“Tell you what,” Taylor said to him, “why don’t you go on back there. Me and Noah can follow the river for a little piece, just to make sure he’s not down here.”

It was a suggestion answered with a rocking nod of Howard’s body. “Hate to put you to all this trouble, Taylor,” he said.

“No trouble,” Taylor told him.

“It’s costing you some business, I know that,” Howard replied.

“Anybody that wants something from me, they’ll come back,” Taylor said. “If I can close down to go fishing, I can close down to help out a friend.”

Howard turned his head to look at the river, stared for a moment at the deep-moving water, at the swirls, then he touched his eye patch with his fingers. He said, “I appreciate it,” and he began his slow ambling to his car. He added, “I guess I better try to find out where his daddy’s working and see if I can’t give him a call. It’s going to scare him to death.”

Noah and Taylor watched him leave.

“I got a bad feeling about this,” Taylor said solemnly. Then: “Why don’t you go the way the river’s running for a little bit and I’ll go back the other way, toward the dam.” He pulled his watch from his pocket and looked at it. “Let’s give it thirty minutes and then turn around and meet back here.”

“All right,” Noah said.

For Noah, it was an odd sensation following the river, with the water running north the way it did, and he made his way up a hill to take a better look. A whirlwind, like a baby tornado, rose up in front of him, lifting dead leaves of hardwoods, spinning them in a twisting funnel, and the sudden noise of leaves scraping against leaves caused a rabbit to jump up from its hiding and scurry away, its white tail making a flash in a streak of sunlight that found its way through tree limbs. He watched the rabbit disappear, then leaned over at his waist to check for a rabbit path. Remembered teaching Travis about rabbit paths when they were putting out their rabbit boxes in winter. Hard to see, unless you knew what you were looking for. A shine on fallen leaves. A narrow ribbon of pushed-down pine needles, wiggling across the ground. Here and there, rabbit droppings. A fluff of fur caught on a stick. All signs.

It would be good to again get up early on a winter morning and check rabbit boxes with Travis, he thought. The sense of cold on his skin, the smell of dead leaves, the crunching sound of footsteps over hoarfrost. And maybe finding a rabbit for his mother to cook for breakfast along with the thin, sweet taste of rabbit gravy, or to sell for twenty-five cents to Ben Wiggins at Wiggins Store.

He had liked those days.

From far off, he heard Taylor’s faint calling: “Matthew, Matthew …”

He pulled his watch from his pocket and looked at it. Twenty minutes had passed since he and Taylor had separated.