“Maybe God is up there,” Tim said. He and I had been arguing recently about the existence of God. Tim was willing to believe on the basis that it did no harm, and that if there was a God, He would be fooled. I disagreed, because to me the world was simply too complicated to have merely happened. Tim posed such hard-to-answer questions as, If there is an all-seeing God, why did he permit the Great War to occur, killing and maiming millions of innocents? I was armed with quotations from the Bible, since, having read quite a bit of it, I knew almost every word. But none of them seemed to answer a real question, I guess because it was hard to imagine ourselves riding asses and wearing sandals as we went through life, like those Israelites did.

So I tried to use common sense, which when dealing with Tim can sometimes be a mistake. After I completed all my explanations, Tim merely put his finger up to his nose, copying my father, and declared that I knew no more than he did, and that, like him, I was coppering my bet just in case there was a God who might call me to account later on for not believing. Yet in case I have not said so, there has never been a boy I knew who was more gentle or compassionate toward living creatures than Tim. He would step over a bug and would agonize for days over an injured calf or a mangy dog. That didn’t keep him from shooting game for the pot, for it was well understood that the life of the woods was subordinate to the needs of men. But if ever a speck of cruelty invaded the thoughts of Timothy Hood, I never knew of it.

Our progress down the river—or creek, for we were not yet in the main stream of the Cold River—was silent. I let my hand drag over the side, but the water was cold, so I took it out and dried it off. I was wearing boy’s Levi jeans, which suited me although Miss Pauline always had a fit when I wore them to town. My heavy wool shirt was soft and warm. No bug in a rug could have been snugger.

The first sign that something was unusual came when my father feathered his paddle in the water, slowing the canoe and turning it to one side. He made a little “shhh” sound, hardly louder than the sigh of the breeze, and nodded his head to one side. I looked, and my heart leaped.

At the edge of the stream, drinking, were two does and four fawns. The does were large, deep-bodied, and rich brown. The fawns had lost their spots, but they were still pale. With their large, flicking ears and big black noses, they looked like cheerful little calico toys.