Willa Cather’s “Two Friends” is a wonderful story about two men who are different in temperament, physique, personality, mannerisms, politics, outlook. They somehow form a friendship and then let it slip away.
The narrator, who was a child when Mr. Dillon and Mr. Trueman were the leading citizens of the town, sometimes wakes up inexplicably sad and knows she must have dreamed of them.
When that old scar is occasionally touched by chance, it rouses the old uneasiness; the feeling of something broken that could so easily have been mended; of something delightful that was senselessly wasted, of a truth that was accidentally distorted — one of the truths we want to keep.
When the poet William Stafford was confined in a work camp for conscientious objectors during World War II, he went for a walk with Dorothy Hope Frantz, the minister’s daughter. She quoted a line from the story. He quoted one back.
They realized they were kindred spirits.
Kim Stafford tells the story of his parents’ courtship in “How I Came to Be.” It’s such a beautiful poem I had to find the story again — to see, again, if Willa Cather really is that good.
No doubt about it.
• Sources: Kim Stafford, Singer Come from Afar; Pasadena, Calif.: Red Hen Press, 2021, p. 111.
Willa Cather, Collected Stories; New York: Vintage Classics, 1992, 315-31.
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