— By Christophe Courchesne '98

That Sunday morning, one hour before Elm Street will open its doors for commencement breakfast, I leave Browning House, dressed for the ceremony in my new wool suit and crimson tie. Walking past the Academy Building and the temporary bandstand on the front lawn, I watch the staff from Facilities blanketing the lawn in folding chairs. They all have familiar faces: men and women, generally busy these four years cleaning bathrooms or mopping floors, whom I have seen in passing but never met. These people seem the only ones up, the campus otherwise asleep. I walk down past the bookstore and into town, the streets without any traffic to speak of. The morning is overcast, the sky a dim gray dome that lacks the darkness of storm.

In front of me, a man appears from around the corner of Citizens Bank, clad in dripping waders, a long fly rod in one hand, and a fluorescent green tackle box in the other. Mr. Sneeden, an English instructor and my poet-mentor during my senior spring, wishes me good morning before I recognize him, his face rough with a day of neglect. I say hello back and ask him if the fish are biting. He smiles widely and shakes his head no. He tells me, "I better be getting back. I need to change and wake Gwen and the kids, seeing as you are already ready for the ceremony!" He walks away, back into campus, along the path I just took.

I check my watch and head for the Coffee Mill, the only shop open anywhere in town. The young man with the blonde ponytail is working, whistling some folk song I almost recognize to his empty café. He pours me a medium Foglifter after a brief exchange of greetings. I pay and thank him, cupping the coffee between my palms. I close the screen door behind me, and the attached cow bell rings my departure. I hurry along Water Street past the dark storefronts, down by the boathouse to the Squamscott River and Swazey Parkway, where I can see Sarah Fahey's day-student 1978 Pontiac parked along the curb.

In a lacy white dress, she waits on a bench in the small park that runs between the parkway and the riverbank. I sit down beside her, and she reaches over to grab my coffee, which she raises to her lips, her glasses fogging up with the cup's escaping steam. I tell her about meeting Mr. Sneeden on my way, and she says, "There was a fisherman over there before, closer to the dam, in waders, but I couldn't make out his face in the mist, just the movement of the rod."

We grow quiet, passing the coffee between us. The river's surface is hard to see, the heavy mist following the tide in, from Great Bay to the dam upriver. Our last Exeter hours are sliding away, as surely as the Squamscott will, before long, be drawn back to the sea.

Circling through the mist, swallows dive and climb, darting in and out of sight, like brief phantoms. The coffee warming my fingers, I hand it to Sarah and step down towards the water. I pick up round flat pebbles and sidearm them one at a time into the river, spinning them off the tip of my finger. Of the dozen I throw, only one skips, surface to surface to surface, sweet arcs defying gravity. I feel Sarah's eyes on me as I see the ripples spreading out from the contact points, three sets of circles moving outward from the centers. The next few slice downward without flight, and I join Sarah again on the bench. She loops her arm around mine, putting her head to rest on the fine black wool covering my shoulder, and closes her eyes.

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