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like a scarecrow made clumsily animate. Carrying an enamel waterbucket he crossed his juryrigged system of planks spanning the stream’s meanderings, at last just giving up and wading in, the water swirling cold as ice about his thighs. “Waistdeep in water and havin to tote a bucket for more,” he complained to himself. “If that ain’t the beat.”
    Chestnut boards nailed in a V and shoved into an orifice in the limestone bluff fed the water into the springbox. The water was cold and virid. Mossgreen, it swirled against the lichened cedar planking of the springbox. Oliver stood immersed in the roar of water, the thousand seepings and drippings of a veritable mountain of water loosely contained by the fissured limestone, the continuous roar of the falls above him. It was deep shade here, cool, and dark. The perpetually wet earth was a ferment of watercress and the air drugged with peppermint. He set the bucket down by his feet and leaned forward, his hands cupping his knees. He peered into the springbox.
    He’d caught a flash of white, not gleaming but dull like the old discolored ivory. It was like peering into deep seas. From the shadows of the springbox slow strands of moss and fern waved like seaweed, echoed the slow circular movement of water. In these dark depths the object turned, winked a bright and momentary gleam of gold from beneath the near-opaque surface. He reached into the water.
    He held in his hands a human skull. It was impacted with moss and mud, a salamander curled in an eyesocket, periwinkles clinging like leeches to the worn bone. Bright shards of moss clung to the cranium like perverse green hair. He turned it in his hands. A chunk of the occipital bone had been blown away seemingly by some internal force, the brain itself exploding and breaking the confines of the skull. He turned it again so that it seemed to mock him, its jaw locked in a mirthless grin, the two gold teeth fey and winsome among the slime and lichens.
    It was concrete, irrevocable. Tangible vestige of old violence from chasms and channels so far beneath his feet light was not even rumored. To his hands. Mute sacrifice from the well of the world. He felt besieged by knowledge he had not sought and did not want. The past eddied and swirled about him as the waters had beleaguered the skull. For a bright moment he felt omnipotent, the years rolled by had opened a door and permitted him momentary passage through it, he knew he possessed knowledge denied all the world, save one other, but he had no idea what to do with it.
    The wagon had stopped in the yard. Pearl turned, the gauzy window curtain strung from her hand. She was heavier these years and her placid face bore few traces of her former bovine prettiness.
    “They comin in,” she whispered.
    “Then let em come,” Hardin said. “I don’t reckon the roof’ll fall in on em.”
    She turned back to the window. Two women stood by the wagon in the earth yard, a third climbing down awkwardly from the wagonseat. Sunday finery, lavender and blue and green catching the summer light and flicking it away, a trio of radiant peacocks approaching halfquerulously this den of iniquity. Parasols clung along though the sky held no hint of rain. A knock.
    “Reckon what they want?”
    He made no reply save a gesture toward the bed where Hovington lay.
    A knock, more assertive.
    “Well, let em in.”
    He arose, standing his glass by the edge of his chair. He crossed the room and turned the wooden latch and opened the door six or eight inches, peered down into a smooth country face beneath a gathered bonnet. He didn’t speak.
    “We come to see about Brother Hovington,” the woman said.
    He opened the door wider and stood aside. Pearl turned toward them, awkward gracelorn. “Come in,” she said.
    “How is he?”
    Hardin took up his glass, drained it. “You can see for yourselves,” he said. “Yonder he lays. Brother Hovington has fell on hard times.
    Hovington lay under a comforter, an