“So, what do you think?” Sammy asked, forcing an eager smile.

“Sounds like a good idea,” I said. “Maybe that’s what the village needs—a specialty, like it had in the fifties when all the refugees were here.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too.”

“Look, Sammy, I wonder if you’d do a favor for me,” I said.

“Name it.”

“I will later, but it’s not complicated.”

Sammy’s eyes blinked a question, but he did not ask it. He shrugged and said, “Sure.”

“I’ve decided to drive back to Newburgh today and spend the night there. I’ve got an early flight out in the morning,” I told him.

“Hate to see you go,” Sammy said earnestly. “Damn it, I wish you lived up here. I always do my best work when you’re around.”

“You don’t need me or anyone else,” I replied. “You just need yourself.”

Sammy tugged at one of the pieces of sculpture on the table, rearranging it. After a moment, he said, “Thanks, Bobo.”

“I’ll see you a little later. Okay?”

“Sure, I’ll be here. I’ve got a couple trying to decide which piece they want— After the Bomb or Dead Volcano.” He swept his hands proudly over the two pieces. They looked very much the same.

I left Sammy and walked through the village a last time, past the cemetery, following the path of walkers long dead, the path that Amy followed when meeting me at the birch tree. The tree was gone, but I knew the spot where it had stood. There was a stone the size of a fist lodged in the grass and ground, and I remembered the day that Amy had angrily buried the brochure about interfaith marriages. The earth had taken the brochure, had swallowed it, digested it.

From the hillside, I could see couples from the Dutch Reformed church packing their cars for the trip back to the city. For a moment—from the distance—the village seemed to be the village of 1955. I sat in the sun where Amy and I had sat under the shadows of the birch, and I watched the cars pull away, leaving the village deserted except for the girl named Trinity. She rode her bicycle up the street and turned and rode back and turned again. Up and down she rode, as though reclaiming her place, and I wondered if she would be there when everyone else had died, or moved away, and Pine Hill itself had been digested by the earth. I wondered what the sound of her voice was like.