He went from the house to the barn and took up a shovel and walked out into the thin woodlot grown up with alders and young birch, where fall mornings timberdoodles would rise up straight to tower over the young growth and hover a moment before planing off, leaving scattered over the marshy ground the whitewash of their droppings. He could maul a man, eat a chicken, discharge old men from their last hope of gainful employment but he could not shoot a bird. It was not an event of purity. Another lack. Fucking Sloane. Carrying the spade he walked out past the spots where he had paper money buried in coffee cans and mason jars with dome lids and rubber seals, farther into the puckerbrush, and once there he did not hesitate but sank the blade of the spade and turned up the black wet soil he already knew was undisturbed but still found the tea canister of gold wrapped in burlap sacking that he hefted and then reburied and smoothed over the ground, scattering gathered trash of twigs and finger-raked leaf mold back over the scarred ground. It was hot. Sweat ran into his eyes. He backed out of the thicket and stood and deerflies were over him and he swatted at them and realized he was naked, that he had left the house without dressing. His body flecked with blood from the bites and smeared with mud-prints from his hands. Stood looking down at himself so. A savage. Some kind of man. Deerflies in his hair. On his thighs, his rear. His back low where he could not reach. He danced, swatting himself with his free hand, and then stepped down on a berry cane and was stabbed and at the same moment stung on his forehead and he swatted himself between the eyes with the other hand that still held the spade handle. The sunlight through the leaves and trees swelled and burst. He stooped in a crouch, leaning on the spade. He began to cry.

Up on the road out of sight of the house an automobile came to a stop, the cylinders popping like single drumbeats. He strained but heard nothing more. Then came the clap of a car door being shut. Still holding the spade he began to run. His idea was to make the barn and go from there to the river and swim and so clean himself and come up to find her already in the house, composed however she would be, himself as any other morning. Well, he practiced silent, it’s a pretty day isn’t it.

Into the backside of the barn, panting, streaming sweat, he laid the spade against the wall and stepped toward the front door of the barn and saw her coming down the sand track through the tamaracks into the clearing, striding loose-jointed, easy, a posture he hoped. Still wearing the same white dress piped with black satin as four days before but holding up pretty good he thought for four days’ wear. He scrubbed the streaked tears and sweat from his face with muddy hands. It would’ve been easier if she’d strolled in wearing a new outfit—he saw she would not lay a thing out before him. Her containment a full measure.