The Cathedral Glen, Part 1

There are stories that are old in the story-teller’s life, old enough to not quite have all the facts exactly right. This is one of those…
There was a boy. His name was Jim, or Tommy, or Brad…I’m not too sure anymore, because it was a long time ago that these things happened. At that time, there was a wide and long field that all the neighborhood houses’ backyards gave on to. The boy lived in one of those houses a ways away, toward the far end. By a long time ago, I mean at least twenty-two or twenty-four years. I was very little then, only six years old and small-ish for my age. But Jimmy, who was also my age, was even smaller than I. All the children of the neighborhood used to play in the field. There were places, where the neighbors would not cut the vines back, and where wood pallets and tires had been thrown, that we used as forts, and castles, and secret clubs. It was generally overgrown, though there were bare patches of dirt and grass to play soccer or baseball, and clusters of wildflowers close to the houses to pick for Mom or the cute red-head who lived on the other side of the field (her name was Beth).
There were places in the field, secret places we knew about where the border between worlds and times was thin. Very thin like muslin gauze, or like the sheer drapes a lot of our mothers put up after reading Better Homes and Gardens or Interior Spaces to dress up shabby living rooms. There were some places that were more like the lace table-covers at grandma’s house, where little things could slip through between worlds, and where you could, if you were patient enough, catch glimpses of the field in the other world. Nothing so big as a faery, and certainly no elves or leprechauns could have passed, and as small as Tommy and Beth and I were, neither could we… But sometimes, maybe a bug could fly though, or a seed drop through one of those little tears in the fabric.
Jimmy and I were playing one day in the copse of trees near the far side of the field where the woods and power lines bordered. We had some GI Joes and He-Mans, and one of Jimmy’s B-17 models. He was famous among the kids for jealously guarding them, which I kind of understood, since he made them with help from his dad. His room was covered in finished hanging ones, boxes of unstarted ones, and several in the middle of construction. Each time he finished one he would bring it out and relegate the last to the growing dogfight in the sky above his bed. Looking back, I cannot see how he could sleep at night with all those planes above his head waiting to crash down to earth… But I digress; he had a newly-minted B-17 with him that “took like four months!” It was pretty impressive, all put together and painted with even oil stains on the engines.