So, confident that his spells would work, he collected the sackcloth bag containing all the powerful talismans of his liberation and left the room, walking down the heart-of-pine floor and out the back door. In the backyard, beyond the lawn, was an apple orchard, begun with saplings his grandfather’s mother had planted even before the house was built. Most of the yard had been a chicken pen, with bare dirt from their scratching. But when his grandmother died his grandfather decided to get shed of the chickens and let the grass grow over the earth. Here he now cut the grass once a week, beginning in May going almost into October, grass that grew greener and tougher with each summer rain.

The apple trees bore pale-green fruit no larger than his thumb this time of the year. By August they would be a little smaller than his fist and red like roses’ red. They were what people called horse apples, sour and small, only good for making tart apple pies and cobblers. Come July he would pluck one off every now and again, remembering how as a little boy he would be so sternly reprimanded: Boy, them green apples will give you a stomachache. Make you sick as a dog. But he would eat them anyway. And miraculously he never got those green-apple bellyaches. He did so love that tart and sour taste that drew his mouth up the way a lemon would, the texture of the white flesh on the inside, even the crisp crunch it made when you bit into it. While thinking this a wave of sadness washed over him, for he realized birds can’t really bite into an apple, they peck. And only chickens peck at barnyard apples. But he would feast on squirrel and rabbit—he would lose green apples for a real chance at eternal life.

Twilight was falling. The days were beginning to lengthen, so he had time to prepare; he knew his grandfather would be away until very late. The day before he had set up the pyre. A slab of metal to hold the ingredients. A few pieces of old pine, dripping strong with turpentine. Oak and hickory. A little tar, because one spell called for pitch. Then he spread the sack over the pyre and checked his grim ingredients against the list. The plastic bag that held the body of the kitten he had killed was thick with moisture, the animal’s hair matted, black, and lank. Then with a strike-anywhere match he set it all afire. It was slow to blaze, but after a while—he had stuck some straw between also—its flames licked and belched and farted and sparked in a way that aroused him. The black smoke from the tar wisped up through the apple trees and danced high.