A dark-skinned man, young, yet middle-aged. Dignified, self-absorbed, intent upon his destination. His briefcase was a handsome matte beige leather, a relic of another era, clearly heavy. His manner was severe. Something about the sobriety of his bearing and his clothing, the “sport coat” in a muted color that might have been gray, beige, or blue, the fresh-laundered white shirt and dark, dull necktie, made me think he might be an older, foreign-born graduate student. The black plastic-framed eyeglasses and the boxy-shouldered coat suggested a culture other than American and a style very far from fashionable. And no American student, even an older graduate student, would wear a coat and tie, let alone carry a briefcase.

Briskly he passed me. Ascended a flight of steps, disappeared into a sandstone building.

At the foot of the steps I stood staring after him. A sensation of terrible yearning came over me, to follow him up the steps . . . The uncanny sensation that you know who someone is, unmistakably you recognize the face, that’s to say the essence of the face, the (unique) face you’d known in a previous lifetime except now in the confusion of the moment, in the excited leap of your blood, you are unable to recall who this person is, or was.

Yet, I was not sure that I wanted him to see me. I was not sure that I wanted to be forced to recall how this person and I knew each other.

It should not have been surprising to me that I might encounter people here in Mohawk whom I’d known years ago in Port Oriskany and in South Niagara. Often in Catamount Falls I’d encountered former classmates whose company I avoided, for I did not want to recall exactly how they knew me, and what they knew of me and my family—Kerrigans.

Seeing in their faces that flicker of recognition—Is that her? The girl who ratted on her brothers and sent them to prison.

Not that they would have been cruel to me, but even their kindness and sympathy would be painful. And their pity.

And even if this were not true, it would seem true to me. Like an indelible stain that has in fact been removed, yet its imprint will always remain in the memory, a shadow of a stain.

Half-consciously then I avoided the area of the campus where I’d seen the dark-skinned man with the briefcase. In the sandstone building were the departments of economics, political science, statistics and I was taking none of these courses.

A few days later I saw him again walking on campus, carrying his briefcase. Amid undergraduates wearing the most casual attire—T-shirts, shorts, jeans—he looked almost comically dignified in sport coat, white shirt, tie. I wished that someone would greet him so that his masklike face might break into a smile.

That uncanny sensation of trying to recall a dream! Even as the dream fades.