The place was more neglected than it had been when I’d tended the cemetery. The grass was longer on the graves, and the pathways not maintained. As I approached the little cabin that had been mine, I noticed that a window shutter hung loose and weeds had sprung up all around the entry. Yet a pair of very muddy boots outside the door gave notice that the place was not abandoned.

I ghosted up to the window and tried to peer in, but the shutter was not that loose. All I could see was darkness. Well, it was time to find out. I stopped outside the door, took my courage in both hands, and knocked.

There was no response. Was there no one home? Or could no one hear the knocking of a ghost’s hand? Desperately, I banged on the door again. “Hello?” I shouted. My voice came out as a rusty creak.

I heard movement from inside the cabin, perhaps the thud of a man’s feet hitting the floor. I knocked again. In the interval between my knocking and the door opening, I had time to think how peculiar I must look. My hair hung lank around my ears. I was unshaven and dressed raggedly in the makeshift cloak and discarded trousers. I looked like a wild man, a creature out of a tale. I’d shock whoever opened the door. But only if he could see me. Recklessly, I banged on the wood again.

“I’m coming!” The voice sounded annoyed.

I stepped back from the doorstep and waited.

Kesey dragged the door of the cabin open. He looked as if he had just wakened. He had on a gray woolen shirt that was only half tucked into his hastily donned trousers. He hadn’t shaved in at least a couple of days. He stared out in consternation and my heart sank. Then, as he looked me up and down, “What are you?” he demanded, and my heart leapt.

“I’m so glad you can see me!” I exclaimed.

“Well, course I can see you. I just don’t understand what I’m looking at!”

“I meant, I mean, it’s so good to see a friendly face.” I halted my words before I accidentally called him by name. There was no recognition in his eyes, and yet it was so good to see someone familiar that I couldn’t stop grinning. I think my smile unnerved him as much as my strange garb. He stepped back, stared up at me with his mouth hanging open, and then demanded, “What are you? What do you want?”

I replied with the first lie that popped into my head. “I’ve been lost in the forest and living rough for months. Please, I’m so hungry. Can you spare me anything to eat?”

He looked me up and down, and then stared at my skin shoes. “Trapper, eh?” he guessed. “Come in. I don’t have a lot, and what I got, well, you may regret asking for a share of it, but I’m willing to give it to you. My da taught me to never turn a hungry man away, cuz you never know when you’ll be hungry yourself. So the good god says. Come in, then.”

I followed him hesitantly. My tidy cabin had become a boar’s den. Dirty cups and glasses crowded the table and the smell of tobacco smoke was thick. He shut the door behind me, closing out the bright day and plunging us into dimness and the smell of stale beer. Clothing hung from the bedpost and the hooks on the wall; none of it looked clean. The smell of old food predominated. Despite my hunger, my appetite died. Kesey stood looking at me and scratching his chest through his shirt. What remained of his hair stood up in tufts. He yawned widely and gave himself a shake.

“Sorry to have wakened you,” I told him.

“Aw, I should have been up hours ago. But the fellows came out for cards last night; just about the only place we can play anymore is in the graveyard! They brought a jug, and stayed late, and well, it’s hard to roust out of bed when there’s no reason to roust out of bed. Know what I mean?”

I nodded. Cards with the fellows. Gettys wasn’t dead then. I tried to control my madman’s grin. He had crouched down to the hearth and was poking up the few remaining coals. He scratched the back of his head. “I got some coffee we can warm up. And there’s some corn dodgers left in the pan. That’s all I have out here. Usually, I eat in town, but the cook don’t make corn dodgers. I learned how to make them from my ma. Toasted, they’re not bad. Substantial, you know. Filling stuff.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“Sit down, then, and I’ll warm them up. So you been lost, huh?”

My two chairs remained. Habit made me sit in the big one. It was very roomy now, despite the jacket and the grubby dungarees that hung from its back and arms. Kesey was building up the fire with bits of kindling. Once the flames set the wood to crackling, he put a blackened coffeepot over them. Rising, he went to the food shelf and took down a pan covered by a stained cloth. In the pan were cornmeal dumplings that had been fried in lard. “I can toast ’em, or you can have them as they are.” He offered the pan to me, and I took two. They were greasy, heavy, and unappetizing. I took a bite, reminded myself that it was food and my stomach was empty.

“So you’re not from around here?”

Chewing the dumpling was an exercise and swallowing it an act of will. “No. I got all turned around in the forest. It was only by luck that I struck the King’s Road. When I saw it through the trees, I thought sure there would be a work crew who could help me. But it was still as death out there. What happened?” I took another bite of the corn dodger. No. Familiarity didn’t improve it. But it felt good to have food inside me.

“King decided to pull the work crews off. He’s got more important things for them to do.” Before I could ask what, he said, “So you said you’re a trapper?”

Actually, he had said it, but the lie worked as well as any other. I filled my mouth with half a corn dodger and nodded.

“Yeah?” He looked skeptical. “What happened to all your gear, then? How’d you get lost from your trapline?”

I swallowed the greasy bread and hastily backtracked. “Well, I thought I was going to be a trapper. Thought I knew more than anyone else about it. I did a lot of trapping, back west in the Midlands. But it’s getting real settled there, and I’d always heard the best furs came out of the Barrier Mountains. So I thought I’d go take some. Everyone warned me, but, well, I thought I had to try. The fear wasn’t too bad when I went in there. You know, I thought I could take it, get some good furs when no one else could. But then the fear come down, and—well, I didn’t think I was going to stay sane, let alone live. I got all turned around, lost everything I had, and I just couldn’t find my way out.”

Now he was nodding sagely. “Oh, yes. I think we’ve all known what that feels like. But lately, it’s slacked off. For a while there, it was gone, then it come back worse than ever, and now it’s gone again. Likely that’s why you could come to your senses.” He sighed. “I still don’t trust it to stay gone. I don’t go any deeper into that forest than I have to. I get my firewood along the edge of it. But I don’t walk under the trees. No, sir.”

“I expect you’re wise. Wish I’d kept the same rules. So why did the King give up on his road?”

Kesey grinned, enjoying being the bearer of big news. “You ain’t heard nothing about doings in the Midlands?”

“Who would tell me? The trees?”

He laughed. “Big gold strike back east. And I mean big. Some fool daughter of a noble family sent the Queen a bunch of rocks, saying she thought she’d find them interesting. Well, she surely did! King claimed it all for the Crown, but that don’t stop some folks, you know what I mean. They swarmed the place. The King pulled the prison workers back from the roadwork to put them to digging for gold instead of chopping trees, and pulled most of the troops back to keep the prisoners busy at what they were supposed to do and keep other folk from doing what they aren’t supposed to do. It’s huge, my friend. Fellow told me that the newspaper says there’s a whole city sprung up near the diggings, in just a couple of weeks!” He sat back in my chair and laughed at me. “I can’t believe you ain’t heard nothing. Bet you’re the only man in Gernia who hasn’t.”