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and cold, as if it had never been breathed.
    Leaning slightly forward, I listened. Hobo leapt to the ground and took a quick trot around the yard. He bounded around the barn, then skidded to a stop a few yards away, his nose to the ground. His tail uncurled and he sniffed and whined.
    I stepped toward him. He jumped back, barked at me, and then circled as if avoiding something on the ground. He pressed himself against my leg and whined again. I reached down to pat him. The ground was slightly depressed before us. I’d never noticed rain puddling there before.
    “It’s just a puddle, boy. Just water.”
    Hobo danced beside me, bumping my leg, not taking his eyes off the ground.
    I squatted and skimmed my hand over the water. Fat, sparse raindrops spattered the ground.
    Hobo barked sharply, then muttered a low, startled growl. I petted him with one hand and fanned my other hand through the puddle. The water was not more than an inch deep, opaque and rust-red. I meant only to reassure the dog, but saw that something was down there. Something round stuck up out of the puddle, solid like a rock, but the texture of it was unusual.
    For balance, I kept my hand on Hobo as I stretched farther; the thing in the puddle gave when I pressed it. Instantly, Hobo leapt back from my hand with a full-throated bark. What was in the water? Wet fur? Skin? I thought I saw a bubble of air rise through the puddle, but it was difficult to tell as the rain pocked its surface harder now. Hobo ignored my commands to quiet.
    I pulled my hat down more firmly against a gust of wind and pushed my sleeves up. Kneeling, I used the flat of my arm to rake the water away, clearing the odd lump. Hobo barked and whined, pacing. I pushed more mud away. For a second, I didn’t recognize what I was looking at: a shoulder and the slope of an arm. I jerked my hand away and tried to scramble sideways, but my knee, sunken in the mud, hit something—a hip. I’d been straddling it.
    “Oh, God! Oh, God!” I scooted back farther. I glanced over my shoulder down the hill. No one would hear me shout from there. I motioned violently for Hobo to shut up. He dropped to a loud whimper.
    What was a dead man doing here?
    I forced myself to look again. Judging from the hip-to-shoulder distance, he was about my height. I followed the line of his shoulder down to the muck. Stretching forward, my belly almost touching the ground, I pressed my fingers into the mud where his hand would be. There it was, solid. I felt it twitch and saw my own fingertip rise with it. I lurched back and set Hobo barking again. The rain picked up.
    I took a deep breath and reached forward again. The wet clay gave easily. I held the arm aloft by the wrist. The mud-caked mitt of a hand hung limp. Then it flexed, turning in my clay-slick grip.
    I froze. Blood rushed to my head.
    He was alive!
    I dug into the slurry, following shoulder and neck to the roundness of his head. I scooped him up, straining to gain leverage on the wet ground. There was a loud sucking sound as the soil released him from its grip. Mud encased him completely, obscuring his features. I tried to hold him with one arm and wipe his face, but he slipped, tilting in my arms, his face turned away.
    Rain spat down harder. I jerked off my hat and used it to shield the head I cradled. The rain battered my bared head. “Can you hear me? Are you okay?” I shouted. A low mutter of thunder erupted behind me. The wind flared, whipping my hair across my face.
    He hung limp, heavy in my arms, entirely covered in clay. No sign of clothes. I twisted out of my coat and threw it over him, tucking it quickly across his chest and over his body. I tried to hold the hat with one hand and use the other to wipe his face, but that only seemed to make things worse.
    I hunkered over with his head against my waist and glanced under the hat, my wet face inches from his. Under the shadow of the hat, he seemed to have no face and no hair, just a muddy round head.