“There was one spot in Perth I didn’t mind,” said Hans.
“The Sugar Cane Candy Store?” I guessed.
He rubbed his chin and tilted his head. “OK, maybe two spots.”
“What’s the other one?”
He stuck out his elbow, inviting me to lock arms with him. “How about a little walk and I’ll show you?”
Hans’s idea of a ‘little walk’ was a long steep trek up the mountain on a trail that seemed not to have been used since we were there as children. The exercise did me good, as I had no time or energy to think about how dire our situation was. Plus, after being stuck on a plane then a bus for hours, I badly needed to get my blood flowing.
“Just a little farther,” said Hans.
“That’s what you said ten minutes ago and ten minutes before that.”
“Yeah, but eventually it will be true.”
As much as I hated Perth, I had to admit that the overlook Hans had taken me to offered quite a spectacular view. The town, seen as a miniature from far up, looked surprisingly quaint and lovely—not at all how it looked in my memories. The fact that the sun was setting added to the softness of the view.
“Not bad, is it?” said Hans, taking in a lungful of clean mountain air.
“How did you know about this overlook? You couldn’t have come up here as a kid.”
He grinned and looked at me mischievously out of the corner of his eye. “I did a lot of things as a kid you don’t know about.”
I put my hand up, open-palm out. “And let’s keep it that way.”
Another great aspect of the view was that the spire of a church hid the orphanage from sight. Perth looked a lot better without that eyesore.
Hans pointed off to the left. “You remember that?”
“Remember what?”
“The baseball field on the other side of the pond.”
I squinted and searched the landscape Hans was pointing at. “Wow, how did you recognize it from so far away? You have great eyesight.”
“No, just a good memory.” He turned to me and smiled. “We had good fun that day.”
I nodded. “Until you and my teammates threw me into the pond.”
Hans laughed. “Hey, you got your first hit, and it was the game-winner. We didn’t have a bucket of Gatorade to pour on you, so we improvised.” He pointed to the right. “And there’s the Widow Maker.”
“I never went sledding there,” I said.
“No?”
I shook my head. “Surprisingly, the idea of speeding uncontrollably down a bumpy hill into a row of trees didn’t appeal to me back then.”
Hans sighed. “Yeah, you were always so reasonable, despite my best efforts.”
I perused the tiny town below us. “I can’t seem to spot the Sugar Cane Candy Store.”
“It should be over there,” he said and pointed. “But it doesn’t look to be there anymore.”
“Where? That parking lot? Are you sure?”
“Positive.” He nodded and tapped his head with an index finger. “I’ve got a good memory.”
“So you say.”
I was beginning to feel a chill and was about to suggest we head back to the lodge when Hans pointed and exclaimed. “Speaking of good memories.”
“What?”
“You see that shack there, tucked into the side of the mountain?”
I nodded. “I see it, but I don’t recognize it.”
“You should. You spent enough time there.”
I looked at him perplexed. “How so?”
“See the fencing going around the property and the patch of gravel?”
“No!”
“You recognize it now?”
“The Perth Animal Farm,” I said in disbelief. “It can’t be.”
Hans nodded. “Yep. Except only you called it that. It was actually Edison’s Safari Land.”
“Wow, you do have a good memory.”
Hans beamed with pride. “I remember it well. Twice I thought you’d run away, went looking everywhere for you, and found you at Mr. Edison’s little petting zoo.”
“I was going to run away,” I said. “I remember asking Mr. Edison if I could borrow his goat so I could ride off to California on it.”
“A goat?”
I shrugged. “His name was Chester, and he was my favorite.”
“I don’t think you’d get very far on a goat.”
“With Chester I could have. He was a magical goat.” I turned to Hans. “He could fly, you know?”
“No, I didn’t know Chester the Goat could fly.”
I nodded enthusiastically. “He had lots of special powers, and he was my friend.”
“So why didn’t you?” He turned to me with a serious, almost sad, look on his face. “Why didn’t you and Chester fly off to California?”
I bumped Hans with my shoulder. “There was only room on Chester’s back for one.”
“Ah.” Hans put his arm around me and gave me a side hug.
After a moment of silence, Hans said, “Doesn’t look like Chester or any of the other animals stuck around.”
“Not surprising,” I said. “Mr. Edison was like a hundred and twenty years old back then. Though, I wonder what happened to the animals.”
Hans looked at me sideways. “Best not to think about it.”