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haven't the faintest. It was too far away." She'd heard about that graduate student and his bear study.
    "If he had a collar it was probably Henry. I know him well."
    "You track bears every day?" Was he putting her on?
    "Seven days a week."
    Didn't sound like much fun. "And your father's an artist?"
    Chip nodded.
    Sometimes Albemarle gossip was correct.
    "The real reason he's back here is to paint the birds," Chip said. "The spillway job is extra, so he can live in this house."
    More than two hundred species lived in the Powhatan. "He kills birds, then paints them?"
    Chip shook his head. "The birds die naturally or from disease, then he does taxidermy on them. Sometimes they're shot and fly on until they drop. He's never killed even one."
    "How about the ones in the cages?"
    "That's my hospital. Chip Clewt General. Those are injured or sick, and I try to nurse them back to health, then let them fly off."
    Keeps his eye on bears, tends sick birds, a vegetarian? Not your ordinary seventeen year old. At least, not like the ones she knew. The ones she knew ate cheeseburgers and blew birds out of the sky and would like nothing better than to line up a sight on a big Powhatan black.
    "What I do is no big deal. Passes the time." Then, looking down at her feet, he said, "Let's take care of what ails you."
    "I'll do it when I get home."
    But he'd already moved toward the sink and was reaching under it. "Maybe they're infected." He drew out a tin basin and turned on the water tap, then left the room.
    Though kept by a pair of hermit males, the kitchen wasn't in too much disorder. Dishes were stacked. A faint onionish smell lingered. Eating slowly, she wondered how often the senior Clewt went away.
    Chip returned with a bottle in his hand and dumped the contents into the basin as it filled with warm water, saying over his shoulder, "Epsom salts. We don't have much of a medicine cabinet."
    "You don't need to do this," Sam said, feeling uneasy. What he was doing felt personal. Too personal.
    "Soak your feet for a few minutes, and then we'll get the socks off," he replied, ignoring the half-protest.
    The warm water immediately eased the pain and she murmured an "Umh."
    "See," he said.
    "You seem to know what you're doing."
    "I've spent some time in hospitals."
    He left the room again. She'd tried not to look at his scarred face, the drooping eye, the withered hand, wanting to save them both embarrassment, but she found it impossible. Was she supposed to stare out the window or up at the ceiling when talking to him? Okay, he did look weird.
    He returned with a pair of fleece-lined bedroom slippers. "You can't go home barefooted."
    "I could."
    "That'd be foolish," he said, kneeling down by the basin. "Now, this'll hurt...."
    The water had turned brownish red from the blood-encrusted socks.
    "There's two ways to do it, slow or quick. Quick is better, I've found."
    She yelled as he jerked a sock off, skin coming with it. The pain shot up her leg, but at least the dog bite didn't look as bad as it had felt.
    "We'll wait a few seconds, then grit your teeth again."
    "You should be a doctor."
    "I don't like doctors or hospitals. I've seen too many of both."
    The fingers of his right hand grasped the upper part of the other sock, and she yelled again as he pulled it off. A stab couldn't have hurt any worse.
    He'd spread a towel down. "Put your feet here while I dump this water and get some more."
    Eyes closed, Sam sat back on the hard chair. Only her mother had ever repaired hurts and wounds, the usual childhood scrapes and bumps. Here was this total stranger...
    "Okay, put 'em back in for a while. Then I'll bandage them loosely, just wrap some gauze..."
    "I should be going."
    "They know you're safe."
    She looked at him directly. "Thank you for what you've done."
    Smiling crookedly, he shrugged. "Who knows, I might end up on your roof one day."
    "Just don't come through the lousy swamp."
    "I think the swamp's beautiful. It's like the sea. It has a