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  “It’s early,” said Bee, letting a childlike sorrow glide through her voice.

  “I’d better be going.”

  Bee turned on the porch light. When she turned around, Nate was right behind her. They brushed together, and he smelled her again.

  “Bee,” he said, but couldn’t find a way to continue.

  “I know, Natie. I know. It’s just—well, never mind.”

  “Can I call you again?”

  “Why would you ask?”

  “I wanted to be sure.”

  “Here, take one of these,” she said, and shoved a hot jar of peaches into his hands. Then she pushed him out the door, closing it behind him.

  The evening was clear, all the way to the stars, the moon half-cocked. Nate walked through the lawn ornaments and stood beside his pickup on the empty street. He felt a hollow place open up inside him, waiting for Bee’s return, closed his eyes, and remembered the sensation of his right arm brushing against her. Her smell was still inside him, and he tried to herd it into a room of his memory, where he could easily find it again.

  He bought a cold six-pack to go at a tavern on the edge of town.

  Along the road pairs of animal eyes lit up in the headlights, raccoons mostly, along with a few cats and a deer. The drive seemed to take no time at all, filled as it was with his thankfulness for the several hours he’d spent with Bee. He felt decades younger, and he was determined to do nothing—to will nothing—that would burden their renewed friendship.

  At home, there was a message on his answering machine from the dispatcher—a load in Milwaukee to pick up and deliver to Columbus, Ohio. Tomorrow morning.

  He folded the laundry and packed some clothes.

  When he went outside again, the moon hovered just above the dark horizon, casting silver light across the backyard. The grass was still wet from the previous night’s rain. At the wooden post on the corner of the back fence, both the cabbage and the canvas bag were gone.

  Not knowing exactly why, he pushed down the top strand of barbed wire and crossed over it. He walked through the pasture and climbed the rock outcropping where the Wild Boy had stood that morning. The birch trees seemed thin and spectral in the moonlight, the bark stretched as tight as snakeskin over the trunks. He remained a long time, listening. Once, he felt sure someone was nearby, but then he lost confidence in the feeling. In the distance, the windows of his house cast yellow into the yard, and he imagined what it might be like to look at his house while he was inside it. The stars reminded him of Bee and his son and the future’s gravitational pull.

  He climbed back down and walked across the pasture, keeping close to the fence. He crossed into his yard and once again checked the wooden post. This time, three smooth stones about the size of quarters rested on top. As he picked them up, he looked in all directions, but could see nothing. In his palm, the stones felt warm, almost alive. Nate put them in his pocket.

  Returning to the house, Nate found the jar of peaches, carried it outside, and put it on top of the post.

  Moving Out, Moving In, Moving On

  The prison van arrived on a warm evening in June. The vehicle moved heavily along the narrow roads, mashing gravel. As if prepared for the visit, the moist air in Words marshaled its fragrances into separate zones.

  Blake Bookchester sat stiffly in the passenger seat, breathing carefully and wearing a new plaid shirt, creased denim pants, and shiny brown medium-duty work shoes.

  Long-forgotten smells entered the open window: clover, litter, and duff from the woods, river mud, late purple lilac, compost, burning brush, road tar, honeysuckle, two-cycle exhaust, and freshly mowed grass. As he reclaimed each sensation, an alarm of sad familiarity rang inside him, a dark beckoning to return to someone he could no longer be.

  Blake hadn’t expected this much difficulty reentering the free world, but to stay alive in prison he’d allowed his spirit to drink from the shallow well of the future, and now all the joys of the unfolding moment were gone, treasured earlier in a thousand imagined scenes of returning. Anticipation had drained the lifeblood of the present. I don’t regret it, he assured himself. I don’t. Otherwise, some nights never would have ended.

  As the dark van came to a groaning rest before the Words Repair Shop, the odor of oil, grease, and diesel fuel established provisional sovereignty around it.

  Perhaps because the town had no public buildings, the shop also served as a community center of sorts. And after its double garage doors were thrown open, people could drift in and out without feeling as if they had to spend money or explain why they were there. Like birds in a bush, this summer gathering spot came without charge.

  When the van arrived, seven men and three women loitered in the gravel parking lot among pieces of machinery, lured from their homes by the evening sky’s multiple lanes of horse-tail clouds and long shadows spreading on the ground. Dressed in whatever had come readily to hand after getting out of bed that morning, they presented a colorful yet faded collection of individuals. Most were unemployed or retired. Two held coffee mugs; one drank from an aluminum soda can; two smoked; one chewed. They talked without hurry, their attention occasionally wandering into wider circles around the neighborhood. With winter so recently departed, they revered warm evenings, a deference later withheld from the evenings of July and August.

  Most of those gathered in the parking lot had known each other a long time, and a long time before that had learned from watching their parents and grandparents how to talk with neighbors. Like riding a bicycle or tying a shoe, these informal, out-of-doors interactions came without conscious effort. They listened, spoke, nodded heads, shuffled feet, changed expressions, stuffed hands in and out of pockets, and assumed different positions in response to an inaudible rhythm.

  Yet as Blake stared out of the van, he realized he’d forgotten how to relate in this way. Nothing seemed recognizable in the gathering twilight, like an unknown tribal ritual. While he’d been away, real life had been replaced by a foreign film about real life. He had no idea what they could be thinking. What did people care about out here? What did they talk about? These people in Words seemed to exist in a parallel world, similar to but different from his. The fact that he had once lived here himself only heightened his sense of alienation, and hardened the certainty that if placed among them he would fail.

  “Stay close to me,” ordered the driver, a man of forty-five, smaller than Blake and wearing a leather jacket. He shut off the engine and pocketed the keys. “I’ll do the talking.”

  Blake and his release agent climbed out of the van. Simply being outdoors overwhelmed Blake initially—the immensity of everything. An infinite variety of visual avenues extended away from him. Every object had objects behind it.

  Mrs. Helm stepped from the repair shop and into orange-tinted sunlight. She looked earnestly at Blake’s discolored and swollen face. Her dismay ripened rapidly into anger and she came stridently toward them. Blake could feel the man next to him gather himself, bristling. His discomfort amused Blake, and he cautiously experimented with smiling. It hurt.

  When she reached them, Mrs. Helm appeared determined to hug him, as if to demonstrate some moral principle to his agent. To prevent this, Blake drew back in time for her to disguise the intention. She folded her arms in front of her.

  “What happened to him?” she demanded.

  “He got hit a few times.”

  “Who beat him?”

  “Other prisoners, mostly an inmate named Jones. He’ll get over it.”

  “Why are you government people incapable of protecting those placed in your care? Isn’t that your job?”

  “I don’t work in the prison.”

  “Yes, but you’re deeply associated with those who do.”

  “Not that deeply.”

  The informal group in the parking lot had stopped talking, turned, and stared. To avoid meeting their eyes, Blake watched them through his peripheral vision, a skill learned in prison, where eye contact was often inte
rpreted as an act of aggression by guards and inmates alike.

  A man walked toward them from inside the building, taller and heavier than Blake and maybe fifteen years older. His shadow followed him along the ground.

  The agent continued: “I’m here to introduce Blake to his new place of employment. Then I’ll drive him over to his father’s house. He’ll start in the morning.”

  “You won’t get away with this reckless negligence,” said Mrs. Helm. “I intend to bring attention to this abuse, and to everyone who should have prevented it. People will know and you’ll be sorry.”

  “Go ahead. Nothing will come of it.”

  “Hello, I’m Jacob Helm. Blake, good to see you.”

  Jacob offered his hand. Blake shook it—too vigorously, he suddenly feared. He withdrew his hand, put it back in his pocket, and looked at the ground. He didn’t recognize his own feet inside the new shoes. “You must be his agent,” said Jacob.

  “Jack Station.”

  “Thank you for stopping by. Let’s go inside. I’ll show you around.”

  “We won’t stay long,” said Station.

  They walked across the lot, around pieces of machinery and people, and into the cooler air of the building. The smell of oil and grease was even stronger inside. Bugs clustered in the corners of windowsills, on the edge of the light.

  The gathered neighbors looked at each other and privately imagined scenes to explain Blake’s severely beaten face. They tried to balance these imagined events on the scale of their earlier conversations, the warm evening and intricately laced sky, then gave up and dispersed like a flock of birds at an imperceptible signal.

  Inside, Jacob gestured to dozens of waiting saws, mowers, four-wheelers, and service engines. “This is a busy time of year. That’s why we’re open so late tonight.”

  “Didn’t know you had a lathe,” mumbled Blake, walking into the northeast corner.

  “Are you familiar with machining?” asked Jacob.

  “Of course he is,” said Mrs. Helm. “Aren’t you?”

  Blake moved his left hand over the four-jaw chuck and sealed gearbox, followed the carriage to the tailstock, and turned a little chrome crank. “Feeder screws seem pretty tight for an old one,” he mumbled.

  “It holds to about three-thousandths,” said Jacob.

  Blake knew he needed to say something else, something confident, reassuring, and friendly. Everyone waited. But at that moment he saw through the smudged window an old woman with white hair and wearing a brown dress carry a red bowl out of a beige house and set it in the green grass. Three white cats hurried over and stuck their heads into it, and the vivid complexity of the event erased everything else in his mind. There simply wasn’t enough time to figure out what these things meant, how they related to him. He felt trapped on the other side of the smudged window. Did the cats belong to the woman or was she just feeding them? Did someone ask her to? Why were they all white? What were they eating? Did this happen every day or had it never happened before? He tried to return to the shop and the conversation he was supposed to be participating in, but too much of him stayed with the old woman. He couldn’t keep up, and his frustration knotted into a bitter rose.

  “Should be close enough,” he mumbled.

  “What?” asked Jacob.

  “Three-thousandths should be close enough.”

  “Nothing’s ever close enough,” said Jacob.

  It seemed like a rebuke, but Blake wasn’t sure. Something in Jacob’s voice defied interpretation. Blake thought he might be hiding some resentment, but it would take time to learn.

  Blake thought he should smile, but before he did, the time for smiling ended. He couldn’t keep up.

  He wondered if everything out here was going to happen at this speed—lurching unpredictably from one instant to the next—and while he wondered about this, Mrs. Helm said something he didn’t quite hear. Then the old woman out the window walked away from the bowl, stopped, and looked directly at him. His release agent moved farther away from Mrs. Helm, his head half-disappearing inside a shadow. A Buick with an open trunk moved along the road in front of the shop. And a boy of about twelve appeared out of nowhere, stood next to Jacob, and stared at him with a worried look. Blake assumed this must be August, Jacob’s son. The boy had many of his father’s features, but his expression mirrored his mother’s serious concern.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Helm, this is a copy of Blake’s release conditions, just so everyone understands.” Station handed a folded piece of paper past Winnie to Jacob. “Read through them. You will also find a description of your obligations as sponsors of a convicted felon. If he violates a single rule—for whatever reason—he goes back to prison. Do you understand that, Blake? Your release continues only as long as you remain within the restrictions explained on this sheet of paper.”

  The old woman stared at him through the window, a dull blue bewilderment taking shape in her eyes.

  “Blake, do you understand? Blake?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What time do you open your shop in the morning, Mr. Helm?”

  “Eight.”

  “I’ll see that he’s here. Let’s go, Blake.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Station,” said Jacob, looking up from the papers. “I know Blake will do well here, but how often, in your own experience, are parolees returned to prison?”

  “Three of four are back within the first month.”

  “Why is that?” asked Jacob.

  “They can’t stay out of trouble.”

  Station turned and walked away, dust rising around the dark cuffs of his pants.

  “If we had a lawyer, you’d be hearing from her,” said Mrs. Helm, more to herself than anyone else. Every time she looked at Blake’s swollen face, she promised herself not to look at it again, then immediately broke the promise. It seemed as if there should be someone to file a grievance with, to redress the inhumanity of human civilization. If men could walk on the moon and compute probabilities based on the random emission of particles from the nucleus of a decaying atom, was it asking too much for those with power to behave decently?

  Mrs. Helm, August, and Jacob watched them climb back into the van.

  Before leaving Words, Blake again saw the old woman behind her house. But now she had something else in her hands—something unidentifiably dark and strange. He tried to get a better look at it, but then the van moved beyond the yard, beyond the village, out into the country.

  Already, more had happened here in Words than what he often experienced over a whole month inside the supermax.

  The thirty-minute ride to rural Grange passed too quickly, Blake thought. He tried to prepare himself, but as soon as he’d collected all the memories he needed to redeem before reacquainting himself with the domestic architecture of his childhood, a cloud shaped like Finland drifted south and hurled a great shadow onto the nearby field, turning a sea of green, gold, red, and yellow to brown, blue, and gray. His thoughts scattered like fleeing ants. He’d forgotten clouds did that and he didn’t like it. Nothing should have that much influence. How could anyone succeed in a place like this?

  I’m going to fail, he thought, and then panicked as he recognized the road in front of his home. Fifteen miles had vanished since the shadowed field. He tried again to collect his memories. Too late. They were outside him now. Beyond the windshield a jungle of entangled intimacy reached into and beyond even his most infantile feelings. He knew every inch of this place. More imperatively, it knew him. His conscious life had been built, sensation-by-impulse-by-feeling-by-dream-by-thought, upon the horizon seen from this road.

  “Stop,” he said.

  “Why?” asked Station without slowing down.

  Blake knew why, but he feared showing weakness more than he cared for honesty.

  “Forget it.”

  They continued past significantly weedy lawns, leaning mailboxes, and ditches filled with daylily spears, headless dandelion stalks, mullein, quack grass, burdock, and thistle. Th
en he could see the house, and its color and shape seemed too much the same to be believed, as if someone had recently built it on a smaller scale to resemble his memory. The roof still sagged, making it impossible to enter or exit by the front door when it rained; the trees were larger yet the same; the eighteen-wheeler was parked next to the shed and the dip in the driveway was filled with water.

  The shallow pool drew his attention. Water had always gathered there after a rain. Some of Blake’s earliest upright steps had wobbled unsteadily toward it. He’d stared into it, waded, stomped, run through it, dropped stones, sailed leaf boats, and ridden his tricycle through it. At night, the moon reflected like a shining eyeball from its surface. Birds drank from it and clouds floated on it. That water ran deeper than the earth itself.

  The front door opened and his father stepped outside, wearing faded jeans and a work jacket. The door closed behind him, and though Blake could not hear it, the sound moved through him. The glass rattled in the frame as the wood banged. His hands trembled.

  His father stood for a moment, then took several steps toward them as the van pulled into the driveway. There was a little gray in his hair, and something else was different too. He favored one leg. His shoulders were thinner, slightly stooped.

  Blake silently cursed and gritted his teeth until it hurt too much. He’d often thought about his father getting older, but he never imagined it would look quite like this.

  There was so much he intended to make right. But how could anything be made right if the person he’d let down had gone on and become someone else—a man with a new set of concerns, closer to the end of his life? This older father standing in the driveway, the hurt was part of him. Blake could see it and it would never go away. Making amends would be of little consequence.

  Nate took another couple of steps toward them, limping again. His aging seemed to Blake like a scar inflicted by the time he’d been away—caused by Blake’s absence. If someone was loved in the right way, they didn’t get old. With the mallet of neglect, he’d beaten his own father.