A breeze shakes the weeds; and Lee shivers, hating her, hating them all. “Come on now....Please?” “I’ll go look,” Joe Ben volunteered. “I’m still up rearin’, and Jan’s asleep. Shoot, I’ll find that dog in no time.” Hank was skeptical. “Last I heard her was east, up in the direction of Stamper Creek; you sure you want to head off up there by yourself?” “You talk like I’m scared of ghosts or somethin’.” “Ain’t you?” “Goodness, no. C’mon, Uncle; we’ll show ’em who’s scared an’ who ain’t.” Hank grinned. “Right sure now? It’s terrible dark, and remember what day it is now...last of October...” “Foo. We’ll find her. You go on back to the house.” Hank started to further tease his cousin but was stopped by the pressure of Viv’s nails in his arm. “All right,” he agreed hesitantly, then winked at Joe. “I don’t know how come it is but every time the woman here gets a little sniff of alcohol she wants to celebrate.” Joe took a sandwich and a cup from the knapsack. “Oh yeah.” He nodded out at the night beyond the fire. “No tellin’ what a perceptive man’s liable to find out yonder first wee small hours of Halloween day. All manner of things.” But once the others had left, his enthusiasm cooled quickly. “Dark, ain’t it, Uncle,” he confided to the dog tied to the shack. “Well, you ready?” When the dog didn’t answer Joe decided to have another cup of the burned coffee, hunkering over the coals with the tin cup steaming between his hands. “Quiet, too...” Though it was neither. The moon found holes in the clouds with skilled agility, making the forest glisten with frost, and the night animals, as though sensing their last chance of the year, were having a session equal to the event. The tree toads sang bright good-bys before burrowing into their nice snug mud; the shrews darted about the paths, uttering shrill squeaks of last-minute hunger; the killdeers flew jerkily from meadow to meadow, calling, “Dee! Dee! Dee,” with clear, sweet, reassuring optimism about the state of this beautiful frosty night. Joe Ben was not reassured; in spite of his show of bravery before Hank, rain or shine, fair or foul, daytime was his time. And the forest at night might be beautiful, but if it was dark how was a man to know that? So he put off the search for the missing dog for one cup of coffee after another. Not that he was scared of the woods after dark—there wasn’t a beast produced by all the northern wilds that Joe Ben would have hesitated tackling, barehanded, with every confidence of winning, day or night—it was that, some way or other, alone at night, with the prospect of walking up to Stamper Creek he got to thinking about his father.... After a long time Molly moves, trying to stand in the shallow water. Most of the fire in her hips is out now. And the pain is numbed by the cold. And it is no longer unpleasant to lie in the water. But if she does not go home now she knows she never will. She falls a lot at first. Then she begins feeling her limbs again and stops falling. She frightens a possum right in her path. The animal hisses and rolls to its side, twitching. She walks past without sniffing it . . . Because if there was ever ghosts in this world, then old Ben Stamper’s ghost walked those woods out there right now, Joe was sure. It didn’t cut ice whether that ghost happened to be solid or not—Joe had never feared harm from the corporeal side of his father, even when the man was alive. Ben had never threatened his young with physical violence. It might have been better if he had; the threat of violence can be escaped by simply getting out of range of it ...but the threat Joe had felt it necessary to escape was the dark portent he had seen stamped into his father’s face—like an expiration date stamped into a borrowed book—and since Joe carried the same face he had felt stamped with the same portent; changing the face had been the only way to change the stamp. “All right, Uncle, hush your whining; this one more cup and we’ll have a look.” So wouldn’t it be a pity to be wandering around and it so dark that you couldn’t see the change? ...She comes to the log she had jumped so easily before; now she drags her body over it, a leaden piece at a time: COLD. Cold little moon. Cold and hot and a long way.... Joe cut himself a nice pitchy pine bough and shoved it down in to the fire. When it was blazing brightly he untied the dog and started off down the trail, leaning back against Uncle’s pull. But those pine boughs don’t work like they do in the moving pictures with the villagers out by the hundreds storming through the woods after some kind of monster that nabs the first guy without a torch and pinches his head off like a grape! Ten minutes later Joe was back firing up his torch again . . . Hard and cold and small as a stone. Could just lie down. On the soft moss there. Sleep there. No . . . This time he tied Uncle’s rope to his belt and carried two boughs, one in each hand. And lasted twenty minutes. Or under the tree in the pine needles. Tired and cold and burning a long way. Sleep for a long time ...No... The third time Joe and Uncle made it as far as the slough bottom. The moon feinted this way and that, trying for a shot past the clouds. A beam of light threaded down through the trees and found a shrew ripping to pieces a frog twice its size, spotlighting them as though they were the main attraction of the evening. Uncle took one look and made a lunge that jerked Joe Ben free of his torches. They hissed to darkness in the deep, wet fern ... in the pine needles for a long time lie down, just sleep and not be cold or HOT ever again. No . . . And it’s black. At the house Viv cries with a feeling of terrific and uncomprehending release, trying to understand what has just happened between Hank and Lee downstairs. Hank fumes angrily in the kitchen with a beer. Lee stands at his window, looking out across the river. “Where are you, moon? You and all your nonsense about magic macaroons? I’d like a word with you, if you don’t mind. . . .” “Uncle! Father! Jesus!” Joe Ben stood petrified while Uncle consumed shrew and frog both. He tried some scripture—“Be thou a light unto my lamp,”—but it just didn’t satisfy. Not when there was . . . something out there! something always out there big ............