Yes, I remember that little league season. Down by the T-ball field you and I tried to build a fort in the creek. You told me your father had cancer, or maybe my mother said so over hot dogs at the concession stand later, overlooking the senior field. My cousin played as a senior then, for the Dodgers. He was a sophomore in high-school. I think your dad died before the summer was over or in early fall. He had played a role in my life, something like a scout-master or a soccer coach. Death remained alien to me, like a twisted bird, or inappropriate, like interrupting your mother in public. We have television to contemplate acting but never to enter, for catharsis. In that bed, in central Virginia, one knew, any minute now, a missile could be arcing over the Atlantic to set this capital on fire. We were troubled, yet salvageable; they were terrible if darkly alluring. We worry; they take advantage. And we were building that fort when I looked into your face for one moment, which was like stumbling upon an old person undressing, and I kissed the space between us and wished not to be you, and said a prayer of thanks to be me. You went in a little deeper, into the woods; you'd seen a deer maybe