Daniel climbed the ladder of steps and I followed, passing the third of the horizontals where the pylon became markedly narrower. I wrote in that piece that the sky had become violet and a single bright star had appeared, a clear white pinpoint high above the distant hill. It sounds like “fine writing” to me now, I don’t know if it was so, I can’t remember. I saw Daniel pass the fourth crossbar, climbing on the steps, holding on to the latticework. I swung up on the lattice, ignoring the steps. We were both high up now, at least 150 feet up. I could see more houses in the distance or see their lights, and a church whose floodlighting brought to it an unearthly greenish glow. I said something to Daniel about climbing that church tower. Would he like to? One night when it wasn’t floodlit?

A man was walking up the field from the river bridge. I recognized him as Guy Wharton, someone I’d met once or twice. He lived on the other side of the river, and was quite young, though older than us, and he owned all this land. It was his grandfather who had spent the pylon compensation on running away with his lover, but his father who had made the Whartons’ money.

“Has he seen us?” Daniel said.

“I don’t know.”

“Better be quick, then.”

Daniel was now under the first of the pylon’s arms. I expected him to light his cigarette from that position, reaching out to take a light from the lowest line suspended from the arm by its string of glass insulators. He didn’t. He went on. I should have told him not to, I thought of telling him not to. Something stopped me, his obvious enjoyment, I think. He laughed, he called out, “It’s great up here, Spiderwoman.”

“I know,” I said. “I told you.”

“Come up a bit and when I’ve lit my cigarette I’ll pass it to you.”

“I’m coming.”

“We’ll go to the top and share it.”

He did what I doubt I’d have dared do. He climbed across the struts, pulled himself up and stood on the first arm, the horizontal bar from which two lines are carried, one on each side. With his left hand he held on to the upright and reached up with his right, the right hand with the cigarette between his fingers. “Now!” he said. “Now!” or “Wow!” I never knew which. But I saw him clearly enough and shall forever see him as he was at that moment, in the twilight, against the dusky red sky, a tall thin boy with long legs in blue jeans, feet apart, standing on the pylon arm, his dark hair blown by the wind. He was laughing, exhilarated, up in the sky, on top of the world. Then he reached up toward the second arm, the dangling insulator and the conductor.