“Are you absolutely sure?” the man asks. “It’s not often I encounter a group. As you can imagine, it’s not the most fruitful, nor the safest, endeavor. Are you sure you won’t have me in for an hour? Maybe two? Can I at least get your names?”

“Leave us now.”

“Okay,” he says. “You realize I’m just a man trying to do good out here, right? I’m literally trying to give us all a better understanding of where we’re at.” Then, after further silence from within, “Okay. I apologize if I’ve scared you. I see I have.”

Tom’s ear is cocked to the door. He hears the man leaving the porch, shoes on the cabin stairs, breaks in the dry grass beyond, the wheelbarrow pushed once more. By the time Tom is at the door himself, his ear to the wood, he can hear the man’s steps diminishing, taking the dirt road out of camp.

He turns to Malorie and Olympia. But before he can say anything, Malorie does.

“I told you not to speak,” she says. “Next time, you don’t.”

“He’s gone,” Olympia says.

But Tom already knows what Malorie is going to say before she says it.

“Not until we sweep the camp, he’s not.”

“Mom,” Tom says. “He’s not Gary.”

Malorie doesn’t hesitate with her response.

“Not another word,” she says. “And wear your hood for fuck’s sake, Tom.”

Tom remains by the front door as Malorie readies herself to step outside, to check every cabin in the camp. The man could be staying here, Malorie will say. He could be camping out in the woods, she will say. Who knows how long he’s been watching them, she will say. And the name Gary will come up again. As it always does in times of trouble.

But Tom isn’t listening for what Malorie says or doesn’t say. His ear is on the soft rustle on the other side of the cabin’s front door. As what must be a welcome breeze shuffles the papers sitting out there on the porch.

The literature the man left behind after all.

TWO