He wondered if the bear was still under the house, or if some dog had carried it off or if the new sharecroppers had found it and thrown it away.

He made his way to the middle of the porch and saw the place where the pillar had fallen, and he knew immediately it was a repair he could not do without the right tools and without help from another man. He could prop it up with a log, maybe, but that would not hold for long.

He inched forward, studying the bowed floor joist. From what he could make of it, it did not seem cracked, only twisted, probably from the falling of the rock in the pillar. And then something caught his eye—a crowbar leaning against one of the rocks—and he guessed that someone—maybe Boyd Cunningham—had tried to force a rock back into place and all of them had broken loose of the cement holding them together.

Then he saw something else.

Tucked into the pillar, in a place where a rock had been, he saw a metal ammunition box from the war. It had been painted gray to match the rocks, yet Noah knew instantly what it was, knew that once it had carried 30-caliber cartridges.

He slipped closer to the fallen pillar, reached for the box and pulled on it gently. The box slid away with ease and he took its handle and began to back-crawl, dragging it with him. Out from under the porch, he turned the front of the box to him, slipped the pin from its lid and opened it. Inside the box, he saw a large envelope and beneath it, a bundle wrapped in newspaper. He removed the envelope and seeing it was not sealed, he opened it and pulled out its contents. Three photographs. Two were of a young woman smiling prettily into the eye of the camera—one a close-up of her face, the other of her full body, sitting at an angle on what appeared to be a bed covered in a quilt. She was wearing an open robe, showing the flesh of her breasts—small, but arched, tipped with dark nipples—and the smooth thigh of one leg.

The third photograph was of the woman and a man that Noah recognized as Boyd Cunningham, having seen his likeness in a framed photograph in Eleanor’s home. They were sitting in a café or a bar or someplace like a bar. Sitting close, her face against his chin, her arm curled around his neck. On the back of the photograph were the words, Roza and Boyd.

He remembered the whispered talk he had heard at Howard Reynolds’s home about Boyd Cunningham having a girl in Germany.

He put the photographs back into the envelope and pulled out the bundle wrapped in newspaper. Opened it. Inside was a large stack of new twenty-dollar bills and another envelope addressed to Boyd Cunningham. The word Confidential had been printed at the left-side bottom of the envelope. He held it for a moment, turned it in his hand, saw that it had been sliced open. He knew that whatever was in the envelope had nothing to do with him and he had no business reading it. Yet, he wondered about it. Wondered if the letter inside it had something to do with the money.