty strange places. They didn’t have much opportunity to meet the kind of woman Artie was talking about. In eight years, in fact, neither of them had been strongly enough attracted to someone else to interfere with the partnership.

          Was that what Artie was trying to tell him? That he’d met a woman he wanted to marry? That he wanted to leave the Service and settle down somewhere to raise a family? A tidal surge of jealousy flooded over him at the thought. No one could have a stronger hold on Artie than he did. “Acknowledging none else–not parent, wife, husband…” He opened the book again and stared at the words. They had done that, even if the words had never been spoken. Acknowledged none else, forsworn all others. Only one thing came before their dedication to each other—their joint vow to their country—and even that, he knew, had sometimes been in jeopardy.

          But if it was, at least in part, the vow that had held them together all these years, what would happen when they no longer worked together? He found that he could not contemplate his life without Artie in it. Could not imagine a life, no matter how otherwise pleasant, in which he didn’t sit across from Artie at breakfast, didn’t share his evenings with Artie, didn’t have Artemus Gordon as an essential part of every day.

          Yet it certainly seemed as though Artie was considering some change. “I often and silently come where you are…“ The body hovering close, but the mind and emotions distant. Jim thought about that for a moment, sensing some echo of his own past. And like a ghost rising from the dead, there was his father, all those years ago, unable to tear himself from his dying wife’s side, but so shuttered and closed off that for Jim it had been like losing both parents.

          Once again he looked down at the words of the first poem. “Ah, lover and perfect equal! I meant that you should discover me so, by my faint indirections…”

          He sighed softly. Any fainter, Artie, and I might not have figured them out at all.

          And he still might be misreading Artie’s desires. Could Artie possibly mean what these words appeared to say? Perhaps it was only that Artie wanted to leave the Service. Wanted them to stay together, but in some other occupation. He had to get this right, and this kind of step-by-step analysis was not one of his skills. He did best when he could see the whole picture, could visualize all the players, and see his own role clearly. This was like feeling his way along a fenceline in a blizzard. You’d come to a break where the cows had trampled it down, and there you were, no choice but to go on, but where was the other side? Sometimes all you could do was throw yourself forward, snow filling your boot prints so you couldn’t see the way back and the howling wind driving the snow so thick you couldn’t see the way forward either.

          He shivered slightly, unsure of his own response. He’d never thought of Artie as a lover, either in the romantic sense or the erotic. Yet he wasn’t unaware of Artie’s attractiveness. It had just never seemed important in the context of their relationship. Was he the perfect equal that Artie had said he wanted? But then…why the withdrawal? Why the implied reconsideration of their future?

          The words seemed to leap out at him. “Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.”

          Artie was withdrawing because he didn’t think Jim could feel that fire. And he wasn’t certain himself that he could, or that he even wanted to. There had been newspaper headlines recently about the exposure of Sodomites in high places, vile foul invective against men who, it was said, perverted themselves with other men. He couldn’t think of himself, or of Artie, in those terms. Yet, some unseen bridge had been crossed in his mind, he found. He couldn’t go back to what had been. All that was left was to go forward.

          Forward to what, he wasn’t quite certain. The poems could hardly be more suggestive, but at the same time, he supposed it would be possible to find only strong friendship in them, if one was determined to do so. Yet if that was all Artie wanted, he wouldn’t have resorted to hints and "faint indirections." When he was sure of his ground, Artie had no trouble at all speaking his mind. If he wanted some kind of long-term, but still brotherly and platonic, commitment from Jim, he would simply have said so. “James,” he’d have said, “I’m ready to move on, but you know, m’boy, we’ve worked pretty well together all this time. What do you say we look for something else to do?”

          But he hadn’t said that. So what he wanted was more, and therein lay the uncertainty. What exactly was included in ‘more’ was beyond Jim’s experience, or even, up to now, his interest. And it wasn’t, he reflected, that he felt any particular revulsion at the idea of him and Artie together. His personal philosophy was whatever two people did together was no one else’s business, as long as nobody was getting hurt. Eskimeaux, he had read, kissed with their noses. He couldn’t quite imagine what they got out of that, but if it gave them pleasure, he wished them hearty enjoyment of it. The same applied to his fairly vague notions of what men did with each other, but it would still have been nice to have some more specific idea.

          He sighed and closed the book, and followed supper-making noises to the galley. A cloud of fragrant steam rose from the pot Artie was stirring, and the smell of bread wafted from the oven. Artie blew gently on a spoonful of broth and sucked it in, smiling over the spoon at Jim. “Superb, if I do say so myself!” he pronounced. He seemed unchanged from all the evenings stretching back over nearly a decade. But there were new lines at the corners of his eyes, and a shadow behind his smile, and the smile faded when he saw the book in Jim’s hand.

          “What does ‘eleve’ mean? Besides one of the tenses of ‘elever,’ of course.”

          The easiest way to get Artie off guard was to ask him a question. Jim had learned that little trick a long time ago.

          Artie said slowly, “It can mean a student. Not just a dilletante, but someone who’s been raised to the level of actively studying.” He shrugged, obviously striving for off-hand diffidence. “I suppose that’s what Whitman meant.”

          “And why a ‘boy of the West?’” Jim asked. They were circling each other metaphorically, almost like enemies. No, not enemies, but like combatants, testing each other’s purpose and goals. Jim didn’t want to feel at odds with Artie like this, but he couldn’t see how else to get at what he needed to know. If he said the wrong thing, Artie was as likely as not to just clam up, as he’d done earlier.

          “Whitman has a romantic notion of what the West is like,” Artie told him in the schoolmaster’s voice that sometimes irritated him, but which was now a reassurance of normality. “I think he sees a ‘Western boy’ as some innocent idyllic creature devoid of the baser desires of men.”

          Jim glanced down at the words of the poem. “If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently select lovers…” he read. “Doesn’t sound very innocent to me.”

          “Perhaps the innocence is in the silence,” Artie said after a moment, his voice now strained and gravelly. “The boy doesn’t communicate his desire.”

          That was certainly a stretch–which meant Artie was on the defensive. “So the teacher isn’t certain of his motives,” Jim suggested. “Whitman says…” He glanced down. “He says, ‘if blood like mine circle not in your veins.’”

          Artie didn’t answer, and when Jim looked up again, he saw that Artie’s face had gone white. “Uncertain of his motives,” Artie said in a whisper. “Yes.”

          He looked like a wild animal caught in torchlight, huge brown eyes, pale skin, wavy hair in disarray. With a pang, Jim thought, I’ve done that to him, and all thought of dragging some kind of truth out of Artie fled away.

          “I don’t know my own motives,” he confessed. “I don’t know whether I can feel the same as you. But if you’ll teach me, Artie, I’ll be your willing student.”

          He wasn’t sure what he expected, but it was not for Artie to put down the spoon and open the oven door. “Let’s eat our dinner first. The bread is done.” He pushed Jim gently toward the door. “You set the table while I bring in the food.”

          Jim silently laid two places, and opened a bottle of Medoc, intensely aware of Artie’s presence, refusing to allow himself to think about what he had done, what he had said. Artie carried in the soup tureen and a plate of crusty bread, gave an appreciative nod at the wine, and sat in his usual place.

          When Jim began, “Artie…” he shook his head.

          “Eat your dinner,” he said. “I had to barter my soul for the mushrooms in that soup.” His voice was light and bantering, hardly different from a thousand mealtimes before. He wouldn’t look at Jim, though, serving up the soup and passing the bread without once meeting Jim’s eyes. They ate in near silence, Artie speaking only to ask for more wine, Jim reluctant to say anything that might damage the fragile thread stretched between them. The book of poems lay at Jim’s hand, the poet himself an unseen presence.

          Artie finally pushed his soup plate away and drained his wine glass. “I don’t know whether I was right to mark those verses for you,” he said into the silence. “You may not thank me one day.”

          “Why?”

          He gestured toward the newspaper on the sideboard. “Didn’t you see the headlines? Pederasts are not exactly popular at the moment.”

          “Is that how you think of yourself?” Jim asked curiously. “Are you attracted to boys?”

          “Good heavens, no!” Artie said, with real amusement. “Awful little savages. But that is the popular perception, you know.”

          Jim glanced down at himself, and then over at Artie. “Um, I don’t think either of us qualifies any more. And the nasty-minded people who wrote those words can go hang themselves, for all I care. We’d probably all be better off if they did.”

          Artie gazed at him with such a mixture of desire and fear in his eyes that Jim couldn’t bear to see it. He reached for Artie’s hand where it lay on the cloth, pulled it up and clasped it as men did to seal a truth between them. “I don’t know anything about this. All I know is that I can’t stand to lose you. You’ll have to teach me the rest of it.”

          Still Artie hesitated. Jim slid out of his seat and stood, pulling Artie up with him. “Do you want to stay here?” he whispered, hardly believing his own daring. “Or go in your room?”

          Jim thought himself that one of their staterooms would feel more comfortable, sheltering them in close privacy. But Artie said finally, “This is all right.”

          They were still handfasted, and his fingers tightened around Jim’s. His other hand came up to touch Jim’s face. “I’m still not certain I’m doing the right thing. But I don’t have the willpower to turn you away.”

          Jim grinned at him with more confidence than he actually felt. “I’d be awfully hurt if I thought you didn’t really want me after all.”

          Artie’s finger traced down his cheek to the corner of his lips. They were so close that Jim could almost feel his pulse, could feel Artie’s heart beating hard in its desire for him. It was a heady feeling, to think that someone wanted him badly enough to leave “faint indirections” for him to find, and to be so physically affected. He’d been aware of the desire of various women for his body, but it was his own self, the man inside, whom Artie wanted, “Oh lover and perfect equal!”

          Artie bent closer to him, so close that Jim could see his thick lashes, and a faint scar along his hairline, an unwelcome reminder of their life together. His eyes drifted shut, and Artie’s lips touched his, and the world closed in around them, two lovers finding each other for the very first time, and the electric fire he had feared he wouldn’t feel roared into life in his vitals.

          Artie was being cautious. Too cautious: the kiss was fleeting, just a tentative brush of his lips, and Jim wanted more. He swayed forward as Artie retreated, and the next kiss was better. They ran out of oxygen eventually, and broke apart, looking at each other, Artie’s eyes sparkling and a queer lurch in Jim’s heart. I’ve just kissed another man, he thought, and it was amazing.

          Artie touched the cravat at his neck, his eyes asking May I? 

          Jim nodded slowly. His heart was beating like an Indian drum. He couldn’t remember ever experiencing such a conflicting mix of passion and apprehension, of raw sexual need and hesitation. Like a damn bridegroom, he thought, consumed with desire, and at the same time shy and nervous.

          Artie seemed to be in a similar condition. Jim had more than once seen him divest a woman of her clothing with speed and aplomb. Now, with fumbling fingers, he finally managed to get Jim’s tie off, and began on the buttons of his vest.

          “Unh-unh,” Jim said with a soft laugh. “Your turn.”

          He undid Artie’s cravat with somewhat more expertise than Artie had managed with his own, and held himself still while Artie removed his vest.

          “If I hadn’t just sewn on two of these,” Artie said, struggling with one particularly obstinate button, “I might be tempted to rip it off.”

          “Another time,” Jim promised him, with a straight face. “I’ll dress in something old, and you can ravish me.”

          Artie flashed him a dazzled smile. “And here I thought I would have to seduce you.”

          “Would you have tried?” Jim asked. “If I hadn’t figured out what you wanted from the poems?”

          Artie took a deep breath. “I honestly don’t know. I didn’t want to talk you into this, if it wasn’t what you wanted too.” His face sobered suddenly. “Please be certain, Jim. The only thing worse than outright rejection would be for you to change your mind later.”

          Jim could feel his mouth stretching into an ear-to-ear grin. “I’ll promise not to ever change my mind if you’ll promise the same.” And when he could breath again, Artie having seized him and claimed his mouth, he added, “Does that mean we’re married?”

          Artie nodded solemnly. “You know, don’t you, that the Bible has no marriage ritual? All it says is that So-and-so went into his tent and ‘knew’ his wife.”

          Jim chuckled softly, and gestured toward Artie’s bedroom. “Well, your ‘tent’ is a step or two nearer than mine.”

          “In a minute,” Artie said huskily. “I have to kiss you again.”

          They fit so perfectly together. Artie’s mouth alive against his, Artie’s body solid and compact in his arms. His strong tongue, the little murmuring sounds he made, his sheer physical energy. It had been strange to Jim, for just a moment, not to feel a bosom against his chest, but he quickly discovered other things that were just as enticing. He couldn’t have guessed how the hard mass of another man’s arousal would feel. He wanted to rub himself against it, wanted to see it, wanted to see Artie touch himself, wanted everything all at once with such ferocity that he didn’t know where to start, and just stood there shaking with need until Artie yanked his trousers open and went to his knees and engulfed Jim with his mouth, and Jim groaned out Artie’s name and came all over both of them.

          It never became old. They never tired of each other. And surprisingly, the new relationship never affected their work. The daily risks were an aphrodisiac–every coupling a celebration of the death they had outwitted that day, and a challenge to the fate they might meet the next. But one day Artie was thrown from his horse during a violent chase, and broke his leg, and something that had been building in Jim came to a head.

           “That’s enough,” Jim told him. “We’re resigning before one of us gets killed.” Artie objected, for form’s sake, but Jim knew his heart wasn’t in the words, and when Jim sent the telegram with their joint notice of resignation, Artie relaxed for the first time since the injury, and began to mend.

          They drifted for a year, picking up odd jobs here and there. The theater was always open to Artie, but had little to offer Jim. Ranching might have suited him, but Artie needed to be near civilization, not stuck for months at a time in the middle of nowhere. Then they happened upon a private school attached to a ranch in Palm Springs, catering to the newly rich California families who didn’t want to send their sons all the way back East for an education. They meant to stay only one term, while Jim sorted out the expensive but poorly trained horses in the riding school and Artie filled in for the tubercular history master. By the end of the term, Artie had been asked to take the assistant headmaster’s post, and Jim was already managing the entire ranching side of the business.

          To their surprise, they stayed almost fifteen years. It was a good life, less risky than before but with its own challenges. Ill-mannered boys with arrogant parents, vendors who shorted deliveries or sent inferior goods–mundane problems compared to the old days, certainly, but on the other hand, no one was shooting at them. The primary risk, in fact, came from within. No matter how careful they were, there was always the chance of exposure. If not for the fact that all the bachelor rooms were occupied when they arrived, they would have been shut away from each other in separate quarters, unable to risk the slightest touch. But the ranch manager’s cabin, set at some distance from the other buildings, was the only space available for them, and they gravely assented to being “stuck in there together for now.”

          They maintained such rectitude that they even didn’t sit together at meals. Jim stayed with the rest of the staff, Artie at the head table with the other faculty members. Even so, Jim was certain the staff and teachers knew where things stood, and by the time they had been there a few years, probably many of the parents too–especially when they built the house in town, far enough from the ranch to give them some real privacy.

          The only real difficulty came when a boy like themselves turned up, and they could offer neither support, nor sympathy, nor even recognition. Jim suspected that more than one copy of Walt Whitman’s works found its way anonymously into these boys’ hands, and even that carried some risk.

          Then, with Jim in his fifties and Artie almost seventy, they retired for good. Sold the house in Palm Springs, boarded a train for New York, and made the Grand Tour of Europe. They visited the family Jim had lived with during his post-graduate year in England. They went to the opera houses in Turin and in Vienna. They gazed solemnly at the Parthenon, toured Venice in a little boat, walked wide-eyed around the Louvre and drank coffee in an outdoor cafe in Paris.

          After two years, they came home to the United States tired but happy, laden with trunks of souvenirs and photographs. They leased an apartment in New York City, overlooking Central Park, and talked about what they might do next. Artie was seventy-one now, and if their love-making had slowed down from the tempestuous thrill of their earlier years, it was still deeply satisfying. Artie could have him hard and thrilling with desire just with a glance from across a room. Artie’s face had thinned out and his hair lightened to silver, but when he turned that slow smile on Jim, bells still rang.

          They had come across from England at the end of September, a rough passage that had them both seasick. New York was comfortable and familiar, their apartment in the Dakota a luxury after two years of sometimes dubious accommodations. But winter was setting in now, and Artie seemed more susceptible to the cold than ever before.

          “Let’s go to Mexico at Christmas,” he said. “It’s warm there.”

          Jim looked out the window at two feet of new snowfall, and agreed. It was indeed warm there, and the liquid Spanish reminded them of their earlier lives. But Artie was unexpectedly listless and tired, and when Jim suggested they return to New York, he didn’t object. They were home by the middle of January, and one doctor after another shook his head and said he wasn’t sure what was wrong. Artie grew more and more tired and pale. He couldn’t eat, no matter what delicacy Jim brought home, and if he did manage to choke something down, as often as not it came right back up. At night he woke drenched with sweat, shivering violently. He began to have headaches of such intensity that the doctors prescribed morphine.

          One day, the doctor that Jim had begged to come down from Boston beckoned him out into the hall and shut the bedroom door so Artie couldn’t hear. He said, “He has leukemia. He won’t live long.”

          Jim had never heard of leukemia. Where had Artie gotten it? Why couldn’t they cure it? No one knew. In Mexico, perhaps. Or maybe he had already been ill when they returned from Europe, and just hadn’t realized it yet. There was no cure, the doctor told him, with professional indifference. Best to notify his family, and start making funeral arrangements. Jim clenched his fists until his nails cut bloody arcs in his palms, and kept himself from hitting the man.

          He wouldn’t give up. He paid for a learned man to come from Paris. The verdict was the same. He bought patent medicines, and gypsy nostrums, and fresh vegetables and fruit shipped from California, and nothing helped. He couldn’t bear to leave Artie in anyone else’s care, but he couldn’t sit in the house doing nothing. By now Artie was barely coherent most of the time, taking such a dose of morphine for the blinding headaches that he hardly knew where he was.

          But one day, while Jim sat at the writing desk in their bedroom, pleading with yet another famous doctor to come while there was still time, Artie said clearly, “If I was a horse, you’d put me out of my misery.” Jim whirled around, but Artie was already fading back into his drug-induced twilight. He walked over to the bed, pulled off his boots and coat, lay down next to Artie, and took him into his arms.

          “Forgive me, Artie,” he whispered. “I can’t.”

          But he didn’t leave Artie again. He never sent the last letter, and he stopped going out to beseech yet another physician to visit Artie, or to seek one more obscure and esoteric cure. He hired a housekeeper, and a manservant to help him with Artie’s more personal needs, and he didn’t leave Artie’s side again until the end.

          Now he knew that country where his father had dwelt. A wall separated him from sympathetic friends, from the thing that had been, and was no longer, Artie, from the lawyer and the undertaker and the photographer and the wagon carrying Artie’s casket through a dirty fog to Chatham Square, the Jewish cemetery. He wasn’t certain he was actually alive himself. He said things that five minutes later he couldn’t recall saying. He ate only after someone caught him as he pitched forward in a dead faint, and the doctor they called in said he would have to be committed to a hospital if he wouldn’t eat at home. Then he ate what was set before him, indifferent to what it was. He signed whatever he was handed, until his lawyer, discovering at the last moment that he was about to agree to build a marble mausoleum for Artie, complete with ornate statuary and doric columns, shook him hard, ripped up the contract in front of the disgusted stonemasons and sent everyone packing.

          Then he proceeded to get Jim falling-down drunk. When Jim woke in the morning, he thought the road-pavers outside had moved into his head, but he was more or less functional again. The world came back into focus, and he did what he had to do.

          When it was all over, he dismissed the servants, sold the furniture, gave Artie’s clothing to charity, left some essential papers with the lawyer, and bought a railway ticket for California. He was fifty-seven years old, the year was 1899, and if he hadn’t promised Artie a long time ago that he wouldn’t take his own life if Artie went first, he wouldn’t have lived to see 1900.

          But he did. He welcomed in the new century in the stable of the rooming house where he was living, and where he was employed as a sort of handyman-cum-stableboy, with a Colt Revolver in one hand and a nearly empty whiskey bottle in the other. He couldn’t remember when he had last shaved or bathed or changed his clothes, and it didn’t seem to matter. He did remember his promise to Artie, but even that was beginning to matter less and less each day. He sat on a bale of hay looking at the gun, and taking occasional swigs from the bottle, and wondered how long he could go on.

          He wasn’t surprised when Artie spoke. He’d seen Artie several times lately, just a glimpse from the corner of his eye, or a familiar shadow in a dim corner of the saloon. He knew better by now than to turn and look for him. Artie was never there when he did. But if he contented himself with the peripheral presence, he could often feel Artie near him.

          “Good God, Jim.” Artie sat on the adjacent hay bale, and waved his hand delicately in front of his nose. “You stink.”

          Jim shrugged. “You can’t smell anything. You’re dead.”

          “I can still tell when someone hasn’t shaved in a week,” Artie said tartly. “And with that much cheap whiskey in you, you’ve got to smell of alcohol, if nothing else.”

          Jim took a chance and looked directly at him. This time Artie didn’t disappear. He was young again, perhaps the same age as when they had first met, his hair warm brown instead of silver. There was a fine network of lines at the corners of his eyes, but none of the deep creases of pain that had marred his face at the end.

          “Are you a ghost?” Jim asked. It didn’t seem important, but he was curious. He’d heard of people seeing ghosts, but he’d never seen one himself.

          Artie chuckled, reached over and took the bottle out of his hand. “Can you see through me?” he asked. “Can ghosts hold things in their hands?” He looked at the label on the bottle and winced. “How can you drink this stuff? You’re not going to have a liver very long if you go on like this.”

          Jim shrugged again. “Does that matter?”

          Artie threw the bottle into a corner, took Jim’s gun from his hand, and dropped it on the floor on his other side. “Yes, it matters.” He shifted his hay bale closer to Jim’s. Jim could feel the heat of his body. He should be overjoyed, he thought. Somehow, Artie had come back to him. But the rational part of his mind, wandering somewhere in the fog of alcohol, told him that he was just drunk, that was all. He was imagining things.

          Artie reached over and took his hand. “Lover,” he said, “you’re not through with life. You still have things to do. You have people’s lives to touch.” He squeezed Jim’s hand. “Don’t cheat them. Don’t cheat yourself.”

          “Stay with me,” Jim said, knowing he was speaking to thin air, to an invention of his own drink-sodden brain.

          “I wish I could.” Artie’s voice held such sadness that Jim looked at him in surprise. “I’d give anything it was in my power to give if I could just stay with you.”

          “I thought Heaven was supposed to be a happy place.” A sudden awful thought seized him. “God, Artie, you didn’t go to–to the other place, did you?”

          Artie laughed out loud, the same hearty guffaw that Jim had so loved to hear. “You mean hell? Of course not!” He laughed again. “Jim, my dearest, it isn’t quite what you’ve been taught. You’ll see.”

          He gave Jim a poke in the side, and when Jim moved, he slid over next to him. Jim put his arm around Artie’s back and hugged him close, tears brimming in his eyes. They sat together for a long time, while firecrackers went off outside, and voices called “Happy New Year!” to each other. Jim shut out everything but the living warmth of his lover next to him. Sometimes they kissed softly. It didn’t seem necessary to do more than that. Finally Jim said what he'd been unable to say while Artie still lived, or in the months afterward.

          “You left me.” His voice shaking, not just from the dammed-up emotion, but from fear that it would drive Artie away again.

          “We never talked about that,” Artie admitted. “I couldn’t accept what was happening to me. By the time I knew there was no hope, it was too late. I couldn’t keep a thought in my head for more than a few seconds at a time.” He hesitated. “We should have talked about it.” It sounded like an accusation.

          “What could I say?” Jim demanded. “It wasn't your fault—I couldn't blame you. I couldn't blame God—that’s blasphemy. But I was so angry I thought it would eat me up from inside.”

          The dam was breaking, the timbers splintering and giving way, and he wept finally, not just the slow leak of tears that was all he'd allowed himself, but racking, wrenching sobs, so loud he thought the people outside must hear him. Artie held him, murmured things to him, but he was still vastly alone, and after a while, when there were no more tears in him, he sat up, wiped his eyes roughly on his sleeve, and said, “I’m still angry. It still hurts. When is it going to stop, Artie?”

          Artie was silent for a moment. “Perhaps when you find someone else to love,” he said finally, and seeing Jim’s reflexive denial, he added, “I don’t mean another man or woman, necessarily. But you have such a deep capacity to love. It has to go somewhere. That’s what I meant when I said you had other lives to touch.”

          Artie wasn’t making sense, but Jim let it go. He wouldn't spoil whatever time he'd been given with argument. He wanted to ask Artie what it was like, where he’d gone, but he sensed that Artie wouldn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, tell him. So he contented himself with touch, his fingers in Artie’s hair, their fingers entwined together, another kiss or two, with a shaky apology for his whiskers. He rubbed Artie’s back where it used to cramp up, and Artie leaned his head on Jim’s shoulder and sang a soft Spanish song about a caballero and his horse, a lullaby to comfort the worst of Jim’s pain.

          When morning came, and Jim found himself lying on the floor of the stable, alone and cold and mostly sober, he hauled himself up with all the stiffness of middle age and a year of hard living, and looked around him in bewilderment. Artie couldn’t have been there. Yet the memory was as solid as he had felt in Jim’s arms. He had felt the thump of Artie’s heart, the warmth of his body. He had felt Artie’s breath against his neck. It could not have been a drunken delusion, just a phantasm built out of his desperate loneliness and his futile longing for Artie. But he couldn’t imagine what else it could have been. People didn’t come back from the dead. Not ordinary people, anyway, and Artie had been no saint.

          He shook his head in weary resignation, told himself to just get on with it, and went back to the feed room to get the morning measure of grain for the horses. A glint of something caught his eye in the slanting early sunlight, and he bent down to see what it was. He picked it up and stood there in wondering silence, looking at the bottle Artie had thrown into just this corner. Could it be… could Artie really have been there? He still couldn’t believe it. But there was his gun, too, on the floor on the other side of where Artie had been sitting, just as Jim remembered. He certainly must have dropped it himself; there was just no other reasonable explanation. He picked it up out of the damp, wiped it automatically on his sleeve, and stuck it in his waistband. The idea of killing himself hadn’t evaporated, but it wasn’t urgent any more. He could wait, and see how he felt about it later.

          After breakfast, he talked his landlady into letting him use the big tin bathtub that was usually reserved for Saturday nights. “About time,” she sniffed. “If the horses didn’t like you so much, I’d have run you off a long time ago.” She was somewhat more complimentary after he shaved and put on a clean shirt and trousers. “You almost look human,” she allowed. She hesitated, and then went on, “I wouldn’t ask, the way you usually look, but I need some things from Mr. Caton’s and I can’t leave my bread ‘til I’ve got it in the oven. Would you go up there for me?”

          She gave him a list, and he walked up into the town in the morning sun, warm on the outside and curiously calm on the inside. Something had let go in him during the night, the never-verbalized rage at being left alone, or maybe just some of the profound loneliness, he wasn’t certain. Artie’s loss still pierced him like a knife wound, but he no longer felt that he couldn’t bear it. It was more like an old injury that had finally begun to heal.

          He handed over the list, and wandered around while he waited for the proprietor to get the items together. He picked out a new hat for himself, and a pretty scarf for Mrs. Lamson, his landlady. She had been kind to him and he hadn’t given her anything at Christmas, too sorry for himself to think of anyone else. While he was considering the penny candy, voices came from the counter at the front.

          “Can’t you please let me have another week?”

          The voice was female, young and clearly desperate. Jim turned around to see who it was, but he didn’t recognize the woman.

          “It’s for the boys, Mr. Caton. I wouldn’t ask for myself. But the boys have to eat.”

          Caton slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Banks, but I’ve extended all the credit I can afford. Can’t you talk to the pastor? He oughta be willing to help.”

          Jim watched as the woman’s shoulders sagged and she turned away. She wasn’t as young as he had thought from her voice. In her mid-thirties, perhaps. Thin, pleasant-faced–or she would have been if she hadn’t looked so unhappy–light brown hair escaping from under her bonnet. Her shoes were badly worn and the hem of her dress was dusty, as though she’d walked a long way. Not quite certain what he meant to do, Jim walked up behind her.

          “Excuse me,” he said. “What boys?”

          “Mrs. Banks and her husband are raisin’ a bunch of orphan boys over to Wilmot,” Caton told him. “The stores over there won’t give her credit any more. I’ve helped out when I can, but you can’t feed a passel of boys on credit for long.”

          “The church people won’t help,” Mrs. Banks said bitterly. “Some of the boys have been in trouble, and a couple of them, their fathers are in prison. People don’t like me having them.” She put her hand on Jim’s arm beseechingly. “They aren’t bad boys. They try the best they know how. But I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t get food for them. We grow as much as we can, but it isn’t enough.”

          Jim looked at the pitifully small collection of cans and jars on Caton’s counter. How many boys would that feed? Not many, and not for long. He felt in his pocket and pulled out a gold twenty-dollar coin and two dollar bills. It was all the money he had at the moment. Mrs. Lamson had given him the dollar bills for his pay, and the gold was one of the few things of Artie’s that he had kept, sacred and untouchable even when every other penny went for drink. He looked at it in the palm of his hand, thought of what Artie had said to him the night before, and laid it on the counter along with the bills. “Buy that much for the boys,” he said, as Caton and Mrs. Banks gaped at him in astonishment. “That’s enough to buy groceries for them, isn’t it?”

          Mrs. Banks got her voice back first. “My land,” she said faintly. “That would feed them for a month.”

          If she was amazed, Caton was suspicious. “Where’d you get a gold piece like that?” he wanted to know. “I know you. You don’t make that kind of money.”

          “It’s my lucky gold coin,” Jim told him calmly. “I’ve carried it with me for twenty years. I can spend it however I like, and that’s how I’m going to spend it.”

          Caton was clearly still suspicious, but not enough to prevent him from picking up the gold. “You pick out whatever you need,” he said grudgingly to Mrs. Banks. “If this isn’t enough–well, I guess I can let you go a bit longer.”

          “I’ll pay whatever extra it comes to,” Jim told him. Caton snorted under his breath, but didn’t argue. Jim told him to hold on to Mrs. Lamson’s order until he came back, and then he went down the street to the telegraph window at the Post Office. When he returned, Mrs. Banks had gone, and he picked up Mrs. Lamson’s purchases and walked back to her house.

          She scolded him for taking so long, but when he asked her about Mr. and Mrs. Banks, her voice softened. “Poor young things,” she said. “They’ve taken on a job that’s too much for them. It’s killing her. Mr. Banks is doing the best he can, but he’s only a school teacher, and you know what kind of money they make.”

          Jim thought about the ranch in Palm Springs, the comfortable quarters for the bachelor teachers and the pretty little cottages for the married ones. The Mexican servants that the school had paid for, the trips to San Francisco to attend plays and operas, the good food eaten all together in the dining hall with the teachers’ wives and children, so that no one had to cook for themselves. By himself, Artie had made more money than both of them together had earned with the Secret Service, and Jim’s pay had been half again as much. The money had grown year by year in careful investments, and along with the income from the house, their two years in Europe had barely made a dent in it. He was rich, in fact, though that had never meant anything to him. It still didn’t, but perhaps it might to someone else.

          “Are they really doing something good?” he asked. “Or just keeping the boys in check until they’re old enough to cause real trouble?”

          Mrs. Lamson considered his question. “I won’t say every one of those boys is savable,” she said finally. “They’ve got some rough ‘uns in the bunch. But yes, if they had the money to take care of ‘em properly, they’d do just fine. They’re hard working as anyone could ask for. It’s a shame the churches won’t help them.”

          Jim asked for the afternoon off, and to his surprise, Mrs. Lamson nodded and let him go. He finished the most pressing of the chores first, anyway, and then saddled his horse and rode the seven miles down the road to Wilmot. A few questions got him directions to the Banks’s house, and he rode up just as the sun was beginning to cast long shadows over the hills.

          A thin man with tired eyes answered the door. “Yes?” he said politely.

          Behind him, Mrs. Banks cried, “Oh! Robert, this is the gentlemen who bought the groceries!”

          They begged him to come in and sit and drink coffee, and then to have dinner with them and the boys. By the time he left that evening, he had seen the pitifully small house, the twelve boys who slept on pallets and bunks in the two bedrooms, the cow, the dusty garden, a pair of fast-running feral chickens from whom they got an occasional egg, and the newest orphan, a scrawny baby who cried unless Mrs. Banks was holding it and who wouldn’t live unless they could somehow buy a goat, because it couldn’t keep the cow’s milk down. He looked at Mr. Banks’s book of accounts, a long column of expenses, the regular but hopelessly small entries from his schoolteacher’s salary, and a third column of red inked credit purchases. Mrs. Lamson was correct; the job was beyond these two, no matter how hard they worked.

          “What would you do if you had enough money to take care of the boys properly?” he asked.

          They hadn’t imagined that ever happening, but with some urging, they began to tell him what they thought was needed. A larger house, of course. Someone to help with the housework. A schoolroom so the boys didn’t have to go out to school. “The children in the town school are cruel to them,” Mr. Banks said grimly. “They have to fight to defend themselves, and then they get in trouble for fighting.”

          Decent clothing and shoes. Medicine and doctors’ visits. Several of the boys had rotted teeth, and terrible toothaches. A goat for the baby. A bigger range, so food could be prepared for everyone at once. They ate in two shifts now, constrained both by the stove and by the amount of table space. Mrs. Banks said wistfully, “A piano.” And then, “But it’s stupid to talk like this! We’re lucky just to keep a roof over their heads and to beg enough money to put food on the table. We’ll never be able to do all these things.”

          Jim had satisfied himself by then that they could manage the money it would take. “Let me see what I can do,” he said.

          Mrs. Banks looked at him doubtfully, and he smiled. “Mr. Caton probably told you I’m the town drunk.”

          She blushed. “Not exactly. He said you were Mrs. Lamson’s handyman. He said you were good with horses, but not much else.” She reddened even more, but went on bravely. “He said we shouldn’t count on you for anything else, that you’d probably given us all the money you had to your name.”

          “And we’re so very grateful for that,” her husband put in. “We had decided that if God didn’t send us some money today, we would have to just turn the older boys out. A couple of them would be in prison in a year, I’m afraid.”

          “Well, Caton wasn’t far wrong,” Jim admitted. “It was all the money I had on me. But I’m not exactly penniless.”

          He took a deep breath. “I lost someone very close to me. It’s been hard. Sometimes it was easier to drink myself into forgetting. But I don’t want to do that any more.”

          They would assume he had lost a wife or perhaps a child. That was all right. The truth could come out later if it needed to. He got up and stretched. “I have to get on back. I’m responsible for the horses that Mrs. Lamson rents out, and I can’t leave her in the lurch. But I’ll come back tomorrow, if I may.”

          He came back the next day with plans for a house that he had sketched out on paper he begged from Mrs. Lamson. Owing to the alacrity of his lawyer in New York, who had wired funds to the bank in town, he also brought a goat, a dozen chickens of a more suitable domestic temperament, and in the back of the hardware store’s wagon, the lumber to build a proper henhouse, and a couple of men to build it. He brought a toy or a book for each of the younger boys and a pocket knife for each of the older ones, and bags of apples, walnuts and peppermints. Mrs. Banks wept, the boys stared wide-eyed, and Banks shook his hand and said, “God bless you, Mr. West. This is the Christmas we wanted to give them, and couldn’t.”

          It didn’t assuage the pain. Artie still inhabited his inner being, haunted his dreams, and flitted at the edge of his vision. But the amazed joy in their faces, and the uncomplicated pleasure the boys took in the changes in their lives, held the worst of each day’s misery at bay. They built the house, two stories with room enough for twice the number of boys, and when more boys came, they built an addition. In 1905, the old farm in Illinois came up for sale, and Jim moved them all back there. He refurbished his parents' house for the Banks's, and hired a contractor to construct a proper building with electricity and a telephone and a huge kitchen. And one day, he woke up in the comfortable big house with its schoolrooms on the ground floor, the spacious dormitories and bedrooms on the second floor, and his own private rooms on the third, and realized that he hadn’t dreamed at all the night before. He got up and paced in front of the tall windows, looking out over the green lawn and the long gravel driveway. “Artie, you bastard,” he said out loud, “where the hell did you go?”

          There was no answer, but there was also no knife thrust of loss at the sound of Artie’s name. He walked over to his desk and picked up the photograph from Vienna. He and Artie looked out of it, happy and secure, confident of their future together. It had been made less than a year before Artie’s death. He had put it on the desk because it didn’t seem right to leave it packed in a box somewhere, but he’d never been able to look at it without choking up.

          He scrutinized himself, his ten-year-younger self, serene in his own delusion of well-being, and shook his head in disgust. Then he looked at Artie. In the lines in Artie’s face, in the shadows under his eyes, he could see now the specter of death. How could he not have noticed at the time? He’d been so certain of his own good fortune that nothing could penetrate his immense hubris. Had Artie felt the shadow overtaking him? Jim couldn’t remember whether Artie had seemed different than usual, more quiet or less energetic. He’d been so caught up in his own enjoyment of their trip that he hadn't taken notice of what was happening to Artie, and if Artie had suspected something was wrong, he would never have spoiled the good time Jim was having by owning up to it.

          “Damn it all,” he whispered. “It’s so unfair. I still miss you so damn much, Artie.” But the wound was less, he had to admit. Every day he looked more into the future, and less into the past. And the days came faster now, more and more of them compressed into a shorter span of time. They had hardly put away the Christmas decorations from last year, and here it was almost Christmas again.

          There was a tap at the door, and Robert Banks looked in. “I wanted to make sure you were up,” he said apologetically. “The accountant is coming at nine, you remember.”

          Jim nodded, his throat too constricted to speak. Robert came over and looked down at the picture he was holding. “He’s the one you lost,” he said, and Jim nodded again.

          “I’ve wondered if that’s who you meant,” Banks said. “I’ve seen the picture on your desk, of course.” He patted Jim’s shoulder awkwardly. “He was a good man. You can see it in his face.”

          “Yes, he was.” Jim set the picture back on the desk and turned his back on it. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

          Robert didn’t mention Artie again, but Mrs. Banks asked him diffidently one day to tell her about him. He didn’t say much, the bare essentials, no more. He had known Artie for many years, had loved him, had lived with him, had fallen apart when Artie died. That was all, but not long after, Robert said to him, “You know, the accountant has been saying we should file to become a corporation. That way, if someone was ever to bring a suit against the home, your assets wouldn’t be at risk.”

          “It’s a good idea,” Jim said, nodding. “I talked to my lawyer, and he says we should do it.”

          “We have to come up with a name,” Robert said. There was a long pause, and then he added a bit nervously, “I wonder whether you would think it was all right to call it the Gordon Home for Boys.”

          The proposal was so unexpected that Jim hardly knew what to say at first. And then he choked up and couldn’t say anything at all. Finally he laughed shakily. “You know, Artie used to say that boys were little savages. But I think he would be honored anyway.”

          Robert chuckled. “Most of the time I’d agree with him. But we do have a pretty good crop just now. And they need a name if we’re going to have a baseball team this spring. They want to play against the other local schools.”

          So the Gordon Home for Boys it became. The baseball team was last in the county that year, but the next year, little Wilson Dieffenbach, with his nose in a book most of the time, found his moment of fame with the other less scholastic boys in the home by declaring that they should be the Gordon Griffons. They formed a football team, found football to be a more congenial sport than baseball, and beat the hell out of the previous year’s district champions in the last game of the season. Wilson Dieffenbach was carried around the field on the shoulders of the other boys, and Jim yelled and cheered until he lost his voice.

          Wilson Dieffenbach went on to be the first of their boys to graduate from college. Jim endowed a scholarship in Artie’s name, open to any orphan boy whose grades and character deserved it, and Wilson was the first recipient.

           In 1912, the wife of his longtime friend in England died, the one whose family he had stayed with so long ago after college, and he took passage on one of the new luxury steamships to attend her funeral. He was booked to return on the Titanic. His trunks had already been sent on, in fact, but his friend’s grief had been difficult to bear, and unusually tired, he decided to stay in London that night and go on to Southampton in the morning. He dreamed of Artie, a nightmarish dream in which Artie was trapped somehow behind a wall of glass. He was crying out urgently, but Jim couldn’t make out what he was saying, and now water was rising around his legs, cutting them off from each other. He woke gasping for breath, shouting Artie's name, and so shaken from the dream that he was late leaving the hotel. He missed the first train to Southampton, and then watched from the dock in impotent fury as the ship, hull down on the horizon, steamed off in the direction of New York without him.

          When the horrifying news came two days later that the Titanic had struck an iceberg, he was in a men’s shop in London replacing a portion of the wardrobe that had sailed on the Titanic without him. He sank into a chair, so pale that the clerk feared he was going to faint, and rushed over with offers of water, a fan, brandy. He shook his head, took a deep breath and held Artie close in his mind’s eye. It wasn’t the first time Artie had interfered in his life, but it was certainly one of the most dramatic.

          So here he was now, still healthy, but considerably slower. Less involved with day to day life, more inwardly focused, drifting away to Artie from time to time, coming back to sign something or oversee some new endeavor. He glanced out the window again at the amazing swath of starlight. Was Heaven out there somewhere among the stars, as many preachers said it was? He envisioned Artie with wings, flitting through the star-stuff in search of some new mischief, and laughed softly. Artie would be keeping them hopping in Heaven, like the newest little one they had here. Ten years old, a face like a cherub and the mind of Beelzebub. He’d scrawled his name on the wall in violent purple ink, sending the maid screeching to Mrs. Banks, but when she came hurrying back to see the scandalous sight for herself, it had disappeared, and David was standing there looking as innocent as a newborn. Since the magical disappearing ink, there had been a succession of practical jokes, until the household was in an uproar and Jim had had to speak to the imp himself, ten minutes of pedantic lecture that had probably done no good whatever. God, he hoped the kid would just survive until he acquired some commonsense. That was all you could ask for any more.

          Mrs. Banks looked in on him, no longer young herself. “The children have put up their stockings,” she said. “Will you come down and see them?” It had become a Christmas Eve tradition for him to stroll past the long line of stockings hung in the primary schoolroom, and solemnly intone the wish that their owners might all find toys and candy on Christmas morning instead of lumps of coal. This group was still young enough to be enthralled with the notion of a fat Santa Claus wriggling down their chimney, and he would send them away to bed with shining eyes and breathless hopes.

          He sighed. “Yes, I’ll be down in just a moment.” He was tired, by God. He didn’t really want to get up. But the boys would be waiting for him.

          Go on, Artie said. I’ll wait till you come back.

          No, he thought, he really was too tired. He opened his mouth to tell Mrs. Banks that he didn’t feel like going down just now, but there was Artie holding out his hand to help him up. He took it and rose easily, surprised. He wasn’t tired after all. In fact, he felt wonderful. He wasn’t even cold.

          “Took you long enough,” Artie complained. “I was getting bored waiting for you.” All the stars seemed to have blazed up at once, because the window wasn’t dark any more. Coruscations of light shone around Artie and illumined the room, and faintly in the background, he could hear Mrs. Banks shrieking, “Robert! Robert!” He wanted to tell her everything was all right, but her voice faded. Artie drew him into a fierce embrace and all the years of sorrow and loneliness fell away, and finally, now, he could see all the way to Artie’s soul, clear and shining in its pure love for him.

          Hello, said the universe. Welcome home, and Artie took his hand and walked with him into the light.