He dug around in his knapsack and pulled out a shirt that had been worn thin, but was clean, and he changed into it, making sure he pushed his dirty shirt back into the knapsack in case Eleanor got it in her mind that she would do a washing for him, whether he wanted it or not. She would not go into his knapsack, he thought. He would do his own washing later.

He checked the fire in the stove, saw that it had died to embers and was safe enough to leave. It was a fear for him&having a fire break out in the shack, burning it to the ground. To some, it would not be a great loss, but it would be a loss of his doing, and he did not want the memory of it hanging over his head.

He finished his coffee, putting the empty cup on the table, and left the shack.

Outside, he saw a possum rushing away from beneath the house, scurrying over the ground, its head down, its fat body waddling on short legs, comic in the way it tried to be fast, but wasn’t. The possum disappeared into a growing of weed grass near the water, making the top of the grass wiggle.

He looked at the lake, at the morning stillness of it. Glassy on top. Fog over the glass. Already making reflections out of the paling purple, like a mirror in a dark room.

And then he saw something odd.

Hanging on a limb of one of the trash trees near the lake, but close to the shack, he saw what looked to be a single small fish.

The chill of warning struck him, raced over his back, across his shoulders, down his arms. He thought of his dream, of the bass hanging from a limb of the beechnut.

He walked cautiously toward the fish. It was hanging by a piece of binder twine, three or four feet long, he judged. Tied in a loop like a person would tie a shoe. Chest high on him. He reached to touch it, saw it was covered with flies, and he knew it had been dead a long time.

He stepped back, stood, wondered: How did it get there?

And then he thought of Matthew Reynolds.

Matthew had said he wanted to catch a fish and give it to him.

He turned and began to rush-walk along the lakeside, looking in the dark waters.

At the east end of the dam, in the place he had made his cast for Hoke Moore’s fish, he saw a fishing rod lying in the edge of the water. He leaned to it, picked it up, shook the water from it, pulled on it. The line gave easily and he turned the reel, bringing the line in. On the hook was a withered grasshopper.

He put the rod down and stepped closer to the water, peering under the trash trees, and there he saw it&a body floating face down in the water, snuggled under an overhanging limb. A shiver shot through him like electricity. He stepped into the water and made his way to the body, the water rising up around his waist.