As older men we stood together at the fence for a long time, recalling that night.
Parts of it are fuzzy now, of course, and it comes down to snap-shots: Pete's terrified face when he slipped, the first glimpse of light at the houses, Henry's shout as he tried to warn me, narrow faces the colour of moonlight. They most likely remembered other things, defined that night in different ways and were the centre of their recollections. As I looked now through the fence at the other forest I was thinking how long a decade had seemed back then, and how you could learn that it was no time at all.
Henry stepped away first. I wasn't far behind. Pete stayed a moment longer, then took a couple of steps back. Nobody said anything. We just looked at the fence a little longer, and then we turned and walked away.
Took us forty minutes to get back to the truck.
The next Thursday Henry couldn't make it, so it was just me and Pete at the pool table. Late in the evening, with many beers drunk, I mentioned the fence.
Not looking at me, chalking his cue, Pete said that if Henry hadn't stepped back when he did, he'd have climbed it.
"And gone over?"
"Yeah," he said.
This was bullshit, and I knew it. "Really?"
There was a pause. "No," he said, eventually, and I wished I hadn't asked the second time. I could have left him with something, left us with it. Calling an ass cute isn't much, but it's better than just coming right out and admitting you'll never cup it in your hand.
The next week it was the three of us again, and our walk in the woods wasn't even mentioned. We've never brought it up since, and we can't talk about the first time any more either. I think about it sometimes, though.
I know I could go out walking there myself some night, and there have been slow afternoons and dry, sleepless small hours when I think I might do it: when I tell myself such a thing isn't impossible now, that I am still who I once was. But I have learned a little since I was fifteen, and I know now that you don't need to look for things that will suck the life out of you. Time will do that all by itself.
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