The porch was empty, save for the leaves and howling wind and, though he faded tragically into the woodwork, the boy. He wasn't a talkative boy, but he was always present. You could sense him as you could the wind - blowing through you, begging to break through the monotony, going nowhere but here and there and everywhere and all at the same time. He wasn't a large boy and he wasn't a bothersome one. You knew he was there. You didn't think about him, you never appreciated him, but you knew him, felt him, heard him, and searched for him, somewhere, somehow, on some level, in your daydreams. The boy was a part of you just as he was a part of this town, just as the fading branches were a part of the landscape. The boy was part of the grass and part of the sky, whether you named the clouds or simply let them hover.

His name was Albert, but you simply knew him as the boy. He was just a scarecrow to you, just a twig among the piles of leaves and earth. His mother was Iris, his father old Ed, his worn corduroys a staple on his weak figure. The baseball cap, too - it was always there, resting on his head, shading him from the sun, protecting him, hiding him. He never smiled, but he occasionally whistled, and every now and then you'd hear his tune, as familiar and peaceful as the soft song of a creek.

And the boy was very much one of the creeks of Blue Hills. He was their friend, and when he traipsed on the land in town or dipped in the murky water he would not step as a conqueror. He was always a visitor, always family. His favorite father was Old Sam, the easternmost pond, right near the oldest farm and the newest factory and the apple trees and directly across from deep brother Nicholas. How the boy loved Sam. He would walk slowly along his dirty sands and rest tired feet in his shallow pools. Sam loved the boy, too; he must have. They would sit for hours and watch the moon and find refuge in gentle skin and rock, until Mrs. Manner called the boy home near dusk and made them part - and they never parted in sadness. No, they valued their time spent just being there, boy and pond, Albert and Sam.

No one, most likely, would be able to say when exactly Albert grew up, but it happened at some point. There was an obvious difference in the air, almost a staleness, and it wasn't just in the air. It was in the wind itself, in the trees, on the porch. Something was missing. There were whistles, of course, but no tune. He stopped wearing overalls. He stopped visiting Sam, stopped waving to Nicholas and climbing the apple trees and embracing the twilight.

The boy did not disappear, of course, for he had never been one to appear.

But he was gone. Not dead, not drowned, just no longer among the leaves. There was extra rain that year, and extra fog. The wood began to weather without the boy there. It's hard to say whether nature had fathered the boy or the other way around, but it's safe to say that neither statement could be called false. The boy wasn't taken from the hills, for Blue Hills would never have let him go without at least a glimmer of a farewell. Furthermore, he never would have left.

The boy was gone, but sometimes if you listened closely to the wind you could hear him still, rustling through the leaves. Albert could not stay with Sam forever, but Sam would sit and watch the moon in peace every day as if the boy were there with him, in silence, in song, and if you looked closely you could see his soft footprints in the sand.

The boy had been one to fade away but never one to shiver. When the hills lost him, no one noticed, no one mentioned it, there was never an announcement, never a mention in the paper or spread among lips. No one would ever speak of him, and no one ever did, no one ever had, but every now and then you could sense him, blowing through you, and then you'd watch the leaves fall and the winter fester and you'd wonder if something wasn't missing, maybe misplaced. You would wonder, but you would never worry. You knew the boy was safe, you knew you were safe because the boy was safe, and you knew it so well you never had to know it; yet once in a wandering moon you would look across to the pond and you would wonder if it had no one, having lost a no one, having lost a son or a father, a companion, or maybe never having lost, never having found, but always having had.