He looked up as I approached. When he saw me his eyes tightened. At first he was wondering if I was friend or foe, but then there came a glimmer of recognition. A wavering smile crossed his lips.

“Mr., Mr. Rawlins,” he said.

I entered the room and was immediately assaulted by a seven- or eight-pound brawny black puppy. The beast struck my shins with its paws and tongued my fingers for every lick of salt it could find.

“Get down from there, Sammy,” Craig said in a completely human tone.

“This the dog you found up at Blood Grove?”

The question soured the young man a bit.

“Did you talk to my mom?” he asked.

“Didn’t she tell you?”

Craig winced, not giving an answer.

“That Lola’s something else,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The anger rose in his voice like a river on a cloudless day overflowing its banks due to a faraway cloudburst.

In an imperfect world I do believe a man could get himself killed saying good morning in the wrong key.

“That she’s fierce,” I said. “That she’d protect you no matter what the danger was.”

Craig listened to my words closely and then nodded.

“She knows me,” he agreed. “When I can’t explain myself she’s got the right words.”

“I went out to the campsite with a Green Beret.” I changed the subject so as not to say something wrong again. “He agreed with part of your story. But he thought that there were four people there including you and the girl.”

“Four?”

“You, the two you saw, and the one that hit you,” I said. “It was his opinion that all four walked away under their own power.”

Craig’s eyes sifted through the images my words presented. His breath picked up its pace, slightly.

“Did you?” he asked and then stopped. “Did you find out their names or anything like that?”

“Nothing. They didn’t leave anything on the ground outside and the cabin was laid bare too.”

“But nobody died?”

“Not then. Not there.”

“Nothing about a guy named Alonzo?” Craig asked.

“No. Nothing.” I was a fountain of negatives.

The bad boy turned sad soldier studied his bare feet a moment.

Sammy kept leaping up on me, ecstatic that he had found such a sturdy playmate.

There were sounds of radios and TVs playing in other apartments. Somewhere a man and a woman were yelling. The air was very still.

“There was one other thing,” I said finally.

Craig looked up, wishing, no doubt, that his mother was there to carry the conversation.

I took out the photograph I’d found in the real Alonzo’s wallet and showed it to the boy-soldier.

“Do you know who she is?” I asked.