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I lowered the cap and staggered to the barn. There my legs betrayed me, and if Id been in the sun, I surely would have passed out the way Henry had the night before. But I was in the shade, and after I sat for five minutes with my head lowered almost to my knees, I began to feel myself again. The rats had gotten to her-so what? Dont they get to all of us in the end? The rats and bugs? Sooner or later even the stoutest coffin must collapse and let in life to feed on death. Its the way of the world, and what did it matter? When the heart stops and the brain asphyxiates, our spirits either go somewhere else, or simply wink out. Either way, we arent there to feel the gnawing as our flesh is eaten from our bones.

I started for the house and had reached the porch steps before a thought stopped me: what about the twitch? What if she had been alive when I threw her into the well? What if she had still been alive, paralyzed, unable to move so much as one of her slashed fingers, when the rats came out of the pipe and began their depredations? What if she had felt the one that had squirmed into her conveniently enlarged mouth and began to-!

No, I whispered. She didnt feel it because she didnt twitch. Never did. She was dead when I threw her in.

Poppa? Henry called in a sleep-muzzy voice. Pop, is that you?

Yes.

Who are you talking to?

No one. Myself.

I went in. He was sitting at the kitchen table in his singlet and undershorts, looking dazed and unhappy. His hair, standing up in cowlicks, reminded me of the tyke he had once been, laughing and chasing the chickens around the dooryard with his hound dog Boo (long dead by that summer) at his heels.

I wish we hadnt done it, he said as I sat down opposite him.

Done is done and cant be undone, I said. How many times have I told you that, boy?

Bout a million. He lowered his head for a few moments, then looked up at me. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. Are we going to be caught? Are we going to jail? Or

No. Ive got a plan.

You had a plan that it wouldnt hurt her! Look how that turned out!

My hand itched to slap him for that, so I held it down with the other. This was not the time for recriminations. Besides, he was right. Everything that had gone wrong was my fault. Except for the rats, I thought. They are not my fault. But they were. Of course they were. If not for me, she would have been at the stove, putting on supper. Probably going on and on about those 100 acres, yes, but alive and well instead of in the well.

The rats are probably back already, a voice deep in my mind whispered. Eating her. Theyll finish the good parts, the tasty parts, the delicacies, and then

Henry reached across the table to touch my knotted hands. I started.

Im sorry, he said. Were in it together.

I loved him for that.

Were going to be all right, Hank; if we keep our heads, well be fine. Now listen to me.

He listened. At some point he began to nod. When I finished, he asked me one question: when were we going to fill in the well?

Not yet, I said.

Isnt that risky?

Yes, I said.

Two days later, while I was mending a piece of fence about a quarter-mile from the farm, I saw a large cloud of dust boiling down our road from the Omaha-Lincoln Highway. We were about to have a visit from the world that Arlette had so badly wanted to be a part of. I walked back to the house with my hammer tucked into a belt loop and my carpenters apron around my waist, its long pouch full of jingling nails. Henry was not in view. Perhaps hed gone down to the spring to bathe; perhaps he was in his room, sleeping.

By the time I got to the dooryard and sat on the chopping block, I had recognized the vehicle pulling the rooster-tail: Lars Olsens Red Baby delivery truck. Lars was the Hemingford Home blacksmith and village milkman. He would also, for a price, serve as a kind of chauffeur, and it was that function he was fulfilling on this June afternoon. The truck pulled into the dooryard, putting George, our bad-tempered rooster, and his little harem of chickens to flight. Before the motor had even finished coughing itself to death, a portly man wrapped in a flapping gray duster got out on the passenger side. He pulled off his goggles to reveal large (and comical) white circles around his eyes.

Wilfred James?

At your service, I said, getting up. I felt calm enough. I might have felt less so if hed come out in the county Ford with the star on the side. You are-?

Andrew Lester, he said. Attorney-at-law.

He put his hand out. I considered it.

Before I shake that, youd better tell me whose lawyer you are, Mr. Lester.

Im currently being retained by the Farrington Livestock Company of Chicago, Omaha, and Des Moines.

Yes, I thought, Ive no doubt. But Ill bet your name isnt even on the door. The big boys back in Omaha dont have to eat country dust to pay for their daily bread, do they? The big boys have got their feet up on their desks, drinking coffee and admiring the pretty ankles of their secretaries.

I said, In that case, sir, why dont you just go on and put that hand away? No offense.

He did just that, and with a lawyers smile. Sweat was cutting clean lines down his chubby cheeks, and his hair was all matted and tangled from the ride. I walked past him to Lars, who had thrown up the wing over his engine and was fiddling with something inside. He was whistling and sounded just as happy as a bird on a wire. I envied him that. I thought Henry and I might have another happy day-in a world as varied as this one, anything is possible-but it would not be in the summer of 1922. Or the fall.

I shook Larss hand and asked how he was.

Tolerable fair, he said, but dry. I could use a drink.

I nodded toward the east side of the house. You know where it is.

I do, he said, slamming down the wing with a metallic clatter that sent the chickens, whod been creeping back, into flight once more. Sweet and cold as ever, I guess?

Id say so, I agreed, thinking: But if you could still pump from that other well, Lars, I dont think youd care for the taste at all. Try it and see.

He started around to the shady side of the house where the outside pump stood in its little shelter. Mr. Lester watched him go, then turned back to me. He had unbuttoned his duster. The suit beneath would need dry-cleaning when he got back to Lincoln, Omaha, Deland, or wherever he hung his hat when he wasnt doing Cole Farringtons business.

I could use a drink myself, Mr. James.

Me, too. Nailing fence is hot work. I looked him up and down. Not as hot as riding twenty miles in Larss truck, though, Ill bet.

He rubbed his butt and smiled his lawyers smile. This time it had a touch of rue in it. I could see his eyes already flicking here, there, and everywhere. It would not do to sell this man short just because hed been ordered to rattle twenty miles out into the country on a hot summers day. My sit-upon may never be the same.

There was a dipper chained to the side of the little shelter. Lars pumped it full, drank it down with his Adams apple rising and falling in his scrawny, sunburned neck, then filled it again and offered it to Lester, who looked at it as doubtfully as Id looked at his outstretched hand. Perhaps we could drink it inside, Mr. James. It would be a little cooler.

It would, I agreed, but Id no more invite you inside than Id shake your hand.

Lars Olsen saw how the wind was blowing and wasted no time going back to his truck. But he handed the dipper to Lester first. My visitor didnt drink in gulps, as Lars had, but in fastidious sips. Like a lawyer, in other words-but he didnt stop until the dipper was empty, and that was also like a lawyer. The screen door slammed and Henry came out of the house in his overalls and bare feet. He gave us a glance that seemed utterly disinterested-good boy!-and then went where any red-blooded country lad would have gone: to watch Lars work on his truck, and, if he were lucky, to learn something.

I sat down on the woodpile we kept under a swatch of canvas on this side of the house. I imagine youre out here on business. My wifes.

I am.

Well, youve had your drink, so we better get down to it. Ive still got a full days work ahead of me, and its three in the afternoon.

Sunrise to sunset. Farmings a hard life. He sighed as if he knew.

It is, and a difficult wife can make it even harder. She sent you, I suppose, but I dont know why-if it was just some legal paperwork, I reckon a sheriffs deputy would have come out and served it on me.

He looked at me in surprise. Your wife didnt send me, Mr. James. In point of fact, I came out here to look for her.

It was like a play, and this was my cue to look puzzled. Then to chuckle, because chuckling came next in the stage directions. That just proves it.

Proves what?

When I was a boy in Fordyce, we had a neighbor-a nasty old rip name of Bradlee. Everyone called him Pop Bradlee.

Mr. James-

My father had to do business with him from time to time, and sometimes he took me with him. Back in the buckboard days, this was. Seed corn was what their trading was mostly about, at least in the spring, but sometimes they also swapped tools. There was no mail-order back then, and a good tool might circle the whole county before it got back home.

Mr. James, I hardly see the rel-

And every time we went to see that old fellow, my mama told me to plug my ears, because every other word that came out of Pop Brad-lees mouth was a cuss or something filthy. In a sour sort of way, I was starting to enjoy this. So naturally I listened all the harder. I remember that one of Pops favorite sayings was Never mount a mare without a bridle, because you can never tell which way a bitch will run.

Am I supposed to understand that?

Which way do you suppose my bitch ran, Mr. Lester?

Are you telling me your wife has?

Absconded, Mr. Lester. Decamped. Took French leave. Did a midnight flit. As an avid reader and student of American slang, such terms occur naturally to me. Lars, however-and most other town folks-will just say She run off and left him when the word gets around. Or him and the boy, in this case. I naturally thought she would have gone to her hog-fancying friends at the Farrington Company, and the next I heard from her would have been a notice that she was selling her fathers acreage.

As she means to do.

Has she signed it over yet? Because I guess Id have to go to law, if she has.

As a matter of fact, she hasnt. But when she does, I would advise you against the expense of a legal action you would surely lose.

I stood up. One of my overall straps had fallen off my shoulder, and I hooked it back into place with a thumb. Well, since shes not here, its what the legal profession calls a moot question, wouldnt you say? Id look in Omaha, if I were you. I smiled. Or Saint Louis. She was always talking about Sain-Loo. It sounds to me as if she got as tired of you fellows as she did of me and the son she gave birth to. Said good riddance to bad rubbish. A plague on both your houses. Thats Shakespeare, by the way. Romeo and Juliet. A play about love.

Youll pardon me for saying, but all this seems very strange to me, Mr. James. He had produced a silk handkerchief from a pocket inside his suit-I bet traveling lawyers like him have lots of pockets-and began to mop his face with it. His cheeks were now not just flushed but bright red. It wasnt the heat of the day that had turned his face that color. Very strange indeed, considering the amount of money my client is willing to pay for that piece of property, which is contiguous with Hemingford Stream and close to the Great Western rail line.

Its going to take some getting used to on my part as well, but I have the advantage of you.

Yes?

I know her. Im sure you and your clients thought you had a deal all made, but Arlette James lets just say that nailing her down to something is like trying to nail jelly to the floor. We need to remember what Pop Bradlee said, Mr. Lester. Why, the man was a countrified genius.

Could I look in the house?

I laughed again, and this time it wasnt forced. The man had gall, Ill give him that, and not wanting to go back empty-handed was understandable. Hed ridden twenty miles in a dusty truck with no doors, he had twenty more to bounce across before he got back to Hemingford City (and a train ride after that, no doubt), he had a sore ass, and the people whod sent him out here werent going to be happy with his report when he finally got to the end of all that hard traveling. Poor feller!

Ill ask you one back: could you drop your pants so I could look at your goolie-bits?

I find that offensive.

I dont blame you. Think of it as a not a simile, thats not right, but a kind of parable.

I dont understand you.

Well, youve got an hour back to the city to think it over-two, if Larss Red Baby throws a tire. And I can assure you, Mr. Lester, that if I did let you poke around through my house-my private place, my castle, my goolie-bits-you wouldnt find my wifes body in the closet or There was a terrible moment when I almost said or down the well. I felt sweat spring out on my forehead. Or under the bed.

I never said-

Henry! I called. Come over here a minute!

Henry came with his head down and his feet dragging in the dust. He looked worried, maybe even guilty, but that was all right. Yes, sir?

Tell this man wheres your mama.

I dont know. When you called me to breakfast Friday morning, she was gone. Packed and gone.

Lester was looking at him keenly. Son, is that the truth?

Yes, sir.

The whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Poppa, can I go back in the house? Ive got schoolwork to make up from being sick.

Go on, then, I said, but dont be slow. Remember, its your turn to milk.

Yes, sir.