A half-moon, bright in the clear air of the mountains, nudged itself over the trees, made a dull light around him. He wedged himself into his sleeping bag and pulled the mosquito netting over the pyramid of sticks he had jammed into the earth and tied with a string. The netting filtered the moonlight, gave it an eerie glow. From his position, he could barely see the carving on the tree. Wondered who A W was, or had been. He closed his eyes and let sleep follow.

• • •

He dreamed of Hoke Moore and the fish as he slept.

Hoke Moore stood at the lakeside, making a long cast with his rod, calling out to the fish, “I come for you.” The fish rose up from the lake, split the water in a graceful leap, dove, split the water, dove. Then, in the sudden, unknowing way of dreams, the bass was hanging from the limb of the beechnut, a fishing line laced through its mouth and gills. Below the tree, Hoke Moore looked up, watched the fish quiver against the line, watched its soul spin out of its body like a dancing white flame and then reshape itself into a see-through ghost-fish with the faint coloring of pale yellow. A soft wail, moan upon moan, came from Hoke Moore, the same sound he had heard in Dachau from the chests of men so thin it did not seem possible that the chests could hold any sound at all. Then he saw a cloud of fish ascending from the lake. Thousands of fish suspended eerily in air, water dripping from them in moonlight, and the yellow-colored see-through bass, its torso twisting grotesquely, flew over them, and the fish followed, soaring above the trees, making the moon dark, so many of them. And then they were gone, and the water of the lake became calm, and the wail of Hoke Moore became a great cry.

The cry woke him.

He sat up, his head nudging against the mosquito netting he had fashioned over his bedding. He was perspiring, a condition that had marked his dreams since the war. From the lake, he heard the monotonous bellowing of frogs, and from nearby, the singing of cicadas and an owl’s solitary announcement of itself. There was a scent of water in the air and he wondered if it was from a warning of rain or from the fog cap of the lake. The lake, he hoped. He had not pitched his pup tent, believing in the cloudless sky. Yet, if it rained, he could take shelter on the porch of the shack, trusting that if anyone found him there, they would not call it a break-in.

He glanced up, through the netting, through the limbs of the beechnut, saw the limb of his dream and believed he saw the fishing line that had held the fish. He blinked and the line became a twig. The sky through the tree was still cloudless.