Herzog dwelled in a trailer with an A-frame addition. Tar-paper roof, hand-pumped well, deer bones scattered among busted axles and weeds. Smaller bones were strung on wire and dangled from low-hanging branches like macabre wind chimes. His chariot was a rusty Datsun quarter-ton pickup with no hood and plastic sheeting over the passenger window. An aging blue heeler woofed from the porch to announce our arrival. I expected her master to emerge in suspenders, clutching a scatter gun. Wrong—he looked and dressed like a drab family-size garden gnome. Soft white hair flowed from beneath a sock hat to his waist; clean and ironed plaid coat and canvas pants. His glasses were dense enough to burn a hole in paper. The brand-spanking-new Crocs threw me, I’ll admit.

“As I live and breathe, it’s Tom-fucking-Bombadil,” Lionel said to Bellow.

Bellow fake-smiled and told him to shut up. He continued to exude cheer as he scanned the bushes like a scout expecting an ambush.

I introduced my party (discreetly declining to mention Bellow was a G-man) and briefly explained the investigation. Herzog stroked his beard, listening politely. When I apologized for not phoning ahead, he laughed and said the power company cut him off ages ago. He owned a fancy cell that he strategically monitored, answering messages once or twice a week, if it was really important. It was good to keep people guessing, see? Woodstove, kerosene, and a portable radio did him fine.

He sat on a cinder-block step and patted his dog and changed the subject to the weather (Bellow raised his eyebrows at me), geography, and the moribund state of the world. Appearances notwithstanding, he considered his piece of land practically suburbia—neighbors occupied surrounding ridges and a pop-fifty town hunkered in a basin not five miles west.

His ancestral home had burned to the ground. The ruins were farther up the hill and already covered in moss and vines. Nature moves quickly to reclaim her own.

“My divorce was the best thing that ever happened to my dog. Wife almost died in the fire. I snatched up the dog and booked it. Figured it’s what the missus woulda wanted. But no, sir. She made it, damn her luck. Covered in charcoal except for her eyeballs trained on me with no small amount of rage.” While he monologued, he filled a pipe and got it going. Pipes are supposed to smell pleasant—that and the professorial aura they imbue on regular stiffs are their whole draw. This load reeked of burning moss and cat piss. A cloud of smoke settled above his head and gradually slithered down his collar and the sleeves of his coat. Watching him inhale and luxuriate, I had an unsettling thought born of years touring rural Alaska. Live too long in isolation, and eventually cat-piss-soaked moss set on fire becomes a fragrant treat.

He asked how I was getting along with Horseheads, and I said fine. He said terrific, because the Valley didn’t necessarily treat folks well, especially outsiders intent on upsetting the cart, so to speak.