Losing the Garden by Laura Waterman

Author:Laura Waterman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619020443
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2018-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

The last time Guy had heard from Bill was a letter postmarked May 30, 1973, ten days before we moved to Vermont. This letter mailed from Alaska, where Bill was living, said he was taking a trip, it wasn’t in Alaska, and he’d write when he got back.

Bill had been an enthusiastic Boy Scout and achieved high grades in school. Guy told me that when he attended parents’ night the young, energetic teachers rushed up to say how much they enjoyed having Bill in their classroom, whereas the older, more staid teachers said they found Bill tough to handle. In high school Bill played drums with a rock band. He was gregarious and well liked. People said Bill had charisma.

During the first few years after that letter, when relatives or friends asked if Guy had heard from Bill, he’d reply, “Bill’s off on an adventure. He’s always liked to be mysterious. I expect to hear a step on the porch one day soon, and there will be Bill.” Bill’s aunt Bobbie liked to recount an old story of how one evening when she was cooking dinner, she turned around and there was Bill, leaning in the doorjamb with a grin on his face, just waiting for her to notice him.Years later our friend Brad Snyder told me that, when he asked Bill what he had hoped to see on that train-hopping trip out west when he lost his leg, Bill waved the question away. He was just headed west. It was the sixties.

As the seventies rolled away, the bolder among our friends and relatives asked if Guy was going to look for Bill.

Guy replied that one of the last people to see Bill told him that she guessed he’d gone to live with the Indians—he was fascinated by their way of life. “Perhaps Bill’s living in an Indian village,” Guy said. But this didn’t really explain why Guy didn’t go look for Bill.

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