He travels to the cistern, fills the buckets, and climbs back into the almighty sun. He sloshes out water as instructed, starting at the point where the roof merges with the hillside, one bucket per one square foot of thirsty sod, working left to right, then starting over. When his buckets are empty, he gazes over the other sod rooftops, then across the irregular grid of small rectangular gardens half-obscured by tall grass and flowers leaning over them.

He can’t help it anymore. He descends the ladder with the buckets, rounds the house beneath its eaves and starts along the arbored trail as if bound for the cistern, but then he drops the buckets and forks off at a crouch through the high flowers and grasses, disturbing them as lightly as he can until he intersects a garden he has spotted from above: bright green with the lacy tops of carrots.

His heart skittering, he yanks up four thick ones and devours them soil and all, unbreakably grinning through the dirt on his teeth. Then he hears rustling in the grass and up rises half-chewed carrot in his throat. He had promised not to steal again but then he did. He had fought the police and awakened in a hospital, unknown to himself. Within an hour of being awake, the voice had arrived to tell him who he was.

Do-nothing.

Sleeping while she burned.

You know how people are.

You know what they’ll do.

You know what she wanted. Stop them.

His darting eyes come to rest in the next garden on familiar round-lobed leaves. He sees they shelter yellow-striped green melons. He pivots slowly on his haunches to confirm that he is hidden. He listens for the rustling again, listens. He shouldn’t steal. Chickenshit. He crab-runs across the carrot rows into the melon patch.

The wilting leaves prickle and cling to his skin. He searches for a ripe melon, but they all seem too small and hard. As he sifts through the sticky leaves and hollow prickly vines, the soft earth depresses unevenly under his crouch, tipping him off balance as his heels sink. A low woof turns him. Tipping back while flailing forward, he takes up two fists of melon vines, flails, gets half-upright, and then as the dog woofs again he topples onto his back, the full leverage of his fall ripping up an entire plant by its wide web of roots.

The tangle drags over him, reeking putridly and shedding dirt. He recoils as across his face drag five ligamented fingers, entwined in root hairs, then the gooey puzzle of a wrist, the wrist gripped by heavier roots and dangling from a radius bone stuck with mealy tissue to its ulna. This rotten mess lands upon him. He hurls it off and thrashes to his knees. Before him boils a cavity of dirt, nubby white worms wriggling everywhere.