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as he sniffed at the ground. The Chief held one of Daniel’s shirts in his other hand. Pinkerton weaved through the stones, settled for an instant here, then there, and finally stopped to paw like crazy at some wet leaves. We were confused at first because it seemed like he was digging at solid earth. Then the Chief bent over and said to my dad, “Charles, there’s something here.”
    The Chief dropped onto all fours, pushed the dog away, and began yelling Daniel’s name down into the ground. When I got close, I saw the hole, a ragged mouth the size of a small bucket, hardly large enough for a horseshoe. My dad scratched an eyebrow. “Danny couldn’t fit through there, Earl. All your damn dog found us was a rabbit hole.”
    But the Chief had faith in Pinkerton. He stood up, snapped the walkie-talkie from his belt, and radioed the state police. When he signed off and replaced the walkie-talkie, he put one hand onmy father’s shoulder. “Charles, PT’s never been wrong. Your boy is in that hole and we’ve got to get him out.”
    That was around eight or nine o’clock at night. Over the next few hours, emergency rescue teams began showing up—from Hawley, from Wilkes-Barre, from Hazleton. They brought hard hats and shovels and gas-powered generators. One of them pitched a blue tarp over the hole to keep out the rainwater. Near as they could tell, the hole went down at least twenty feet, probably more. Somebody decided it was probably an ancient well and nobody questioned him. Other than Pinkerton’s nose, we had no reliable proof that Daniel was down there. A group of firefighters wanted to widen the hole, but some miner from Scranton said the only chance was to dig a parallel shaft and tunnel over. Problem with that was they’d be estimating where Daniel was and they’d need to haul drilling equipment up into the forest.
    I heard all of this from a position I’d taken atop a fist-shaped gray rock overlooking the hole. I just sat there in the light rain, watching everything like you do in a dream. Part of me thought maybe Daniel was off someplace hiding, upset that Jeff and I didn’t pay him enough attention or something. That’s what I was hoping. But in my gut, I knew my brother was down there trapped.
    Somewhere in the middle of the night, the rain stopped and the chain saws started. Every available man, Jeff and my dad included, had been recruited to clear-cut a ten-foot-wide path between the fairy fort and the field so the drilling equipment could get through. That’s nearly a quarter mile, and they worked from both ends. When I tried to help, my dad told me to go down to the picnic pavilions, where the women were holding a prayervigil. Instead I crept back to the hole and talked to Daniel. I told him not to worry, that everything would be okay. When I ran out of things to say, I thought about how tired I was and how tired he must be, so I sang him some lullabies. And when I ran out of lullabies, I sang whatever I could think of, songs about John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.
    I don’t think I fell asleep during those hours. I remember the constant growl of chain saws growing dimmer as they made progress away from the fort, and I remember the stars overhead fading as the sky began to turn from black to dark blue. Then a mechanical roar buzzed the tops of the pines and a great cone of light swung over us. I stood and saw the helicopter, floating west toward the park. As I charged down the new trail, past the carnage of jagged stumps and felled trees, my mind filled with a vision of experts, trained professionals from New York or Philadelphia, people who planned for disasters like this every day. They’d have a better idea than this half-baked drilling plan, and they’d have Daniel free in no time. When I reached the forest’s edge, I saw the helicopter, already landed just beyond FDR’s