Foster took a spade from the barn and dug up the mason jars and coffee cans, all eleven of them. Some of the cans soft with age. He’d known they were out there, just had no idea there were so many of them. He carried them in armloads into the kitchen and took out the tied rolls of bills and flattened them out on the table in separate stacks. And sat and counted through it and then counted again. Then checked his father’s addition on the map. Off somewhat. Foster thought about that. It wasn’t like him. Counted the money one more time. A little more than fourteen thousand dollars. He divided the money into five-hundred-dollar stacks and rolled them and tied them with string. Then stacked them into a shoebox, the best thing he could find. The odd hundred and eighty-three he folded flat and put in his wallet. Then he took up the shoebox and walked around the house with it. Finally he put it down at the bottom of the woodbox and stacked kindling over it. Summertime, it seemed like a good place.

Far out in the woods, not marked on the map, down in the ground an old tea canister had rotted away. The tin melted into the humus. The old gold pieces nestled in the soft earth like precious lustrous butter pats.

At night he wept. With both dogs upright beside him, both faces intent upon his as he sat with his hands over his face, the all of him racked up in his throat. Over and over saying, “Poppy, Poppy, Poppy,” the name bubbling out of him. For hours until he was sick, aching, exhausted. Wept even after he realized it was self-pity as much as grief. Until he suddenly and vividly heard his father’s voice commanding him to stop. “Stop it.” Just once. He took his hands from his face and looked around. There was nothing and the sound did not come again, just the echoes of it. He looked at his dogs. They looked back at him.