"I guess it would be easier if I went alone. It'd make things simpler to deal with," she said. And then, as though she could hear my thoughts: "Wade, you know I'll come back, don't you?"

"Yes," I said, already trying to memorize the sound of her voice, the feeling of her back against my hands.

"I mean, I'll only stay out there as long as I have to."

"I know," I said.

Grace's eyes searched mine. "Wade. I will. I'll come back."

I kissed her. "You'll come back," I said.

Later, while Grace danced with Petyr, I walked to the edge of the lawn and tossed the tin ladybug into the woods, where it was quickly swallowed by the ferns.

Grace called three times from California. The first call came just after she'd landed. I got home from work and found the light blinking on the machine. I could hear the slowing whine of the plane's engines in the background of her message. "Well, the eagle has landed," she said, "and all she wants to do is take off again and fly straight back there. Ugh, Wade. Get me out of here. I wish you'd come with me. I miss your tummy. I'm going home to take a nap, so don't bother calling. I'll try you tonight. Kiss Sonny for me."

I went to work and tried to keep busy, but I couldn't keep my mind on anything. Twice I almost gave equipment away for free.

I told myself she wasn't going to call. I told myself I didn't want her to.

But that night, when no call came, I couldn't sleep. I stayed up and watched the fireflies waste themselves against my window.

She didn't call the next morning either. I a.s.sumed she would call sometime that day, but instead of waiting around, I went scavenging with Sonny. I took him with me in a small pouch I'd bought, a pouch I could strap onto my back. We walked for hours, just the two of us. We hiked deep into the woods, deeper than I usually went, and late in the afternoon I found an amazing thing. A baby shoe dipped in copper. But I wasn't as excited as I knew I should be. I wasn't excited at all. Instead, the whole idea of being out in the woods, hunting for buried junk, suddenly felt ridiculous. It felt like a waste of time.

When I got home that night there was still no message from Grace. I felt a bubble of anger rise in my stomach.

I called the number she'd left, but all I got was a recording telling me that she was out of range. I called again, but the same thing happened. I called the office number she'd given me.

"h.e.l.lo, Wade," said the office woman before I even opened my mouth. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e and grating. "Grace gave me your number. My phone has it memorized. I'll tell her you called, okay?"

Again that night I couldn't sleep. The air crackled with her absence. I tried Grace's personal phone number again and again, into the early morning hours, but each time I got that same recording. Sometime around noon, I fell asleep by the window. I woke with a throbbing sunburn on half my face. The light on my machine was blinking.

"Wade, I'm so, so sorry I didn't call earlier," said Grace. "I know you've been trying to reach me. Don't worry, though, all right? n.o.body's going to kidnap me or steal me away. You don't have to keep calling. We'll be all right. I just have a million things to do. Miss you. I'll try you tomorrow."

Three days pa.s.sed with no word from her. I thought about flying out there. I thought about tracking her down.

Finally, the phone rang.

"h.e.l.lo?" said Grace. I could hear car horns and voices in the background. "h.e.l.lo, Wade?"

"Grace?" I said.

"Wade, are you there? h.e.l.lo?"

"Yes! I'm here!" I said, both furious at her and panicked she'd hang up.

"Jesus. Hang on a second."

A rustling sound came from the other end, then things quieted down.

"Yikes. Sorry about that," said Grace. "I had to get away from the tables."

"I miss you," I said angrily.

"I miss you too. I'm sorry things have been so crazy here. The web is more tangled than I remembered."

"Grace, I want to come out there."

"Hon, that's not a good idea. I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off and I-"

"Please, Grace. Just let me."

"Wade, I can't talk about this right now. I'm at a restaurant and the person I'm meeting just walked in."

"Who are you meeting? What's going on?"

"Just calm down, Wade, all right? You're acting silly."

"Don't tell me to f.u.c.king calm down! I want to come out there."

"Stop it, okay? Stop! Take some time and cool off. I'll call you when I get a moment."

The line went dead.

I tried to call her back but all I got was that recording. I called her office but no one picked up. I called twice more, and on the third try, a recording told me that my phone had been blocked by the number I was trying to reach. My face and hands pulsed with a painful heat.

I looked around my house at all the things I'd collected over the years. The trinkets and baubles and junk. I ran my arm along a shelf, knocking everything to the ground. I tore the shelf off the wall and threw it across the room. I smashed another shelf, and another. Soon the room was littered with broken things. I got in my truck and gunned it into town.

It was dark by the time I arrived at the store. Haymont was just locking up. I pushed past him and made my way to the counter, where the phone was kept. I dialed Grace's office.

That same woman picked up. "Put me through to Grace," I said.

"It doesn't work that way," she said, and hung up.

I called again and a recording told me that all phones in my area code had been blocked by the number I was trying to reach. I was about to slam the phone to the ground, when I remembered the one other number I had. I dialed.

"h.e.l.lo?" said Petyr.

"Petyr, it's me, Wade," I said, overcome with grat.i.tude. "Please. I need to talk to Grace."

"Grace asked me not to accept any calls from you, Wade," Petyr said in that quiet, soothing voice of his. "I have to go now. I'm hanging up. I'm sorry."

The line cut off.

"Are you all right?" said Haymont.

I looked up at him standing by the counter with his tie slung over his shoulder. I was about to yell at him to call Petyr for me, but something about the way he was looking at me caused me to stop. His eyes were fearful and he was shying away, almost cringing. I stepped forward to hand him the phone and he actually flinched. It reminded me of how frightened I'd been of that boy, the one who'd appeared in my kitchen long ago, so ravenous. I thought of how I'd recoiled as the dimpled black meat of his arms came toward me.

"How about we relax, Wade, all right?" said Haymont. "Please."

I put the phone down and drove home.

Eventually, as the weeks pa.s.sed with no word from her, I came to understand that I would never see Grace again. This knowledge left me feeling both empty and strangely calm. The days grew quiet and dry. The August heat finally broke, causing leaves to crack and fall to the ground in brown particles. I decided to build a new hunting stand. I placed it farther up the trunk than the old one, up in the highest branches. I went scavenging with Sonny until late in the day, until it was nearly dark and our shadows stretched deep into the woods.

One morning, I woke to the sounds of going home. I realized, as I climbed from bed, that this was the day all the children were leaving for the winter. I fixed myself a coffee and headed out onto the porch to watch the buses take them away.

The day was very bright. I had to put on Grace's old sungla.s.ses to be able to look at the camp without my eyes hurting. So many of the children were slim this year. There was hardly a fat one among them. I watched as they scurried around, hugging each other good-bye and exchanging numbers and addresses, loading their bags and duffels onto the buses. I went up to my stand to get a better view.

As I made my way up the rungs, though, I became aware of a creaking above me. I glanced up at the stand and saw that someone was already up there.

I froze halfway up the tree. Grace. She'd come back.

A breeze washed over me. I began climbing again, my hands almost trembling. What would I say to her when I reached the stand? Part of me wanted to hug her. Another part wanted to hurl her to her death. When I neared the top of the trunk, though, I saw that the person in my stand wasn't Grace at all.

I pulled myself up onto the platform.

"You can see the whole camp from up here," said Patty. She was sitting cross-legged at the platform's edge. Her hair was finally loose. It hung down her back in a shimmering black fan. She was much smaller than she had been at the start of the summer, but she was by no means thin.

"You're going to miss your bus," I said.

She glanced over her shoulder and studied me a moment. "I pictured you different," she said. She spoke with a slight, lovely accent. "I thought you'd be older. Scarier."

"You should go. You're going to be left behind."

But she didn't move, just sat and stared at the camp, where the buses were already loading up. I sat down beside her. How strange she looked, part fat, part thin, like someone caught between two versions of herself. Her legs were almost slender, but there were crushed black veins in her ankles. Her neck was thin but her face was puffy and shiny with sweat.

Down at the camp, the buses began shuddering to life.

I noticed a chunk of something resembling a moon rock in Patty's lap. "What's that?" I said.

She glanced at the rock, turning it over in her hands. "It's salt. Rock salt."

She brought the rock to her mouth and bit off a piece. She sucked and chewed it. "See?" she said, and handed me the rock.

I took it and bit off a hunk. Immediately my tongue began to burn. Chewing it, I felt as though my teeth were cracking and shattering against its surface. My mouth filled with liquid.

Patty smiled at me. "Stings!" she said. Her eyes were bloodred from tearing. Drool leaked from her mouth.

Wiping her chin, she inched closer to me, and together we sat and watched the buses pull out of the lot. Counselors stood in the gra.s.s, waving good-bye.

I wished that Grace was there, that she was sitting beside me in my stand, watching the children leave for home. I could almost see her next to me instead of Patty, sitting at the platform's edge in her jeans and T-shirt, her hair pulled back from her spoiled face. I could practically feel her there, pressing against me. Her head was on my shoulder now, her hair soft against my neck. I smiled, staring out at the sloping woods through her old sungla.s.ses. Because everything was all right. She was back with me. The sky was the bluest of blues, and the land was rich with gold.

Part One: The Two Ferns THE RULE FOR GUARDING THE DUMPSTER WAS SIMPLE: NO ONE, under any circ.u.mstances, takes anything out.

So imagine my chagrin when I woke to the sounds of someone rummaging around inside the dumpster's hull. I wiped a porthole in my fogged-up windshield and saw that it was before dawn: the sky dark, the mist still clinging to the palm trees. I fished around until I found my spear gun and got out of the car.

"Time to quit that," I said, and banged on the dumpster's side, sprinkling rust everywhere.

The noise from inside stopped.

"Out," I said.

A man peeked over the lip. He was older than I'd expected for a thief; he looked to be in his seventies, skinny and bent, with unkempt hair and a dirty white beard.

"What seems to be the problem?" he said.

"Scat. Now."

"All right. Fine. G.o.dd.a.m.n." The old man swung his leg over the top of the dumpster and lowered himself to the ground with surprising agility. He wore no shirt, just a pair of cutoff jeans shorts with long, fraying threads hanging off the ends. Spatters of pink spots dotted his chest and shoulders from years of too much sun. In his hand was a duck with part of its beak blown off.

"That goes back in," I said, and gestured to the duck, an old, wooden hunting decoy.

"Oh, come on, son," he said, tucking the duck beneath his arm. "No one's going to miss this thing."

"I'll miss it," I said. "My boss will miss it."

He shot a quick glance at the hedges beyond the lot. I could almost feel him doing the math, calculating his chances of getting away if he made a break for it. I tightened my grip on the spear gun and made sure he saw. The gun was a 24 Blue Reef Special. My boss, Orlando, had let me borrow it from the p.a.w.nshop for the night, to guard the dumpster. The Blue Reef was a long and mean-looking gun with a razor-sharp harpoon sticking out from the barrel. Professional fishermen used it to bring down large deep-sea fish-marlin and jackfish. Fish much faster and tougher than the old man standing by the dumpster.

He adjusted the duck beneath his arm. "Just hear me out. My son, he gave this to me for my birthday a few years back. It was a gift from my boy. It means something to me."

"See these?" I said. "See those?" I gestured at the flyers taped up everywhere-on the chain across the entrance to the parking lot, on the window of the p.a.w.nshop, on the front of the black, barge-like dumpster itself. The fliers explained that to remove anything from the dumpster was strictly illegal, as the dumpster was the collective, rented property of the neighborhood's four p.a.w.nshops, including Orlando's p.a.w.n World, where I worked. On Dumpster Tuesdays, the first Tuesday of every third month-March, June, September, and December-the local p.a.w.nshops got together and rented a dumpster to use to clean out all the merchandise that had gone unsold for too long. The dumpster stayed in one of the p.a.w.nshops' parking lots for ten days, and then the rental company would come and pick it up.

This time around, the dumpster was in our parking lot, outside Orlando's. We took turns guarding it at night: me, Orlando himself, and four or five guys from the other shops. It was my first Dumpster Tuesday.

"But no one bought this thing," said the old man, holding fast to the duck. "You tossed it out."

"If everyone who p.a.w.ned something at our shop waited until we tossed it out and then just came by and got it out of the dumpster, no one would bother buying anything from us, would they?"

"Friend, I'm an old man." He smiled at me; I saw he was missing some teeth on top. "Memories is almost all I got left. And this duck brings up fond memories for me."

"Like what?" I said.

"Pardon?" he said.

"I mean, what memories does it bring up for you? Name one."

He studied the duck in his hand. "Well," he said, "it makes me think of this one time my boy Jerricho and me, we went duck hunting together? We used this very decoy. And I'm saying, the boys couldn't stay away from her. Thought she was a regular Marilyn Monroe." He nodded at the duck. "She did her job that day. Yes, sir." Then he turned back to me, waiting.

I stared at him.

"Aw, come on already," he said. "Give me a break."

"Sorry. You missed your window. You should have bought the decoy back from us while it was still in the store. Better yet, you shouldn't have p.a.w.ned it in the first place if you cared about it so much."

Suddenly his eyes brightened. "Hold up, hold up. I know who you are," he said, pointing at me. "You're the guy who had all the problems with that country singer. I heard about you on News Twelve."

I felt an uncomfortable tingle at the back of my neck. "Back in the dumpster," I said, meaning the duck.

"Tell you what, it sounded like you was about ready to murder that poor cowboy. Following him around, threatening him and all. Not that I blame you, though. After the trouble he caused you? Bringing down a s.h.i.t-storm like that?"