The car had melted in the rain. Wiley hiked back through the woods to locate the place where they pushed the Duster off the road, though he could not be certain in the bright new day if he was following the right path. He found the lake by following the sounds of birds in flight, and he found the clearing and the path to the road. But no car. Impressions from tire tracks in the waterlogged ground provided evidence that it had been there, but he could not figure out how or why the dead car had moved. And without the landmark of the car, he could not remember where they had buried the guns. Perhaps someone else had found the Duster, he thought, managed to start it, and driven off, or perhaps a tow truck, called by the police, had pulled into the space and dragged it away. Or perhaps his bearings were all wrong. He walked a half mile along the highway, then retraced his steps and investigated the side of the road in the other direction. Certain that he remembered the clearing, Wiley returned to the trail and stood at its apex, overlooking the lake, willing the car to return. He strode to the shoreline and looked for signs writ on water—perhaps it had become unmoored and floated away and now rested submerged in the bottom silt. Nothing but mallards feeding on duckweed, and caught in the tall grass, the tattered flag of a ten-dollar bill fluttering, drying in the sun-blistered air. Farther along the shoreline, the waters lapped against the abandoned canvas bag floating like a sail from a drowned boat. He sat on the slant of a downed tree and stared at the sunlight dancing on the water.
The stillness of the afternoon reminded him of the last time his father took the boys hunting. They tramped up to Potter County and the canyons carved into the mountains, bivouacking in the cabin of a friend of a friend from the mill. Denny must have been twelve, and Wiley, at eight, labored under the heft of the rifle. A killing frost had long since come and gone, and the November dawn arrived steel gray and loaded with moisture. The threesome waited in a blind fifteen feet in the air, and the gun in his father's hands, the same rifle now missing, looked like a cannon. Wiley prayed that no deer would pass through the parameter of their sights, and just as he settled into the belief that his wish would be granted, a gunshot cracked the silence. The buck, shocked by the impact at its shoulder, coughed blood and bumbled into the brush. His father climbed down first, Denny following closely behind, and by the time Wiley had negotiated the makeshift rungs, they had caught up to the deer. His father grabbed the antlers and hoisted the head for his sons to see the raging eyes, the heaving flanks, and the tenacious instinct to fight surrender. And life stole away without gesture. Wiley's stomach rebelled and he threw up behind a chokecherry tree. A sharp knife greeted him on return, as his father prepared to field dress the animal. Lifting the point skyward, he turned to the boy. “Son, all things must pass and give way to the next, whether by your hand or God's. If you're going to go hunting, you got to be ready that something will die, and if you are scared of death, you've no place being here.” Wiley wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and knelt next to his father.