“Sometimes I wonder if he is really dead,” Bill Landsmann said. “He is not really buried, not in a cemetery, yes? So maybe he is still alive somewhere. You never really know about these things, I believe.” He trembled. “I am sorry, so sorry,” he said, still shaking, rubbing his nose with his hand. Leora didn’t say a word.

“Here is your coat,” he said, suddenly rising from the bench, and as he stood up, Leora felt as if he had tipped some sort of fragile balance within her. Behind the bench was a thicket of brambles. On top of the thicket a coat was resting, folded and neatly placed between the thorns. Leora immediately realized that it wasn’t her coat. It resembled a coat that she owned, it was true, but this one wasn’t hers. When she turned it over in her hands, she recognized it. It had been Naomi’s.

She looked up at Bill Landsmann, trying to find the words to question it, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand. “Take it. It is yours.”

Leora took the coat in one hand, and Bill Landsmann’s hand in the other. And then he sent her home.

A FEW DAYS LATER, Bill Landsmann went back to his father’s grave. Leora knew this because she saw an article in the town newspaper whose headline was SENIOR FOUND SLEEPING AT EAST MOUNTAIN RESERVATION. As a high school senior, she naturally took interest, failing to notice that the article was printed on the Old People page.

Senior citizen and Algonquin Drive resident William Landsmann was discovered sleeping on the ground near Columbus Rock at East Mountain Reservation early Tuesday morning by Peter Downing, a township police officer who was patrolling the area.

When Mr. Downing discovered him, Mr.Landsmann was lying facedown alongside Babble Brook, a small river that flows through the eastern side of the reservation. After failing to display a permit, Mr. Landsmann was questioned by Mr. Downing and asked to take a Breathalyzer test. Mr. Landsmann showed no blood alcohol content but was unable to explain satisfactorily his reasons for sleeping in the reservation. He received a fine according to municipal regulations.

“When I asked him what he was doing there, he told me that he was just passing through,” Mr. Downing said. “I didn’t find that very convincing, since he was lying on the ground, but I didn’t have any real reason not to believe him.”

Mary Beth Parker, the chief administrative officer for East Mountain Reservation, reports that while the reservation has had problems with vagrancy in the past, this case was very unusual. “Most of the time it’ll be a bunch of kids, or someone who’s intoxicated, or a homeless person who somehow wandered off the beaten track, so to speak,” she said. “But this was an older gentleman who wasn’t at all drunk, and he has a home.”

Individuals must obtain a permit in order to camp at the reservation.