Mr. Gammons? Kate said. Dewayne?

He didn‘t look around, didn‘t twitch, didn‘t react in any way.

She knelt down next to him. Dewayne, I‘m Kate Shugak. Do you remember me? You walked out of the woods into my yard. Do you remember? It was the Fourth of July, and we had salmon on the grill. I was there with my auntie Vi and my uncle Old Sam, and you remember Holly Haynes from the mine, she was there, too. Gammons was silent.

We found your truck, Kate said. It‘s back in Niniltna, safe with the trooper. You can pick it up any time.

Nothing.

Did you go into the woods alone, Dewayne?

Silence.

Did you go with a friend, maybe? Rick Allen, did he go with you?

His chest moved up and down with his breathing. Otherwise, he didn‘t move. Kate bit her lip. There was no other way to put this. We have your note, Dewayne. We know what you meant to do. Did your friend Rick maybe come after you, to stop you?

He stared out the window. There was a stubble of beard on his chin, his hands lay loosely along his thighs, and he looked somehow weary, drained of any energy for life, love, or laughter. His wounds were healing, and the bug bites, the ones he hadn‘t scratched into infection, had shrunk to dark red spots. He almost looked like the photograph in his personnel file. Of course, he almost looked like the one in Richard Henry Allen‘s, too.

Not without a twinge of conscience, Kate said, Do you remember your friend Lyda, Dewayne? She worked out at the mine with you? You were friends, remember? For the first time she saw something in his eyes that might have been a flicker of awareness.

Dewayne? she said, pulling herself up by the arm of his wheelchair so she could look directly into his eyes. Dewayne, do you remember Lyda Blue? she said, her voice urgent. You liked her, didn‘t you? She liked you, too. She was very upset when you went away.

But it was gone, that flash of intelligence, and she had to admit that it might never have been there in the first place, but for her wanting it to be so very much. A movement caught the corner of her eye and she looked around to find a doctor in the doorway. He was a heavy, balding white man in his midforties who smelled of cigarette smoke and antiseptic solution. He looked like he‘d been on his feet for days with no sleep. He was wearing a white coat with the inevitable stethoscope around his neck and carrying a chart, which he opened to scan and then closed it again, shaking his head. He eats if we feed him. He‘ll wet the bed if we don‘t put a diaper on him. He hasn‘t said word one since he got here.

When is he going to come out of it?

The doc shook his head. My official diagnosis, Miss Shugak? Beats the hell out of me. He‘s retreated so far inside himself that I don‘t know if he‘s ever going to see the light of day again.