Red said he thought it was a beautiful place and they should move back. Emaline laughed. “I think the Harters maybe wouldn’t like that. They’ve taken very good care of the cabin.”

They left Red splashing in the creek, walked up the hill and found the grave of little Billy, who had died of meningitis the day after Christmas in 1924. It was Billy’s death that had sent Watson to drown himself in alcohol. The hand-carved grave marker Watson had made was still there. William Watson, 1922—1924. RIP Our Boy. Bobby remembered Billy, or at least he remembered his curly blond hair, but could not recall a thing about the night he died. It was a mercy, Emaline said. She could remember every detail.

They walked back down to get Red for the drive home. He fell asleep in the back seat as she sat looking out the window, thinking about all that had happened on Little Goose Creek. She thought being near the cabin might upset her, but it did not. She still had nightmares about it, of Watson beating her mother the night he died, when Emaline took the burning kerosene lamp and swung it into the back of Watson’s head with all her strength. The nightmares were so vivid that she could smell the burning kerosene and see Watson’s mad eyes as he ran from the house and dove into a snowbank to extinguish the fire in his hair. She could smell the oil in the rifle she had sighted between his eyes, knowing that if he tried to come back she would pull the trigger, because if she did not, he would kill them all. She could see him leaving then, jumping into the truck and swerving down the mountain. His death was not part of the dream, because she didn’t see the truck plunge off the road, tumble down a hundred feet and catch fire. But it was still enough to send her leaping out of bed, her heart racing, the funnel of dream still pouring its images into her mind as she struggled to get her bearings.

Mercifully, the nightmares were more and more rare. More often, the dreams she had bore no relation to that night except for the image of the Burning Man. She had often wondered how a young mind could transform such singular horror into a figure from which she could derive such consolation. It was enough that the Burning Man had been there all these years and that he seemed to appear most often when her life was most difficult. Perhaps that was why she had not dreamt of him in some time. Her life had never been so calm or so settled. She felt a bit lonely at times, especially in the evening after Red went to bed, but for now, at least, she preferred loneliness to the madness of life with Jake.