I do not remember that first drive into the Catskills with Raymond, except for a herd of deer on a knoll. I must have sat forward in the car seat, as would a child who is excited. I know that Raymond slowed the car and said, “You’ll see a lot of them up here.” Then he added, “Bobo, everything up here is different,” and he began to tell me the stories of the Catskills, from the early settlers to the resort industry. “Once it was believed the Catskills would be the new Jerusalem. There’s a rich Jewish heritage here. You’ll find that out at the Inn.”

I have thought of that first trip over the years and wondered why I have no impression of the mountains and trees and the towns and villages and streams. Perhaps I was too young, or too tired. We had been in New York for two days. On the last night with my classmates, Carolyn and I had stayed together until late, and then I had joined some of the boys in one of the rooms and we had talked long after midnight. I did not know it then, but I was trying to tuck away my time with them as fully, as completely, as possible. Coy Helms called it “Bobo’s last night as a human being.”

Coy. Coy is another person I always remember when I am in the Catskills.

The last thing Coy said to me on May 27, 1955, was, “Keep it pointed toward the ground, Bobo. They’s Yankees all over the place up here.”

His exact, last words were those.

I laughed at Coy and took his offered hand. “Sure, Coy,” I said. There was great strength in his handgrip. He looked away, then blinked his eyes rapidly, then licked the dryness from his lips. He shrugged the way Coy always shrugged when he wanted to appear nonchalant— a casual roll of the muscles across his shoulders. Coy was large and powerful, the strongest boy-man I knew. He had played tackle on the football team. One night, enraged because an opponent had threatened me, Coy broke the boy’s leg. Yet, Coy was also gentle and caring. If he liked you, Coy loved you. In a good way, I mean. With his soul, with the fluttering that bubbles up in a person’s chest when that person has sensed, or witnessed, something too splendid for the chest to contain. When Coy said to me, “Keep it pointed toward the ground, Bobo. They’s Yankees all over the place up here,” I knew it was not what he wanted to say. What he wanted to say was, “I love you, Bobo.”

I remember thinking, as I watched Coy stroll away and board the train, “I love you, too, Coy. Thank you for breaking legs for me.”