Down that next road, Fellis drove slow. I smelled the woodsmoke before I saw the cabin. Daryl’s uncle used to hunt deer and moose, but as he got older he couldn’t keep up with the cabin’s needs: fresh water, shoveling outhouse shit, chopping and stacking wood in the woodshed, plowing the dirt road, and sweeping the roof of snow in the winter months. Come winter, I couldn’t picture Daryl tending to the place.

Fellis parked the truck and we got out.

“What’s that smell?” Fellis said.

Two deer, twisted, half gutted, leaned against the small woodshed.

“Fucking waste,” Fellis said.

We walked up to an upside-down orange bucket, and I stepped onto it and knocked on the cabin door.

“He’s there,” Fellis said. “Keep knocking.”

Fellis went around the cabin while I stayed on the bucket. I looked in, squinting through the misty white curtain over the door and to the cabin’s other window at the opposite end. It was hard to see exactly, but the table by the back wall was cluttered with what looked like Daryl’s pill bottles. He probably had some good stuff.

At the far end by that table and back window, a head rose and looked at me.

“Fellis!” I yelled. “I see him! I see him!”

“That’s me, you dumb shit,” Fellis said.

Fellis came back around the cabin.

We leaned on the truck, quiet.

“Maybe he ain’t here,” I said.

“He’s here,” Fellis said. “That chimney’s going too hard for him not to be.”

Birds chirped in the pine and oak trees. Squirrels and chipmunks crunched dried leaves and snapped tiny twigs around us. The sun shone through clouds for a moment before the gray sky swallowed it. It felt and smelled like rain was coming.

“Let’s go in,” Fellis said, and before we pushed away from the truck, a man groaned and something metal clanked. The outhouse door opened. Daryl fastened his belt and looked at the ground as he walked. He was wearing white earbuds.

Fellis picked up a glossed acorn and tossed it at Daryl, who saw it fly by him. When he saw us, he tripped and tumbled down, his earbuds popping out of his head.

“This is private property!” he said. “Help! Help!”

“It’s us,” I said. “Daryl, it’s us. Dee and Fellis.”

Daryl looked pale, thin. A small red cut ran across his forehead. His black shirt hung off one shoulder like he’d been beaten up by two men, a tug of war. The tongue of his belt was too long, his waist too thin.

“What are you listening to?” I said. I gave him my hand, and his felt sweaty.

He didn’t answer me. He watched Fellis.

“I don’t know why you’re here,” Daryl said, “but I wasn’t myself.”