Kurt was thinner than before, his cheeks slightly collapsed, and the knuckles of his hands were chapped and raw. He still looked all right though. His thick, black hair curled down over his ears, and he had big sideburns that fringed out like flames and fine stubble edging his square jaw. His nose was handsomely crooked, and his mouth, as usual, was faintly amused. He wore a wrinkled green T-shirt and a leather bracelet on his wrist, faded bluejeans that clung to his brawny legs. He could have been a movie star, I thought, if only his eyes weren’t so close together.

“What’ve you been doing, man?” I asked, roughly rubbing his shoulder to show my clear happiness to see him.

“Farming. Down in Ashland,” he said. Beneath long lashes, his eyes brooded with intensity, the same dark glint he had been cultivating all these years. “Living in a straw-bale house for a while. Before that I was delivering beer in New Orleans.” Every year, Kurt migrated like a bird, to Denver or Mexico or Pittsburgh, depending. He had friends in every town, it seemed, who participated in his marvelous experiences, and who then went back to their regular lives when he moved on.

“It was all right?” I said, trying to parse his mood. Sometimes he came back from the road with grim stories to tell, feelings of desolation that still hung around him. Other times, he was skittish, eager to leave again as soon as possible. Today, he seemed robust, and somehow scorched by wind.

“Amazing,” he said, locking the door and swinging his backpack onto his shoulder. “Transformative. I’m at a new place now.” A cryptic smile came onto his face, full of some deep meaning he refused to put into words. I had forgotten the mild struggle we fell into every time we found each other again.

On the way to the Corolla, Kurt told me about Ashland, and the woman he had met there who ran the organic farm, and the inevitable dissolution of their romance. “I was like one tooth, one curl, man,” he said. What he meant, I realized, was that he had been sad, and crying like a baby. I told him about my dad, who had just left his wife, and the blood clots that had appeared and then dissolved in his brain.

“It was heavy,” I said, and Kurt nodded knowingly.

By the time we hit the edge of the city, out past Tualatin where the buildings started to taper off and the freeway straightened, we were basically caught up. Filmy scenes of parking lots and sod farms passed through the windows. When we cleared Wilsonville—five minutes without talking and counting—I rummaged through my bag and rolled us a joint. I picked out the stems, mixed in some tobacco, and licked the yellow gum neatly. Kurt fiddled with the radio until he found the good oldies station.