Piper by John E. Keegan Page B

settle for photographs she could paint from later. She shot an entire roll, taking pains to compose each picture from the perfect angle, close-ups that would turn out to be the slice of a building or have a weird shadow effect. Carlisle sat next to me, on the trunk of a fallen tree, watching her.
    â€œThis is a real treat for me,” he said, “to take you and your mom up here.”
    â€œIt’s okay,” I said.
    â€œTakes a lot to turn your head, doesn’t it?”
    â€œNo, it’s great. Really.”
    â€œLook at her. She’s in heaven.”
    For our lunch, we hiked up a trail with switchbacks. Carlisle and I took turns carrying the wicker basket, and Mom carried her easel and paints in a brown metal toolbox with drawers that fanned open in tiers. We weren’t exactly Lewis and Clark. Carlisle, in his Birkenstocks, wanted to stop at every vista to wipe the sweat off his face with a hanky. I thought Mom would complain, but she seemed energized by the increase in elevation.
    â€œWhy did we wait so long to come up here?” she said.
    â€œThere is no here ,” Carlisle said. “The three of us could divide up and hike these mountains every weekend for the rest of our lives and never bump into each other.”
    I never forgot Mom’s response, which probably explained why she’d taken to Carlisle in the first place. “I couldn’t stand to be that alone,” she said.
    â€œIt’s hyperbole, Mom.”
    She smiled and wrapped her arm around me. “See? I told you she’s smart.” Her fear of isolation might have also explained our own bond. There was no place she could go, no endeavor so boring, that I didn’t want to be with her. I was unconditional company.
    Carlisle spread our lunch out on a red and white checkered tablecloth in a heather meadow: artichoke hearts, marinated onions, feta cheese on rye crackers, spiral pasta salad with pesto, a choice of Italian sodas that we iced down with cubes from the tupperware, kiwi and strawberry slices for desert. The champagne was French, of course, and pink. When Carlisle shot the stopper into the lupine and devil’s club surrounding us, the champagne fizzed all over the tablecloth before Mom could get her glass under it. I thought it was all a bit dainty and not the fare of pressed ham and pre-sliced cheese that Dad would have chosen, but Mom savored every bite, dunking her strawberries into her champagne and practically kissing the kiwi into her mouth.
    After dessert, she set up her easel and tied a scarf around her head to keep the hair out of her eyes. Barefoot and in shorts, I could see the muscles in her legs work as she leaned into her board to sketch the face of the mountain reflected in the stillness of the pond next to us. Carlisle sat on the ground, loosened his belt buckle, and opened up the case I thought contained a telescope. But it was a black piccolo with silver finger buttons that glistened when he played something that sounded like butterflies fluttering over a field of buttercups. Mom put her arms around her middle, closed her eyes, and listened, while a stick of charcoal dangled from between her fingers. John Carlisle’s cheeks puffed in and out, the skin stretched beyond normal size. As I watched him pointing his piccolo toward the easel, it was almost as if he was trying to will the picture up out of the paper. I remembered feeling sorry that his family had left him with a newspaper instead of an orchestra or a dance troupe. I didn’t know anyone else in Stampede who even listened to classical music much less played an instrument. John Carlisle was a soloist by default.
    In those days I was glad Mom had someone like Carlisle, someone besides the typical Stampeder who stopped by wherever she set up her easel and said, “Hey, Van Gogh, why don’t you just snap a picture?” As time wore on and the kiddish mucous cleared from my eyes, I began to see him