Sturbridge, Massachusetts
November, 2023

“Hey Gramps — this one must have fallen out of an album. It was stuck to the bottom of the box.” Marla wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her forearm, grimacing when she noticed the dark smudge of grime. Helping her grandfather pack up the house he had lived in for over forty years had been a lot of work.

Rewarding, though. She’d been a navy brat, growing up, so she hadn’t seen her grampa often. Now she had a child of her own, and she was living close by. It was good to finally get to know him as a person, and not just a name.

She walked over to the farm table where he was looking through photo albums, most of which had been kept by her grandmother. “Recognize it?”

It was a black and white picture, not as well preserved as most of the rest, and very different from her grandmother’s work. The composition was striking. A young woman stood in the doorframe of a stone-walled house, leaning against it casually, her head tilted in a way that was strangely intimate. She was holding a small clutch of wildflowers and wearing a thin cotton dress with a tiny flower print. V-neck, calf-length, tight three-quarter sleeves with slightly puffed shoulders.

Maybe it was her pose, or the expression, or the dress. Maybe it was the wildflowers. She looked innocent. Timeless. And, somehow, very much in love.

He looked at the photo, and his cheerful blue eyes misted. “Oh,” he said.

Marla looked at the photo again. It wasn’t her grandmother; she knew that right away. Yet the pain and loss she sensed in her Grandfather’s expression were foreign to her understanding of him. Softly, she asked, “Who is she?”

~o~O~o~

Somewhere in the New England Woods,
Summer, 1970

They’d agreed not to talk about it that day, because it was all that anyone was talking about. Certainly anyone who was American, male, and age 17. Except for the truly, obscenely rich, that is, and who knew anyone like that? There was the war, and the protests. The massacre at Kent State had happened just a month earlier.

“Bet there was a trail there, once.” John’s finger was pointing well up the hill, above the thick brush. “Maybe even a road.”

Danny looked more closely. “What am I missing?”

“The lines of stones? Kind of parallel, maybe five, six feet apart?

“Uhhh . . . not seeing it, man,” Danny replied after a third look. “They’re all pretty scattered.”

“C’mon,” his friend urged. “Let’s check it out!”

Danny hung back. “We get lost in the woods, your Pop’ll do his whole George Patton routine on you.”

John laughed. “Relax, you’ve got Master Charge! Aren’t I an Eagle Scout? Am I not in possession of both map and compass?”

His mock hauteur had the desired effect. Danny laughed and threw up his hands. “Lead on, then! But’s it’s your funeral!”

They ducked under hemlock branches and scrambled over boulders, squished and slopped through a slough of soft ferns, and eventually got to the area John had seen from below.

Danny tilted his head, looking at the stones from a fresh angle. “Maybe?”

“Let’s see how far it goes,” John proposed.

“Just keep an eye on the time,” Danny cautioned.

“I got no deeds to do, no promises to keep!” John had a nice voice.

Danny had a high one, so he cheerfully played Art to John’s Paul, floating in an easy harmony. “I’m dappled, and drowsy, and ready to sleep!”

Grinning, John came back in on melody; Simon was the anchor, after all. “Let the morning time drop all its petals on me. Life I love you, all is groovy!”

They laughed, and they walked on in the sunlight of that bright morning, to all appearances just as carefree and happy as anyone could be, in that early summer of 1970. Friends forever. At least, they always had been, far back as either could remember. Their fathers were best friends, too, so John and Danny had been acquainted, after a fashion, before either were born.

Most people were surprised at the friendship between their dads. They disagreed about Nixon and “Women’s Lib,” about civil rights, busing, music, hippies, and Vietnam. Always, Vietnam. But their friendship had been forged in out-of-the-way places with names like Carentan and Eindhoven, and sealed in the deathly, frozen ground of Bastogne. That kind of brotherhood doesn’t break or bend. Not easily, anyway.

Danny stopped fretting. The further they walked, the more he was convinced that John had been right. The broken kinda-sorta parallel lines of stones always followed a gentle upward slope, always avoided the sloughs, and stayed more flat than not. Even though it was hard to discern any difference between the trees inside the lines and outside, the road theory seemed probable.

“If it was a road,” Danny said thoughtfully, “I wonder where it went. There’s never been anything out here but woods.”

The Eagle Scout disagreed. “Hard to believe, but none of this is original forest. A hundred years ago, all of it was logged, cleared, and cultivated. This was farm country.”

“You sure about that? The trees look big!”

“That’s what Mister Baggot told me,” John proclaimed, as if that settled it.

“Ah,” said Danny, immediately accepting the word of their senior scout leader. It was tough to know what to believe, sometimes, but if Gunnery Sergeant William Baggot said a thing was so, you could take it to the bank.

A couple miles in, they came across a stream, and hopped from boulder to boulder to get across. John almost took a tumble into the water, but Danny was close enough to steady him. Always.

A few minutes later, Danny put a hand on John’s arm. “Look!”

Up a bit of a slope from their “road,” past some large, low bushes, the outlines of a dry stone wall were unmistakable. Without another word, they both charged up the hill like it was the Point du Hoc.

The wall was only a few feet tall, but it had been well constructed, and enclosed the entire top of the small hill, maybe 100 feet to a side.

It was a cemetery.

They found the entrance on the far side, and wandered among the graves. Many of the stones were so weathered and moss-covered as to be unreadable, the names of the people buried beneath lost to time. But others, better preserved, were still standing. Still legible. Amos Aldrich, aged sixty-two years. Died 16 April, 1821. RIP. Jethro Winsted, 1804. RIP. Rachel Winstead, 1801, beloved daughter. Aged four months. RIP. Sarah James, 1785, RIP.

Danny finally broke the silence that had seized them since their discovery, though his voice was hushed. “Where are we?”

John looked around. “Holy ground,” he said softly.

“Yeah. Sure is.”

By mutual accord they walked toward the break in the barrier, feeling the weight of years pressing on them. Even the birds seemed to have paused their song, so intense was the quiet.

At the break in the wall, from which they were now looking out, it became apparent that an entire settlement had once stood at this spot along their newly-discovered road. Poking out amount the majestic red oaks, the silver beech and black cherry trees, they could see the foundations of numerous structures, all in the same New England granite, all using the same, tight, dry stone construction.

They wandered. Down the backside of the hill that contained the cemetery, and up another slope, they found the foundations of at least thirty buildings. One of the larger ones, closest to the cemetery, looked like it had been a church. Near what would have been the eastern front, they found a large stone lintel, half buried in moss-covered loam. And on one face was carved the word, “Zion.”

“Strange name for a church,” John remarked.

“Maybe it was the name of the town. Settlement. Whatever they called it.”

They kept wandering and made another surprising discovery. Up the far slope, hidden from the view from the cemetery by an outcropping of rock, they found a house that had been built completely of stone. Unlike the rest of the settlement, it was still standing and largely intact. A main room, two rooms in the back, and a loft that must have been accessed by a ladder, once upon a time. On one side of the house the roof extended beyond the walls by several feet, creating a sheltered open area that might have been used for stacking firewood.

“Hey, look at this!” John lifted a battered leather hat off a peg beneath the overhang, dusted it off, and put it on his head.

“Not bad,” Danny laughed.

John grabbed the sides of his shirt and puffed out his chest. “I am Josiah Goodman, an Elder of Zion!”

Danny smiled. “You need whiskers, I think.”

“Yeah, well . . . haven’t had much luck with that yet.”

“Better’n mine,” Danny said, suddenly glum. “I’ve seen peaches with more fuzz!”

In an alcove off the main room, they found another surprise — a faded gingham apron with lace at the neck and on the hem. The lace might have been white once, but now it was a deep ivory, and brittle as a dry leaf in December. Danny shook his head. “No way this lasted a hundred, hundred fifty years. Makes no sense.”

John scratched his nose, which he tended to do when he was thinking. “Maybe some people came later, you know? Set up house here, after the rest of the settlement was abandoned.”

“Like outlaws!”

“You read too much Robin Hood,” John laughed. “Outlaws!”

Danny looped the apron around his neck, tied the drawstring — loosely, so as not to break it — and struck a pose. “I am Hannah Goodman of Zion, and I bid you good day!”

John roared out a laugh, then said, “Fine, then, Goodwoman Goodman, where be my luncheon?”

“I am getting hungry, now that you mention it,” Danny allowed. “Let’s eat now, before we head back.”

They shucked off their canvass backpacks, but when John moved to open his, Danny swatted his hand away. “La, good sir, that be woman’s work! Sit thee down, and I’ll serve thee shortly!”

“You’re too much,” John laughed. But he went back outside, into the bright sunshine, and found a patch of grass and ferns that was dry and warm to sit. Stretching his long legs out before him, he leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the other hill, and the cemetery, and the blue sky with the scattered, scudding clouds.

A few minutes later, Danny joined him. He spread a tea towel he’d carried in his pack, and laid out the sandwiches and fruit they had brought with them. Their canteens followed, then he stretched out beside his friend. “Lunch is served, good sir.”

“A blessing on this house, and upon thee, good lady,” John intoned.

They ate quietly, listening to the wind in the trees, and the hum of honey bees, and the raucous call of blue jays.

“It’s a good place,” John said, after a bit. “Peaceful.”

“That it is,” Danny agreed with a sigh. “I’ve needed a bit of peace, lately.”

John shook his head. “No cheating, now. We had a deal.”

Danny nodded, contrite. “Right you are, good sir. And right to remind me of it.”

They packed up soon after. Danny put the apron back on its peg, and, after a moment’s consideration, John returned the hat to where they had found it. “Feels like it belongs here,” he said.

Silent again, they walked back over the hill with the cemetery, found their road, and followed it back, slowly and almost imperceptibly losing altitude. They were home, as they had promised, well before dark.

Later in the week, John popped over to Danny’s house, smiling at the sound of the Jackson Five punching out of the sweet HiFi stereo rig Danny’s dad had put together, capped by an amazing set of Acoustic Research AR-3a’s. “Hi, Mr. Wrigley!” he called as he headed up the stairs.

There was never any knocking or ringing of doorbells between the Madden and Wrigley households.

Unsurprisingly, he found Danny propped up on top of his bedspread, nose buried in a book. “Up in the air, Junior Nerd Man!” he sang out.

Danny put down the book with a grin. “Guilty, sure.” He swung himself out of bed. “What’s got you up and out? Tired of Benny Goodman?”

“Geez, you’ve got that right!” John winced in pain, and picked up the book Danny discarded. “The Left Hand of Darkness? Sounds creepy.”

“It’s . . . “. Danny tried to think of a way to describe his feelings about the truly strange and wonderful book, whose characters seemed so very real to him, but he couldn’t do it. “Well,” he finally said lamely, “I wouldn’t call it creepy. Anyhow, what’s up?”

“I went to the library today, and did a little digging. Apparently there was a ‘Zion Township,’ back in colonial days, not all that far from here. One of those splinter Protestant groups, apparently.”

“Did you find anything that explained why it was abandoned?”

John shook his head. “Nope. Not a thing. Last record I saw was from some time in the 1820s, but I don’t know how significant that is.”

“I wonder if Mr. Baggot would know,” Danny said, thinking out loud.

“Maybe.”

Something in John’s tone caused Danny to give him a sharp look — one which a flash of intuition immediately softened. “You don’t want anyone else to know, do you?”

John looked a little embarrassed. “I guess I don’t. Not really.” He shrugged, uncomfortable. “Not sure why.”

“I don’t want to tell anyone else either,” Danny admitted quietly. “This way, it’s our spot. Just yours and mine.”

He was momentarily distracted by the sound of his father switching off the stereo, followed immediately by the sound of the television. Good evening. I’m Chet Huntley, in New York . . . .

He shook it off. “Sorry, what?”

John gave him a puzzled look. “I said, do you want to go back, this weekend?”

“Yes.” Danny smiled. “Yes, I’d like that.”

They made better time the second trip, and ended up spending a couple of hours at “their” house. John had thought to bring along a few tools — an old saw, a spare hammer, a jar of nails and a bit of rope.

Danny brought better food, a decent picnic blanket, and some cheap plates and silverware he’d gotten at a tag sale.

He also brought a new apron.

“What’s with that?” John asked, smiling to take any possible sting from his words. He was sweaty and happy, as he tended to be when he was outdoors, and working with his hands.

Danny shrugged casually, returning John’s easy smile. “Keeping with the theme. But the old one’s about to fall apart. I figured it had earned a rest.”

John chuckled. “Well, you’re in charge, Mrs. Goodman.”

“I should hope so, Mr. Goodman,” Danny responded in a similar tone.

Danny went indoors, and John’s eyes followed him. Then he shook his head, bemused, wiped sweat from his brow, and returned to his self-appointed task of building a new ladder to the loft.

They fell into a rhythm, that summer, hiking up to Zion every couple of days, bringing lunch, and a few things to “spruce the old place up.” John was handy and Danny, ingenious. When in Zion, Danny continued to call John, “Josiah,” or “Mr. Goodman;” John called Danny, “Mrs. Goodman,” or “Hannah.”

The war did not enter their woods. It was not discussed. In all of Zion Township, that last, perfect summer, there was peace.

In late June, “Hannah” started weaving flowers into “her” hair.

“Josiah” laughed, and said the flowers looked nice. “It’s good that your father lets you do the whole hippy thing. That would look all wrong with short hair!”

They weren’t up for the Fourth of July; their dads always did a barbecue for the neighborhood. But they made it two days later.

John was outside, running a big plane down some planks he’d split, intending to make a picnic table, when he looked up to see Danny emerge from the house in a sundress, naturally covered by the apron. His eyes popped. “Danny?”

His friend frowned slightly. “Hannah, while we’re here.” When John didn’t respond right away, Danny’s voice dropped to a whisper, and a note of pleading crept into it. “Please?”

John nodded slowly. He scratched his nose thoughtfully. Then he smiled. “Of course, Mrs. Goodman.”

She smiled back, sunshine after a summer shower. “Lunch is almost ready, Mr. Goodman. You should make use of the stream.”

Each trip thereafter, “Hannah” added something more. A pair of flats one week, a delicate set of bracelets the next. A hair comb. John wasn’t sure when Hannah started wearing makeup. She was subtle.

In Zion, she was Hannah, always. Once they left, he was Danny.

Like the war, they didn’t talk about it.

Sometime in August, John brought his father’s camera on one of their trips, and started taking photos of the Settlement. The cemetery. What was left of the church. The remains of iron tools, rusted and brittle, helped them identify one of the old foundations as a blacksmith’s shop; John’s photos there were particularly good. He had an eye for composition.

They decided to stay late one day so that John could take some pictures of the settlement with longer shadows and softer light. It was after five when he returned to their much more cozy cabin.

Hannah had been learning to cook over an open flame in a fire pit; she greeted him with a smile and a bowl of stew. Just the smell of it made his stomach rumble. “Why thank you kindly, Ma’am.”

She smiled, a dimple showing on her smooth cheek. When they were finished, he offered to do clean up, but she told him not to be silly. “I’ll just run this down to the creek.”

He lay down in grass that was dryer and browner than it had been when the summer was new, and he watched her go, the light breeze swirling the flower-strewn skirt around her bare, slender legs. His eyes remained on her until she walked back up the hill, carrying the now-cleaned cookware, silverware and dishes.

When Hannah emerged from the house after putting everything away, he was there, waiting in the stillness and the soft light. Sensing the slow, steady, deeply joyous beat of his own heart, though the cause surpassed all understanding. Touching the living, breathing peace of Zion.

Their eyes met.

Did Hannah move? Did Josiah? Maybe they both did. But they were, suddenly, standing close. Very close.

His hands rose slowly, almost dreamily, until they rested on her shoulders, just below the slight “pouf” that joined the sleeves of her dress to its bodice.

She tipped her head to look up at him, her eyes never leaving his.

The slightest contraction of his biceps was enough to bring her closer still. He bent his head and placed a soft kiss on her lips, tasting her sweetness.

“Yes,” she breathed, melting into him.

More kisses followed, and still more. Hannah’s arms rose, and her hands drifted, writing sonnets across the firm muscles of his back.

Then, just as his passion began to ignite in earnest, she stepped back, cupped his cheek in her palm, and said, “it’s time to go.”

“We can’t stop now!” he protested, reaching out to clasp her in his arms again.

She put a light hand on his chest, restraining him effortlessly. “I say this for you, love. Not today. Take some time, back home. Scratch your nose, like you do.” She smiled impishly. Lovingly. “When we come back again . . . when we come back, we’ll see.”

He felt the light pressure of her hand, and the weight of her words, and bent his head in acquiescence. “Next time . . . Mrs. Goodman.”

“We’ll see.”

The walk back was more silent than usual. John and Danny were each lost in their own thoughts.

But they returned, two days later, and this time there was no delay. Josiah’s photography and Hannah’s cooking were neither finished nor even begun, and they departed with empty stomachs.

Yet both were completely, wholly satisfied.

August passed, Labor Day approached, and their blissful summer came to a sweet conclusion. On their last day in Zion, in the slanting, golden light of the late afternoon, Hannah let Josiah take her photo by the front of the house. The house that had been, for that brief time, their home and their refuge. An island of deep peace in a world gone mad.

They returned to school, and the weather turned, as it ever does. Sunshine gave way to cloud, rain to frost, and frost to snow. Zion, so briefly restored to life, returned to its long hibernation.

Time moved on in the world beyond as well, events following one after another. And the day arrived, at last, when John found himself visiting Danny, a printed notice in his hand.

“63,” he told his friend. “No way I won’t be going.”

Danny’s own number was quite high. He looked at John’s card, absurdly feeling the need to see it for himself, though he knew the Eagle Scout would never lie. Desperately trying to keep his feelings in check, Danny lowered both his eyes and his voice. “I don’t want you to go.”

John nodded, understanding. “I know. But . . . it can’t be helped.”

“What we did, last summer . . . if they knew, they wouldn’t take you.”

John smiled. It was a private smile, infused with the distilled, purified essence of all their memories. “We didn’t do anything last summer, Danny. And what I did with Hannah?” He chuckled. “If guys could get out of the draft by tumbling their girlfriends, there’d be no army at all.”

“And we’d have a population boom like the world’s never seen,” Danny agreed, capping John’s joke. But his brave smile faded. “You know they wouldn’t see it that way.”

“It doesn’t matter. I do. And admit it — so do you. I’m not a ‘homosexual.’ I’m not attracted to guys, and never have been. Hannah was — is — the most perfect woman I’ve ever known.”

Danny’s eyes stung, but he refused to let the tears flow. “All right then. I’m going, too.”

“No! Danny, no! It’s bad enough either of us have to do this! One of us needs to —“

Danny put his hand on John’s chest, stopping the flow of words like he’d shut off a tap, so powerful was the memory that gesture evoked. “No,” Danny said, his voice as full of love as it was totally and completely devoid of any give. Any flexibility. “If you go, I go. No discussion.”

And so it happened, for Danny was as stubborn, and as loving, as Hannah. He cut his long, flowing hair, and his lithe body hardened through boot camp. The army, being the army, did not put them in the same unit, so neither could offer a steadying hand when the other could have used one.

They marched and they fought, and they marched some more, learning to endure the thick, warm, fetid air. Slogging through rice paddies and swamps, pushing through dense jungles, climbing steep peaks, and dreaming of another place and time. A beloved face. Eyes filled with love. Peace.

By strange coincidence, John and Danny were injured within three days of each other. They were at the opposite ends of a mobile hospital, though neither knew the other was there. The same doctor performed their respective operations. And, a few weeks later, they were both loaded into transports and sent home.

But only one of them was alive.

~o~O~o~

Sturbridge, Massachusetts
November, 2023

Marla’s grandfather didn’t respond to her question, apparently lost in his own thoughts.

“Gramps . . . Who is she?” This time, she asked a little louder.

He startled a bit and let out a grunt. “Ah . . . Not sure, Hon. I think she was one of your Gramma’s friends. Haven’t seen her in forever, though.”

She didn’t believe him, not for an instant, and was miffed that he wouldn’t confide in her. “Shall I toss it, then?”

“Eh,” he replied, back on his game. “No need. Just throw it in the album on top there. I’ll figure out where it goes when I’m all moved.”

“Well, okay,” she said, her inflection making her skepticism clear and suggesting — in the nicest possible way — that she would very much like to hear the real story.

He easily caught the different layers of meaning his granddaughter loaded into three short syllables, but he knew how the game was played and he hadn’t lost any steps. “Great,” he replied, accepting her words at, if anything, a discount to face value.

She slipped the photo into the album he’d indicated, then started putting the albums into the moving box. When she’d cleared the table, she said, “I’ve got to go pick up Jack now. I should be back tomorrow after nine, okay?”

“Sounds good, kid.” He rose and saw her out.

The dining room was empty of everything except the furniture, and the living room was completely stripped. But his tenor banjo remained in its place of honor by the stacked stone of the fireplace, reminding him of long, pleasant evenings. Of courting his wife, whom he missed every day, and would until he died. He remembered teaching his boys how to play, and that Christmas when the four of them put on an impromptu concert. He wandered over and touched it lovingly.

He brought the instrument into the dining room, where he could still sit properly. A fellow should sit, when he plays the banjo. It feels more home-like. He didn’t need to look down to tune it. Muscle memory, after all these years.

Then his fingers flashed, firm and skillful, and a haunting melody filled the silence of his almost-empty home.

By the waters,
the waters of Babylon,
We lay down and wept,
And wept,
For thee, Zion.
We remember thee,
Remember thee,
Remember thee, Zion.

He lay his palm flat against the strings, silencing them, and let the tears flow. After a few minutes he spoke to his ghosts, as he often did these days. Over the course of his life, he seemed to have acquired quite a few of them.

“You’d have told her, wouldn’t you?” His chuckle was dry. An old man’s laugh, for an old man’s humor. “You were always such a damned Eagle Scout.”

~o~O~o~
Zion Township
June, 2025

“Hey, Mal, come look!”

He poked his head inside, still wearing the funny leather hat, and came to the alcove off the main room that his friend was exploring. She lifted a faded yellow dress from a peg and held it against her torso. “What do you think?”

The HRT was finally starting to show some effects, and the dress emphasized them.

Malcom gave her a smile — she never seemed to get enough of them. “Lookin’ fab, Chloe.”

The young trans girl shook her head, puzzled. “No way this survived a couple hundred years, know what I’m sayin’?”

Malcolm scratched his nose, thinking. “Maybe some people came back and stayed a while, even though everything else was gone.”

She nodded, solemn as an owl. “Refugees, maybe.”

Malcolm didn’t answer; he was looking around. “Peaceful here.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It is.”

Chloe walked out into the sunshine. Slowly, deliberately, her eyes swept the whole of the hidden settlement they had just explored, and she thought about the nearly invisible path that led them to it. As if passing judgment, she murmured, “Safe, too.”

Their eyes found each other. Somehow, their feet moved.

— The end.

For information about my other stories, please check out my author's page.

~o~O~o~

Author’s note: Places like the Zion Township depicted in this story are scattered through the hills and woods of New England. We have the power to domesticate our environment, but nature generally wins in the end.

There are many great versions of the song Danny plays at the end of the story. It’s perfectly constructed to be sung in a round, as this beautiful a cappella rendition by Andrew Helbig demonstrates: Babylon. But the version that best connects to the story is, of course, by Don McLean, on banjo. Here he is live in 1973 at Royal Albert Hall. “Babylon” starts at just past the two-and-a-half minute mark on the clip.

Many thanks to Andrea Lena DiMaggio, for beta reading this story for me. I never had to be in that grim lottery; she still remembers her number. Happy birthday, dear friend.

— Emma Anne Tate