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his thick shoulders, turning them near the color of the ponytail hanging to the middle of his back. The edges of a wild-man’s beard, full and frayed, poked out from the sides of his jaw. Beside him on the log lay the tattered book he always kept near.
    He said without turning, “Knew you was close, Charlie Givens.”
    Charlie stopped. When he spoke, his words were colored with the slow drawl of the Virginia mountains. “Now, Taylor, that ain’t true. I’s quiet as a church mouse the whole way.”
    “That may be your mind, but I know better.” Still with his back to Charlie, still scanning below. “You spooked a hawk when you crossed the gate. Hawk spooked a rabbit. Rabbit spooked a deer. Deer told the bear.”
    “How you know that?”
    “Bear told me.”
    Charlie offered no response. Taylor spoke often of the monster that dwelled in the Hollow, which may nor may not have been a bear and may or may not have existed only in the dark labyrinth of Taylor Hathcock’s muddled mind. Charlie didn’t much care either way. He had more pressing issues.
    “Well, I appreciate the lesson, Taylor, but I done bore your groceries all this way, an’ if I don’t go pay the water bill I’m gonna float.”
    “Time’s drawn too short for that,” Taylor said. “Set those rations down here and perch yourself. We need a word.”
    Charlie did as he was told, glad to unburden his arms if not his bladder. He placed the groceries (a box of Twinkies, a case of beer, two packs of pencils, three boxes of shotgun shells—always that, nothing more and nothing less) in the center of the log beside Taylor’s book and sat at the opposite end.
    He asked, “You find Her yet?”
    Taylor kept the binoculars trained on the valley and said no, but Charlie knew She was down there, had to be. He squinted his eyes and peered the dozen or so miles below. Tiny cars crawled like ants along thin ribbons of roads, funneling in and out of the small downtown.
    “Look at them,” Taylor said. “Going everyplace and no place, all for naught. It pains me, Charlie. How you live down there in all that gaggle?”
    Charlie watched the binoculars and wondered what Taylor saw. One of the lenses was cracked down the middle. Its opposite eyepiece was nothing more than an empty hole. By appearance alone, he thought the spyglasses would offer little more than a fuzzy image of whatever lay no more than five feet from Taylor’s nose.
    “Well, I live in Camden, Taylor. That there’s Mattingly.”
    Taylor took the binoculars from his face. He reached for his book and the nub of pencil that marked his place, then scrawled overtop words that were already there. Charlie averted his eyes, wanting to see but not daring.
    Taylor finished and said, “All’s the same town and the same world, Charlie Givens. It’s a poison to the soul, and I want no part of it. They don’t come to my Holler. They say the devil walks here. You believe so?”
    Charlie said he’d never even entertained such a thought and hoped Taylor wouldn’t perceive that lie, because there had been many a time over the years when Charlie made thelong walk back to the rusty gate believing the devil not only walked in Happy Hollow, he scarfed the beer and Twinkies Charlie bought him every month too. He crossed his legs (a difficult task for a man his size) and began a slow rocking back and forth.
    “Found something last night,” Taylor said. “Down to the grove.”
    Charlie stilled himself. “The grove? Somebody come up in the Holler?”
    “No. Someone done come out.”
    “Done come . . . ?” Charlie paused, trying to let that sink in, but found it only floated at the surface of his thick head. “Taylor, how’s that true?”
    “Go tend your business,” Taylor said. “Meet me inside after. But hurry up, we gotta go soon.”
    “Where we goin’?”
    Taylor rose from the log and pointed to the sleepy town far below.
    “Yonder.”

5
    I found Hollis’s first official customer of the morning on