He remembered Jack Purvis while driving to the river with Taylor—a memory blowing so quickly through him that at first he had trouble thinking of Jack’s name. When the name did come to him, he frowned a puzzled frown, wondering why Jack Purvis had made his fleeting, ghostly appearance at such a strange time.

Jack Purvis had tormented him in childhood. Had taken pleasure in causing shame and embarrassment. Had called him a dummy. Had said he couldn’t read with a first-grader even when he was in the sixth grade. Would take third-graders and put them against him in doing simple mathematics, always making certain there was a crowd gathered for the contest. Always led the jeering, his laugh hanging in the air like the crowing of a rooster.

Once, Jack Purvis and some of his friends had pulled him away at school recess and had stripped him of his clothes behind a hedgerow that grew between the school and a cotton field, forcing him to walk home naked, and then Jack and his friends had lied about it, saying he took off his clothes on his own because he had peed in his pants and was ashamed. Had even said he was the one who had thrown his clothes down the hole in the outhouse.

Jack Purvis had died at age fifteen in a car wreck, showing off for some of his friends. He remembered sensing relief, or maybe gladness, over Jack’s death. Remembered going to the cemetery alone and standing beside Jack’s grave and wondering if Jack had gone to heaven or to hell. Hell, he guessed; heaven, he hoped.

Sitting in the car seat beside Taylor, half-listening to Taylor’s stories about the weakness of Matthew Reynolds’s thinking, Noah thought again of the day he had been stripped of his clothes by Jack Purvis and his friends. Thought of the long walk home, of his mother’s sadness and of his father’s anger. His father had left the home in long strides, his voice bellowing vows of justice, and he had returned later with Travis, his body slumped, his spirit broken, telling the story of lies given by Jack and his friends, saying to his wife, “They put it all on our boy.” For the rest of the school year, he and Travis had stayed at home.

And then it came to him: he had remembered Jack Purvis because of Matthew—the way Matthew must be treated by other boys his age.

A shiver made its way across his shoulders.

“I sure hope that boy’s all right,” Taylor said gravely. “It’d kill Howard if anything happened to him. About all he does these days is watch over that boy.”

In front of them, Howard Reynolds drove his old car at his slow pace, easing over the off-road that took them to the river.

There was no sign of Matthew at the place where Noah had fished the day before, no answer to the calling of his name.

A look of relief settled on Howard’s face. “Maybe he’s back home by now,” he offered.