Summer days drew us, my group of friends and I, to the shadows that cooled the grass beneath the maple trees of Elmwood Cemetery. Even on hot summer days, when the air was as still as a grounded kite, and the sky was nearly white with haze, the dirt paths that wound between granite and marble felt cool against our bare feet.

Max was there, his gaze fixed and steady, focused on the space separating the other monuments, staring out past the street to whatever lay beyond. I still remember the surprise when we found him on the side road, his stone legs planted beneath one of the majestic maple trees. Its gnarled roots reached across the grass, making a perfect place for us to sit and visit. Rough bark against our backs, we kept Max company. We read his name, we laughed at his curls, and we ran our fingers over his face and the flat place where his nose should be, wondering and angry that anyone would try to destroy such a testimony of a family's love.

We thought about other things too. Who had laced his boots? Did little boys really wear dresses back then? Maybe his mother had purchased the oufit for him from one of the merchants downtown. We imagined him walking the streets of Barre, clutching her hand, his little feet skipping over the cobbled stones as he hurried to keep up. Maybe he tugged her to a stop to watch the horses clomping by, maybe he laughed and clapped his hands.

We talked about where Max might have lived, wondered if his neighborhood had been one of the many that had grown up across the hills, turning farmland and forests into streets with houses and backyards to play in. I knew my own house was once a barn and the large white apartment building that my friend lived in on Washington Street used to be a tavern, complete with hitching posts outside for the horses. We'd seen pictures of it and of a Main street filled with horse-drawn carriages and lots of men wearing hats.

Sometimes hours passed while we walked and talked, while we lay on the ground, the sun burning orange against the backs of our eyelids. We thought our own thoughts then, me about Max and his dad, flying down the cemetery hill in the middle of winter, snow flying all around as the wind rosied his cheeks and the metal runners on their wooden sled zipped across the snow-- and in the summertime, Max on a picnic with his mother and friends, rolling and laughing in the grass, turning the world upside down with little-boy somersaults. Did he hide in the autumn leaves? Did he gather up huge piles to jump in? We liked to think that he did, and that for all the time that separated us, we weren't so different after all.

Sometimes I ventured into Elmwood on my own, an only child, lonely for companionship, for someone to understand. Max listened. I told him my worries, my fears, my dreams. I asked him if he knew my sister, buried close by, another child gone from the world in an untimely manner. In the answering silence, I was always comforted. Sometimes it even felt good to be sad, to sit there by myself and mourn for the little boy I never knew, his family long gone, no one left to put flowers on his grave, no one to care if he was broken or whole.

Summers came and went, seasons passing, and we walked again on a lazy afternoon, my friends and I, older now, our talk turned to boys, movies, music. We stopped, mouths hanging open, then running fast to the place where Max used to be. One of us cried as we stared at the empty pedestal and the twisted iron rods that had once held him there. The maple came down not long after that, leaving Max's place unrecognizable, leaving a hole in our hearts and in our minds.

It wasn't until many more summers had passed, wasn't until many more trees had been felled-- and others planted-- wasn't until all my friends had moved away from the old neighborhood, that I finally learned what had happened to the statue of the boy with the broken nose.

On a hot summer day, after a parade, and clutching my young daughter's hand, we stumbled into the Depot building and came face to face with Max Parker, aged 3 years 8 months. I smiled at his face, repaired and whole again, and assured my daughter that yes, indeed, boys did wear dresses back then. She knows now, just as I do, that we're part of a community that does care. The family who once lived and died here, who loved their little boy enough to immortalize him in stone, may no longer be able to put flowers on his grave, but there are those who still carry fond memories of Max Parker in their hearts, and others who will wonder yet again who he was and what the world was like when he walked the streets of Barre.