Spring! What a beautiful time of year! Everything is green. The grass, the new buds on plants. Even the Tamarack trees are producing green needles again.

So it was with buoyant hearts that the couple planned their wedding.

They had had an exciting courtship, as they grew up together, right next door to one another. Reginald Barker was nine, when eight-year-old Martin Romero came to stay with the next-door neighbors.

Martin‘s parents had died a few months before, and he was rather a depressed child. Before the fourth grade started, he turned nine, so he and his new friend, Reggie, were able to go to school together in the town‘s elementary school. They had the same teachers for the last two grades, and became best friends from then on. Throughout middle school, they ended up in most of the same classes, and high school was the same.

Let‘s back up a bit, however. Shortly after 4th grade started, Marty began being picked on. Two boys, Brad and Johnny, were basically normal boys, but Marty was short, new, and the youngest in the class. Therefore, picked on. Not bullied physically, but teased constantly. So it was that Reggie declared himself the protector of Marty.

While Reggie had never taken any martial arts, when he was in the first grade, a seventh-grader had decided that the little boy needed a lesson taught to him. It was taught soundly, but not the one that the seventh-grader had intended. Reggie now possessed the reputation as being the only first grader who could take on a seventh-grader and win! Thus, when he declared that anyone who wanted to hurt Marty would have to go through him, Brad and Johnny backed off.

Such was the respect that they had for Reg, as he was now referred to, that they too became friends of Marty, and declared that they would stand by him. While Marty could possibly not beat any of the other boys in a fight, anyone who challenged him, was in for a very bad time.

Some of the other boys would refer to Marty as a fag, or a fairy. Even a sissy boy, but never in front of one of the four. If Marty told one of the other three that there was the smallest inkling of the possibility that someone insulted him, the insulter would have to deal with three very tough friends of the insultee.

When they entered high school, someone who was not in the know of Marty‘s protection, made such an insult. All four boys were present.

On the way home from school that night, the poor soul met up with three boys, all of them very well developed, in the physical department. Not a fist contacted the young man, however. The nearness of the boy‘s perceived demise was enough to set him on the straight and narrow.

Marty knew of the show of power, and that no physical harm had happened to his insulter, but he did not know what was said. He just knew that the boy would turn in rapid retreat whenever he spotted any of the four.

Part of the show of force was from a conversation that Reg had with the young Marty during the waning days of their first summer next door to each other. Marty had confessed to Reg that he was really Marta. Not physically, mind you, but in her mind. She would be registered in school as a boy, but she was scared, because she acted distinctly feminine, a detail that had not escaped Reg‘s notice.

After Brad and John became friends, they were somewhat taken aback when Marta explained to them, but by then, their initial fear of Reg had culminated in true friendship with the young trans-girl, and they simply upped their protection.

In the summer between the eighth and ninth grades, Reg asked Marta if she was going to actually transition. She was now living as Marta full time and was even on hormone blockers. She turned to face Reg square on and asked, “What‘s it worth to ya?”

Now it must be noted that Reg was not a fool. In fact, Marta and the three boys plus Brad’s and John’s girlfriends, Shawna and Erica, had worked together on their homework for their entire school time, and Reg had helped the other three through rough times, and hard classes. So when Marta posed such a question, he answered immediately. “Spending the rest of my life with you.”

At this, Marta, while not surprised, was relieved. Reg had long been her knight in shining armor, and while she had hoped that the feelings might be reciprocated, she had thought it might be just a dream. Well, it turned out that it was, but one that was destined to come true.

To save up for college, the four decided to set up a rafting business down the Salmon River. The river was not particularly difficult, with most of the rapids being class III. All three of the men would pilot their own raft, and their girlfriends would act as spotters in the front. It was great fun for all of them, and they came back every summer to save up for the next year. Naturally, with the way they had done in high school, each had scholarships to fund their schooling, but the extra money from the rafting was well worth it.

It was two years after Marta graduated from university, that she and Reg decided to tie the knot. They had shared an apartment through college, and for the last two years, while Marta established herself in a counseling center in Lewiston. Somehow in her six years to get her masters degree, she and Reg had saved the money for her transition. It must be said that extra money had somehow been funneled her way from her friends as well. Shawna and Brad, and Erica and John had formed such tight partnerships while rafting, that they decided to make theirs for life as well. Brad had gone on to become a doctor, and John went into pharmacy. Reg, however, had chosen a degree in engineering.

The six people met for a final guided trip down the river, before dissolving their company. One of the people on this trip was a personal friend and Reg and Marta’s Pastor from their local church.

It was a wonderful trip, and the evening of their second day, the two said their vows on a rock outcropping overlooking the river. That night, and the rest of the trip, their tent would be set up far enough from the rest of the people that their celebration would not disturb anyone else.

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Epilogue: Fifty-five years later

A man and a woman walk up to an outcropping overlooking the river below. They remember the joyous celebration of half a century ago and the looks on their friend’s faces as they kissed at this same place.

The two are not married, but they are wonderful friends. Shawna had been married to Bradly Cooper for forty-five years until her husband was killed in an automobile accident. John Matson, who had been married for almost sixty years until Erica had succumbed to cancer the previous year.

Their friends, Reg and Marta, were unforgettable. The two had been married for two days, and Marta had been thrown from their raft on the last set of rapids, hitting her head on a submerged rock, and washing up on the bank down the river. She had been knocked unconscious and drowned.

Reg was devastated. He lived for two more years but was unable to handle being without his lifelong friend and wife. He came to this very spot on what would have been their second anniversary and dove off. His body was found three days later.

Shawna and John stand on the edge of the rock, looking at the spot their friends stood, then Shawna tosses a wreath off, into the water.

It floats down the river as a testament to their love for two incredible people that they will never forget.

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Author’s note: Much of the idea for this story came from a movie that I love, called “Same River Twice.” When I set out to write it, I knew how it would end, and I think this was the hardest ending I have ever put in any of my writings, either posted here or elsewhere. I wrote the epilogue in tears.