A Simple Plan

A Simple Plan

by Scott Smith

Copyright (c) 1993 by Scott B. Smith, Inc.

FOR MY PARENTS,

WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO ALICE QUINN,

GAIL HOCHMAN, VICTORIA WILSON,

AND ELIZABETH HILL

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only

mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

-- MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

1

MY PARENTS died in an automobile accident the year after I was married. They tried to enter I-75 through an exit ramp one Saturday night and crashed head-on into a semi hauling cattle. My father was killed instantly in the wreck, decapitated by the hood of his car, but my mother, miraculously, survived. She lived for a day and a half more, hooked up to machines in the Delphia Municipal Hospital, her neck and back broken, her heart leaking blood into her chest.

The semi driver came through it all with only a few minor bruises. His truck had caught fire, though, barbecuing the cattle, and after my mother died he sued my parents' estate for damages. He won the suit but got no material satisfaction from it: my father had mortgaged his farm to the hilt and was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy when he died.

My wife Sarah's pet theory was that he'd committed suicide, driven to it by the embarrassing proliferation of his debts. I argued with her at the time, though not very wholeheartedly. In hindsight, you see, it seems that he may've made certain preparations. A week before the accident, he came by my house in his pickup, its truck bed packed with furniture. Sarah and I had no use for any of it, but he was insistent, threatening to head straight for the dump if we didn't accept the entire load, so I helped him carry it, piece by piece, down to the basement. After he left us, he drove over to my brother Jacob's apartment and gave him the pickup.

There was also his will, the first clause of which was an injunction upon Jacob and me that we swear orally, in each other's presence, to visit his grave every year, without fail, on his birthday. It continued from there, a bizarrely elaborate document, pages and pages, going through the old farmhouse room by room, bequeathing each object to us by name, no matter how trivial or inconsequential -- a shaving kit, a broom, and an old Bible for Jacob; a broken blender, a pair of work boots, and a black stone paperweight in the shape of a crow for me. It was pointless, of course, wasted effort. We had to sell everything of any value to pay the debts he'd left behind, and the things of no value we had no use for. We had to sell the farm, too, our boyhood home. A neighbor bought it, grafting it to his own land, absorbing it like a giant amoeba. He knocked down the house, filled in the basement, and planted a soybean field on the lot.

My brother and I had never been close, not even as children, and the gap between us only grew wider as we got older. By the time of the accident, we had very little except our parents left in common, and their sudden deaths eased whatever weight this might've normally held.

Jacob, older than I by three years, had dropped out of high school and lived alone in a small apartment above the hardware store in Ashenville, the town in which we were raised, a tiny crossroads marked with a flashing yellow light, as rural as rural gets in northern Ohio. He worked on a construction crew in the summer and survived off unemployment benefits through the winter.

I'd gone to college, the first in my family to do so, graduating from the University of Toledo with a bachelor's degree in business administration. I'd married Sarah, a classmate of mine, and moved to Delphia, thirty miles east of Ashenville, just outside of Toledo. There we bought a three-bedroom, unabashedly suburban house -- dark green aluminum siding and black shutters, a two-car garage, cable TV, a microwave, the Toledo Blade delivered with a soft thump to our doorstep every evening at dusk. I commuted back to Ashenville each weekday, to the feedstore there, where I worked as assistant manager and head accountant.

There was no animosity between Jacob and me, no bad blood, we simply weren't comfortable around each other, had difficulty finding things to say, and made little attempt to hide it. More than once, coming out onto the street after work, I saw him dodge into a doorway to avoid meeting me, and each time I felt more relief than pain.

The one tie we did have, after our parents' accident, was the keeping of our promise to our father. Year after year on his birthday we'd repair to the cemetery and stand in stiff, awkward silence beside the grave site, each waiting for the other to suggest that a proper amount of time had passed, so that we could part and slip back into our separate lives. It was a depressing way to spend an afternoon, and we probably would've given it up after the very first time had we both not felt that we'd be punished somehow if we did, cursed from beyond the grave for our failure to stand by our word.

Our father's birthday was December 31, the last day of the year, and the visit gradually took on a ritualized aspect, like any other event during the holiday season, a final hurdle to cross before reaching the new year. It became, essentially, our chief time to interact. We'd catch up on each other's lives, talk about our parents or our childhood, make vague promises to see each other more often, and leave the cemetery with the clean feeling of having rather painlessly fulfilled an unpleasant duty.

This went on for seven years.

ON THE eighth year, December 31, 1987, Jacob picked me up at my house. He came around three-thirty, a half hour late, with his dog and his friend Lou in his truck. They'd been ice fishing together, their chief activity in the winter, and we had to drop Lou off on the other side of Ashenville before proceeding to the cemetery.

I never liked Lou, and I don't think he ever liked me. He used to call me Mr. Accountant, saying it in a way which seemed to imply that I ought to be embarrassed by my occupation, ashamed of its conventionality and stability. I was peculiarly intimidated by him, though I could never discern exactly why. It certainly wasn't his physical presence. He was a short, balding man, forty-five years old, just beginning to put on weight in the gut. His blond hair was thin, wispy, so that you could see his scalp beneath it, pink and chapped looking. He had crooked teeth, and they gave him a slightly comical quality, a mock toughness, making him look like some two-dimensional disreputable character out of a boy's adventure book -- an old boxer, a street thug, an ex-con.

As I came down the walk, he climbed out of the pickup to greet me, so that I'd have to sit in the middle of the seat.

"Howdy, Hank," he said, grinning. Jacob smiled at me from behind the wheel. His dog, a big, overgrown mutt, mostly German shepherd, but with some Labrador thrown in on top, was in the back. It was a male dog, but Jacob had named him Mary Beth, after a girl he'd dated in high school, his first and only girlfriend. He referred to him as a "she," too, as if the dog's name had blinded him to his gender.

I climbed in, Lou pulled himself up behind me, and we backed our way down my driveway to the street.

My house was in a small subdivision called Fort Ottowa, after a frontier outpost whose inhabitants had frozen to death in a blizzard sometime before the start of the Revolution. It was farmland, unrelentingly flat but made over to look like it wasn't. The roads curved around imaginary obstacles, and people constructed little hills in their front yards, like burial mounds, covering them with shrubbery. The houses up and down the street were tiny, each one built right up against the next -- starter houses, the realtor had called them -- full of newly married couples on their way up in the world, or retirees on their way down, the former planning careers and babies and moves to nicer neighborhoods, the latter waiting for their savings to disappear, their health to suddenly worsen, their children to send them away to old-age homes. It was a way station, a rung near the bottom of the ladder.

Sarah and I, of course, belonged to the first group. We had a nest egg, an account gathering interest in the Ashenville Savings Bank. Someday soon we were going to move away, take a step up in the world, the first of many. That was the plan, at least.

Once beyond my neighborhood, we headed west, away from Delphia, and as we did the curving streets, the clustered groupings of two-story houses with circular driveways and swing sets and picnic tables rapidly dissolved away behind us. The roads straightened themselves, becoming narrower in the process. Snow blew across them in places, moving snakelike, in long, thin, dusty lines, piling up along their edges. Houses strayed from one another, separated by whole fields now rather than simple squares of grass. Trees disappeared, the horizon widened, and the view took on a windswept look, a white-gray barrenness. We passed fewer and fewer cars.

It was an uncomfortable ride. Jacob's truck was eleven years old, and there was nothing about it that did not show its age. At one time it had been painted a bright tomato red, my brother's favorite color, but it was faded now to a scab-like burgundy, its sides pockmarked with rust. Its shocks were shot, its heater erratic. The rear window was missing, replaced by a sheet of plastic. The radio was broken, the windshield wipers torn off, and there was a hole the size of a baseball in the floor. A steady stream of cold air blew in through this, shooting straight up my right pant leg.

Jacob and Lou talked about the weather as we drove, how cold it had been lately, when it would snow next, whether or not it had rained on the previous New Year's Eve. I kept silent, listening. Whereas I normally felt merely awkward alone with Jacob, when I was with him and Lou together I felt both awkward and excluded. They had an aggressively private way of interacting; their language was coded, intimate, their humor schoolboyish and obscure. Lou would say "pineapple," with an extra stress on the "pine," or Jacob would moo like a cow, and they'd both immediately tumble into laughter. It was bewildering -- I could never escape the feeling that they were constantly making fun of me.

We passed a frozen pond, with skaters on it, children in bright jackets shooting back and forth. Dark, weathered barns dotted the horizon. It never ceased to surprise me: we were ten minutes away from my house and already surrounded by farms.

We drove south of Ashenville, skirting the town, keeping it just out of sight beyond the horizon, taking State Highway 17, ruler straight, until we hit Burnt Road. We turned right there, heading north, then left onto Anders Park Road. We crossed a long, low cement bridge over Anders Creek, plowed snow piled thickly over its railings, making it look fake, like something from a Christmas story, a cookie-dough bridge.

Beyond the creek was Anders Nature Preserve, a thickly wooded square of land that hovered at the right-hand edge of the road for the next two miles. It was a park, run by the county. There was a small pond at its very center, stocked with fish and surrounded by a mown field. People came out from Toledo during the summer to picnic there and play games, to throw Frisbees and fly kites.

The place had originally been the private estate of Bernard C. Anders, an early automobile magnate from Detroit. He'd bought the land in the 1920s and built a large summer house on it, the stone foundations of which were still visible beside the pond. When he died, during the Depression, the estate passed to his wife. She moved into the house year-round and lived there for the next four decades, finally leaving it only to be buried. She and Bernard had produced no children, so she chose to bequeath the land to the county, on the condition that they make it into a nature preserve and name it after her husband. It was an unusual place for a park, out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on four sides by working farms, but the county, with an eye on state tax credits for parkland, accepted. The house was razed, picnic tables carted in, hiking trails cut, and Anders Nature Preserve was created.

We'd gone about a mile past the bridge, halfway down the southern edge of the park, when a fox sprinted in front of us.

It all happened very quickly. I saw a flash of movement off to the left, coming out of the snow-covered field, had just enough time to focus in on it, see that it was a fox, a large, reddish one, sleek and healthy, a dead chicken hanging from its jaws, and it was in front of us, shooting across the road, its body taut, hugging the ground, as if it thought it might sneak by unseen. Jacob slammed on the brakes, too hard, and the truck went into a skid, its rear end coming out to the left, its front bumper sliding right, digging with a loud, raking sound into the snow at the edge of the road. There was the crystalline popping sound of a headlight shattering; then the truck slammed to a stop. We were thrown forward, and the dog came flying in through the plastic rear window, tearing it, his legs scrambling in panic. He was there in the cab for just a moment -- I felt his fur, cold against the back of my neck -- then he was gone, back out the hole he had made, over the side of the truck, and into the woods after the fox.

Jacob was the first to speak. "Fuck," he said softly. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

Lou giggled a little at that and pushed open his door. We climbed out onto the road. The imploded headlight was the only damage, and we stared at it for a bit, forming a semicircle around the front of the truck.

Jacob tried calling the dog. "Mary Beth!" he yelled. He whistled shrilly.

No one seeing us standing there would've ever recognized us as brothers. Jacob took after our father, while I took after our mother, and the difference was dramatic. I'm brown haired, brown eyed, of medium height and build. Jacob was several inches taller than me, blue eyed, with sandy blond hair. He was also a fat, fat man, immensely, even grotesquely overweight, like a caricature of obesity. He had big hands, big feet, big teeth, thick glasses, and pale, doughy skin.

We could hear the dog barking. He was getting farther and farther away.

"Mary Beth!" Jacob yelled.

The trees were fairly thick here, standing close together -- maples, oaks, buckeyes, sycamores -- but there was relatively little undergrowth. I could see the fox's tracks winding their way in and around the trunks, disappearing into the distance. Mary Beth's paw prints ran parallel to them, a little darker in the snow, wider and rounder, like a trail of hockey pucks beneath the trees. The ground was perfectly flat.

We listened to the dog's barking grow fainter and fainter.

On the other side of the road was a field, smooth with snow. I could see tracks there, too, coming toward us from the far horizon, perfectly straight, as if the fox had been walking along one of the field's furrows, masked from view by the snow. In the distance, a little toward the east, I could make out Dwight Pederson's farm -- a stand of trees, a dark red barn, a pair of grain silos, and a two-story house that looked gray against the snowy landscape, though I knew it was actually light blue.

"It had one of Pederson's chickens," I said.

"Stole it." Lou nodded. "Broad daylight."

Jacob whistled for Mary Beth. After a while it seemed like he'd stopped moving away. The barking neither decreased nor increased in volume. We listened to it, tilting our heads toward the woods. I was getting cold -- there was a stiff wind cutting across the road from the field -- and I was eager to climb back inside the truck.

"Call him again," I said.

Jacob ignored me. "She's treed it," he said to Lou.

Lou's hands were deep in the pockets of his jacket. It was an army surplus jacket, white for camouflage in the snow. "That's how it sounds," he said.

"We'll have to go in and get her now," Jacob said.

Lou nodded, took a wool hat from his pocket, and pulled it down over his pink skull.

"Call him once more," I said, but Jacob ignored me again, so I tried calling the dog myself.

"Mary Beth," I yelled. My voice came out pitifully thin in the cold air.

"He's not coming," Lou said.

Jacob shuffled back to the truck and opened the driver's side door. "You don't have to go, Hank," he said. "You can wait here if you want."

I didn't have a hat with me, and I wasn't wearing boots -- I hadn't planned on hiking through the snow -- but I knew that both Jacob and Lou expected me to stay behind, expected me to wait like an old man in the truck, and I knew that they'd joke about it while they made their way off through the trees and tease me when they returned.

So, against my will, I said, "No, I'll go."

Jacob was leaning into the truck, fiddling around in the space behind the seat. When he emerged he was holding a hunting rifle. He took a bullet out of a little cardboard box and loaded it into the gun. Then he put the box back behind the seat.

"There's no reason," he said. "You'll just be cold."

"What's the rifle for?" I asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Lou grinning.

Jacob shrugged. He cradled the gun in his arms, flipped the collar of his jacket up around his ears. His parka was bright red and, like all his clothes, a size too tight for him.

"It's posted land," I said. "You can't hunt here."

Jacob smiled. "It's compensation: that fox's tail for my broken headlight." He glanced toward Lou. "I'm only taking one bullet, like the great white hunter. That seem fair to you?"

"Perfectly," Lou said, drawing out the first syllable so that it sounded like "purrrr."

He and Jacob both laughed. Jacob stepped awkwardly up onto the snowbank at the side of the road, balanced there for a second, as if he might fall backward, then gathered himself and lumbered down into the trees. Lou followed right behind him, still giggling, leaving me alone on the road.

I hesitated there, wavering between the twin sins of comfort and pride. In the end it was pride and the thought of Lou's snickering that carried the day. With something bordering on revulsion, I watched myself climb up over the bank and set off through the snow, hurrying lest they get too far ahead.

THE SNOW was shin deep in the woods, and there were things hidden beneath its smooth surface -- the trunks of fallen trees, stones, broken branches, holes, and stumps -- which made the going much harder than I'd anticipated. Lou led the way, spry, scurrying ratlike between the trees, as if he were being chased. I followed directly in his tracks, and Jacob brought up the rear, a good ways behind us, his face turning a brilliant pink, just a shade lighter than his jacket, with the effort of moving his huge body forward through the snow.

The dog's barking didn't seem to get any closer.

We continued on like this for about fifteen minutes. Then the trees suddenly thinned, and the land dropped away before us into a wide, shallow bowl, as if, millions of years before, a giant meteorite had landed there, carving out its impression in the earth. Parallel lines of stunted, sickly looking trees transversed the hollow -- they were apple trees, the remains of Bernard Anders's orchard.

Lou and I stopped on the edge of the bowl to wait for Jacob. We didn't talk; we were both out of breath. Jacob shouted something through the trees at us, then laughed, but neither of us understood him. I scanned the orchard for the dog, following his paw prints with my eyes. They disappeared in the distance beneath the trees.

"He's not in there," I said.

Lou listened to the dog's barking. It still seemed very far away. "No," he agreed. "He isn't."

I made a complete circle of the horizon with my eyes, taking in both the orchard and the woods behind us. The only thing moving for as far as I could see was Jacob, working his way aggressively through the snow. He still had another fifty yards to go and was progressing at a pathetically slow rate. His jacket was unzipped, and even at that distance I could hear the tortured sound of his breathing. He was using his rifle like a cane, digging its butt into the snow and pulling himself forward by its barrel. Behind him, he'd cut a wide swath of deep, messy tracks, so that it looked as if he'd been dragged through the woods against his will, struggling and kicking the entire way.

By the time he reached us, he was soaked with sweat, his skin actually steaming. Lou and I stood there watching him try to catch his breath.

"Christ," he said, gasping, "I wish we'd brought something to drink." He took off his glasses and wiped them on his jacket, squinting down at the ground as if he half-expected to find a pitcher of water sitting there in the snow.

Lou waved his hand in the air like a magician, snapped his fingers over the right-hand pocket of his jacket, then reached in and pulled out a can of beer. He popped its top, slurped the foam from the lid, and, smiling, offered it to Jacob.

"Always be prepared," he said.

Jacob gulped twice at it, pausing in between to catch his breath. When he finished, he returned the can to Lou. Lou took a long, slow swallow, his head tilted back, his Adam's apple sliding up and down the wall of his throat like a piston. Then he held the can out toward me. It was a Budweiser; I could smell its sweetish scent.

I shook my head, shivering. I'd started to sweat hiking through the snow, and now, standing still, my damp skin was becoming chilled. The muscles in my legs were trembling and jumping.

"Come on," he said. "Have a sip. It won't hurt you."

"I don't want any, Lou. I'm not thirsty."

"Sure you are," he prodded. "You're sweating, aren't you?"

I was about to decline again, this time more forcefully, when Jacob interrupted us.

"Is that a plane?" he asked.

Both Lou and I glanced into the sky, searching the low clouds for movement, ears keyed for the hum of an engine, before realizing that he was pointing down into the orchard. We followed his finger to the very center of the bowl, and there, nestled among the rows of stunted apple trees, hidden almost completely by its covering of snow, was indeed a tiny single-engine airplane.

LOU AND I reached it first, side by side.

The plane was resting perfectly flat on its belly, as if it were a toy and a giant hand had reached down out of the sky to set it there, snug beneath the branches of the trees. There were remarkably few signs of damage. Its propeller was twisted out of shape, its left wing was bent back a bit, tearing a tiny hole in the fuselage, but the land itself was relatively unmarked; there were no upturned trees, no jagged, black gashes in the earth to reveal its path of impact.

Lou and I circled the wreck, neither of us approaching close enough to touch it. The plane was surprisingly small, no bigger really than Jacob's truck, and there was something fragile about it: it seemed far too tiny to support the weight of a man in the air.

Jacob came slowly down into the orchard. The snow had settled more deeply here, and he looked like he was wading or shuffling toward us on his knees. Off in the distance, Mary Beth continued sporadically to bark.

"Jesus," Lou said. "Look at all these birds."

At first I didn't see them -- they were so still in the trees -- but then suddenly, as soon as I saw one, they all seemed to jump out at me. They were everywhere, filling the entire orchard, hundreds and hundreds of black crows perched motionless on the dark, bare branches of the apple trees.

Lou packed some snow into a ball and tossed it at one of them. Three crows lifted into the air, completed a slow half circle over the plane, and settled with a soft fluttering onto a neighboring tree. One of them cawed, once, and the sound of it echoed off the shallow sides of the bowl.

"It's fucking spooky," Lou said, shivering.

Jacob came up, huffing and puffing. His jacket was still unbuttoned, his shirttails hanging out. He took a few seconds to catch his breath.

"Anybody inside?" he asked.

Neither of us answered him. I hadn't even thought about it, but of course there had to be someone inside -- a pilot, dead. I stared uneasily at the plane. Lou threw another snowball at the crows.

"You haven't checked?" Jacob asked.

He handed his rifle to Lou and lumbered up to the plane. There was a door in its side, just behind the damaged wing. He grabbed its handle and gave it a tug. The plane made a loud creaking sound, metal pushing against metal, and the door swung open about five inches, then stopped. Jacob tugged again, putting his weight into it, and got another inch and a half. Then he grabbed the edge of the door with both hands and pulled so hard that the whole plane rocked back and forth, dislodging its shell of snow, revealing the shiny silver metal beneath, but not moving the door at all.

Emboldened by his aggressiveness, I approached the plane more closely. I tried peering in through the windshield but could make nothing out. The glass was spiderwebbed with a tiny, intricate matrix of cracks and frosted over with a thick sheet of ice.

Jacob kept tugging at the door. When he stopped, his breath was coming hard and fast again.

Lou stood a little ways off. He looked like a sentry, with Jacob's rifle cradled in his arms. "It's jammed, I guess," he said. He sounded relieved.

Jacob peered in through the crack he'd made, then pulled his head back.

"Well?" Lou asked.

Jacob shook his head. "Too dark. One of you'll have to go in and check it out." He took off his glasses and wiped at his face with his hand.

"Hank's the smallest," Lou said quickly. "He'll fit the easiest." He winked at Jacob, then grinned toward me.

"I'm smaller than you?"

He patted his little stomach, the beginning of his paunch. "You're thinner. That's what counts."

I looked toward Jacob for help but immediately saw that there'd be none forthcoming. He had a toothy smile on his face, his dimples cutting into his cheeks.

"What do you think, Jacob?" Lou asked.

Jacob started a little laugh but then stopped. "I can't imagine you fitting, Lou," he said seriously. "Not with that gut of yours." They both turned to look at me, straight-faced.

"Why go in at all?" I asked. "What's the point?"

Lou started to grin. A handful of crows flapped heavily into the air, changing trees. It seemed like the whole flock was watching us.

"Why not just get the dog," I said, "then go into town and report this?"

"You scared, Hank?" Lou asked. He shifted the rifle from one arm to the other.

I watched myself cave in, disgusted by the spectacle. I heard a voice in my mind very clearly analyzing the situation, saying I was acting like a teenager, doing something pointless, even foolish, to prove my courage to these two men, neither of whom I respected. The voice went on and on, reasonable, rational, and I listened to it, agreeing with everything it had to say, while I strode angrily around the plane to its open door.

Jacob stepped back to give me room. I stuck my head inside the doorway, let my eyes adjust to the darkness. It seemed even tinier inside than it had outside. The air felt warm, and humid, too, like in a greenhouse. It gave me an eerie feeling. A thin stream of light entered from the tear in the fuselage and shot across the cabin's darkened interior, like a weak flashlight beam, forming a tiny crescent moon against the opposite wall. The rear of the plane was almost completely dark, but it appeared to be empty, a bare metal floor growing narrower and narrower the farther back it went. Just inside the doorway was a large duffel bag lying on its side. If I'd reached in with my hand, I could've grabbed it and dragged it out.

Toward the front, I could see two seats, gray with the light filtering in through the ice-covered windshield. One of them was empty, but there was a man's body slouched in the other, his head resting against the control panel.

I pulled my head out of the doorway.

"I can see him from here."

Jacob and Lou stared at me. "Is he dead?" Jacob asked.

I shrugged. "We haven't had snow since Tuesday, so he's been out here for at least two days."

"You aren't going to check?" Lou asked.

"Let's just get the dog," I said impatiently. I didn't want to go into the plane. It seemed stupid of them to make me.

"I think we ought to check." Lou grinned.

"Come on, Lou. Cut the crap. He can't be alive."

"Two days isn't that long," Jacob said. "I've heard of people surviving stuff longer than that."

"Especially in the cold," Lou agreed. "It's like keeping food in the refrigerator."

I waited for the wink, but it didn't come.

"Just go in and check him out," Jacob said. "What's the big deal?"

I frowned, feeling trapped. I stuck my head back inside the plane for a second, then pulled it out again. "Can you at least scrape the ice off the windshield?" I asked Jacob.

He gave a deep, theatrical sigh, more for Lou's benefit than mine, but nevertheless shuffled off toward the front of the plane.

I started to squeeze my way in through the doorway. I turned sideways and slipped my head and shoulders inside, but when I got to my chest, the opening seemed suddenly to tighten, gripping me like a hand. I tried to pull back, only to find that my jacket and shirt were snagged. They bunched up under my armpits, exposing the skin above my pants to the cold air.

Jacob's bulk darkened the windshield, and I heard him start to scrape at the ice with his glove. I watched, waiting for it to get lighter, but nothing happened. He started to pound -- dull, heavy thuds that echoed through the plane's fuselage like a heartbeat.

I exhaled as far as possible and lunged forward. The doorway's grip moved from my sternum to just above my navel. I was about to try again, thinking that one more push would do it, that I could get in, examine the dead pilot, and get out as quickly as possible, when I saw a curious thing. The pilot appeared to be moving. His head, resting against the dashboard, seemed to be shaking ever so slightly back and forth.

"Hey," I whispered. "Hey, buddy. You all right?" My voice echoed off the plane's metal walls.

Jacob continued to pound against the glass. Thump. Thump. Thump.

"Hey," I said, louder, slapping the fuselage with my glove.

I heard Lou move closer in the snow behind me.

"What?" he asked.

Jacob's hand went thump, thump, thump.

The pilot's head was motionless, and suddenly I wasn't so sure. I tried to squeeze forward. Jacob stopped pounding.

"Tell him I can't get it off," he yelled.

"He's stuck," Lou said gleefully. "Look at this."

I felt his hands grab me just above the waist. His fingers dug in, a rough attempt at tickling. I kicked out with my right leg, hitting air, and lost my footing in the snow. The doorway's grip held me up. Lou's and Jacob's laughter came filtering inside, muted and far away.

"You do it," Lou said to Jacob.

I was pushing and pulling now, not even sure which way I wanted to go, just trying to get free, my feet digging into the snow outside, the weight of my body rocking the plane, when there was a sudden flash of movement up front.

I couldn't tell what it was at first. There was the sense of the pilot's head being tossed to the side, then something exploding upward, rising and pounding frantically against the inside of the windshield. Not exactly pounding, I realized slowly, but fluttering. It was a bird, a large black crow, like the ones sitting in the apple trees outside.

It came off the windshield and settled on the rear of the pilot's seat. I watched its head dart back and forth. Carefully, noiselessly, I tried to work my way backward out of the doorway. But then the bird was airborne again; it smacked once into the windshield, bounced off, and flew straight at me. I froze at the sight of it, simply watched it come, and only at the very last moment, just before it hit me, pulled my head down into my shoulders.

It struck me in the exact center of my forehead, hard, with what felt like its beak. I heard myself cry out -- a short, sharp, canine sound -- pulled back, then forward, somehow broke free from the doorway, and fell into the plane's interior. I landed on the duffel bag and didn't try to get up. The bird returned toward the front, bounced off the windshield, flew back toward the now open doorway, but veered to the right before reaching it, shooting up toward the jagged little hole in the fuselage. It perched there for a second, then wormed its way through like a rat and disappeared.

I heard Lou laugh. "Holy shit," he said. "A fucking bird. You see that, Jake?"

I touched my forehead. It was burning a little, and my glove came away bloody. I slid off the duffel bag, which was hard and angular, as if it were full of books, and sat down on the floor of the plane. A rectangle of light from the open doorway fell across my legs.

Jacob stuck his head inside, his body blocking the light.

"You see that bird?" he asked. I could tell he was smiling, even though I couldn't make out his face.

"It bit me."

"It bit you?" He didn't seem to believe me. He waited there a moment, then pulled his head away from the door. "The bird bit him," he said to Lou. Lou giggled.

Jacob darkened the doorway again. "You all right?"

I didn't respond. I was angry at both of them, felt that none of this would've happened if they hadn't pressured me into going inside. I moved in a crouch toward the front of the plane.

I could hear Lou's voice, faintly. "You think birds carry rabies or anything?"

Jacob didn't answer him.

The pilot was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. He was a small, thin man, young, in his twenties. I came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.

"You alive?" I whispered.

His arms hung down at his sides, his fingertips just barely brushing the floor. His hands were swollen, impossibly large, like inflated rubber gloves, their fingers curling slightly inward. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and I could see the hair on his forearms, dark black against the ghostly whiteness of his skin. I grasped his shoulder and pulled him away from the dashboard. His head fell back heavily against the seat, and I flinched at the sight of it, jerking myself up and banging my own head against the plane's low metal ceiling.

His eyes had been eaten out by the bird. Their dark sockets stared at me, his head rolling a bit to the right on his neck. The flesh around his eyes had been chewed completely away. I could see his cheekbones, white in the dim light, pale and translucent, like plastic. There was a bloody icicle coming out of his nose. It hung all the way down to the base of his chin.

I stepped back, fighting a surge of nausea. Yet even as I did so I felt myself strangely drawn forward. It was something like curiosity, but stronger: I felt an absurd desire to take off my gloves and touch the man's face. It was a powerful, morbid pull, and I had no name for it, but I fought it, taking another step back, then another, and by the time I made my fourth step, the feeling was gone, replaced only by revulsion. The pilot's face stared after me as I retreated toward the doorway. From a distance its expression looked beseeching, mournfully so, like a raccoon's.

"What the fuck're you doing?" Jacob asked. He was still in the doorway.

I didn't answer him. My heart was beating thickly in my temples. I stumbled against the duffel bag, turned and kicked it ahead of me toward the doorway. It was surprisingly heavy, as if it were full of dirt, and its weight brought back my initial wave of nausea.

"What's the matter?" Jacob asked. I shuffled toward him, pushing the bag across the floor. He backed away.

When I got to the door, I set my shoulder against it and -- using my increased leverage -- managed to creak it open another three inches. Jacob and Lou watched me, their faces curious, wavering between amusement and apprehension. The day seemed brighter than it had before, but it was just my eyes. I squeezed the duffel bag through the door, then followed it out into the snow.

"You're bleeding, Hank," Jacob said. He raised his hand to his own forehead, turned toward Lou. "That bird bit him."

Lou scrutinized my forehead. I could feel a little line of blood running down into my left eyebrow. It was cold against my skin.

"It ate out his eyes," I said.

Jacob and Lou stared blankly at me.

"The bird. It sat in the pilot's lap and ate out his eyes."

Jacob grimaced. Lou gave me a skeptical look.

"You can see his skull," I said. "See the bone." I crouched down, scooped up some snow, and held it, burning, against my forehead.

The wind had picked up a little, and the apple trees in the orchard were swaying in it, creaking. The crows on their branches had to lift their wings every now and then to keep their balance. The light was beginning to fade and, with it, whatever warmth there had been to the day.

I took the snow away from my forehead. It was light brown with blood. I removed my glove and touched the cut with my finger. It was cold from the snow, and tender. There was a bump rising up, as if a marble or a tiny egg had been planted just beneath my skin.

"You've got a little bump," Jacob said. His rifle was slung over his left shoulder; his jacket was buttoned up.

Lou crouched down beside the duffel bag. It was closed with a tightly knotted drawstring, and he had to take off his gloves before he could undo it. Jacob and I watched him work at it. When he got it loose, he opened the bag.

As he looked inside, his expression went through a remarkable transformation. There was an initial hint of perplexity, his eyes opening wide, as if trying to focus better, his eyebrows rising slightly; but this was followed quickly by signs of excitement and amusement, his face flushing a deep crimson, his lips pulling back in a smile to reveal his crooked teeth. Watching him, I felt sure that I didn't want to know what the bag contained.

"Holy fucking shit," he said. He reached inside and hesitantly touched whatever was there, a petting motion, as if it were alive and he was afraid it might bite.

"What?" Jacob asked. He moved heavily toward Lou through the snow.

With a sinking sensation, remembering the bag's weight, I decided suddenly that it must be a body, or parts of a body.

"It's money," Lou said, smiling up at Jacob. "Look." He leaned the bag forward.

Jacob bent over and squinted at it, his mouth dropping open. I looked, too. It was full of money, packets held together with thin paper bands.

"Hundred-dollar bills," Lou said. He took one of the packets out, held it up in the air before his face.

"Don't touch it," I said, rising to my feet. "You'll get fingerprints on it."

He glanced sourly at me but returned the packet to the bag. Then he put his gloves back on.

"How much do you think is here?" Jacob asked. They both looked toward me, deferring to my accountant's knowledge.

"Ten thousand to a packet," I said. I measured the bag with my eyes, tried to guess how many packets could fit inside. "It's probably close to three million dollars." I said this without really thinking. Then, when I thought about it, it seemed absurd. I didn't believe it.

Lou picked up another packet, this time with his gloves on.

"Don't touch it, Lou," I said.

"My gloves are on."

"The police'll want to get prints from the packets. You'll smudge any that are already there."

He frowned but dropped the packet back into the bag.

"Is it real?" Jacob asked.

"Of course it's real," Lou said. "Don't be stupid."

Jacob ignored him. "You think it's drug money?" he asked me.

I shrugged. "It's from a bank." I gestured toward the bag. "That's how they sort money. A hundred bills to a packet."

Mary Beth appeared suddenly on the opposite rim of the orchard, working his way down through the snow toward the plane. He looked dejected, as if we'd let him down by not joining in on his pursuit of the fox. We all watched him approach, but no one commented on his return. One of the crows cawed at him, a warning cry, and it hung for a second, sharp and clear in the crisp air, like a note from a bugle.

"This is crazy," I said. "That guy must've robbed a bank."

Jacob shook his head in disbelief. "Three million dollars."

Mary Beth came around the front of the plane, wagging his tail. He gave us a sad, tired look. Jacob crouched down and patted absentmindedly at the dog's head.

"I suppose you're going to want to turn it in," Lou said.

I looked at him, shocked. Up till that point I hadn't even considered that we had an option. "You want to keep it?"

He glanced toward Jacob for support, then back at me. "Why not each keep a packet? Ten thousand dollars apiece, and turn the rest in?"

"For starters, it's stealing."

Lou gave a quick snort of disgust. "Stealing from who? From him?" He waved toward the plane. "He won't mind."

"It's a lot of money," I said. "Somebody knows it's missing, and they're looking for it. I guarantee that."

"You're saying you'd turn me in, if I took a packet?" He picked one of the packets out of the bag, held it out toward me.

"I wouldn't have to. Whoever's looking for it knows how much is missing. If we hand it in a little short and you start spending hundred-dollar bills around town, it won't take them long to figure out what happened."

Lou waved this aside. "I'm willing to take the risk," he said, flashing a smile from me to Jacob. Jacob smiled back.

I frowned at them both. "Don't be stupid, Lou."

Lou continued to grin. He slipped the packet into his coat, then picked a second one out of the bag and handed it to Jacob. Jacob took it but couldn't seem to decide what to do with it. He crouched there, his rifle in one gloved hand, the money in the other, looking expectantly at me. Mary Beth rolled in the snow at his feet.

"I don't think you'd turn me in," Lou said. "And I know you wouldn't turn your brother in."

"Get me near a phone, Lou, and you'll see."

"You'd turn me in?" he asked.

I tried to snap my fingers, but with gloves on they didn't make any sound. "Like that."

"But why? It's not like it'd harm anyone."

Jacob was still crouched there, the money in his hand. "Put it back, Jacob," I said. He didn't move.

"It's different for you," Lou said. "You've got your job at the feedstore. Jacob and I don't have that. This money'd matter to us."

His voice had edged itself toward a whine, and, hearing it, I felt a revelatory flash of power. The dynamic of our relationship had shifted, I realized. I was in control now; I was the spoiler, the one who would decide what happened to the money. I smiled at Lou.

"I'd still get in trouble if you took it. You'd fuck up, and I'd be considered an accomplice."

Jacob started to stand up, then crouched back down again. "Why not take all of it?" he asked, looking from Lou to me.

"All of it?" I said. The idea seemed preposterous, and I started to laugh, but it made my forehead ache. I winced, probing at the bump with my fingers. It was still bleeding a little.

"Just take the bag," he said, "leave the dead guy in there, pretend we were never here."

Lou nodded eagerly, pouncing on the idea. "Split it three ways."

"We'd get caught as soon as we started spending it," I said. "Imagine the three of us suddenly throwing hundred-dollar bills around at the stores in town."

Jacob shook his head. "We could wait awhile, then leave town, start up new lives."

"A million apiece," Lou said. "Think about it."

"You just don't get away with something like that." I sighed. "You end up doing something stupid, and you get caught."

"Don't you see, Hank?" Jacob asked, his voice rising with impatience. "It's like this money doesn't even exist. No one knows about it but us."

"It's three million dollars, Jacob. It's missing from somewhere. You can't tell me no one's searching for it."

"If people were searching for it, we would've heard by now. There would've been something on the news."

"It's drug money," Lou said. "It's all under the table. The government doesn't know about any of it."

"You don't--" I started, but Lou cut me off.

"Jesus, Hank. All this money staring you right in the face. It's the American dream, and you just want to walk away from it."

"You work for the American dream, Lou. You don't steal it."

"Then this is even better than the American dream."

"What reason would you have for turning it in?" Jacob asked. "No one's going to get hurt by our taking it. No one's going to know."

"It's stealing, Jacob. Isn't that enough?"

"It's not stealing," he said firmly. "It's like lost treasure, like a chest full of gold."

There was some sense in what he was saying, I could see that, yet at the same time it seemed like we were overlooking something. Mary Beth made a whimpering sound in the snow, and Jacob, without taking his eyes off my face, began to pet him. The crows sat quietly in the surrounding trees, hunch shouldered against the cold, like miniature vultures. Darkness was falling quickly all around us.

"Come on, Hank," Lou said. "Don't fuck this up."

I still didn't say anything -- I was hesitating, wavering. As much as I delighted in my power over Lou and Jacob, I didn't want to do something I'd later regret merely to contradict them. Without even realizing it, without even intending to do it, I began searching for a way to take the packets. And it was like magic, too, like a gift from the gods, the ease with which a solution came to me, a simple plan, a way to keep the money without fear of getting caught. I could just sit on it, hiding it away until the plane was discovered. If someone found the wreck and there was no mention of a missing three million dollars, I'd split it up with Lou and Jacob and we could go our separate ways. But if, on the other hand, it seemed like someone knew the money was missing, I'd burn it. The duffel bag and the packets themselves would be the only evidence that could be held against me. Up until the very instant I gave Lou and Jacob their shares, I'd be in complete control. I could erase my crime at a moment's notice.

Looking back on it now, after all that's happened, it seems insane with what little fear I picked this path. It took me perhaps twenty seconds, a third of a minute's worth of debate. For a brief instant I was in complete control, not only of the money's destiny but also of my own, and Jacob's, and Lou's, yet I was utterly unconscious of this, had no feel for the weight of my decision, could not sense how, within the next few seconds, I was going to set into motion a series of events that would radically transform each of our lives. In my ignorance, my choice seemed straightforward, unambiguous: if I were to give up the duffel bag now, it'd be an irrevocable step -- I'd hand it over to the sheriff, and it'd be gone forever. My plan, on the other hand, would allow me to postpone a decision until we had more information. I'd be taking a step, but not one that I couldn't undo.

"All right," I said. "Put the money back."

Neither of them moved.

"We're keeping it?" Lou asked.

"I'm keeping it."

"You're keeping it?" Jacob said. "What do you mean, you're keeping it?"

"This is what we're doing. I keep it for six months. If no one comes looking for it during that period, then we'll split it up."

Jacob and Lou stared at me, taking this in.

"Why do you keep it?" Lou asked.

"I'm the safest. I have a family, a job. I've got the most to lose."

"Why not split it up now?" he asked. "We each sit on our own shares?"

I shook my head. "This is how we're doing it. If you don't want it like this, we can turn it in now. That's the choice I'm offering you."

"You don't trust us?" Jacob asked.

"No," I said. "I guess I don't."

He nodded at that but didn't say anything.

"They'll discover the plane before six months is up," Lou said. "Spring'll come and somebody'll find it."

"Then we'll see for sure if anyone knows there was money on it."

"And if someone knows?" Jacob asked.

"Then I'll burn it. The only way we'll keep it is if there's absolutely no chance of getting caught. As soon as it seems like we might be in trouble, I'll get rid of the money."

"You'll burn it," Lou said, disgusted.

"That's right. Every last bill."

Neither of them spoke. We all stared down at the duffel bag.

"We don't tell anyone," I said. I looked at Lou. "Not even Nancy." Nancy was Lou's live-in girlfriend. She worked in a beauty parlor over in Sylvania.

"She's got to know eventually," he said. "She's gonna wonder where all my money's coming from."

"She can know when we decide that it's safe to keep it. Not a moment sooner."

"Then the same thing holds for Sarah," he said.

I nodded, as if this went without saying. "We'll continue to live like normal. I'm just asking you to hold off for six months. It'll be there, waiting for you. You'll know it's there."

They were both silent, thinking.

"All right?" I asked. I looked first at Lou, then at Jacob. Lou was scowling at me, as if he were angry. He didn't say anything. Jacob shrugged, hesitated a second, then nodded. He dropped his packet back into the bag.

"Lou?" I said.

Lou didn't move. Jacob and I stared at him, waiting. Finally, with a grimace, as if it pained him to do it, he pulled the wad of money from his jacket, stared at it for a moment, and then, very slowly, slid it into the bag.

"We count it before you take it," he said, his voice low, almost a growl.

I smiled at him, even grinned. It seemed funny that he didn't trust me.

"All right," I said. "That's probably a good idea."

2

IT WAS getting dark now, so we decided to return to the truck and count the money there. As we hiked back toward the road, Jacob and Lou started talking about what they were going to do with their newfound wealth. Jacob wanted a snowmobile, a wide-screen TV, a big fishing boat that he'd name Hidden Treasure. Lou said he was going to invest half his share in the stock market and spend the rest on a beach house in Florida with a deck, a hot tub, and a wet bar. I just listened, wanting all the time to warn them not to make plans, that we might not be able to keep it, but for some reason remaining silent.

Lou and I carried the duffel bag together, walking sideways, each of us holding an end, and it slowed us down enough for Jacob to keep up. Jacob talked the whole way, chattering like a child. You could feel his excitement -- it was something palpable; he exuded it like a scent.

The temperature began to drop as soon as the sun went down, glazing the surface of the snow into an icy skin, which we broke through each time we took a step. There was very little light beneath the trees. Branches seemed to jump out at us as we walked, appearing suddenly from the darkness directly before our faces, making us duck and weave as we moved forward, like a trio of boxers.

It took us nearly thirty minutes to reach the road. When we got there, Jacob put his rifle back behind the truck's front seat and started searching for his flashlight, while Lou and I emptied the money onto the tailgate. We were both a little stunned, I think, at the number of packets that spilled from the bag, mesmerized by the sight of so much wealth, and that's probably why we didn't notice the sheriff's truck until it was almost upon us. Perhaps if we'd seen it earlier, if we'd made out its headlights when they were still hovering on the edge of the horizon, two yellow pinpricks moving slowly toward us, I would've acted differently. I would've had time to think things through, to consider my options with a little more care, so that when the truck finally got close enough for me to make out the bubble light on its roof, I might've decided to tell Sheriff Jenkins about the plane. I could've shown him the money, explained how we were just about to call him up on the CB, and, by doing that, I would've ended the whole thing right then and there, would've handed it to the sheriff in a nice, tidy bundle, disposing of it before it had a chance to unravel and entangle us all.

But it didn't happen like that: the truck was no more than two hundred yards away when we noticed it. We heard it first, heard its engine, the crunch of its tires against the frozen road. Lou and I looked up at the same time. A half second later Jacob pulled his head from behind the seat.

"Shit," I heard him say.

Without thinking, acting purely on instinct, like an animal burying its store of food, I slammed shut the tailgate. The money tumbled out across the truck bed, the packets making a soft thumping sound against the metal floor. We'd dropped the duffel bag to the ground after we'd emptied it, and I bent to pick it up now. I draped it across the money, covering it as best I could.

"Go up front with Jacob," I whispered to Lou. "Let me do the talking."

Lou shuffled quickly away, his head bowed. Then the sheriff was there, his brakes squeaking as he came to a stop on the opposite side of the road. He leaned across the seat to roll down the window, and I stepped out to greet him.

Technically Carl Jenkins wasn't really a sheriff, though that's what everyone called him. Sheriff was a county position, and Carl worked for the town. He was Ashenville's only policeman, a position he'd held for nearly forty years. People called him Sheriff simply from a lack of any other possible title of respect.

"Hank Mitchell!" he said as I came toward him, his whole face smiling, as if he'd been driving along just now hoping he'd run into me. I didn't know him that well; we were no more than nodding acquaintances, but I always felt like he was sincerely pleased to see me. I think he made everyone feel that way, even strangers; he had that quality about him, a disarmingly unguarded avuncularity, a smile that caught you by surprise.

He was a small man, shorter than I. His face was perfectly round, with a wide, shiny forehead and a small, thin-lipped mouth. There was an air of properness about him, an elegance: his khaki uniform was invariably perfectly pressed, his nails clipped, his thick white hair combed and carefully parted. He smiled often and always had a clean, freshly scrubbed smell about him, a sweetish mixture of talcum powder and shoe polish.

I stopped a few feet short of his truck.

"Engine trouble?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Dog trouble." I felt remarkably calm. The money was just a small thought in the very back of my head. I could tell he wasn't going to get out of his truck, so I knew we wouldn't have a problem. I told him about the fox.

"He treed it?" Carl asked.

"We thought so, but we didn't get more than a hundred yards into the park before he came running back."

Carl peered at me over the rim of his half-raised window, a look of concern on his face. "What happened to your head?"

I touched the bump with my hand, then waved out toward the woods. "Walked into a branch," I said. It was the first thing I thought of.

He continued to stare at me for another second or so, then glanced off toward Jacob and Lou. They'd both given him a wave when he pulled up, but now they'd climbed inside Jacob's truck. Their faces were close together, practically touching, and they were talking in what I could only call a conspiratorial manner. Lou was speaking, gesturing excitedly with his hands, and Jacob was nodding at what he said. Mary Beth was sitting on Jacob's lap, staring out the window at us.

"They been drinking?" Carl asked quietly.

"Not yet," I said. "Jacob and I were at the cemetery this afternoon."

"The cemetery?"

I nodded. "Visiting my parents' graves. This is the day we always do it."

"New Year's Eve?" His face lit up. He seemed to enjoy the idea of this.

"I took the day off," I said.

Carl reached forward and flicked a switch on the dashboard, turning the truck's heater to high. There was a warm, rushing sound inside the cab. "Is Jacob still out of work?" he asked.

"He's looking," I lied, feeling the usual flood of embarrassment I experienced whenever my brother's joblessness became a topic of conversation.

"Lou working?"

"No. I don't think so."

Carl shook his head sadly, staring across the road at them. "That's a shame, isn't it? Two grown men, both eager for work. This country..." He trailed off, seemingly lost in thought.

"Well," I started, "we should probably--"

"Lou used to coach baseball," Carl said, cutting me off. "At a boy's camp up in Michigan. Used to be one hell of a shortstop. You know that?"

"No," I said. "I'd never heard that before."

"You wouldn't guess it looking at him now. But there was a time..."

Jacob's truck made a creaking sound as he pushed open his door. Carl fell silent, and we both watched my brother squeeze himself out onto the road and lumber toward us.

"Hello, Jacob," Carl said. "I was beginning to think maybe you were trying to avoid me."

Jacob smiled sheepishly. It was his usual expression when approaching figures of authority. As soon as I saw it, I remembered it from our childhood. It was how he'd looked when a teacher called on him in school.

"I was just cold," he said. "I wanted to get in the truck and warm up a bit."

"Hank tells me you two were visiting your parents' graves today."

Jacob glanced at me, then gave Carl a hesitant nod.

"That's a good thing," Carl said, "a real good thing. I hope my kids do the same for me when I'm gone."

"My dad made us," Jacob said. "It was in his will."

Carl didn't seem to hear him. "I remember your father," he started, but then seemed immediately to think better of it, as if suddenly unsure that it was actually our father he remembered and not some other deceased native of Ashenville. He shook his head. "A good man," he said. "An exceptionally good man."

Neither Jacob nor I could come up with a way to respond to that. There was a moment's silence, which Jacob ended finally by saying, "You tell him about the plane?"

I looked at him in shock. He had a big grin on his face, his fat cheeks ridged with dimples, his lips pulling back to show his teeth. He glanced toward me, and, for a second, I was afraid he might even wink.

"What's this?" Carl asked. He looked from Jacob to me.

"Hank and I were driving by here on Tuesday, this exact same stretch of road, and we thought we heard a plane going down."

"A plane?"

Jacob nodded. "It was snowing pretty hard, and we couldn't be sure, but it sounded exactly like a plane having engine trouble."

Carl stared at him, eyebrows raised, waiting. I tried to think of something to say, some way to change the subject, but nothing came. I stood there, angrily willing Jacob to shut his mouth.

"There haven't been any reports of a missing plane?" he asked.

"No," Carl said slowly, drawing it out, as if to show that he was thinking while he talked, taking what Jacob had told him seriously. "Can't say I've heard anything like that." He glanced at me again. "You just heard an engine? No crash?"

I forced myself to nod.

"Could've been anything then. A motorcycle, a snowmobile, a chain saw." He waved across the fields toward the southeast. "Maybe it was something Dwight Pederson was tinkering with."

We all turned and stared at the Pederson place. There were lights on in the downstairs windows, but the barn and outbuildings were lost in the darkness.

"If you do hear anything," Jacob said, still wearing his clownish smile, "you should give us a call. We could show you where we were."

"I'm sure it would've been reported by now," Carl said. "Planes don't just drop out of the sky without people noticing them missing."

I looked at my watch, trying to cut things off before Jacob had a chance to say anything more. "You're probably eager to get home, Carl. It's after five."

He shook his head, sighing. "I've got a late one tonight, New Year's Eve and all. Apt to be some drinkers out driving." He looked at Jacob. "I trust you won't be one of them."

Jacob's smile faded from his face. "No. You don't have to worry about me."

Carl stared at him for a second, as if expecting him to say something more. Then he turned toward me. "How's Sarah getting along? She must be about due, if I'm not mistaken."

"End of January," I said. My wife was eight months pregnant with our first child.

"You'll have to wish her a happy new year from me," Carl said. He began to roll up his window. "And tell Lou not to be so shy next time. I won't bite."

CARL drove off while we were climbing into the truck. He continued westward, away from Ashenville.

"Just drive for a bit, Jacob," I said. "Don't follow him. Head back toward town."

Jacob started the engine. It took him a while to turn around on the narrow road.

"Go slowly," I said. I was afraid that some of the packets might blow out of the truck bed if we went too fast.

Nobody spoke until we were on our way. Then, as we were crossing the bridge over Anders Creek, I said, "Whose idea was that? To ask him about the plane?" I leaned forward so I could see both of them. Lou was sitting in the center, with the dog in his lap. He had his arms around him, hugging him to his chest. Neither of them answered me.

"Was it yours, Lou?" I'd meant to question them calmly, to rationally show them the danger of what they'd done, but my voice betrayed me, coming out tight and full of anger.

Lou shrugged. "We thought it up together."

"Why?" I asked.

"So we could find out if anyone was looking for the plane," Jacob said. His voice sounded triumphant, as if he felt he'd outwitted me. "And not only that, but now if someone does come looking for it, Carl'll call us first. That way we won't be surprised."

"You've just decided to steal three million dollars, and the first thing you do is interrogate the sheriff about it. Doesn't that seem even the slightest bit foolish to you?"

"We found out that no one's looking for it," Jacob said. "We never would've known that if we hadn't asked."

"It was stupid, Jacob. If they find the plane now, and they realize that the money's missing, he's going to know right off who took it."

"But that's the beauty of it. There's no way we'd have mentioned it to him if we were the ones who took the money."

"Promise me you won't do anything like this again."

He smiled at me. "Don't you see how sneaky it is? Our asking him about the plane puts us on his side."

"It was a risk," I said. "It was stupid."

"But it paid off. We found out--"

"This isn't a game, Jacob. We've committed a crime. We could go to jail for what we've done tonight."

"Come on, Hank," Lou said. "No one's going to send us to jail for this. None of us has records, we aren't criminals. Anyone would've done what we did."

"You're saying we didn't commit a crime?"

"I'm saying they wouldn't send us to jail for it. Even if they convicted us, we'd get a suspended sentence."

"Especially if we hadn't spent any of the money yet," Jacob said. "I think--"

"I don't care what you think," I said, my voice rising toward a shout. "If I feel like you're taking unnecessary risks, I'll burn the money." I looked from Jacob to Lou. "Do you understand?"

Neither of them said anything.

"I'm not going to jail because of something stupid you two idiots have done."

They both stared at me, shocked by my outburst. Mary Beth made a whimpering sound in Lou's arms. I looked out the window. We were on Burnt Road, moving south, surrounded by fields.

I took a deep breath, tried to calm myself down. "I just want you to be careful," I said.

"We'll be careful, Hank," Jacob said quickly. "Of course we'll be careful."

Lou didn't say anything, but I could sense him, even with my head turned toward the window, grinning at Jacob.

"Stop the truck," I said. "We can count it here."

JACOB pulled off onto the edge of the road, and we climbed outside into the cold. We were about three miles west of town. Snow-covered fields lined either side of the road, and there were no houses in sight, no lights of any sort. If a car had approached us from either direction, we would've been able to see it for nearly a mile before it reached us.

Jacob and Lou counted the money; I stood behind them with a flashlight. Mary Beth remained inside the empty cab, sleeping on the seat. They organized the packets into stacks; each stack was ten packets high. It seemed to take forever to count them. I divided my attention equally between the piles of money and the surrounding horizon, alert for approaching lights.

The night was very quiet. The wind hissed across the empty fields; the snow made an occasional creaking sound as it settled alongside the road; and over it all, soft but insistent, came the steady shuffling hush, like cards being dealt at a casino, of Jacob and Lou counting the packets into piles.

When they finished, there were forty-four stacks lined up one after the other along the truck's tailgate. It was $4.4 million.

It took a little while for this to sink in. We stood there, gazing at the money. Lou counted the stacks again, touching the top packet of each one with his forefinger.

"How much is that apiece?" Jacob whispered.

I had to think for a second. "Almost a million and a half."

We continued to stare at the money, stunned.

"Put it away," I said finally, shivering in the cold. I handed Jacob the duffel bag and watched it grow solid as he slowly refilled it.

When all the money was inside, I took it back to the cab.

LOU LIVED southwest of Ashenville, in the opposite direction from me, and we drove there first. It was getting colder and colder; a fretwork of ice was forming along the edge of the windshield. The torn rear window flapped in the wind, sending a steady stream of frigid air pulsing through the cab. Mary Beth rode in the back, huddled halfway into the truck, right up against our necks, so that I could hear him breathing in my ear. The bag of money was resting on the floor, wedged tightly between my legs. I held the top shut with my hand.

It was quarter till seven by the time we reached Lou's.

Nancy's car was in the yard, and there were lights on in the house. It was a large, run-down farmhouse, ancient, one of the oldest surviving homes in the area. Lou and Nancy rented it from Sonny Major, whose grandfather had once owned all the surrounding fields, growing corn and cabbage in them; he'd been one of the region's gentry in the high days before the Depression. Things had gone downhill since then. Sonny's father had sold nearly all the land over the years, except for two thin strips along the road. One of these supported the farmhouse; the other, a smaller plot about three quarters of a mile to the south, had a tiny, rusted-out house trailer on it. Sonny lived in the trailer, alone, within sight of the house he'd grown up in. He called himself a carpenter but survived chiefly off the money he made from Lou and Nancy's rent.

Jacob parked in the driveway, leaving the engine on. Lou opened the door and climbed outside, hesitating for a second before shutting it.

"I was thinking we might each take a packet now," he said. "Just to celebrate with." He smiled at me.

I slid over toward the door, keeping the duffel bag between my legs. Mary Beth climbed in through the window, his fur smelling fresh and cold. He shook himself and then sat down on the seat, leaning up against Jacob. Jacob put his arm around the dog.

"Forget about the money, Lou," I said.

He wiped at his nose with his hand. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing's going to change in your life for the next six months," I said.

Jacob patted Mary Beth's side, a hollow sound. There were trees clustered around Lou's house, huge ones with thick, gray trunks rising up tall against the blackness of the night sky. They were swaying a little in the wind, their branches clicking together. Down the road Sonny's trailer was completely dark. He wasn't home.

"All I'm asking for--" Lou started, but I shook my head, cutting him off.

"You aren't hearing me, Lou. What I'm saying is, don't ask."

I leaned over and pulled shut the door. He stared at me for a moment, through the window, then exchanged a quick glance with Jacob before turning and walking slowly up his driveway.

IT TOOK forty minutes to drive from Lou's house to mine. Jacob and I covered much of this distance in silence, sunk in our own private thoughts. I replayed my encounter with Carl. I'd lied to him; it'd come easily, naturally, and I was surprised by this. I'd never been successful at deceit before. Even as a child I couldn't lie; I hadn't had the self-confidence for it -- the essential calmness -- and had always ended up either giving myself away or breaking down and confessing. As I reviewed my talk with Carl, though, I could find no weak points, no holes in my story. Jacob had overstepped, it was true, asking about the plane, but I realized now that what he'd said wasn't as compromising as it had originally seemed. Perhaps, as he claimed, it might even help us.

I hardly thought of the money. I hadn't yet allowed myself to begin considering it as my own. It was too vast a sum for me to personalize; it seemed abstract, a mere number, nothing more. I felt an edge of lawlessness, it's true -- a cool, cocky feeling rippling with a terrible fear of getting caught -- but it stemmed more from my mendacity with Carl than from any understanding of the magnitude of our theft.

Jacob had pulled a candy bar from the glove compartment and was chewing at it while he drove. The dog sat on the seat beside him, his ears erect, watching him eat. We were on Highway 17 now, making our way into the outskirts of Delphia. Trees were springing up alongside the road, houses beginning to cluster into subdivisions. The traffic slowly thickened. I was almost home.

The thought came to me suddenly, in a little jolt of panic, that if we were to be caught, it would be because of Lou.

"Lou'll tell Nancy, won't he?" I said to Jacob.

"Will you tell Sarah?" he asked.

"I agreed not to."

Jacob shrugged, took a bite from his candy bar. "Lou agreed not to tell Nancy."

I frowned, dismayed. I knew that I was going to tell Sarah about the money as soon as I got home -- I couldn't imagine not telling her -- and this knowledge seemed to confirm my reservations about Lou. He'd tell Nancy, and one of them would screw it up.

I reached over and adjusted the rearview mirror so that I could look at my forehead. Jacob turned on the dome light for me. When I touched it, the bump felt smooth and hard, like a pebble. The skin directly above it was shiny and taut, while the area around it was taking on a purplish tint, a painful-looking darkness, as blood coagulated within the damaged tissue. I licked the thumb of my glove and briefly tried to clean the wound.

"How do you think that thing knew he was in there?" Jacob asked.

"The bird?"

He nodded.

"It's like a vulture. They just know."

"Vultures see you, though. They see you crawling in the desert. That's how they know you're dying, if you're crawling or just lying there. That thing couldn't see inside the plane."

"Maybe it smelled him."

"Frozen things don't smell."

"It just knew, Jacob," I said.

He nodded, three short, quick movements of his head. "That's right," he said. "That's exactly my point." He took another bite of his candy bar, then fed the last little bit to Mary Beth. The dog seemed to swallow it without chewing.

When we pulled into my driveway, I sat there for a few seconds before climbing out, staring off through the windshield. The house's front light was on, illuminating the trees in the yard, their branches glistening with ice. The living-room curtains were drawn, and there was smoke coming from the chimney.

"You and Lou going out tonight?" I asked. "Celebrating the new year?"

It was cold in the truck; I could see our breath in the air, even the dog's. The sky outside was cloudy, starless.

"I suppose."

"With Nancy?"

"If she wants."

"Drinking?"

"Look, Hank. You don't have to be so hard on Lou. You can trust him. He wants this just as bad as you -- more so, probably. He's not going to mess it up."

"I'm not saying I don't trust him. I'm saying he's ignorant and a drunk."

"Oh, Hank--"

"No, hear me out." I waited until he turned to face me. "I'm asking you to take responsibility for him."

He put his arm around the dog. "What do you mean, responsibility?"

"What I mean is, if he fucks up, it's your fault. I'll hold you to blame."

Jacob turned away from me and looked outside. All up and down the street my neighbors' windows were full of light. People were finishing their dinners, showering, dressing, busily preparing for their New Year's celebrations.

"Who takes responsibility for me?" he asked.

"I do. I'll look after the both of us." I smiled at him. "I'll be my brother's keeper."

It came out like a joke, but I only half meant it that way. All through our childhood our father had told us how we ought to take care of each other, how we couldn't depend on anyone else. "Family," he used to say, "that's what it always comes down to in the end: the bonds of blood." Jacob and I had never managed to pull it off, though; even as children we were always letting each other down. Because of his weight, he'd been mercilessly teased at school and was constantly getting into fights. I knew that I was supposed to help him, that I ought to be jumping to his defense, but I could never figure out a way to do it. I was weak, small for my age, a thin, bony kid, and I'd just stand with everyone else, in a tight circle around my brother and his tormentors, watching, in absolute silence, while he was beaten up. It became the template for an interaction that we'd ceaselessly repeat as we aged: Jacob would fail somehow, and I -- feeling impotent and embarrassed and unworthy -- would do nothing but observe.

I reached over the dog's head and punched Jacob lightly on the shoulder, feeling silly doing it, an awkwardly forced attempt at fraternal camaraderie. "I'll take care of you," I said, "and you'll take care of me."

Jacob didn't respond. He just watched me open the door, pull the duffel bag out of the truck, and, straining, hoist it over my shoulder. Then, as I was picking my way carefully up through the snow to the house, he reversed down the driveway and drove off.

I ENTERED quietly, setting the bag inside the hall closet, on the floor toward the back. I draped my jacket across its top.

There were sliding doors on either side of the entranceway; the one on the right led to the dining room, the one on the left to the living room. Both were closed now. The dining room's was rarely open; except for the extremely sporadic occasions when we had company over, we always ate in the kitchen. The living room's, on the other hand, was closed only when we had a fire going.

Straight ahead, the entranceway divided into a flight of stairs on the left and a long, narrow hallway on the right. The stairs led to the second floor, the hallway to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Both of these were sunk in darkness.

I slid open the door to the living room. Sarah was in there, reading in a chair beside the fire. As I entered, she looked up: a tall, thin-boned woman with dark blond, shoulder-length hair, and large, brown eyes. She had some lipstick on, a bright shade of red, and her hair was pulled away from her face with a barrette. Both things -- the lipstick and the barrette -- made her seem younger, more vulnerable, than she really was. She was wearing her bathrobe, a huge tent of white terry cloth with her initials sewn in blue thread above her heart, and its folds masked the distension of her abdomen somewhat, making it look like she merely had a pillow resting on her lap. Beside her, on the table, was a half-finished bowl of cereal.

She saw me looking at the bowl. "I got hungry," she said. "I wasn't sure when you'd be back."

I went over to kiss her on the forehead, but just as I was bending down, she cried, "Oh!" grabbed my hand, and placed it on her stomach beneath the robe. She gave me a dreamy smile. "Feel it?" she asked.

I nodded. The baby was kicking. It felt like an erratic heartbeat, two firm thrusts and then a softer one. I hated when she made me do this. It gave me an uneasy feeling, knowing that something was alive inside her, feeding off her, like a parasite. I pulled my hand away, forced a smile.

"Do you want dinner?" she asked. "I could cook us an omelet." She waved toward the back corner of the room, where an open doorway led into the kitchen.

I shook my head. "I'm all right."

I sat down in the chair on the other side of the fireplace. I was trying to decide on the best way to tell her about the money, and as I attempted to work my way around this, it suddenly came to me that she might not approve; she might try to make me give the money back. This idea led me to a disturbing revelation. I saw for the first time how much I actually wanted the money. Up till then -- with Jacob and Lou -- I'd always been the one threatening to relinquish it, and this had allowed me to nurture the illusion that I was relatively disinterested in its fate: I would keep it, but only if certain rigorous conditions were met first. Now, confronted with the possibility of being forced myself to give it back, I understood how artificial those conditions really were. I wanted the money, I realized, and I'd do almost anything to keep it.

Sarah sat there, the book in her lap. She had her hand on her belly, the dreamy look on her face. She came out of it slowly.

"Well?" she asked. "How did it go?"

"It was all right," I said. I was still thinking.

"You spent all this time at the cemetery?"

I didn't answer her. The room was dark, except for the fire and the little lamp on the table beside her chair. There was a miniature grandfather clock on the mantelpiece and a bearskin rug on the floor before the hearth, both wedding gifts from my parents. The rug was fake, a storybook bear with perfect, glass-marble eyes and white plastic teeth. On the opposite wall was a window-size mirror in a wooden frame. Its surface reflected the room back at me so that I could see myself in it, along with Sarah and the fireplace.

Sarah leaned toward me in her chair. "What happened to your forehead?"

I touched my bump. "I banged it."

"Banged it? On what?"

"Sarah," I said. "I'm going to give you a hypothetical situation, okay? Like a game."

She set her book face-down on the table beside her and picked up the bowl of cereal. "All right."

"It's a thing of morals," I said.

She took a spoonful of cereal, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, getting lipstick on it.

"Let's say you were out walking and you found a bag of money."

"How much money?"

I pretended to think. "Four million dollars."

She nodded.

"Would you keep it, or would you turn it in?"

"It's somebody else's money?"

"Of course."

"So it'd be stealing to keep it?"

I shrugged. That wasn't the direction I wanted her to move in.

She barely even seemed to think about it. "I'd turn it in," she said.

"You'd turn it in?"

"Of course. What would I do with four million dollars? Can you see me bringing home that much money?" She laughed, slurped loudly at another spoonful of cereal.

"But imagine all the stuff you could do with four million dollars. You could start a whole new life."

"It's stealing, Hank. I'd end up getting caught."

"What if you were sure you wouldn't get caught?"

"How could I be sure of that?"

"Maybe you knew no one was looking for it."

"But how would I explain my change in lifestyle? My fancy clothes, my trips to the Caribbean, my jewelry, my minks? People would start asking questions."

"You'd move away. You'd go somewhere where people didn't know you."

She shook her head. "I'd always be worried about getting caught. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night." She stared down at her fingernails. They were painted bright red, the same color as Jacob's jacket. She wiped at the lipstick on her hand. "No. I'd turn it in."

I didn't say anything. Sarah lifted her cereal bowl to her mouth and sipped the milk from it. She watched me over its rim.

"You'd take it?" she asked, her face half hidden by the bowl.

I shrugged. I bent over and untied one of my shoes.

She set the cereal bowl down. "It seems to me like it'd be an awful lot of trouble."

"Let's say you got rid of the problem of getting caught." I made a cutting motion with my hand. "There's absolutely no way it'll happen."

She frowned. "Whose money is it?"

"What do you mean? It's yours."

"But who am I stealing it from?"

"A drug dealer. A bank robber."

"If it were a bank robber, it'd be the bank's money."

"All right, then it's a drug dealer."

"Oh, Hank," Sarah said. "You just want me to say I'd take it."

"But isn't it conceivable that you might?"

"I'm sure that in some situations I'd think twice before turning it in."

I didn't know what to say to that. It wasn't at all what I had hoped for.

She glanced toward me. "Why're you asking me this?"

I decided suddenly that I'd made a mistake. Hypothetically, I realized, I wouldn't have taken the money either. I got up and walked back toward the hallway.

"Where are you going?" she called after me.

I gave her a little wave with my hand. "Wait."

I went to the hall closet and took the bag out from underneath my jacket. I dragged it behind me, across the hallway's tiled floor and into the living room. Sarah had the book open in her lap again, but she closed it when she saw me with the bag.

"What--?" she started.

I brought it right up in front of her, loosened its drawstring, and, with a dramatic flourish, emptied it at her feet.

The money fell into a large pile, packets sliding out across the bearskin rug.

She stared down at it, shocked. She set her book on the table. Her mouth opened, but she didn't say anything.

I stood in front of her, holding the empty bag. "It's real," I said.

She continued to stare at it. She looked pained, as if she'd just been struck in the chest.

"It's all right," I said. I stooped down, like I was going to start putting the money back, but instead I just touched it with my hand. The bills felt cool against my fingertips, their paper soft and worn, like cloth. They were old, their edges a little tattered, and I thought of all the hands they must've passed through already before reaching my own -- millions of different people, in and out of wallets and purses and vaults, so that they could end up here, finally, spread out in a pile across my living-room floor.

"You took it from the feedstore?" she asked.

"No. I found it."

"But it's somebody's. They have to be looking for it."

I shook my head. "Nobody's looking for it."

She didn't seem to hear me. "It's four million dollars?"

"Four point four."

"You found it with Jacob?"

I nodded, and she frowned.

"Where?"

I told her about the fox and Mary Beth, about the hike into the park and our discovery of the plane. When I told her about the bird, she squinted at my forehead, a pained, sympathetic look coming over her face, but she didn't say anything.

After I finished, we sat for a bit in silence. I picked up a packet and held it out toward her. I wanted her to touch it, to see what it felt like, a dense little brick of money, but she wouldn't take it.

"You want to keep it, don't you?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I guess so. I mean, I don't see why we shouldn't."

She didn't say anything. She put her hands on her stomach and stared down at it, a distracted look on her face. The baby was kicking.

"If we keep it," I said, "we'll never have to worry about money again."

"We don't have to worry about money now, Hank. You've got a good job. We don't need this."

I stared into the fire, thinking about that. It was dying down, the flames flickering low. I got up and added another log.

She was right, of course: we couldn't claim -- as Jacob and Lou probably did, and as my parents might've had they lived long enough to join us in our present situation -- that the money was something we needed, something we couldn't live without. Our life wasn't a struggle in that way. We were solidly middle class; when we worried about the future, it was not about how we were going to feed ourselves, or pay our bills, or educate our children, it was about how we'd manage to save enough for a larger house, a better car, more complicated appliances. But just because we didn't need the money didn't mean we couldn't want it, couldn't see it as a salvation of a different sort, and put up some struggle to keep it.

I'd gone to college to become a lawyer, only to give it up when I hadn't gotten the grades. Now I was an accountant in the feedstore of my hometown, the same town I'd spent all my childhood vowing to escape. I'd settled for something less than I'd planned on when I was younger and then convinced myself that it was enough. It wasn't, though; I saw that now. There were boundaries on Sarah's and my life, limits to what we could do and where we could go, and the pile of money lying at my feet illuminated them, highlighted the triviality of our aspirations, the bleakness of our dreams. It offered us a chance at something more.

I tried to find a way to communicate this to Sarah.

"My job's never going to amount to much," I said, pushing at the fire with the poker. "I'll be manager someday, after Tom Butler dies or retires, but he's not much older than me, so neither of those'll happen very soon, and by the time they do, I'll be an old man myself."

I'd thought this several times over the previous few years, a gray, depressing probe into the future, but I'd never spoken it out loud before, and I was astonished to hear myself do so now. It was as if someone else had uttered the words; I had to pause a moment to let them sink in.

Sarah nodded, her face calm, expressionless, and I got a further shock from that: she wasn't surprised by what I'd said. She'd already known the extent of my possibilities at the feedstore as well as I had. I waited for her to say something, to protest in some way, but she didn't.

"Think of the life we could give the baby," I whispered. "The security, the privilege."

I glanced over at her, but she wasn't looking at me. She was looking down at the packets. I continued to poke at the fire.

"It's lost money, Sarah. Nobody knows anything about it. It's ours if we want it."

"But it's stealing. If you get caught, you'll go to jail."

"Nobody gets hurt by our keeping it. That's what makes it a crime, isn't it? People getting hurt?"

She shook her head. "It's a crime because it's against the law. It doesn't matter whether anybody gets hurt or not, you'll still get arrested. I'm not going to be left bringing up a child all by myself because you've done something stupid and ended up in jail."

"But we can do it for the right reasons," I said. "We can do it so that something good comes from it." I was beginning to flounder. I wanted the money, and I wanted her to want it too.

She sighed, as if in disgust. When she spoke again, her voice rose a step. She was becoming angry. "I'm not worried about the morality of it, Hank. I'm worried about getting caught. That's what's real; the rest is just talk. If you get caught, you'll go to jail. I'd let you keep it if there wasn't that risk, but there is, so I won't."

I stopped short at this, startled. I'd assumed from the beginning that any reluctance I'd encounter on her part about keeping the money would stem from moral grounds. It had given me a helpless, fatalistic feeling -- I knew that there was no way to argue against something like that -- but now I saw that it was much simpler. She wanted to keep the packets, but she was afraid of getting caught. I should've realized this from the beginning, too. Sarah, above all else, was a pragmatist -- it was the quality I loved best in her -- she dealt with things at their most basic level. For her, a decision to keep the money would be predicated on two simple conditions. The first -- which I'd already dealt with -- was an assurance that no one would be hurt by our actions; the second was that we wouldn't get in any trouble. Everything else, as she'd said, was just talk, a distraction from what mattered.

I told her about my plan.

"The money's the only evidence that we've committed a crime," I said. "We can sit on it and see what happens. If someone comes searching for it, we'll just burn it, and that'll be that."

She pursed her lips. Watching her, I could see that I'd gained a foothold.

"There's no risk," I said. "We'll be in complete control."

"There's always a risk, Hank."

"But would you do it if you thought there wasn't?"

She didn't answer me.

"Would you?" I pressed.

"You've already left a lot of clues."

"Clues?"

"Like your tracks in the snow. They lead in from the road, right to the plane, and then back out again."

"It's supposed to snow tomorrow," I countered triumphantly. "They'll be gone by tomorrow night."

She half-nodded, half-shrugged. "You touched the pilot."

I frowned, remembering Jacob asking Carl about the plane. It was starting to seem stupid again, rather than clever.

"If they suspect you for any reason," Sarah said, "they'll be able to figure out that you were there. All they need is a single follicle of hair, a half-inch thread from your jacket."

I lifted my hands in the air, palms up. "But why would anyone suspect me?"

She answered quickly, though she didn't have to. I knew what she was going to say. "Because of Jacob and Lou."

"Jacob's all right," I said, not sure if I really believed it. "He'll do whatever I say."

"And Lou?"

"As long as we have the money, we can control Lou. We'll always be able to threaten that we'll burn it."

"And after we divide the money?"

"He'll be our risk. He'll be what we have to live with."

She frowned, her forehead wrinkled in thought.

"It seems like a small price to pay," I said.

She still didn't say anything.

"We can always burn the money, Sarah. Right up to the very last moment. It seems silly to give it up now, before anything's even gone wrong."

She was silent, but I could see that she was coming to a decision. I returned the poker to its stand, then went back and crouched down over the packets. Sarah didn't look at me. She was staring at her hands.

"You have to go back to the plane," she said, "and return some of it."

"Return it?" I didn't understand what she meant.

"Just part of it. You'll have to go early tomorrow morning, so when it storms later it'll cover your tracks."

"We're keeping it?" I asked, a little thrill of excitement running over my body.

She nodded. "We'll put five hundred thousand back, and keep the rest. That way when they find the plane, they'll assume no one has been there yet."

"That's an awful lot of money."

"That's how much we're leaving."

"It's half a million dollars."

She nodded. "It'll bring us down to an even three-way split."

"So would two hundred thousand."

"That's not enough. Five hundred is perfect. No one would walk away from that much money. It'll put us beyond suspicion."

"I don't think--" I started, but she cut me off.

"It's five hundred thousand, Hank. Either that or we give it all back."

I glanced up at her, surprised at the forcefulness of her tone.

"Greed is what'll get us caught," she said.

I considered that for a moment; then I acquiesced. "All right," I said, "it's five hundred thousand."

I counted out fifty packets right then and there, as if afraid she might change her mind. I stacked them up at her feet, like an offering at an altar, and put the rest into the duffel bag. Sarah sat in her chair, watching me work. When the bag was full, I pulled its drawstring tight, closing it, and smiled up at her.

"Are you happy?" I asked.

She made a noncommittal gesture with her hand, as if she were flicking away a fly. "We can't get caught," she said. "That's the important thing."

I shook my head, leaning forward across the bag to take her hand. "No," I said. "We won't."

She frowned down at me. "You promise you'll burn it if things get out of hand?"

"That's right," I said. I pointed toward the fireplace. "I'll burn it right here."

I HID the bag of money beneath our bed, pushed all the way back against the wall, with two empty suitcases jammed in after it, masking it from view.

We stayed up late, watching a New Year's show on TV. When the orchestra played "Auld Lang Syne," Sarah sang along, her voice high and tremulous, but hauntingly pretty. We drank sparkling cider, nonalcoholic, because of the baby, and clinked glasses at the stroke of midnight, wishing each other the best for the coming year.

Before we went to sleep, we made love -- gently, slowly -- Sarah crouched over me, the weight of her belly resting flat upon my stomach, her breasts hanging full and heavy in the darkness above my face. I cupped them carefully in my hands, squeezing her nipples between my fingertips until she moaned softly, a low, animallike sound coming up from deep inside her chest. Hearing her, I thought of the baby, pictured it rocking within her, enclosed in a watery bubble, waiting to be born, and the image gave me a strange, erotic thrill, sent a shiver running across the surface of my skin.

Afterward Sarah rested beside me on her back, holding my hand to the tautness of her belly. We were underneath the blankets; I was pressed up tight against her. The room was cold. Ice was forming along the edges of the windowpanes.

I listened to the sound of her breathing, trying to guess whether she was asleep yet. It was slow and steady, which made it seem like she might be, but there was a tenseness about her body, as if she were listening very hard for something to happen. I caressed her stomach, a light, feathery touch. She didn't react.

I was starting slowly to slip into sleep myself, thinking of the bag of money sitting right beneath us on the floor, and of the dead pilot out in his plane in the darkness, with the ice and the orchard full of crows, when Sarah turned her head and whispered something at me.

"What?" I asked, struggling back awake.

"We should just burn it, shouldn't we?" she said.

I raised myself on my elbow, looked down at her in the darkness. She blinked up at me.

"People don't get away with things like this," she said.

I lifted my hand off her belly and brushed the hair from her face. Her skin was so pale, it seemed to glow. "We'll get away with it," I said. "We know exactly what we're doing."

She shook her head. "No. We're just normal people, Hank. We aren't sneaky, we aren't smart."

"We're smart," I said. I brushed my hand across her face, making her shut her eyes. Then I laid my head down beside her on her pillow, snuggling up against her warmth. "We won't get caught."

I'm not sure if I actually believed this: that we were unassailable. Certainly I must've been aware even then of the dangers of our course, must've felt some fear when I stopped to consider all the difficulties yet to be overcome. There were Jacob and Lou and Carl and the plane and a hundred other ways that I could only guess at through which trouble might come and find us. On the most basic level I must've been scared simply because I was committing a crime. It was something I'd never even considered doing before, something far enough beyond my realm of experience to give me a lost feeling in and of itself, even without the fear of punishment that hung all about it like an aura. But I don't think these thoughts weighed on me then as much as they do now, in hindsight. I think I was happy then; I think I felt safe. It was New Year's Eve. I was thirty years old, contentedly married, with my first child soon to be born. My wife and I were lying curled up in bed together, having just finished making love, and beneath us, hidden away like the treasure it was, sat $4.4 million. Nothing had gone wrong yet; everything was still fresh and full of promise. I can look back now and say that in many ways this was the absolute apogee of my life, the point to which everything before led upward, and from which everything after fell away. I don't think it was possible at that moment for me to believe we could ever be punished for what we'd done: our crime seemed too trivial, our luck too great.

Sarah was silent for a long time. "Promise me," she said finally, taking my hand and placing it back on top of her stomach.

I tilted my head and whispered in her ear, "I promise we won't get caught."

Then we went to sleep.

3

I AWOKE around eight the next morning. Sarah was already out of bed; I could hear her showering in the bathroom. I huddled there beneath the covers, warm, still a little sleepy, and listened to the pipes creaking under the pressure of the water.

The pipes in my parents' house had made a similar sound whenever someone opened a faucet. As a child, Jacob had told me that there were ghosts within the walls, moaning, trying to escape, and I'd believed him. One night my mother and father had come home, drunk, and started dancing in the kitchen. I was six, maybe seven years old. Roused by the noise, I arrived just in time to see them, wrapped in each other's arms, trip over a chair, my father's head knocking a fist-size hole in the wall as he went down. Terrified, I rushed into the room with a wad of newspaper, to patch the hole before the ghosts could escape, and at the sight of me -- a scrawny, nervous kid in pajamas, my hair tousled with sleep, frantically jamming paper into the wall -- my parents broke into hysterical laughter. It was my first memory of embarrassment, of being ashamed, but thinking back on it that morning I felt no bitterness toward them, only a curious sort of nostalgia and longing. I missed them, I realized, still half asleep, my mind wandering, half-dreaming, so that, as I thought of them, they somehow usurped Sarah's and my places -- my mother, young, pregnant, was washing herself in the bathroom while my father waited beneath the covers, the shades pulled down, the room dim, listening to the pipes softly creak behind the wall above his head.

That was how I always tried to think of my parents, as young -- like Sarah and me -- with their life together just beginning. It was more invention than recollection: I hadn't been born very long before things started to fall apart, so the memories I retained of my parents, the real ones, the ones that came floating up unbidden, were from when they were already aging, both of them drinking too much, the farm slipping away behind their backs.

The last time I saw my father alive, he was drunk. He'd called me at the feedstore one morning, his voice sounding shy and embarrassed, to see if I could stop by sometime and take a look at his accounts. I consented gladly, feeling a little shy myself, but flattered, too, because he'd never really asked me for help before.

I drove out to the farm that evening, straight from work. My father had a little study that opened directly off the kitchen, and there, on the folding card table he used as a desk, I spent the next fifty minutes disentangling his finances. He kept track of his bills in a huge leather-bound ledger. The book contained a mess of hastily scrawled numbers, columns merging one into the other, computations scribbled illegibly in the margins. He'd written most of the notations in ink, so when he made a mistake -- which appeared to have been quite often -- he had to cross it out rather than erase it. Even through this morass of disorder, though, it was instantly clear to me that my parents were about to lose their farm.

I'd known they were in trouble, had known it for as long as I could remember, but I'd never imagined that things could get this far out of hand. They owed money to just about everyone -- the electric, phone, and water companies, the insurance company, the doctor, and the government. It was lucky they didn't have any livestock, because then they would've owed Raikley's, too. They owed money for repairs on their combine, for fuel and seed and fertilizer. Those were just bills, though: they were bad to get behind on, and my parents would've had to pay them eventually, but they weren't how you lost your farm. It was the bank that would take your property, and it was to the bank that my father owed the bulk of his money. He'd overborrowed and mismanaged. He'd mortgaged his home, mortgaged his land, and now, in a matter of weeks, he was going to lose them both.

I worked for a while before I said anything, organizing numbers into coherent columns, separating his debits from his assets, adding everything up. My father sat behind me on a stool, watching over my shoulder. They'd already eaten dinner, and he was drinking now, whiskey out of a juice glass. The study door was open, and through it we could hear my mother washing dishes in the kitchen. When I finally put down my pencil and turned around to face my father, he smiled at me. He was a large, heavyset man, with a good-sized paunch, and blond, balding hair. His eyes were pale blue, small in his face. They leaked little strings of tears when he drank too much.

"Well?" he asked.

"They're going to foreclose you," I said. "I don't imagine they'll give you much past the end of the year."

I could tell that he'd been expecting me to say this -- he had to have known, the bank must've been threatening him for months, but I think he'd been hoping I'd find some loophole, something he was too uneducated, too unfamiliar with the intricacies of accounting, to see for himself. He got up from his stool, went over to the door, and shut it. Then he sat back down.

"What can we do?" he asked.

I lifted my hands into the air. "I don't think we can do anything. It's too late."

My father considered that, frowning. "You're telling me you did all that adding and subtracting, and you still can't figure out a way to help us?"

"You owe a lot of people money, Dad. There's no way you can pay them all back, and when you don't, they'll take the farm."

"They aren't going to take the farm."

"Have you talked with the bank? Haven't they--"

"Banks." My father snorted. "You think I'm going to give up this place to a bank?"

It was then that I realized he was drunk -- not seriously drunk, just enough so that he could feel the alcohol running warmly through his veins, like a soporific, deadening his perceptions, enervating his reactions.

"You don't have a choice," I said, but he waved me aside.

"I got plenty of choices," he said. He stood up, set his glass down on the stool. "All you're looking at is those numbers, but that's not half the story."

"Dad," I started, "you're going to have to--"

He shook his head, cutting me off. "I don't have to do anything."

I fell silent.

"I'm going to bed," he said. "I was just staying up because I thought you'd be able to figure out how to get them off my back."

I followed him from the room, trying to think of something to say. There were things they'd have to be considering now, not the least of which was finding someplace new to live, but I couldn't imagine a way to bring this up. He was my father; it seemed like I could only insult him by offering advice.

My mother was still out in the kitchen. The dishes were all done now, and she was cleaning one of the counters. I think she must've been waiting for us to finish, because she dropped her sponge and came right over when we emerged. My father went straight past her, heading toward the stairs, and I started to follow him.

"No, Hank," my mother whispered, stopping me. "He'll be all right. He just needs some sleep."

She took me by the elbow, pulled me off toward the front door. She was small, but strong, too, and when she wanted you to do something, she let you know. Right now, she wanted me to go home.

We talked for a moment in the entranceway before I left. It was drizzling out, cold. My mother turned on the porch light, and it made everything look shiny.

"You know?" I asked her.

She nodded.

"Have you talked about what you're going to do?"

"We'll manage," she said quietly.

Her composure, coupled with my father's denial, was giving me a panicky feeling in my chest. It didn't seem like they had any understanding for the magnitude of their trouble. "But this is bad, Mom," I said. "We're going to have to--"

"It'll be all right, Hank. We'll weather it through."

"Sarah and I can give you a few thousand. We could maybe take out a loan, too. I can talk to somebody down at the bank."

My mother shook her head. "Your father and I are going to have to make a few sacrifices is all. But we can do that. You don't have to worry." She smiled, turned her cheek toward me for a kiss.

I kissed her, and she opened up the screen door. I could see that she didn't want to talk about it, that she wasn't going to let me help. She was sending me away.

"Careful of the rain," she said. "It'll make the pavement slick."

I ran through the drizzle to my car. As I climbed inside, the porch light flicked off behind me.

I called my father the next morning, from my office. I wanted him to come into town and go to the bank with me, so that we could have a talk with the manager, but he refused. He thanked me for my concern, then told me that if he wanted my help, he'd ask for it. Otherwise I should assume he had everything under control. Having said that, he hung up the phone.

That was the last I ever spoke to him. Two days later, he was dead.

SARAH turned off the shower, and -- as if to fill the sudden silence -- a voice whispered in my head: you forgot to go to the cemetery.

It was New Year's Day, which meant that Jacob and I had let a year pass without visiting the graves. I considered this, debating its importance. It seemed to me that the thought behind the ritual, the simple act of remembrance, was more important than the visit itself. I could see nothing that was gained by our actual presence at the cemetery. Besides, it was only a matter of a single day. We could go this afternoon, twenty-four hours later than we'd promised. I was sure that, considering the circumstances, our father would forgive us our tardiness.

But then, at the same time, I realized that much of the visit's importance came through its strict observance, the fact that we were forced to put aside a specific afternoon each year, block it off from any outside interference, and devote it to the memory of our parents. The minor inconvenience of it was exactly what gave it its weight. The new year was a boundary, a deadline we'd let pass.

I began to consider several possible forms of penance for this transgression, all of them revolving around an increased number of trips to the grave site in the coming year, and was up to twelve, one each month, when Sarah reappeared from the bathroom.

She was naked except for a yellow bath towel wrapped around her head. Her breasts had become so full that they looked comical on her tiny frame, like something a pubescent boy might draw. Her nipples were a brilliant crimson, two scabs against the bloodless white of her skin. Her belly hung low and heavy, and she cradled her hands beneath it while she walked, as if it were a package she was carrying, rather than a natural distension of her body. She looked awkward, clumsy. It was only at rest that she had any grace, holding her eight months' weight with a peculiar stateliness, an animallike elegance. I watched her waddle to the windows and, one at a time, pull open their shades.

The room filled with gray light. The sky was cloudy, cold looking, the trees beyond the glass dark and bare.

My eyes were partly closed; Sarah glanced toward the bed but didn't seem to realize I was awake. She unwrapped the towel from her head, bent over, and rubbed at her hair. I watched her, her body framed against the window and the winter sky beyond.

"We forgot to visit the cemetery," I said.

She looked up, startled, her body still bent partly over. Then she went back to rubbing her hair. She worked vigorously at it; I could hear the sound of the cloth against her scalp. When she finished, she straightened up and wrapped the towel around her chest.

"You can do it this afternoon," she said. "After you go back to the plane."

She came over and sat on the edge of the bed, her legs spread wide, her weight resting behind her on her hands. I sat up, so I could see her better. She looked at me and put her hand over her mouth.

"Oh, God," she said. "You're all bloody."

I reached up and touched my bump. It was virtually gone, but I could feel a wide swath of caked blood arcing out from it across my forehead.

"It bled during the night," I said.

"Does it hurt?"

I shook my head, probing the wound with my fingertips. "It feels like it's almost gone."

She nodded but didn't say anything.

"Think if it'd hit me in the eye," I said.

Sarah examined my forehead, but with a distracted expression on her face. I could tell she was thinking of something else.

"You ought to tell Jacob you're going back to the plane," she said. "Maybe have him come with you."

"Why?"

"It just seems smart. Last thing we need is for him or Lou to drive by and see your car sitting next to the park. They'll start thinking something's going on, that you're trying to trick them."

"They wouldn't see the car. I'll be there and back before either of them is even out of bed."

"It's just being careful, Hank. That's what we have to be from now on. We have to be thinking ahead all the time."

I considered that for a moment, then nodded halfheartedly. Sarah watched me closely, as if waiting for me to argue. When I didn't, she gave my leg a squeeze beneath the covers.

"We aren't going to tell him about putting the money back, though," she said. "You'll have to hide it under your jacket and go into the plane by yourself."

"You're saying he'd go back and steal it?"

"Maybe. Jacob's human. It'd be a perfectly natural thing to do. Or tell Lou about it. I know Lou would do it." She brushed at her hair with her hand. Wet, it looked darker than it actually was, almost brown. "This way we don't have to worry about it. We can just know it's there, and that if it's there, we're safe."

She rubbed my foot. "Okay?"

I nodded. "Okay."

Smiling, she slid up the bed toward me, leaned forward, and kissed me on my nose. I could smell her shampoo, something lemony. I kissed her back on the mouth.

I GOT UP to shower, and Sarah, wearing a dark green maternity dress, disappeared downstairs to fix us breakfast.

I turned on the water to let it heat up, then went to the mirror and inspected my forehead. In its exact center was a small hole, no bigger than an acne scar. Dried blood spiraled out from it, highlighting it like the target on a bull's-eye.

I stared at myself until the mirror began to fog over, cleaning some of the blood away with my thumb, then stripped out of my pajamas. I felt bloated, hazy, as if my body knew that it was New Year's Day and thus automatically assumed that I was hung over.

As I was preparing to climb into the shower, I noticed there were no towels in the bathroom. When I opened the door to go get one, I found Sarah crouched with her back to me by the bed, the duffel bag resting beside her on the floor, packets of money spread out across the carpet.

She looked up as I came into the room, glancing over her shoulder with what seemed like a guilty smile. Seeing it appear on her face, I felt a flicker of suspicion move through my body, like a shiver. I knew immediately that it was unwarranted, knew that it was merely my surprise at finding her in the bedroom with the money when I thought she was downstairs in the kitchen, and I instantly felt as if I'd wronged her somehow, falsely accusing her of a misdeed.

"I need a towel," I said. I stood perfectly still in the doorway -- naked, and feeling foolish because of it. I'd never liked walking around undressed, not even in front of Sarah. My body -- its physical presence, the space it took up, the color of its skin -- embarrassed me. Sarah was just the opposite. On especially hot summer days, she liked to lounge bare skinned around the house.

"Oh, Hank," she said, "I'm sorry. I meant to get you one." She didn't stand up.

She was holding a packet of money in each hand. I started to take a step toward the hall but then stopped. "What're you doing?" I asked.

She nodded toward the duffel bag. "I wanted to make sure it wasn't in order."

"In order?"

"If it was from a bank robbery, the serial numbers might've been in order. We couldn't spend it then."

"Are they?"

She shook her head. "It's all old."

I stared down at the packets spread out across the floor. They were organized very neatly, stacked into piles of five. "You want me to help put it back?" I asked.

"No," she said. "I'm counting it."

"Counting it?"

She nodded.

"But we already did that. Jacob and Lou and I counted it last night."

She gave me a little shrug. "I wanted to do it too," she said. "It didn't seem real unless I did it myself."

When I got out of the shower, Sarah was back downstairs. I could hear her banging things together in the kitchen. I crouched by the bed and checked beneath it, moving one of the empty suitcases aside. The duffel bag was there, safe, pushed up against the wall, looking exactly as I'd left it the night before.

I slid the suitcase back into place, dressed quickly, and hurried downstairs for breakfast.

AFTER we finished eating, I called Jacob and told him that we had to go back to the plane.

"Back to the plane?" he asked. He sounded groggy, barely awake.

"We have to make sure we didn't leave anything behind," I said. I was in the kitchen. Sarah was at the table, knitting a sweater for the baby and listening to our conversation. The money I'd counted out the night before was stacked beside her.

"What could we've left behind?" Jacob asked.

I could picture him in my mind, lying on the bed in his little apartment, still dressed in the clothes he'd worn last night, fat, unshaven, the covers wadded into a dirty knot at his feet, the shades pulled, the room smelling stalely of beer.

"We weren't careful," I said. "We have to go back and look things over."

"You think you left something?"

"Lou left his beer can."

My brother's voice took on a tired, exasperated tone. "His beer can?"

"And I moved the pilot. We have to put him back like he was."

Jacob sighed into the phone.

"I think I might've bled a little onto the plane's floor, too."

"Bled?"

"From my forehead. They can tell things from blood. It's worse than fingerprints."

"Jesus, Hank, nobody's going to notice a couple drops of blood."

"We can't take the chance."

"I'm not going to walk all the way--"

"We're going back," I said loudly. "We're not going to fuck this up because you're too lazy to do it right." My voice came out even angrier than I'd intended it to, and it had an immediate effect on both my listeners. Sarah glanced up, a startled look on her face. Jacob fell into silence.

I smiled reassuringly at Sarah, and she went back to her knitting. "I'll pick you up," I said to Jacob. "And after we're through we can stop by the cemetery."

He made a low groaning sound, which solidified slowly into speech. "All right," he said.

"In an hour."

"Should I call Lou?"

I debated for a second, watching Sarah work at the little yellow sweater. I had no desire to spend the morning in Lou's presence, especially not a hung over Lou. "No," I said. "There's no reason for him to come."

"But I can tell him we're going?"

"Of course," I said. "We're all in this together. Last thing we want now is to start keeping secrets from each other."

WE COULDN'T figure out how to hide the money on me so that Jacob wouldn't notice it. There were fifty packets; it was like trying to conceal fifty small paperback books on my body. We filled my pockets, jammed bills up my sleeves, in my socks, under my waistband; but after a while certain areas of my body started swelling suspiciously, looking weighted down, stuffed, and there were always a few packets left over that we couldn't find a place for.

"I don't think it's going to work," I said finally.

We were in the kitchen still. I had my jacket on, was starting to get hot, frustrated. The packets stuffed into my clothes made me feel heavy; every movement was awkward, like a robot's. We were both wearing gloves.

Sarah was standing a few feet away from me, looking me up and down. It was obvious from her expression that she didn't approve of what she saw. "Maybe you could just carry it in a bag."

"A bag?" I said. "I can't carry it in a bag. What would I tell Jacob?" I unzipped my jacket, and three packets fell out, slapping to the floor in quick succession. I watched her squat down to pick them up.

"Maybe we should put less back," I said.

She ignored me. "I know what we'll do," she said. Then she turned and walked rapidly from the room.

I waited in the kitchen for her, like a burly scarecrow, my arms extended stiffly away from my sides. When she came back, she had a little knapsack in her hand.

"It's for carrying the baby," she said. She held it up in front of me. It was made of purple nylon, with a picture of a cartoon dinosaur on its front. Sarah seemed very pleased with it. "I got it out of a catalog."

I took off my jacket, and we hung the knapsack over my shoulders, loosening its straps until it rested snugly against my stomach. Sarah wrapped the money in a plastic garbage bag -- so that I'd have something to leave it in when I reached the plane -- then stuffed the bag inside the pouch. After she finished, I zipped up my parka. There was a definite bulge around my abdomen, but the jacket's bulk obscured it.

"You look a little fat," Sarah said, patting me on the belly. "But Jacob'll be the last one to comment on that."

"I look pregnant is what I look like," I said. "I look like you."

ASHENVILLE was a small, ugly town, just two streets really, Main and Tyler, with a blinking yellow light to mark their intersection. Each of the four corners formed by this junction supported one of the tiny municipality's essential institutions -- the town hall, Raikley's Feedstore, St. Jude's Episcopal Church, and the Ashenville Savings Bank. The rest of the town, a motley group of one- and two-story structures, splayed out around these four establishments, straggling off along either side of Tyler and Main: the post office, the volunteer fire department, a small grocery store, a gas station, a pharmacy, a diner, a hardware store, a laundromat, two taverns, a hunting goods store, a pizza place.

There was a gray uniformity about the buildings, a seemingly universal dilapidation that inevitably depressed me whenever I saw them. Paint peeled from their clapboard sides in huge barklike strips, as if they were molting; cracked windowpanes were covered over with yellowed newspapers; gutters sagged; shutters banged in the wind; and giant black gaps dotted the rooftops, marking the blank spaces left by storm-blown shingles. It was a poor town, a farm town which had seen its greatest days sixty years ago, in the decade before the Depression, a town whose population had steadily decreased in every census since 1930, and which clung now, leechlike, to the land around it, sucking out only enough sustenance to maintain its tenuous hold there, hunched over, careworn, dying.

It was nine-thirty by the time I pulled up in front of the hardware store, above which Jacob lived. Ashenville was quiet, its sidewalks virtually empty. The pale, cloud-filtered light gave it a tired, pallid quality, as if, like many of its inhabitants, it was hung over, entering the new year on wobbly legs, a dry, sticky taste in its mouth. Christmas decorations clung to the light poles lining the street -- green, red, and white tinselly creations: snowmen, Santas, reindeer, candy canes, looking old and limp, beaten down, like things you might see at a garage sale.

Jacob was waiting on the street with Mary Beth, leaning against a parking meter. I was relieved to see him there; it meant I didn't have to enter his apartment, something that always oppressed me, highlighting as it did his material failure in the world. Jacob lived in squalor: it was a poor person's apartment, badly lit and grimy, full of broken-down furniture and leftover food, and the thought of him waking and eating and sleeping there infused me with a disagreeable mixture of pity and contempt.

I'd tried on several occasions to help Jacob, but it never worked. The last time had been seven years before, just after our parents' accident. I'd offered him a part-time job at the feedstore, driving a delivery truck. It was something that, when we were children, had been done by a semiretarded man, a slow-moving giant with mongoloid features who spoke a high-pitched language full of nods and giggles that no one could understand. That was years ago, and I'd forgotten all about it, but Jacob hadn't. He was insulted, angry, as mad at me as I'd ever seen him. For a moment it even seemed like he was going to hit me.

"I just want to help you," I'd said.

"Help me?" he asked, sneering. "Leave me alone, Hank. That's how you'll help. Just stay the fuck out of my life."

And so that, essentially, was what I'd done.

Jacob shoved Mary Beth into the backseat of the station wagon, then climbed in beside me, breathing loudly through his open mouth, as if he'd just sprinted up a flight of stairs. He had a Styrofoam cup full of coffee, and after he shut the door he pulled something wrapped in a greasy paper towel from his jacket pocket. It was a fried-egg sandwich, liberally ketchuped, which he immediately began to eat.

I eased out onto the road, appraising his condition. He was wearing his red jacket, and its bright color highlighted the wanness of his face. He hadn't shaved; his hair was greasy and uncombed. The lenses of his glasses were speckled with dirt.

"You went out with Lou last night?" I asked. I could feel the baby bag hanging like a large, heavy football against my stomach. My jacket was bunched up over it, touching the edge of the steering wheel. It felt obvious to me, absurdly so, and I had to resist the temptation to look down.

Jacob nodded, his mouth jammed full of toast and egg and ketchup.

"Have fun?" I asked.

He nodded again, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

"Where'd you go?"

He swallowed, took a sip of coffee from the Styrofoam cup. I noticed that there was no steam coming off it; it was cold. The thought of this made me feel a little sick.

"The Palace," he said. "In Metamora."

"You and Lou and Nancy?"

He nodded, and we drove for a while in silence. Mary Beth rode with his head sticking over into the front seat, resting next to Jacob's shoulder. We were outside of town now, moving west. In the distance, swaybacked, its roof caving in, was an old, brown barn, a handful of holsteins clustered around its rear. The day was still and gray, neither particularly cold nor warm, the temperature hovering just below the freezing mark. If it were to snow, as it was forecasted to, it would be wet and sloppy.

I cleared my throat, was about to speak, but then didn't. Jacob finished his sandwich. He balled up the paper towel and set it on the dashboard. I eyed it with distaste.

I had something I wanted to ask him but sensed that he would take it wrong. Finally I just did it. "You think Lou told Nancy?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Leave him alone," he said.

I glanced across at him, trying to read his expression, but he was turned away, staring out the window at the passing fields, a sullen set to his shoulders.

I braked the car, pulling over to the side of the road. Mary Beth skidded, legs flailing, to the floor behind us. "He told her, didn't he?"

We were somewhere near where we'd counted the money the night before. There were no houses in sight, no cars. The land was treeless and white.

Jacob turned from the window. His face looked tired, creased. "Come on, Hank. Let's just get there and do this."

I put the car in park. The dog scrambled back up onto his seat, whimpering. We both ignored him.

"He'll have to tell her someday, won't he?" Jacob asked. "How's he going to take his share without telling her?"

"You're saying she knows?" I asked. I took a deep breath. My voice sounded panicked, even to myself.

"You're trying to tell me you didn't say anything to Sarah?"

"That's right."

He watched me, as if waiting for me to change my mind.

"Did he tell her or not?" I asked.

He continued to stare at me. He seemed to consider something for a second but then put it aside. He turned back toward the window.

"I don't know," he said.

I waited. Of course Lou has told her, I thought. Just like I told Sarah. And Jacob knows about both of us. I considered briefly the importance of this, that Jacob had lied to me, that I in turn had lied to him, and that we each knew the other was lying. For a second it almost seemed funny, and I smiled.

Jacob waved down the road. "Come on," he said tiredly. "Let's get this over with."

WE APPROACHED the nature preserve from the same direction we had the day before, coming across the low cement bridge over Anders Creek, then down past Dwight Pederson's farm along the park's southern edge. There was a dog sitting at the end of Pederson's driveway, a large collie, and it barked at us as we drove by, a deep, full-chested sound. Mary Beth barked back, high-pitched, startling us, and then, tail up, turned to watch the collie recede through the rear window.

I parked next to the gouge Jacob's truck had left in the snowbank the day before and shut off the engine. I was appalled at the marks we'd left on the place. Our tracks moved off from the road, cutting a giant, ragged gash straight into the woods. Anyone driving by would've noticed them immediately. To the left the fox's tracks trailed across the field toward Pederson's farm, a string of tiny black dots in the snow, straight and precise. I followed them with my eyes.

"You're going to park here?" Jacob asked. "Right out in the open?"

I considered this briefly. He was right, of course, but I could think of no alternative. "You see a hiding place somewhere?" I said.

"We could drive around to the park entrance, bring the car inside."

I shook my head; this was something I'd already debated and put aside. I listed off my reasons now, one at a time. "The gate'll be locked," I said, "the road inside won't be plowed, and we'd probably get lost if we tried to find the plane without having our tracks to lead us to it."

Jacob glanced back toward the bridge. "It just seems like a risk, leaving it out like this."

"We left your truck here yesterday."

"Yesterday we didn't know what was in there."

"It's okay, Jacob. We'll do it quickly. In and out in a flash."

"Maybe we should just blow it off."

I noticed that he was sweating profusely, a hangover sweat, pungent smelling, like overripe fruit. He wasn't worried about someone seeing the car, I realized; he was worried about the hike into the park.

"You drank too much last night," I said. "Didn't you?"

He ignored my question. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his jacket, and it left a dark spot on the fabric. "My truck yesterday," he said, "your car today. It might start people wondering."

I unhooked my seat belt, preparing to climb from the car, and as I did so, I felt the bag of money resting heavily against my gut. It'd be easier, I saw suddenly, if he didn't come. I turned to look at him. He had ketchup smeared across his chin.

"This is what we'll do," I said. "You'll stay here. I'll go in, straighten things out at the plane, and come back as quick as I can. If anyone drives by while I'm gone, you can pretend you're fixing something with the car."

"And if they stop to help?"

"You talk to them."

"Talk to them? What the fuck am I supposed to talk to them about?" His voice came out thin and tight sounding. I couldn't tell whether it was from fatigue or disgust.

"Tell them it's okay. Tell them you've got it fixed."

"And what about the tracks?" He waved off into the woods.

"I'll bring the dog with me," I said. "If anybody asks, you can just say Mary Beth ran off, and Lou and I went in after her."

"We'll end up getting in trouble if someone comes by. They'll remember we were here when they finally discover the plane."

"It'll be spring before anyone finds the plane. No one's going to remember our being here after all that time."

"What if the sheriff comes by again?"

I frowned. I'd forced myself to forget about Carl. "He won't come by," I said, with exaggerated self-confidence. "He had to work late last night. I guarantee you he's still in bed."

"And if he isn't?"

"If he comes by, you can tell him we lost something here last night. Tell him I dropped my hat in the woods and wanted to come back to search for it."

"Yesterday you yelled at me for taking risks. This seems like more of a risk than what I did."

"It's a necessary risk, Jacob. There's a difference."

"I don't see what's so necessary about it."

I shrugged, feigning indifference. "If you want, we can just burn the money right now. It'll save me the hike."

"I don't want to burn the money, I want to leave."

"I'm going in there, Jacob. You can either stay here and stand guard, or come along with me."

There was a long pause while he looked for a way out. He didn't find one. "I'll stay here," he said.

I put on a wool hat, the same dark blue as my jacket and gloves. Then I took the keys from the ignition and shoved them into my pocket.

MARY BETH ran on ahead as I moved into the woods, disappearing through the trees, then came galloping back, the tags on his collar jingling, his fur dusted with snow. He made a few tight circles around me and sprinted off again. I strode after him, feeling good, the cold air invigorating me, waking me up.

It took me about fifteen minutes to reach the rim of the orchard, and I paused there for a moment, surveying the scene. The plane sat in the middle of the shallow bowl, its metallic skin looking burnished, like silver, amidst the dark branches of the apple trees. Our tracks surrounded it, black holes in the snow.

A wind came up, making a rushing sound through the trees around me, and it carried with it a subtle wetness, a sense of imminent change. I glanced at the sky. It was a deep, slow-moving gray, full of the promise of snow.

The crows were still in the orchard. I didn't notice them from the rim of the bowl, but as I started down into it, they suddenly seemed to be everywhere, moving restlessly from tree to tree, cawing incessantly, as if they were arguing with one another.

I moved toward the wreck, my hand cupped against my stomach, supporting the weight of the baby pouch. The dog followed at my heels.

The plane's door was hanging open, exactly as we'd left it. I could see the mark the duffel bag had made in the snow when I'd pushed it out, a long, shallow trough. Mary Beth circled the wreck, sniffing the air.

I stuck my head in through the doorway, allowed my eyes a moment to adjust to the lack of light, then squeezed my whole body inside. I was hurrying, thinking about Jacob sitting out on the road in my car, and of all the possibilities for things going wrong because of that, when I felt the same unnatural warmth on my face I'd noticed the day before, the same heavy stillness to the air, and the memory of the bird shot through my mind.

I crouched on the floor, right where the duffel bag had been sitting, rested my hand against the wall to keep my balance, and peered toward the pilot.

He was in his seat, in the same position I'd left him the previous afternoon. His head was leaning back, staring upside down toward the rear of the plane, his arms thrown out, crucifixlike, to either side. His face was wearing the same mournful expression -- the white rings of bone around his eyes making them seem clownishly grief-stricken; the bloody icicle coming out of his nose and protruding up past his open mouth; the tip of his tongue -- swollen and dark -- sticking out between his lips.

I slapped my hand against the plane's fuselage.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Get out of here!"

My voice echoed back at me. I listened to it, waiting. Mary Beth approached the open doorway, sniffing loudly. He made a little whining sound but didn't stick his head inside. There was no sign of movement from the front.

"Hey!" I yelled again. I stomped my boot against the floor.

I waited, but nothing happened. Finally, satisfied that I was the only living thing in the plane, I stood up, scanning the floor to see if I'd dripped any blood the day before. Finding none, I started to inch my way toward the front. I unzipped my jacket as I went.

I came up quietly behind the pilot, walking in a slight stoop, trying to decide where I should plant the money. I'd planned to just lay it on the copilot's seat, but now I saw that this wouldn't work -- it would've fallen off in the crash. I'd have to put it at the dead man's feet, stuff it up tight against the nose of the plane.

I unzipped my jacket and removed the money from the knapsack. I wiped the garbage bag with my gloves, to erase any fingerprints, then crouched down and slid it forward along the floor. I pushed it past the two seats, past the pilot's boots, all the way up to the front of the plane. My back started to sweat while I worked, a cold, clammy feeling. I was holding my breath, and it made me dizzy.

When I'd jammed the money in as far as it would go, I stood up, grasped the pilot by his shoulders, and eased him forward. He bent at his waist with surprising ease, his feet sliding backward along the floor. At the last second his head rolled forward on his neck, landing on the plane's control panel with a smacking sound, like a bat hitting a ball. The bloody icicle broke, fell to the floor, and shattered.

I took a deep breath, and stepped back. I straightened my body until the top of my hat touched the plane's metal roof; then I held myself there, thinking, checking things off in my head. I'd looked for blood, I'd planted the money, I'd repositioned the pilot. There was nothing left to do.

I zipped up my jacket, turned, took a single step, and froze. There were two birds sitting just inside the open doorway, watching me. It was the strangest thing -- I seemed to think of them before I actually saw them, their images floating across my mind as I turned my body, two shadows emerging from the plane's darkness to confront me. It was eerie; it was as if I'd willed them into being.

I stared at them. They didn't move.

I waved my arms. "Scat!" I yelled.

One of the birds edged toward the doorway. The other remained where it was.

Very slowly, I took a step forward. The first bird shuffled quickly to the door. It stopped on the threshold to watch me, its plumage shiny in the light streaming in from the orchard. The second bird lifted its wings, as if to threaten me. It moved its head from side to side on its shoulders. Then it stretched its neck and cawed. The sound ricocheted off the walls. When it died down, the bird settled its wings back into its body and took a tentative step toward me.

"Out!" I yelled.

The first bird gave a little cry and disappeared with a quick hop through the doorway. I could hear the push of its wings as it flew away. The other bird simply sat there, turning first one eye toward me, then the other.

I stepped forward, stomping my boot against the floor.

The bird shuffled backward, away from the door. It lifted its wings again.

I watched it, waiting. "I'm leaving," I said, like an idiot. I took two shuffling steps forward, closing in on the door.

The bird retreated, sinking into the darkness at the rear of the plane, its wings still raised. I had to move at a stoop, my shoulders hunched over, my boots making a rough, scraping sound against the floor.

When I reached the door, I went out backward, so I wouldn't have to take my eyes off the crow. It raised its wings a little higher, turned its head to watch me disappear.

"I'm leaving," I said again, squeezing myself out into the snow.

Outside, the world seemed brighter, just as it had the day before. I leaned my shoulder against the door and, straining, pushed it shut. It swung closed with a violent metallic shriek.

Mary Beth had disappeared. I followed his tracks with my eyes. The trail headed off toward the road. I called his name, twice, halfheartedly, then gave up, assuming that he was already back at the car with Jacob.

As I started up the gentle slope away from the wreck, I sensed that there was something different about the orchard, something besides the illusory change in light, but it wasn't until I reached the bowl's rim that I realized what it was. It was a snowmobile, a low, whining hum hanging beelike in the air around me. It was coming from the direction of the road.

I paused, my body tense, listening, trying to decide what it meant. The wind had died down, the day felt warmer, and when I glanced at the sky I saw that, rather than thickening toward the predicted storm, it was actually clearing. I could even make out a large patch of blue to the south.

The snowmobile's buzz slowly gained in volume, far away still but moving closer. The crows in the orchard called loudly back and forth to one another.

I took one last look at the plane, glinting dully in the bottom of the hollow, then turned and started back toward the road at a run.

I STRAINED to listen for the snowmobile while I ran, but I couldn't hear it. The sounds of my breathing, of my arms rubbing against my jacket, my boots slapping down into the snow, and the trees flashing quickly by, all hid the hum of its engine. The footing was slick, my boots heavy, and I tired quickly. I slowed to a walk after a few minutes, when I was still only halfway back to the road. As soon as I ceased to run, I heard the engine. It was close now. It sounded as if it were right in front of me, just out of sight through the trees. I could hear Mary Beth barking. I listened, walking for about twenty yards to let my heart slow down a bit, then took a deep breath and started to run again.

I saw the car first, my dark green station wagon pulled off at the side of the road. It appeared like a shadow before me, suddenly materializing between the trunks of the trees. Then there was my brother, standing in front of it like a giant red beacon. Next to him was a smaller man, and beneath this man, between his legs, was the snowmobile, its engine idling now, spitting out a dense cloud of light gray smoke.

The man was tiny, old, dressed in an orange hunting jacket. It was Dwight Pederson -- I recognized him immediately. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder.

When I saw who it was, I dropped back to a walk. I still had about thirty yards to go before I reached the road, but I realized instantly that whatever damage Jacob had managed to produce through talking to the old man would only be increased by my sprinting frantically up to them out of the woods. I had to go slow now, react rather than act. I put my hands in my pockets and carefully picked my way toward them through the trees, trying to appear calm, in control, casual.

Pederson saw me first. He stared at me, seemingly uncertain who I was, then raised his hand halfway up his body in greeting. I waved back, smiling. Jacob was talking very fast. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but it looked like he was arguing with the old man. He was making a cutting motion in the air with his arm and shaking his head. When he saw Pederson wave at me, he threw a panicked look into the woods but didn't stop talking. Pederson seemed to be ignoring him. He gunned the snowmobile's engine, then said something short to Jacob and pointed down at the snow in front of them.

What happened next happened very quickly.

Jacob took a step toward the old man, reared back, and gave him a wide, swinging blow to the side of his head. Pederson fell sideways, his body collapsing onto the edge of the road, absolutely lifeless, his left leg still draped partway over the seat, his rifle slipping from his shoulder. Jacob lost his footing on the follow-through, tumbled over the back of the snowmobile, and landed directly on top of the old man.

Mary Beth started to bark.

Jacob struggled to raise himself off Pederson's body. His gloves slipped in the snow; he couldn't seem to regain his feet. He'd lost his glasses when he fell, and, still lying there, he patted his hands around him in the snow until he found them. Then he put them on and started struggling upward again. When he finally made it to his knees, he paused, resting for a moment before, with what looked like a superhuman effort, he rose to his feet.

The snowmobile's engine continued to idle, a deep, steady rumble. The dog cautiously approached Jacob from the center of the road. He gave his tail a slow, hesitant wag.

Jacob stood there, motionless. He touched his face with his glove, took his hand away to stare at it, then put it back.

All this time, I hadn't moved. I'd stood there frozen, watching in horror. Even now I only partly shook myself free. I took a single step toward the road.

Jacob leaned back and kicked the old man. He kicked him twice, with all his strength, once in the chest and once in the head. After that he stopped. He put his hand up to his face and turned to look toward me.

Mary Beth started to bark again.

"Oh, Jacob," I said, very quietly, as though speaking to myself. Then I began to run, moving quickly through the snow toward my brother.

JACOB stood there, his glove covering his mouth and nose, watching me approach.

The snowmobile's engine was making a coughing sound, threatening to stall, and the first thing I did when I reached the road was bend down and turn it off.

Jacob was crying. This was something I hadn't seen since we were children, and it took me a second to accept that it was actually happening. He wasn't sobbing, wasn't weeping, there was nothing violent or dramatic about it, he was simply seeping tears; they moved slowly down his cheeks, his breath coming a little more quickly than usual, coming with a certain shakiness to it, a trembling and hesitation. His nose was bleeding -- he'd banged it falling on top of Pederson -- and now he was pinching his nostrils shut between two of his fingers.

I glanced down at the old man. He was lying on his side, his left leg still propped up on the snowmobile's seat. He was dressed in jeans and black rubber boots. His orange jacket was hitched up around his waist; I could see his belt, thick and dark brown, and above it an inch of thermal underwear. Jacob had knocked off his hat when he hit him, revealing a sparse head of long, gray hair, dirty looking, oily. An orange wool scarf covered most of his face. I could see where Jacob had kicked him, right above the left ear. There was a dull red scrape there, around which his skin was already beginning to darken into a bruise.

Mary Beth stopped barking finally. He came up and sniffed at Jacob's boots for a second, then moved off into the center of the road.

I crouched over Pederson's body. I took off my glove and held my hand against his mouth. He didn't seem to be breathing. I put my glove back on and stood up.

"He's dead, Jacob," I said. "You've killed him."

"He was tracking the fox," Jacob said, stuttering a bit. "It's been stealing his chickens."

I rubbed my face with my hand. I wasn't sure what I ought to do. "Jesus, Jacob. How could you do this?"

"He would've gone right by the plane. He would've found it."

"It's all over now," I said, feeling my chest begin to tighten in anger. "You've ruined it for us."

We both stared down at Pederson.

"They're going to send you to jail for this," I said.

He gave me a panicked look. His glasses were wet from the snow. "I had to do it." He sobbed. "We would've been caught."

His eyes glittered, small and wild in the white, doughy expanse of his face; his cheeks were damp with tears. He was terrified, bewildered, and, seeing him like that, my anger collapsed, immediately replacing itself with a rush of pity. I could save him, I realized, my older brother, I could reach down and pluck him out of this trouble, and in the process I'd save myself, too.

I glanced quickly up and down the road. It was empty.

"Have any cars gone by?" I asked.

He didn't seem to understand. He took his hand away from his nose, wiped at the tears on his cheeks. Blood was smeared across the skin above his upper lip, giving him a comical appearance, as if he were wearing a fake mustache.

"Cars?" he said.

I gestured impatiently at the road. "Have any passed? While I was in the park?"

He stared off into the distance. He thought for a second, then shook his head. "No. Nothing." He put his hand back over his nose.

I glanced across the road, toward Pederson's farm. The house was very small and far away. I thought I could see smoke rising from its chimney, but I couldn't tell for sure. The snowmobile's tracks headed off straight down the center of the field, running parallel to the fox's.

"What do we do now?" Jacob asked. He was still crying a little, and he turned away from me, pretending to stare at Mary Beth, to hide it. The dog was sitting in the middle of the road.

"We'll make it look like an accident," I said. "We'll drive him away from here and make it look like a snowmobile accident."

Jacob gave me a frightened look.

"It's all right," I said. "We can get away with this." For some reason seeing him panic made me all the more calm. I felt confident, completely in control.

"They'll follow the tracks," he said. "They'll come here and they'll see our tracks and they'll follow them to the plane."

"No. A storm's coming." I waved at the sky, which, despite what I was saying, was continuing to clear. I ignored this, bullying my way forward. "Any minute now it'll start snowing, and all of this'll be covered up."

Jacob frowned, as if ready to disagree, but he didn't say anything. He brought his hand back up to his face, and I saw the blood smeared on his glove.

"You didn't get blood on him, did you?"

"Blood?"

I crouched beside Pederson, inspecting his clothes. There was a dark brown smear on the shoulder of his jacket. I scooped up a handful of snow and rubbed at the stain. Only a little bit came off.

Jacob watched me, a look of resignation on his face. "It's not going to work, Hank," he said. "We're going to get caught."

I continued to rub at the blood. "This isn't a big deal. It's not something people'll notice."

He held his hand out in front of him, stared down at his glove. "You said it's worse than fingerprints," he said, his voice taking on a quickness, a jagged quality.

"Jacob," I said firmly. "Calm down." I stood up and touched him on his arm. "All right? We can do this if we stay calm."

"I killed him, Hank."

"That's right," I said, "but it's done. Now we have to deal with it. We have to cover it up so you don't get caught."

He shut his eyes. He put his hand back over his nose.

I realized that I had to get him away. I pulled the car keys out of my pocket. "You're going to take Mary Beth and drive back to the bridge." I waved down the road toward Anders Creek. "I'll meet you there."

He opened his eyes, bewildered. "At the bridge?"

I nodded. "I'm going to drive Pederson there on the snowmobile. We'll push him over the edge, make it look like he drove off by accident."

"It'll never work."

"It'll work. We're going to make it work."

"Why would he be down at the bridge?"

"Jacob," I said. "I'm doing this for you, all right? You've got to trust me. Everything's going to be okay." I held out the car keys in the palm of my glove. He stared at them for several seconds; then he reached out and took them.

"I'm going to drive through the park," I said. "Out of sight from the road. You'll get to the bridge before me, but I don't want you to stop. I want you to drive by and then circle back. I don't want people to see you sitting there."

He didn't say anything.

"Okay?"

He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and wiped at his cheeks. The car keys jingled in his hand. "I just don't think we'll get away with it."

"We'll get away with it."

He shook his head. "There's so much to think about. There's all this stuff we probably haven't even noticed yet."

"Such as?"

"Stuff we're not counting on. Stuff we're missing."

I was growing impatient. Time was slipping by. Any moment a car might appear on the horizon, driving toward us. If we were seen here like this, everything would be lost. I took Jacob by the elbow, guiding him toward the station wagon. I sensed that if I could get him moving, everything would be all right. We stepped out onto the road. The dog rose to his feet and stretched.

"We aren't missing stuff," I said. I tried to smile reassuringly at him, but it felt like it came out pleading. I gave him a little push forward.

"Just trust me, Jacob," I said.

IT WAS perhaps ten seconds after Jacob started the car and drove off, as I was turning toward Pederson to pick him up and set him on the snowmobile, that the old man let out a long, agonized moan.

He was still alive.

I stared down at him in shock, my head swimming. He kicked his leg a little, and it slipped off the snowmobile onto the ground. His boot made a heavy thumping sound when it landed. I glanced down the road. Jacob had disappeared.

Pederson mumbled something into his wool scarf. Then he groaned again. One of his gloves flexed into a fist.

I stood there, bent at the waist, my mind racing. With frightening clarity, I saw two paths opening up before me. Taking one of them, I'd be able to finish it right here. I'd get Pederson up on the snowmobile, drive him back to his house, and call Carl. I'd have to tell him everything, and give the money back. If I did that, if I were totally honest, and Pederson survived his beating, I knew I'd have a good chance at escaping a jail sentence. But Jacob wouldn't. Carl would send somebody down to the bridge to pick him up. He'd be charged with assault and battery, or attempted murder. He'd go to jail, probably for a long time. And the money would be gone.

Then, of course, there was the other path. It was already prepared for, already halfway trodden upon. I had the power to save Jacob, save the money. And in the end, I suppose, that was why I did it: because it seemed possible, it seemed like I wouldn't get caught. It was the same reason I took the money, the same reason I did all that follows. By doing one wrong thing, I thought I could make everything right.

Pederson groaned. He seemed to be trying to lift his head.

"I'm," he said very distinctly, but nothing more. He clenched his fist again.

I stooped down beside him. It was an ambiguous motion: someone watching us from a distance might've assumed that I was trying to help the old man.

His scarf was wrapped tightly around the bottom half of his face. His eyes were closed.

When I'd seen Jacob hit him, it had happened so quickly that it seemed natural to me, predictable. I'd been surprised, but not shocked. I'd accepted it immediately. Jacob, I said to myself, has killed him. In my mind at that instant Pederson had been dead. And that's what I told myself now as I crouched over his body. He's already dead, I said. He's already dead.

At first I'd planned to hit him again, like Jacob had, perhaps in the throat. For some reason I thought of the throat as a particularly vulnerable spot on the body. But looking at his neck, I saw his bright orange scarf, and the sight of it changed my mind.

I glanced up and down the road, to make sure no cars were coming, then leaned forward, took the scarf in my hand, balled it up a bit, and pressed down firmly against his mouth. With my other hand I pinched shut his nostrils.

Looking back now, it seems as though there ought to have been something more, some impediment or compunction, a barrier to struggle through. I would've expected at the very least a sense of terror, an atavistic revulsion, a realization that what I was doing was unequivocally wrong, not simply because the society of which I was a member called it such but because it was murder, a primal crime. There was nothing like that, though. And perhaps this shouldn't be surprising -- perhaps it's romantic to expect that epiphanic realization, that sudden sense of fate's diverging pathways as one hesitates between them, choosing. In real life the immensity of such moments must almost always slip by unnoticed, as it did for me, something to be added later, in hindsight, but buried until then beneath the incidental details -- the feel of Pederson's scarf through my glove, the worry that I was squeezing his nostrils too tightly, that I might be bruising them, and that this might be discovered in an autopsy.

I didn't feel evil. I felt nervous, scared, nothing more.

He struggled very little. He moved his hand once, a wiping motion across the ground, as if he were trying to erase something, but that was all. His eyes stayed shut. There was no noise, no death rattle, no final groan. I held the scarf there for a long time. The sky had cleared enough now for the sun to come out, and it warmed my back. I could see a cloud shadow moving slowly along the edge of the field across the road. As I watched it pass, I started to count. I counted very slowly, pausing before each number, concentrating on the sounds they made in my head. When I reached two hundred, I let go of the scarf, took off my glove, and felt carefully for the old man's pulse.

There was nothing there.

I RODE east through the nature preserve, keeping the road just out of sight to my right. I reached the pond after a minute or so. It was frozen solid. Picnic tables were scattered haphazardly about its border. Everything was covered with snow.

Past the pond, the woods were thicker, and I had to choose my route with more care, winding in and out between matted tangles of underbrush. The branches of the trees scraped against my jacket, as if they were trying to stop me, hold me back.

Pederson's body straddled the seat in front of me, slouched forward like the pilot's in the plane. I had to press right up against his back to reach the controls.

I tried to occupy my mind solely with thoughts of my plan. I sensed a danger in circling back to what had happened already that morning, sensed that doing so would only lead to confusion and anxiety, that the safest path was forward, where things could still be changed.

The bridge would be plowed and salted, I knew; there would be a thick bank of snow along either edge. If Pederson had wanted to cross without damaging his snowmobile's treads on the cement, he would've had to have ridden along one of these banks -- banks that were just wide enough to support his machine and just high enough to crest the top of the guardrails.

People would wonder what he was doing there, why he'd decided to cross the bridge, but it wouldn't be enough to make them suspicious. It would be a mystery, something they'd shake their heads over, nothing more. Unless, of course, the plane were discovered before it snowed. There would be the snowmobile's tracks then, the footprints leading into the park. There would be signs of a scuffle alongside the road.

I glanced up at the sky. It was continuing to clear with a startling rapidity. There was a wide expanse of blue now, sun streaming down through the branches of the trees, the air cold and crisp. What clouds remained were fair-weather clouds, white and fluffy. There was no sign of impending snow.

The closer I got to the edge of the park and the bridge beyond it, the harder I had to work to keep my mind fixed on my plan. Other thoughts crept in. It began with the physical sensation of Pederson's body against my chest. His head was nestled beneath my chin. I could smell his hair tonic through his hat. His body itself was compact, dense. It didn't feel at all like I would've expected it to. It felt like it ought to be alive.

And as soon as I thought this -- that Pederson was dead, that I had killed him, smothered the life out of him with my own hands -- my heart fluttered heavily up into my throat. I realized that I'd crossed a boundary, done something abhorrent, brutal, something I never would have imagined myself capable of. I'd taken another man's life.

This thought bewildered me, set my mind tumbling backward and forward, rationalizing, justifying, denying, and it was only with an extreme effort of will that I regained control. I shut myself down, pulled back, forced my mind to concentrate on nothing except what was going to occur in the next fifteen minutes. I continued on toward the eastern edge of the park, my arms supporting Pederson's body, guiding the snowmobile through the trees, half my brain occupied with thoughts of the bridge and Jacob and the sheriff, the other half desperately trying to fight off a strange, horribly threatening sensation -- that I was doomed now, trapped, that the rest of my life would pivot somehow off this single act, that in trying to save Jacob, I'd damned us both.

THE PARK'S southeast corner went right up to the foot of the cement bridge.

I paused at the edge of the woods, making sure no one was in sight. The creek was about fifteen yards wide here. It was frozen solid, the ice covered with a thin layer of snow. Pederson's farm was behind me, down the road. There were fields across the creek, empty to the horizon. Jacob hadn't arrived yet.

I eased the snowmobile out alongside the road, the engine rumbling beneath me. I looked to the east, then back to the west. There were no cars in sight. I could see the old man's house now, just visible around the edge of the trees. It was closer than I'd thought. I could make out its windows, could see the collie sitting on the top step of its porch. If someone had been standing there watching, they'd have been able to see me, too.

I gunned the engine, maneuvering the machine up onto the bank of plowed snow, moving slowly along it until I reached the center of the bridge. There was a ten-foot drop there from the roadway to the ice. The guardrail was buried in snow.

I put Pederson's hand on the throttle, adjusted his body in the seat, sliding him back a bit, planting his boots on the footrests. I slung his rifle over his shoulder, pulled his hat down on his ears, wrapped his scarf tightly around his face. The motor coughed a little, stuttering, and I gave it some gas.

I glanced up and down the road again. There were no cars, no movement whatsoever. The collie was still sitting on Pederson's porch. It would've been impossible to tell, of course, whether someone was watching from a window there, but I quickly scanned them all the same. They reflected the sky back at me, the bare branches of the trees surrounding the house. I turned the snowmobile's skis toward the creek and eased it slowly forward, until it hung partway over the ice, balancing on the edge of the snowbank.

I tried to think if I was forgetting something, shutting my eyes, but my mind refused to help me. I could think of nothing.

The collie barked, once.

I stepped down onto the roadway, braced my feet against the pavement, and pushed the snowmobile forward with my shoulder. It went over with surprising ease. First it was there, and then it was gone. There was a tremendous crash when it hit the ice, and the engine shut itself off.

I climbed back up onto the bank to see.

The snowmobile had rolled over in midair, landing on Pederson, crushing him beneath its weight. The ice was cracked, but not collapsed, forming a bowl-shaped depression around the old man and his machine. The creek was seeping slowly in, covering his body. His hat had fallen off again, and his gray hair floated out away from his head in the icy water. His scarf was tight around his face, clinging to it like a gag. One of his arms was pinned beneath the snowmobile. The other was thrown palm upward to the side, as if he'd died struggling to free himself.

JACOB arrived a few minutes later, from the east. He slowed the car to a stop beside me, and I climbed inside. As we sped away, I glanced back at the bridge. The old man's body was just visible beneath it, a splash of orange on the ice.

We drove by the Pederson place for the second time that day. The collie barked at us again, but Mary Beth, lying curled up in a ball on the backseat, didn't seem to notice. I'd been right earlier, there was smoke coming out of the chimney. That meant the old man's wife was there, sitting beside a fire in the parlor, awaiting his return. The thought of this made my chest tighten.

When we passed the spot where the fox had crossed the road, I heard Jacob give a sharp intake of breath.

"Jesus," he said.

I looked out the window. There were tracks everywhere -- the fox's, the dog's, Jacob's, Lou's, mine. There was a gash in the snowbank from Jacob's truck and, crossing the road, tread marks from Pederson's snowmobile. It was a mess, the whole thing, impossible to miss. The tracks seemed to converge as they disappeared into the woods, as if to form an arrow, pointing straight toward the plane.

Jacob started to cry again, very softly. Tears rolled down his face, and his lips began to quiver.

When I spoke, I made my voice sound very calm. "It's all right," I said. "It's going to snow. As soon as it snows, that'll all be gone."

Jacob didn't say anything. He started making hiccoughing sounds in his chest.

"Stop it," I said. "It's working out. We're getting away with it."

He wiped at his cheeks. The dog tried to lean over the seat and lick his face, as if to comfort him, but Jacob pushed him away.

"Everything's okay," I said. "As soon as it snows, everything'll be okay."

He took a deep breath. Then he nodded.

"You can't react like that, Jacob. The only way we'll get caught is if we fall apart somehow. We have to stay calm."

He nodded again. His eyes were red and puffy.

"In control."

"I'm just tired, Hank," he said. His voice was rough, barely more than a whisper. He looked out the window, blinked his eyes. His nose had stopped bleeding, but he hadn't wiped off the dark smear from above his mouth. It gave his face the look of a fat Charlie Chaplin.

"I was up too late last night, and now I'm tired."

I HAD Jacob drive us all the way around the park. We headed back toward town along its northern edge, on Taft Road.

The nature preserve looked exactly the same on this side as it had on the other. It was just woods -- sycamores, buckeyes, maples, a few evergreens, the occasional white curve of a birch. Some of the pines were still dusted with snow from Tuesday's storm. There were birds every now and then, flashes of movement among the bare branches, but no signs of any other wildlife, no rabbits or deer, no raccoons or possums or foxes. It seemed strange to think that the plane was in there -- the bag full of money, the dead pilot -- and that beyond the wreck, on the other side of the park, was Pederson, whom I'd smothered, lying there in the icy water of Anders Creek.

I'd never pictured Jacob and myself as men capable of violence. My brother had gotten into fights at school, of course, but always because he'd been trapped, teased to the point where he had no choice but to lash out. He wasn't articulate enough to use his tongue, so he used his feet and hands instead, but the result was just as pitiful. He never really learned how to fight, never managed even an imitation of the true pugilist's desire to cause pain: no matter how overwhelmed with rage, he always appeared to be holding himself back, as if afraid to hurt his antagonists, and it made his fury seem farcical, make-believe, like something out of a silent movie. He'd flail clumsily at them, open fisted, as though he were swimming, tears streaming down his face, and they'd laugh at him, calling him names.

In our hearts, we were both products of our father's temperament, a man so pacifistic he refused to raise livestock -- no cattle, no poultry, no swine -- because he couldn't bear to see them slaughtered. Yet somehow, together, we'd managed to kill a man.

When we reached Ashenville, Jacob pulled to a stop in front of his apartment. He put the car in park but didn't turn off the ignition. Most of the town was closed for New Year's. There were only a few people on the street, hurrying somewhere private, heads tucked low against the cold. A wind had come up, and it blew things across the road. The sky was perfectly clear now; sunlight danced off of the hardware store's plate-glass window and made the pavement sparkle. It had turned into a beautiful winter day.

Jacob didn't get out. He stared blankly past the windshield, as if he wasn't sure where he was. He touched the bridge of his nose with his fingertips.

"I think I broke it," he said.

"You didn't break it," I reassured him. "It's just bleeding."

He still looked scared, shaken up, and it was beginning to worry me. I didn't want to leave him like this. I reached across the seat and turned off the engine.

"You know what I thought of?" I asked. "Right when you hit him?"

He didn't answer me. He was still probing at his nose.

"I thought of you getting into a fistfight with Rodney Sample." I tapped my head with my hand. "I had this instant flash of it inside my brain, an image of you swinging at him and falling down."

Jacob didn't say anything.

"How old were you then? You remember?"

He turned and gave me a distracted look. He had his gloves on again. The right one was stained dark with blood; there was a dime-size spot of dried egg yolk on its forefinger.

"Rodney Sample?"

"In gym class. You swung at him, and you both fell down."

He nodded but didn't say anything. He gazed down at his gloves, noticed the egg yolk. He lifted his hand and licked at it, then wiped it on his pant leg.

"We're in it now," he said, "aren't we?"

"Yes." I nodded. "We are."

"Jesus." He sighed, and then it seemed, for a moment, as if he were about to cry again. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and, rocking a bit, started to scratch at his elbows.

"Come on, Jacob. Pull yourself together. What's done is done."

He shook his head. "I killed him, Hank. They're gonna do an autopsy, and then they'll know."

"No," I said, but he ignored me.

"It's easy for you to be calm. It's not you that they'll send to jail." He was taking deep breaths now, panting.

"You didn't kill him," I said, surprising myself. He was scaring me with his panic; I was trying to calm him down.

He glanced at me, confused.

I realized immediately that I didn't want to tell him what I'd already begun to. I tried to backtrack. "We both killed him," I said. I looked out the window at the street, hoping he'd let it go. But he didn't.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

I attempted a smile. "Nothing."

"You said I didn't kill him."

I stared at him, trying to work it through in my mind. Since we were children I'd known that I couldn't depend on him -- he'd be late, he'd forget, he'd let me down out of laziness or ignorance -- so of course I should've known better. But he was my brother; I wanted to trust him. And, though I could sense that there was a danger in it, I saw that there might be a benefit, too. I'd saved him; it seemed like he ought to know about it. It would put him in my debt.

"He was still alive when you left," I said. "I didn't realize it till I went to pick him up, and by then you were already gone."

"I didn't kill him?" Jacob asked.

I shook my head. "I smothered him with his scarf."

It took a while for my brother to absorb this. He stared down at his lap, his head tucked into his chest, so that the skin beneath his chin piled up into a rippling series of folds.

"Why?" he asked.

The question caught me by surprise. I looked at him closely, trying to analyze what had prompted me to do it. "I did it for you, Jacob. To protect you."

He shut his eyes. "You shouldn't have done it. You should've let him live."

"Christ, Jacob. Didn't you hear me? I said I did it for you. I did it to save you."

"Save me?" he asked. "If you'd let him live, it would've just been me beating him up. We could've turned in the money, and it wouldn't have been that bad. Now it's murder."

"All I did was finish what you started. We did it together. If you hadn't done your part in the first place, I never would've had to do mine in the second."

That silenced him. He took his glasses off, cleaned them on his jacket, and then put them back on.

"We're going to get caught," he said.

"No, Jacob, we aren't. We've done it, and we're going to get away with it. The only way we'll get caught is if you break down and attract attention."

"I'm not going to break down."

"Then we aren't going to get caught."

He shrugged, as if to say, "We'll see," and we watched a little boy ride by on a bicycle. He pedaled right down the center of the street, struggling against the wind. He had a black ski mask on, and it made him look threatening, like a terrorist.

"Are we going to tell Lou?" Jacob asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

I felt something shift and settle heavily into place when he asked this. The word accomplice floated up from somewhere in my mind, and for perhaps the first time in my life I understood what it meant. It was a powerful word; it connected people, bound them to one another. Jacob and I had committed a crime together, and our fates were now inextricably intertwined. That Jacob appeared to be more frightened at present than I was by what we'd done meant nothing. Our power was equal; we were in each other's hands. If he was too shaken to understand that at present, he wouldn't be for long.

I turned toward him. "Why would you want to tell Lou?"

"It just seems like he ought to know."

"This is a bad thing, Jacob. This is something we could spend the rest of our lives in jail for."

He shut his eyes again.

"Promise me you won't tell him," I said.

He hesitated, staring down at his gloves. Then he shrugged. "All right."

"Promise me."

He sighed, looked past me out the window. His pickup was parked across the street. "I promise I won't tell Lou," he said.

We fell silent after that. Jacob seemed like he was about to get out of the car, but then he didn't.

"Where'd you hide the money?" he asked.

I gave him a sharp glance. "In the garage," I lied.

"In the garage?"

"I thought Sarah might find it if I hid it in the house."

He nodded, waited a moment, as if trying to think of something further to say. Then he reached over and opened the door. The dog sprang to his feet behind us.

"We forgot to visit the cemetery," I said.

Jacob looked at me with a tired expression, his lips edging into a sneer. "You want to go now?"

I shook my head. "I'm just saying we forgot."

He made a deprecatory gesture with his hand. "That's about the least of our problems, isn't it?" he asked. He didn't wait for my answer. He just heaved himself up to his feet, whistled for Mary Beth, and -- when the dog scrambled over the back of the front seat and out onto the pavement -- swung the door shut behind him.

SARAH heard me come home and called me upstairs. I found her in the bedroom, the shades pulled, the light dim. She was just settling in for a nap, lying on her back beneath the covers, her hair pinned in a bun on top of her head.

I sat down beside her, on the edge of the mattress, and began to recite the morning's events. I started from the beginning, letting the story unfold, leaving its climax, the encounter with Pederson, to fall, bombshell-like, in its proper place. Sarah rolled onto her side, shutting her eyes, the covers pulled up to her chin. She didn't react to what I said; she simply lay there, her lips frozen into a sleepy smile. I wasn't even sure that she was listening.

But then, just as I was describing my exit from the plane, she lifted her head a little and opened her eyes.

"What about the beer can?" she asked.

She'd caught me off guard. "The beer can?"

"Lou's beer can."

I realized that I'd forgotten to look for it. I'd meant to do it after I planted the money, but then the two crows had appeared, flustering me.

"I didn't find it," I said, hedging.

"You looked?"

I paused, considered fibbing, but my hesitation eliminated the need for it.

"You forgot," she said, her voice heavy with recrimination.

"I didn't see it. It wasn't near the plane."

She lifted herself into a sitting position. "If they find it," she said quickly, "they'll know someone's been there."

"It's just a beer can, Sarah. No one's going to notice it."

She didn't say anything. She was staring down at the bed. I could see that she was becoming angry: her lips were locked tightly over her teeth, and it seemed like she was clenching the muscles in her forehead.

"They'll assume it was dropped last summer," I said. "By someone picnicking in the orchard."

"They can run tests to see how long it's been there. They can tell by how much it's rusted."

"Come on, Sarah. They aren't going to run any tests." I was stung by her tone of voice. It seemed to imply that I'd made a grave and unforgivable error. She thought I'd acted foolishly.

"They'll find Lou's fingerprints on it."

"He was wearing gloves," I said, straining to remember if this was true. "It's just a beer can lying out in the woods. Nobody's going to think twice about it."

"They will, Hank. If there's even the slightest suspicion that any of the money's been taken, they'll search every inch of the orchard. And if they find the beer can, and they find Lou's fingerprints on it, they'll track us down."

I thought about that. I was hurt by her anger and had a vague desire to hurt her back. I knew that she was blowing things out of proportion, but at the same time I saw that she was probably justified in her fear. We'd left something behind: small as it was, it still had the potential to become a clue, a little piece of evidence to indicate our presence.

"We might as well just burn it," she said.

"Come on, Sarah."

She shut her eyes and shook her head.

"We aren't going to burn it," I said.

She didn't say anything. She smoothed the cover out across her belly, a sulky look on her face, and, watching her, I realized suddenly that I wasn't going to tell her about Pederson. I was surprised by this, jolted. We'd never kept secrets from each other, had always confessed everything. But I knew I wasn't going to tell her this, not here, not now. Perhaps I would sometime in the future, in ten or twenty years, when we were living happily off the money, when what I'd done had been justified, upheld by what had come after. I'd tell her then how I'd saved us from discovery, how I'd taken it upon myself, alone, to protect her and our unborn child from harm. She'd be shocked at my bravery, at the way I'd kept it to myself all those years, and she'd forgive me everything.

The truth was, I was afraid of what she'd think of me. I was terrified of her judgment.

"Your forehead looks better," she said, not looking at me. It was an effort at rapprochement.

I touched my forehead. "It doesn't hurt anymore," I said.

Then we sat in silence. Sarah dropped back onto her pillow, rolling toward me. I didn't look at her. I was waiting for her to say that she was sorry. If she had I might've told her, but she didn't, and finally I gave up.

"Go on," she whispered.

"That's it," I said. "I shut the door and hiked back through the woods to the road. Then we came home."

IT DIDN'T snow all afternoon. I moved restlessly about the house, glancing now and then through the windows at the sky. I turned on the radio every hour and listened for the weather. The forecast was for snow, heavy at times, lasting through the afternoon and into the evening, but by dinnertime there wasn't a cloud in sight, and when the sun finally set, a brilliant sea of icy white stars appeared in the sky, blinking down through the darkness at the earth.

Pederson's accident made the local news. Sarah and I saw it on TV before dinner. They had a shot of the bridge, taken sometime that afternoon. The snowmobile was still in the water, half submerged, the old man's hat floating beside it, but his body had already been retrieved. There were tracks up and down the creek's bank, so that you could imagine the scramble to pull him out, the panic and flurry fueled by the illusory hope that he might not yet be dead.

The newscaster said the body had been found by a passing motorist, shortly before noon. There was no mention of foul play, no indication that anything suspicious had been discovered. In the background I could see the sheriff's truck, pulled off onto the edge of the road, its lights flashing. Carl was standing beside it, talking to a tall, thin man in a bright green down vest, perhaps the unnamed motorist. In the very corner of the screen, off in the distance, I could see Pederson's house. There were three or four cars in the yard, friends come to comfort the widow.

Sarah didn't comment on the report. All she said was, "That's sad, on New Year's Day and all." She didn't seem to realize how close the creek was to the nature preserve.

I went to bed sunk in a deep depression.

I'd killed a man. There it was, every time I turned back to look -- it was something I had done. In my heart I felt unchanged, the same man I'd always been, but in my head I knew I was different now. I was a murderer.

And then there was Sarah. I hadn't told her the truth. It was the first major lie ever to come between us. I realized, too, that with the passing of time it would only grow more difficult to tell her. My fantasy of confessing in twenty years was just that, a fantasy. Each moment I spent in her presence without telling her was a continuation, a reaffirmation of the original lie.

I drifted into sleep that night with my arm draped across her belly. If the baby were to kick, I'd be able to feel it in my dreams. But my last waking thoughts were not of the infant, or of Sarah, or of the money. My last waking thoughts were of Jacob. I closed my eyes and saw the look of panic on his face as he stood over Pederson's body, believing that he'd killed him, and in my chest, as my breathing deepened into sleep, I felt a surge of warmth, the same wave of pity for him I'd felt when I'd seen the tears glistening on his cheeks. But it wasn't just for Jacob now, this warmth and pity -- it was for myself, too, and Sarah, and the baby, and Pederson, and Pederson's widow. I felt sorry for everyone.

IN THE morning I could tell just from the light in the bedroom that it was snowing. It was dim, gray, with a sense of movement to it, and a silence. I slipped out of bed and crossed quietly to the window. Giant, wet flakes were floating down out of the sky, spinning, swirling, sticking to whatever they touched. It had obviously been snowing for most of the night. The tracks in the yard were filled in, the branches of the trees bowed down toward the earth. Everything, the whole world, was white with it, covered up, hidden, buried.

4

MY OFFICE window faced directly south, out the front right-hand corner of Raikley's Feedstore, toward St. Jude's Episcopal Church across the street. I was there at my desk on Wednesday, the sixth of January, eating a powdered donut with a cup of lukewarm coffee, when a handful of darkly clothed men and women emerged from the church's side door and made its way slowly across the gravel parking lot, through the chain-link gate of the tiny cemetery, to the dark black gouge of a freshly dug grave forty yards beyond.

It was Dwight Pederson's funeral.

There were six cars in the parking lot, including the silver hearse pulled up right next to the cemetery's gate. It was a small gathering; Pederson had been something of a loner; he hadn't had that many friends. I could pick out his widow, Ruth, as she made her way back toward the grave. The priest clung to her arm, diminutive, his shoulders bowed, his left hand clutching a Bible to his chest. I could see only the very edge of the grave; the rest was hidden behind the church. The crowd of mourners arranged itself around its border.

St. Jude's bell began to toll.

I finished my donut, then got up and took my coffee to the window. The cemetery, perhaps a hundred yards away, was far enough in the distance that I couldn't identify the people around the grave. Some of them were hidden behind the church; the others, heads bowed, bodies muffled against the cold, were faceless, like strangers, though I must've known most of them. They would've been people I passed on the street in town, people I knew stories about, comic anecdotes, gossip.

I watched as they bowed their heads, then lifted them, saying something in unison before bowing again. I could see Ruth; her back was turned to me. She didn't lift her head with the others; she kept it bowed. I suppose that she was weeping. The priest was hidden from view.

I remained at the window until the service was over and the people began to make their way slowly back toward the parking lot. I watched them, counting under my breath. There were seventeen in all, including the driver of the hearse and the priest. They'd given up their morning to honor the memory of Dwight Pederson and express their grief over his death. They all believed that he'd died accidentally, a freak tragedy, pinned beneath his snowmobile in six inches of icy water, his leg and two of his ribs broken, his skull cracked, struggling vainly to free himself from the suffocating grip of his woolen scarf.

Only Jacob and I knew the truth.

Things were going to get easier from here on out, I knew. With each passing day there would be less and less anxiety about what I'd done. Pederson was buried, eliminating the threat of something being discovered in an autopsy; the plane was covered with snow, the tracks around it erased forever.

Perhaps the greatest relief of all, though, was that I still thought of myself as a good man. I'd assumed that what had happened at the edge of the nature preserve would change me, affect my character or personality, that I'd be ravaged by guilt, irreversibly damaged by the horror of my crime. But nothing changed. I was still who I'd always been. Pederson's death was just like the money; it was there whenever I thought about it, but then when I didn't, it was gone. It made no difference to my life in a day-to-day sense unless I called it up myself. The key was not to call it up.

I believed that what I'd done on New Year's Day was an anomaly. I'd been forced into it by extraordinary circumstances, circumstances far beyond my control, and now the whole thing seemed remarkably understandable to me, even forgivable.

But was it? If there was an anxiety which plagued me at that time, it had nothing to do with being caught, nothing to do with the money or the memory of my crime. It had to do with Sarah. Would Sarah understand what I had done?

I could feel a draft coming through the window. There was a plastic sheet of insulation sealing its outside frame, but it was torn and flapped loosely in the wind. I watched the mourners talk for a bit in the parking lot. They clustered around Ruth Pederson, hugging her one after the other. The men shook one another's hands. Finally they all climbed into their cars, pulled out of the parking lot, and started slowly down Main Street toward the western edge of town.

They were going back to the Pedersons': I could imagine it well enough. They'd eat lunch around a big wooden table in the kitchen -- casseroles and three-bean salads, cold cuts and potato chips. There would be warm drinks -- tea, coffee, hot chocolate -- in Styrofoam cups and for dessert they'd have Jell-O, carrot cake, chocolate chip cookies. Ruth Pederson, changed now out of her black dress, would sit at the head of the table. She'd watch the others eat, making sure that everyone had enough. People would hover around her, speaking softly, and she'd smile at what they said. Everyone would go out of their way to help clean up, washing dishes and putting them back in the wrong cabinets. Then, as the afternoon wore on into evening, the light fading westward toward the nature preserve, they'd slip off one by one into their own lives, until at last Ruth was left all by herself in the empty house.

I could picture this in my mind -- could see her sitting there, the house sunk in shadows, the guests gone, their well-meaning tidiness leaving her nothing to busy herself with except her grief -- but, though I knew that I ought to, I felt no remorse at the image, no guilt, only an abstract sort of empathy, distant and subdued. I'd taken her husband from her; it was not something I would've thought I could ever live with. Yet, there I was.

I pulled shut the blinds, finished my coffee, dropped the empty cup into the wastebasket. Then I sat down at my desk, turned on the little light there, pulled a pen from my shirt pocket, and set to work.

ON MY way home from the feedstore that night, I took a long detour, so that I could drive by the nature preserve. I circled above it, then came in from the west, moving slowly along the park's southern border. It was just beginning to get dark, and I drove with my high beams on, scanning the edge of the road for our tracks. There was nothing there; all the signs of our passage, even the gouge Jacob's truck had cut into the snowbank, had been erased.

When I drove by the Pederson farm, I could see several lights shining through the windows of the house. The collie was sitting on the porch. It didn't bark this time though; it simply stared at my station wagon, its ears erect, its thin, angular head rotating slowly on its shoulders as the car drifted past down the road toward the bridge over Anders Creek.

A FULL week passed. I spoke twice with Jacob on the phone but didn't see him. We talked only briefly, both times about Pederson, reassuring each other as to the success of our cover-up. I didn't speak to Lou at all.

Thursday afternoon I was working in my office when Sarah appeared. Her face was flushed from the cold, making her look angry, and there was a busyness about her -- her eyes shifting rapidly from spot to spot, her hands reaching up to touch now her hair, now her face, now her clothes -- which told me that something bad had happened. I stood up quickly, came out from behind my desk, and helped her take off her jacket. Beneath it she was wearing one of her maternity dresses -- a fleet of tiny sailboats floating across a sea of pale blue, cheap-looking fabric. The dress molded itself to the swollen dome of her belly. I couldn't help but stare at it; it reminded me of some giant fruit. There was a baby inside her: whenever I saw her now, the thought jarred me, gave me an uneasy feeling in my own stomach.

Sarah dropped heavily into the armchair beside my desk, the chair customers sat in when they came to ask me for an extension on their bills. Her hair was pinned up around her head, and she was wearing dark red lipstick.

"Lou's told Nancy," she said.

I went over and shut the office door. Then I sat down behind my desk.

"I saw her at the grocery store," Sarah said. "I came in to buy some applesauce, and I was digging through my purse for a coupon I'd cut out of the paper when she came up behind me and asked why I was bothering with it."

"With the coupon?"

Sarah nodded. "She said with our New Year's present I shouldn't have to worry."

I spread my hands out across the desk, frowning.

"She said it right in front of the cashier. Like she was commenting on the weather."

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. I pretended I didn't understand."

"Good."

"But she knew. She could tell I understood what she was talking about."

"We couldn't really expect Lou not to tell her, could we?"

"I want to burn it."

"I mean, she had to find out sooner or later."

"We've made a mistake, Hank. Admit it. We're in over our heads."

"I think you're overreacting," I said. I leaned forward to take her hand, but she pulled it away. I stared across the corner of the desk at her. "Come on, Sarah."

"No. We're going to get caught. I want to burn it."

"We can't burn it."

"Don't you see, Hank? How it's going to get out of hand? It was all right when just the four of us knew. But everyone feels like they can tell someone else. There're five of us now. Pretty soon there'll be more. It'll just keep growing like that until we get caught."

"We can't burn it," I said again.

"It's a small town. It won't take that long. We have to stop it while we still can."

"Sarah," I said slowly. "It's not as simple as it was at first."

She started to protest, but then she saw my face. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Do you remember seeing the story about Dwight Pederson on the news? The old man whose snowmobile went into the creek?"

She nodded. "On New Year's Day."

"He didn't die accidentally."

Sarah didn't seem to understand. She gave me a vacant stare.

"He saw Jacob and me at the nature preserve, and we killed him." Saying this, I felt a weight shift from my shoulders. Without having planned it, I was confessing. I was coming clean.