The wind hissed through the branches overhead. Looking up, peering between the black silhouettes of maple leaves, Arthur saw a thick spill of stars. He knew every constellation, knew how the stars were born (as much as anyone did) and how they grew old and how a few died. Still, the stars were seldom more than lights on deep blue velvet. Only once in a great while could he make them fill out and see them for what they were, far participants in an intricate play.

Voices carried over the woods. On the broad single-story cabin's porch, vaulting on sturdy concrete pillars above the fern- and tree-covered bluff, Francine talked about fishing with her sister Danielle and brother-in-law, Grant.

"Men love hobbies full of guts and grease," Danielle said, her voice high and sweet, with a touch of North Carolina that Francine had mostly abandoned.

"Nonsense," Grant countered cordially, pure Iowa. "The thrill lies in killing God's innocent creatures."

Below Arthur, the river flowed with a whispering rumble. Still squatting, he slid down the bank on the heels of his thoroughly muddy running shoes and dipped his long-fingered hands into the cold water.

All things are connected to a contented man. He looked up again at the sky. "God damn," he said in awe, his eyes moistening. "I love it all."

Something padded close to him in the dark, snuffling. Arthur tensed, then recognized the eager whine. Marty's three-month-old chocolate Labrador, Gauge, had followed him down to the river. Arthur felt the pup's cold nose against his outstretched palm and rumpled the dog's head and ears between his hands. "Why'd you come all the way down here? Young master fickle? Not paying attention?"

Gauge sat in the dirt, rump wriggling, tail swishing through the damp leaves. The pup's moist brown marble eyes reflected twin star-glints. "Call of the wild," Arthur said on the pup's behalf. "Out here in the savage wilderness." Gauge leaped away and pounced his forepaws into the water.

Arthur had owned three dogs in his life. He had inherited the first, a ragged old collie bitch, when he had been Marty's age, on the death of his father. The collie had been his father's dog heart and soul, and that relationship had passed on to him before he could fully appreciate the privilege. After a time, Arthur had wondered if somehow his father hadn't put a part of himself into the old animal, she had seemed so canny and protective. He hoped Marty would find that kind of closeness with Gauge.

Dogs could mellow a wild boy, or open up a shy one. Arthur had mellowed. Marty—a bright, quiet boy of eight, spectrally thin—was already opening up.

He played with his cousin on the sward below and east of the patio. Becky, a pretty hellion with more apparent energy than sense—excusable for her age—had brought along a monkey hand puppet. To give it voice she made high-pitched chattering noises, more birdlike than monkeylike.

Marty's giggle, excited and girlish, flew out through the tops of the trees. He had a hopeless crush on Becky. Here, in isolation—with nobody else to distract her—she did not spurn him, but she often chided him, in a voice full of dignity, for his "boogy" ways. "Boogy" meant any number of things, none of them good. Marty accepted these comments in blinking silence, too young to understand how deeply they hurt him.