Ahead of me, the trail broke into a graveled clearing with two towers. One was a colossal metal water tower, a hulking gray presence in the surrounding stands of oak and maple. Some days, in the late afternoon when the sun started to fall below the canopy, the trees cast perfect shadows across its flat surface, so that it almost seemed to be part of the woods. The other tower was taller, a framework of crisscrossing metal parts. It seemed like it might start moving, extending its limbs to crush human intrusion. We thought this tower had something to do with electricity. Both towers were surrounded by a high fence with angled strips of barbed wire along the top. It didn’t work; kids still climbed over and jumped to the lowest rung of the water tower’s service ladder, then pulled themselves up to scale its side. Everyone was afraid of the other one, the one that might be electric.

I could hear voices and laughter on the far side of the lot, most likely some of the Phoenixville kids who hung around getting stoned and drinking beer. Red lights blinked from the top of both towers, a warning to aircraft or a beacon to other alien beings.

The winter before, Thomas and I had come up here with Jack Griffith, Thomas’s oldest friend on the mountain. We hadn’t seen him much since Dad’s funeral; Thomas had stopped going out or returning phone calls. It was dusk, a day or two after New Year’s; we were still off school for Christmas, and it was snowing. Marie, Thomas, and I had been outside, trying to shovel the driveway, when Jack rumbled up in a little Datsun. He was driving now, he said, and thought he and Thomas could look around, that the snowplows hadn’t been out yet. Marie told Thomas to go. As they were getting in the car, Jack turned to me and asked if I wanted to come, and without thinking, I said yes and climbed into the back.