SO IT CAME about that Marya Knauer was to win the first of the annual Brandon P. Schwilk Poetry Awards for a poem she had written in his memory—though the fifteen-line poem, rigorously rhymed, stiff with an archaic and faintly outlandish diction, wasn’t “about” any individual at all: it seemed to be about the defilement of the Shaheen Creek by the paper pulp and chemical factories to the north.

It quite pleased her that her poem had been chosen; she didn’t want to consider what sort of competition, in that school, it might have had. Enough to know that she’d won, and been praised, and flattered; that her prize (prizes, really: a small scroll stamped in black ink and pseudo-gilt, A Treasury of English and American Poetry, a check for $35) would make her a figure of some importance in her aunt’s and uncle’s eyes, at least for a while. She leafed through the poetry anthology, five hundred tissue-thin closely printed pages, and felt a sensation of excitement mixed with cold sick dread: had her silly little well-intentioned poem announced, as if by accident, her wish to compete here . . . ?

She thought about Schwilk. She wondered what he had had in mind, repaying evil with good; defiantly repaying evil with good; and so very publicly, so consciously. What was the motive? To make everyone at the school feel guilty? To pronounce his own superiority, in the face of their ignorance? Or was it, Marya wondered, simply because he loved poetry and couldn’t help himself; because he wanted, insisted, that others love it too. . . .

AFTER THE AWARDS ceremony in June, Marya walked home alone along the towpath, carrying her trophies. She tried unsuccessfully to envision Schwilk across the canal, walking parallel with her—carrying his briefcase, head bowed, his chestnut-red hair stirring in the breeze. She tried to envision his tweed coat, his gray trousers that fit so poorly. “Mr. Schwilk!—Mr. Schwilk!” she called. But her voice was faltering, shamed. She couldn’t see him there; she seemed, oddly, to be forgetting him.

A story unfolded in her head about a man who had drowned—or had he drowned himself?—here in the canal; his body found drifting and bobbing one morning in the scum along the bank. No one knew his name or where he’d come from, his pockets were empty, his face ravaged. . . . Marya’s heart began to beat rapidly. She knew the story already, it seemed: it was about Schwilk: it had to do with his death, here in the canal, back in September.

She had been a witness. She’d seen.

The old canal was fairly wide but it looked deceptively shallow; it didn’t give an impression of depth, or danger. Difficult to believe that anyone could drown in it, Marya thought, shivering, even on purpose.

Four

FOUR