disclaimer: Gene & Finny belong to the estate of John Knowles, not me.

Fall 1940

We were still boys; fifteen, just.

Back then there was no particular connection at all.

I'd seen his graceful self on one field or another, his bored head in the random class we shared.

I had no sense of things to come, had no sign that I would ever find a cause to love him, or to hate him. No reason to think about him at all.

That from the arch of that skull (with its remarkable contents) to the splay of his toes, I would come to know him rather better than anyone at Devon, I would have dismissed as unlikely, at least.

We'd never met.

When we were introduced, it was casually, surname only (typical for Devon), "Phineas" he said to me, his right hand in mine. I guess my face slipped at the oddness of it. "Finny" he said, "Call me Finny, that's what most people do."

Here I was surprised at myself, surprised at the pleasure I took from his interested gaze. Then he was distracted, and the day shifted back to being ordinary.

I always remembered that moment: his standing there, with the green of the playing-field behind. His voice, his hand, the appraising look he gave me, as if trying to size me up at one go. These things I was aware of, they stayed in my mind.

What didn't stay in mind, what remained hidden, was the toehold he had quietly, efficiently, if unintentionally, planted - squarely in my cool, undiscovered heart.

At that point, long before I understood the locked geography of that heart, its twists and turns, its dead ends and their darknesses, I was aware only that in a small way he'd made me happy, no more, no less.