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I

The maple tree he planted in the front yard of his old house was flourishing. Paul had left Des Moines, Iowa 30 years ago, and this was his first time back. He had been busy, building a law practice in New York City, getting married and having two kids, and traveling the world in proper style. Paul himself was a weathered mid-50s, in his khaki pants and pink polo shirt. Meanwhile, his tree had grown straight and true, thirty feet tall, with branches filled with deep green leaves and seedlings, which fell like helicopters in late spring. When Paul had lived there, he joined the other boys and they grabbed bunches of maple seedlings and tossed them into the air, watching them helicopter down.

Paul looked at his old house, that was itself unremarkable, built by the dozens in the 1950s to house new families. This ranch style house was one story, had aluminum siding (more economic than painting they said), with a front porch. It looked so similar to the old days that he felt like he could walk right in. The house reminded him of playing games, jokes, arguments, and some family secrets.

He was about to turn away, when someone came out of the front door and saw him.

“You’re probably wondering why I am looking at your house,” Paul said. “I used to live here.”

“That’s fine,” the guy said. He was in his sixties, stooped a bit, wearing long brown pants and a striped shirt. “Are you a Parker?”

“Umm, well yes, my name is Paul Parker. How do you know my name?”

“We bought the house from your mother. I’m Chris Murray.”

“Nice to meet you. You have a great memory. Did you buy the house?” Paul vaguely remembered that they had sold the house to a handyman. Paul and his brothers had beat up that house pretty good.

Chris laughed, “no, my parents bought it. I inherited it six years ago when they passed.”

They stared at each other for a minute, while Paul wondered if he could leave.

“Say, would you like to come in and see the house,” Chris asked.

“Sure,” Paul said, and they walked into the house together.

“Sorry if it looks kind of empty,” Chris said, “but my ex took a lot of stuff when she moved out two years ago.”

“The house looks fine,” Paul lied. The Murrays had torn down all the old bookcases, tossed the old telescope, and replaced the Parkers’s rickety New England furniture with economical pieces from Bob’s discount furniture. A massive flat screen tv dominated the living room. “Looks like a cozy place to watch a game.”

“That is exactly how I spend most of my summers,” said Chris. “I always wear my Chicago Cubs hat,” which he kept right by his lazy-boy recliner, “as a good luck charm to help them win.”

“Aren’t the Cubs the lovable losers?” Paul asked.

“Hey, they won in 2016,” Chris said.

“First time in a century,” Paul said. “That’s why I am a Yankees fan.”

Chris showed him around, but it was the Murray house now. Paul knew the floor plan, but nothing evoked much feeling in him. All the craziness had drained away, and the curiosity had been next out the door.

Chris chatted about the neighbors, and it turned out the his old friend Billy had moved back into his parents’s old house after they died, two doors down.

“You should go see Billy,” Chris said. “He’s probably home.”

II

Billy was home.

“So, what brings you back to Des Moines?” Billy asked, as they sat down on his front porch. Billy was shorter than Paul, wearing shorts and a Cubs t-shirt, and had been lazily flipping through tv channels when Paul knocked on his door.

“I wondered what it was like, after all these years,” Paul said. “I guess that we are like salmon, eventually coming back to the same stream.”

“Well, what do you think?” Billy asked.

“Des Moines has really surprised me,” said Paul. “It is a lot better than I remembered. After high school I couldn’t wait to get out. Now I see a lot of things that are appealing.”

“What surprised you?”

“A lot,” Paul said. “I went to the farmers market downtown, art shows in Des Moines’s East Village, and it was just cool to walk around. I also took a bike around Grey’s Lake, and visited the Des Moines Art Center. It’s funny, the Art Center is much bigger now, with lots of new exhibits, but I found one room that had the exact same paintings, in the same spots, as 30 years ago. Standing there, it felt like time stood still.”

“Time can seem to stand still here,” said Billy. “Still, as nice as our East Village may be, it can’t compare to New York, right?”

“Well, we still get the biggest art openings in New York. Of course, with the good, you get the bad. In Des Moines, it just feels calmer and more manageable. Besides, here I don’t have to step over all the refuse in the streets.”

“They don’t clean the streets in New York?” Billy asked.

“They do,” said Paul. “I am referring to human refuse. You can’t get away from it. They are always asking for something. They get more insistent, and scarier, at night.”

“But you have done well in New York, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I have,” Paul said. “I built up my own powerhouse law firm. If someone gets crippled or killed, their family calls us. I have ads all around New York, and I call myself the Terminator. With all those cases, I have 25 associates beavering away for me. A couple of them went to Ivy League law schools, but now they work for me.”

“Wow, that’s great. It’s good to be one of the big fish, right?”

Paul shook his head, “I am not one of the big fish, I am the big fish. If someone tried to get bigger, I would cut them down to size.”

“I guess that that is the attitude that you need to make it in New York,” said Billy. “How about family?”

“Good there too,” Paul lied. “My wife and I have two darling daughters. The kids are going to the private French-American School in New York.” Paul didn’t feel like saying that his daughters couldn’t stand being in the same room as him, and his wife had just filed for divorce.

“Why didn’t they come with you?” Billy asked.

“Well, one of my daughters had a school play. I can show them to you though.” Paul showed Billy pictures from family trips they had taken to Paris, Rome, and Egypt.

“That’s amazing,” Billy said, “isn’t it funny how life turns out.”

“Very funny.”

“I remember that back in school you were so artsy,” Billy remembered. “You took all these art classes with that friend of yours. You wrote lots of poetry. You even wrote a poem about our football team winning the state championship. I probably have that in the yearbook somewhere around here.”

“I was so young, then,” Paul said. “I actually wanted to be a poet, riches be damned. Now I write legal briefs that can win my clients millions of dollars. That’s the writing that matters.”

“Jeez, you have accomplished so much. I don’t even have a family,” Billy said.

“Really?”

“I just never found the right girl,” said Billy.

Paul didn’t know what to say.

“Didn’t you and your friend want to be poets together?” Billy asked. “What was her name?”

“Tracy.”

“That’s right,” said Billy, “Tracy. You guys were always together. I always wondered. Were you guys together, together?”

“No,” Paul laughed. “I was way too sensitive back then.”

“Tracy, Tracy, Tracy,” Billy said. “That rings a bell, somehow.”

“Well, what?” Paul said.

Billy thought for a minute, then he went in and started rifling though a mound of papers on his kitchen table. “Here it is,” he said from inside.

Billy brought back outside the flyer and handed it to Paul. “See, Tracy is reading some of her poetry at the Art Center in two days.”

“Really, is she good?” Paul asked.

“I don’t really know about that stuff,” Billy said, “but her name pops up pretty regularly in Des Moines.”

“That’s something, I guess,” Paul said. “She probably lives in some artists’ colony, and declaims her poetry to crowds of, maybe, a hundred people.”

“You should go to her show,” Billy said, “that would be such a nice surprise for her.”

“Maybe I will,” said Paul, “we always had that connection. Of course, I never thought that she would still be flopping around the Des Moines art scene.”

The more Paul thought about seeing Tracy, the more it appealed to him. He could probably move things around at work to stay a few more days.

“By the way, Billy,” Paul asked, “do you know if she ever settled down?”

“Not that I know of,” Billy said. “ I have run into her a few times, and she is still the same free spirit, like always.”

“Thanks Billy, do you mind if I keep the flyer?” Paul asked.

III

That evening, Paul googled Tracy from his suite in the Hotel Fort Des Moines. There was quite a bit. She was an adjunct Writing Professor at the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She appeared to, in fact, live in an artists colony. There were some pictures, and he still remembered the curve of her face. There were no indications of a husband or a partner.

Tracy had published three books of poetry. Paul read one poem, then the next, and he kept on going. Her poetry was beautiful. He almost cried. He could never write like that.

He couldn’t do it. Instead, he confirmed his flight back to New York for the next day.