Epilogue
or, What's Past is Prologue

Sean and Gerry open their eyes, and back out of the way of a beige 
sedan driving out of the Recreation Center parking lot. On the 
front walkway, a giant inflatable turkey sways in the November 
wind. Across the parking lot, middle-schoolers navigate their way 
through the bowls and rails of the skate park. The baseball 
diamond lies empty, and toddlers run giddily toward piles of 
cottonwood leaves.

The two watch the first wisps of snow begin to fall on the 
cemetery and dust the headstones with the finest film of white. 
The stories of the dead who lay here, stories of success, 
hardship, war, heartache, frustration, surprise, wonder, pain, 
courage, compassion, all joys and all sorrows, all gone save for 
two numbers: the year of their birth, and the year of their death.

All at once, the unfathomable depths of the past seem to Sean and 
Gerry like a vast ocean, ready to drown their small existences 
under the weight of all those who have come before. With that 
terror, though, comes the hope that this vast ocean could be 
sailed, with charts to guide them, and currents to carry them 
toward isles of discovery yet to be seen.

At the northeast end of the skate park, the trees spread apart, 
and in the far distance, through the falling snow, are the low, 
rolling hills where the Columbine Mine once stood. The hills loom 
over the valley, once called the Coal Field, covered in the same 
dry grass the miners trudged through all those years ago.

Sean rubs his palms together and blows into his cupped hands. 
Neither he nor Gerry is dressed for this kind of weather. They 
agree to meet up in Louisville tomorrow for hockey and say 
goodbye. They both share the feeling that the story may not be 
quite over. In fact, it may have just begun. 

The snow is falling harder as the boys hurry home.

THE END