It's a Hard Story to Have to Know

Autumn was in the air, and the morning delivered the weather I’d hoped for. It was one of those grey days I loved so much as a boy. Those cool, overcast days matched my disposition more closely than any other season. I was a melancholy kid, constantly bewildered by the world around me, and never quite sure how to make sense of what I felt.

It wasn’t just the greyness I loved—it was the barrenness. The naked trees, the wind, the damp smell of the air, the absence of blue sky. To be outside on such a day was to be immersed in a world where I fit in seamlessly, my temperament and the world merged into a single, soothing unity. It was like being wrapped in a down comforter the color of my own soul. I still felt fear and loneliness, but I could move safely through the world—my feelings now part of it. I no longer felt apart.

For the other three seasons, I was always out of step. Spring was too blissful—more joy than I could believe or handle. I could manage brief moments of joy before old fears crept back in. Summer was all distraction. My thoughts and feelings were suspended during those months, with days filled with adventure and noise. Winter was the hardest, adding another layer of darkness to the one I had lived in for too long. When the first snow fell, it felt like it would never leave.

I survived by retreating to a tiny room I built in the basement, a space with two terrariums, a fish tank, and an old worn-out chair where I could sit and read. My siblings were not allowed to enter. Along the furnace pipes that sent warm air through the house, I taped poems that served as armor. One of them—about an intellectually disabled child, written by my high school friend, Ron Stibich—was curled at the corners, the ink bleeding a little where heat met basement damp. I still know two lines by heart, the way you recall a bruise:

Wouldn’t life’s journey easier be, as a boy of twelve with a mind of three.

On those blissful autumn days, there was nothing I enjoyed more than getting out of the house and heading to Brookside Park and the woods. There weren’t any woods near our home on West 54th Street, so to reach the park we would walk up the hill to Denison Avenue, turn left, and head towards Blackie’s Junkyard. If the dogs were tied up, we would cut through the junkyard to the railroad tracks that led to the park. Those junkyard dogs were more feared than any beast at the Brookside Zoo.

Once on the tracks, we’d see who could walk the furthest on a rail without falling, a perfect game for siblings.

"Bet you won’t make it to the whistle post sign," Matt would say, grinning as he eyed the rails.

"I will and then some," I’d shoot back, already balancing on the rail. "Watch."

Bart, always competitive, would call, "I’ll beat you both.” And he usually did.

Beyond the whistle post sign was a trestle that bridged a thirty-foot gap over the valley below, with no catwalk—just ties between the rails and open air beneath. Should a train come while you were out there, it was curtains. You could try to outrun it, but the ties were uneven. A fall meant broken bones or worse. Or you could jump into the ravine to escape. A Faustian bargain between two ugly deaths—jumping or being crushed—and the sprint of a lifetime to save your life. We crossed one at a time while someone kept watch.

After the trestle, the track curved, and there the trains slowed down. That was where we could jump the train, grabbing a boxcar or coal-car rung for a free ride to the park. Getting on was easy—a short jog, an outstretched arm, a quick leap. Getting off was trickier. If you missed the curve, you rode the speeding train all the way to the switching yard downtown, where you’d have to find a way back without being caught by the railroad police.

I had my tumbles getting on and off, but nothing serious—mostly picking cinders out of my forearms and elbows. Dennis, a schoolmate of ours, wasn’t as lucky. He was heavy and unathletic, and truth be told, we preferred when he didn’t come; he complained and slowed us down. But he was a kid who, like all kids, wanted to belong.

One day, when he wasn’t with us, he ran alongside the train and tried to grab the rung. He slipped and fell beneath the coal car, the wheels mangling his leg. He spent weeks in the hospital and underwent numerous operations. They saved the leg, but he walked with a limp from then on. I can still picture the way other kids imitated his gait, laughing. None of us knew then that the smallest cruelties can leave the deepest scars.

When word reached us at St. Boniface Elementary, the nuns said little other than that he was injured and warned us again to stay away from the tracks. In the playground, the story was embellished and then spread on a wind that smelled of coal smoke and wet leaves. We mourned him in the only way boys could—by pretending it hadn’t happened. The next Saturday, even with this news, we were on the tracks, shoes scuffing cinders, none of us believing it could ever happen to us.

As we walked, Brookside Creek sang a constant little song over the rocks that we could hear before we could see it. When it came into view—low and brown, sliding past like it hadn’t heard anything, we were ready to wade.

Our destination was “Pineapple Island.” Matt was the one who named it after the tiny cans of Dole pineapple juice we always brought—dented ones my father bought by the case. The island was a narrow strip of sand and stones less than ten feet off the bank of the creek. When the water was low, we’d wade across barefoot, pants rolled up, and once there, we’d become Robinson Crusoes.

We never wanted to go home.

Lunch was the usual—PB&J flattened into pancakes from being in the backpack. As I handed out the tiny cans, Matt unwrapped his sandwich, raised his can like a flask, and grinned. “This is how explorers eat. To Pineapple Island!”

We lifted ours in answer. “To Pineapple Island!”

“Nobody can find us out here,” Dave said, scanning the far bank. “Not even Mom.”

Bart had already drained half his juice before the toast finished. He flicked the empty can into the shallows—plink—and leaned against a drift-log, arms crossed, smirking. “That’s the point. Out here, we’re in charge. First one to finish eats the last sandwich.”

I don’t remember how long we stayed that day, or what we said after hearing about Dennis. What I remember is the quiet—the sense that something had shifted and none of us yet knew how to name it.

Childhood doesn’t end all at once; it slips away through the smallest cracks—the sound of wheels on rails, the look on my brother’s face, a remembered poem, the silence that followed after the train was gone.

Even today, I can feel that same comfort settle in—the stillness that held me as a boy. Childhood is often a hard story to have to know, and we all carry it differently—some as a limp, some as a kind of weather that never quite clears. The difference is that today, I know what lives beneath it: the weight of what can’t be undone, the knowledge that beauty and danger share the same air.

On this cool autumn morning, I pulled out my rain slicker and prepared to walk the woods near my home. I thought of my three brothers—Bart, Matt, and Dave—Dave and I the only ones still alive. I don’t recall any of them ever trying to jump a train with me. Maybe they were frightened after hearing about Dennis, or maybe they paid more attention to the warnings from parents and teachers. Or maybe I told them not to, and they listened to their older brother. I can’t say. We were brothers, cut from the same genetic material, but not the same boys—each of us molded by the same experiences refracted through different eyes.

As I stepped outside, I imagined the four of us as buckskin-clad members of Lewis and Clark’s expedition. Entering the woods, I adjusted my imagined coonskin cap and glanced back to see that my brothers were following. Once in the woods, we followed a path cut by deer, a byproduct of habit as they followed the contours of the land and skirted obstacles. It was always the surest and gentlest way through the woods. No train tracks this time, no Pineapple Island, no junkyard dogs—just the four of us again, finding our way through briars and trees.

At some point, we each turned down a different path. Matt was the first to leave—out of the woods and back to a home near Brookside Park. He became a recluse in what had become a rough part of town and died there, comforted by his childhood sweetheart. Bart left the woods for the sea, a born sailor and angler with salt water in his veins. He died falling off his boat, his ashes scattered on the ocean off a Navy ship. Dave was never much one for the woods and still lives within a short drive to the park. I don’t believe he’s ever been back. I set stone markers at the spots where I imagined my brothers turning. Lost in those moments of departure, I stand there, wishing for a few minutes to talk with Matt and Bart. We would not need to say much.

Standing there, I envisioned four birds in a tree, sitting side by side. Three chirped and flitted about; one stayed, still and watching. I am that bird. That’s what my growing old really is: a kind of quiet watching. The images fade, but the seeing deepens. With my brothers’ departures, I came to realize that I am going to spend the rest of my life in these woods. Once I accepted that, I saw the woods with a new clarity. I saw the richness of a place that mirrored the richness of an island discovered by four young boys. I could hear, in the distance, the songs of Brookside Creek.

We live in a time of a nagging suspicion that our lives would be greatly improved if we were someplace else. But walking while dreaming of another place only makes the journey harder; it’s easy to trip and fall. So, I look down, take the path that’s mine, and turn back toward home along the deer trail. These woods welcome old men.