Estus Terry still lived in the hermitage set back in the wildlands north of Bethlehem in the big northward loop of the Ammonoosuc. He was out of the business, retired three years since his partner Aaron Wells was disemboweled by a logger in an Allagash camp and as Terry told Jamie at the time, “You got to quit when you can’t go in behind your partner. I got the news first thing occurred to me was four-five years ago that sonofabitch wouldn’t have even thought to pull a skinning knife on Aaron and if he’d been thick enough to try anyhow would have been him sitting on the ground trying to stuff his guts back inside himself, not Aaron. How does a man know when the time is come to say enough? You can’t trust your nerves, or we’d all have quit long since. So a sign comes. If it’d been me, I guess Aaron would be shacked up with some wore-out old whore in Bangor or Augusta. Someplace like that. I’m sorry it happened but I’m glad it was me was left.”

The big horses were gone. Where Terry went now he went on foot. The house was much the same, but for a new stovepipe replaced the old one rotten to an angle. Terry was out in the yard awaiting him. Jamie had brought a pair of bottles of bonded whiskey and stepped out of the Packard with the bottlenecks gripped together in one hand. Terry spread-kneed on a chopping-block: green Johnson wool pants, a white shirt, black vest buttoned over the shirt. Hair straight back flat as if a wet comb had just passed through. He grinned a black-rimmed greeting.

“Pelham.”

“How’re you keeping, Estus?”

“Just fine. Except I ought to’ve come over the spring when you buried that girl and the children. I’d like to tell you I was puny or didn’t hear until too late but the sad truth is I just wasn’t up to it, not the trip but all the rest. I never been one for such things. Ceremonies.”

“That’s all right, Estus. It was a quiet little thing anyhow. I wasn’t up to having any big todo over it all myself. And it was Joey and Claire died; the boy, Foster, he never even come down with it. Sailed right through.”

“I knew it. Not about the boy but I’m glad to hear it. The rest I mean—I knew you wouldn’t want a show. Maybe it was that left me feeling I ought to’ve made the effort. I liked that girl.”

“It was only getting something taken care of at that point. They’d been dead and waiting four months. It was a wet day, Estus, there wasn’t much to it. She always liked you too. I brought these along for you.” Jamie laid the bottles down in the grass growing up through the chips around the chopping block.

“Now that was thoughtful.”