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radio.
    The day defaulted with small eruptions of chatter until the air fell cold at the appointed hour. The sun looked ready to falter. Our neighbors drifted off, helping each other from the field in a long, slow shuffle until Claire and I were alone.
    This was what we wanted. We usually waited late into the afternoon for everyone to leave so we could have the last bright minutes of the day to ourselves.
    At a high southern swell in the field, past the fire pit, a sight line down the ledge into the tangle of evergreens allowed us to see the rough location of our forest synagogue, a little two-person hut hidden in the woods.
    If our hut had an antenna, perhaps it would surface through the trees and serve as a landmark. Maybe on a day like this we could look down from the field and see it. But our hut used no antenna, so from the field you could never see the structure itself or even the little trail we took each Thursday up from the creek bed to get there. From above you couldn’t see anything but woods. From above you couldn’t be sure that our synagogue existed. Sometimes even inside it, while Rabbi Burke’s sermon pumped from the strange radio, I felt the same way.
    Claire and I held hands as the field darkened and we said nothing. Our silence was a rule of the synagogue, something we swore to when we were first entrusted with membership. We did not discuss what we heard there, nor did we discuss the hut itself. Even just looking at it from this elevation in the field we remained, by mandate, quiet.
    But I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The enforced silence was a relief. Because all talk was banished we could not disagree, we could not mutually distort what we heard during services. There was nothing to debate, nothing to say, and the experience remained something we could share that would never be spoiled with speech.
    On the footpath back to the car, we passed people huddled in the woods, voices warped in dispute. A man wept and a woman seemed to berate him in whispers. Normally when couples fought, Claire and I put our heads down and charged past them, congratulating ourselves later for getting along so well. We’d never fight like that! Out in public! We were better than that!
    But this didn’t seem like a domestic argument.
    Through the trees, in the grass, sat a man and woman I recognized from the picnics. They had two kids I didn’t much enjoy, boys who belted each other and fell down so often, they seemed immune to pain and probably the higher feelings as well. But I didn’t see the boys now, only the parents.
    Standing over them was a large man with red hair, wearing an athletic suit. He was not one of the regulars from the field. I didn’t know him.
    “Everything okay?” I called into the trees.
    The couple didn’t respond, just whispered harder.
    “We’re good,” the tall redhead finally answered, and when the man groaned, the redhead seemed to shush him.
    Are you speaking for everyone? I didn’t ask.
    The redhead looked back through the trees, weaving to get an angle on us, but I’m not sure what he could see.
    Claire pulled on my arm. “C’mon,” she said, “let’s go.”
    It was getting darker and colder and Claire and I were too tired to have been out this long. She tugged on me and leaned downhill, pleading.
    “Maybe I should call someone,” I whispered to Claire, pulling against her.
    But the redhead must have heard me.
    “We’ve already called someone, they’re coming. Everything’s taken care of.”
    He didn’t look our way. He seemed to be trying to block my view of the other two. If I could have examined them, would I have seen the facial smallness, felt a hardened callus forming under their tongues? Would there have been a yellow stain in their eyes?
    Claire started off downhill without me, said she’d meet me at the car.
    The redhead went to his knees, folding his huge body over both of them as if he might protect them from a blast. Then a distant, small sound, a