He and Neal turned right and came across their own ropes from an earlier turn. Harvey had been sure they were headed in a zigzag route away from where they started. Clearly, they were already mixed up. But Nash, always optimistic on the hunt, didn’t acknowledge it other than to turn around.

There was space enough for a man to walk alone. The trails gave them that much room. Harvey kept expecting things to be grown over, for a meeting of trees to block the way, to cause them to start over. But that never quite happened. And rather than finding comfort in this, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the woods wanted them to descend.

Descend? Harvey thought. It seemed like a peculiar word to use considering they were walking forward, not down. And yet no other word felt as fitting.

The pair didn’t speak. Nash stopped often and studied the trees. For this, Harvey understood his old friend was looking to bag a bird on his birthday.

“Pheasant?” Harvey asked.

But Neal didn’t respond.

And they continued to…descend.

Another dead end. Another turnaround. Harvey started to see their rope as something as tangled as the branches he ducked and dodged.

Neal’s penlight seemed to grow dimmer as the darkness of the woods increased. The logic-less terrain was wearing on Harvey. He thought of the dancing women back at the party. The drinks he was missing out on. Neal’s light settled on a cluster of trees and then another, then another, and they all looked the same. Harvey suddenly wanted music. Smoke. A woman’s body to hold. The deeper they walked, the greater the distance behind them became, and Harvey felt like he was standing still as the forest grew wide around them. But Nash was all business.

“Look for red dots,” he said. First thing he said in a long time.

Harvey had no idea what this was supposed to mean but he imagined a red-eyed witch crouched on the trail ahead.

“Let’s bag the first thing we see,” Harvey said. “Then let’s go get trash-canned.”

Nash didn’t respond, and it bothered Harvey. Neal always had a way of making you feel included. Like you were in on the hunt no matter how little you knew or how big the game. But tonight Harvey felt like he was playing a small role in a story only Neal Nash had read.

Harvey thought of Saul, drunk, wobbling in his white linen suit and green poncho, waiting for his friends to return.

Alone at the entrance. Alone in the North Woods.

And Saul thought of Harvey at the same time. As if the angular branches deflected thoughts, sent them spiraling through the spaces, a living web that delivered one man’s idea to another.

Saul shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The rope was heavy against his waist.

He’d heard whispering a minute ago. A scratchy voice, a group of voices, sounds Neal would no doubt ascribe to the wind.