“Haven’t you had enough of the night?” asked Virgil. There they were, their pants all covered with dust and dew, and they had had to carry the third man home flat between them.

“I’ve lost Hazel, she’s vanished, she went to drown herself.”

“Why, that ain’t like Hazel,” said Virgil.

William Wallace reached out and shook him. “You heard me. Don’t you know we have to drag the river?”

“Right this minute?”

“You ain’t got nothing to do till spring.”

“Let me go set foot inside the house and speak to my mother and tell her a story, and I’ll come back.”

“This will take the wide net,” said William Wallace. His eyebrows gathered, and he was talking to himself.

“How come Hazel to go and do that way?” asked Virgil as they started out.

William Wallace said, “I reckon she got lonesome.”

“That don’t argue—drown herself for getting lonesome. My mother gets lonesome.”

“Well,” said William Wallace. “It argues for Hazel.”

“How long is it now since you and her was married?”

“Why, it’s been a year.”

“It don’t seem that long to me. A year!”

“It was this time last year. It seems longer,” said William Wallace, breaking a stick off a tree in surprise. They walked along, kicking at the flowers on the road’s edge. “I remember the day I seen her first, and that seems a long time ago. She was coming along the road holding a little frying-size chicken from her grandma, under her arm, and she had it real quiet. I spoke to her with nice manners. We knowed each other’s names, being bound to, just didn’t know each other to speak to. I says, ‘Where are you taking the fryer?’ and she says, ‘Mind your manners,’ and I kept on till after while she says, ‘If you want to walk me home, take littler steps.’ So I didn’t lose time. It was just four miles across the field and full of blackberries, and from the top of the hill there was Dover below, looking sizeable-like and clean, spread out between the two churches like that. When we got down, I says to her, ‘What kind of water’s in this well?’ and she says, The best water in the world.’ So I drew a bucket and took out a dipper and she drank and I drank. I didn’t think it was that remarkable, but I didn’t tell her.”

“What happened that night?” asked Virgil.