The day was sun-bright, cloudless, yet cooled by a slight breeze. By eight o’clock, he had made his camp safe from the nosy inspection of animals and had left the lake and the woods around the lake, finding himself wandering.

He discovered a road nearby and followed it for a short while and then veered off into the woods, making his way by curiosity. In a short time, he came to a large body of water that he believed to be the Chatuge. It was hard for him to imagine it was manmade, the way it was settled into the land, as natural as any lake formed of its own accord. A pretty place, he thought. A good place to fish, for fish would have a liking for the water with its washed-in food from small branches and creeks.

He turned away from the lake and made his path back toward the road. There was no purpose in the path he took. No urge. His body moved in the direction that it chose, an aimless wandering not unlike the meandering of a butterfly on a still day. If he had been forced to make a reason for the path of his walk, he would have said it was gut instinct, using the same explanation his army sergeant had used to dismiss his bewilderment over the presence of some guardian force he could not see or touch.

Above him, he heard the drone of an airplane and he raised his face to the sound. High up, he could see the plane making its slow crawl across the blue-lit dome of sky, its four engines jutting out over its wings, and he remembered watching paratroopers leaping from airplanes in the war. Little bubbles of bodies striking the wind, hurling away from the black dot of the opened door, dragging parachutes. It was like watching something being born—small, wiggling animals erupting from their mother’s belly.

The airplane crawled away, taking its droning sound with it.

He could smell the faint scent of the rosemary soap he had used for his lake bath on the day before, and for washing his face that morning. In the war, he had gone days without bathing. Now, he was obsessed with being clean. The scent of the soap gave him pleasure, caused him to remember his mother’s soap-making, taking lye from the drippings of a potash barrel and combining it with the fat of pig slaughterings. The rosemary soap was a good buy, he thought. Worth the money. He would get another bar before leaving the valley, he decided.

From far away, he could hear the faint sound of a church bell.

Church of the Resurrected Christ, he believed.

The bell ring was so faint it could have been something hidden in the air, something made by thin clouds bumping into one another.

He found himself leaving the woods and crossing a field of long-dead corn stalks, and he realized that he was going again in the direction of the house belonging to the woman named Eleanor Cunningham.