AFTER FIVE YEARS Pulling up in my car, I went into the cottage, wearing a tie. They didn't recognise me until I took off my sportscoat. Well I knew the walls and what they contained. I could account for the crack in the cup I drank from. I could hear their voice from a distance, knowing its nearness; hardly a word new, hardly a smile that wasn't a clue to another. And when they handed me the fiddle, I played the tune they taught me, although the time was off; the three brothers from the hill came in to make me more at home. The strange cat on the range was the only sign that I had been away. He was offspring of in the generation in between. -- Augustus Young (born 1943)