The box with the water bottles was still out in the middle of the floor because she wasn’t strong enough to replace it, and now she was grateful for that. It took but a few seconds to grab a full bottle and remove the wrappings and start back down the stairs, clutching the rail with her free hand and taking careful steps, getting her foot down firm and flat each time. Eric had crawled back to the door, was sitting with his back against it and his head in his hands.

“Here you go,” she said, and she was almost scared to hand him the bottle, scared to touch him. Whatever was going on in his body and mind wasn’t right. Wasn’t natural.

He took the bottle from her and opened his eyes to thin slits, just enough to let him see the top. He was mumbling something, but she couldn’t make it out.

“What’s that?”

“Lights,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Turn them off, please.”

She leaned over him and hit the wall switch and plunged the room into darkness. That seemed to give him some relief as he drank from the bottle. Years she’d saved those bottles, unopened, some of the only original Pluto Water in the valley, and now he’d gone through two in two days. Oh, well, wasn’t Christian to worry about a thing like that, sort of condition he was in.

There was still a light on in the kitchen, so she walked over and turned it off, too, and now the whole house was dark. She came back into the living room and stood with her hand on the back of a chair and watched him as the rain hammered the windows and another bolt of lightning lit the room briefly. He was sitting with his knees pulled up and his head down, and after a moment’s pause he drank again, just a few swallows.

I should call a doctor, she thought. He’s sick with something fierce, and the last thing that’s going to cure it is Pluto Water. I’ve got to call him a doctor.

But he was coming back. It was astonishing, really, the speed of it. He was recovering while she watched, his breathing easing back to normal patterns and color returning to his face and the tremors ceasing in his hands and legs. Across the room the grandfather clock Harold had made back in ’fifty-nine began to chime, and Eric Shaw lifted his head and looked at the source of the sound, and then he turned and looked at her. Smiled. Weak, but it was a smile.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re feeling better,” she said. “That fast.”

He nodded.

“I mean to tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “Shape you were in… I was standing here thinking I’d have to call for the ambulance, and then I took but a blink and you looked better.”

“It works quick when I get it.”

“And when you don’t?”

He closed his eyes again. “Gets pretty bad.”

“I could see that. Go on and finish it.”

“Don’t need to,” he said. “Doesn’t take much.”

He put the top back on the bottle, which was now about two-thirds full, and added, “I’m sorry. First of all to come crashing in your house in the rain like this; second for ruining more of your water.”

“Don’t you worry about that.” She went over to the hall closet and got a couple kitchen towels out, brought them over and handed them to him. “Go on and dry off.”

He dried his face, neck, and arms and then used the towels to mop up some of the water from the floor. While he was doing that, she noticed that his car was still running out in the yard, lights on and driver’s door open. She went outside and down the steps into the wet yard. The storm was dying down now, but the thunder still had a menacing crackle to it, like a dog snarling and snapping its jaws as it retreats. Thing about a dog like that-it always comes back.

When she got to the car, she leaned in and turned it off and took the keys in her hand. The interior was soaked, water pooled on the leather seat. She closed the door and then went back into the house and handed him the keys. When he finally stood, his legs looked steady. Anne told him to take the wooden rocker and she sat on the sofa.

“I’ve come across plenty of stories about that water,” she said, “but I never did hear of anyone needing it like you did. It’s almost like you’re addicted to it.”

“A lot like that.”

“Well, it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know what would be in it that would-”

She stopped talking when she saw his eyes. They had shifted suddenly, warped into something flat and unfocused.

She said, “Mr. Shaw? Eric?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t seem to have heard her, even, was staring at the old grandfather clock, but she wasn’t certain he was seeing that.

“You all right?” she asked, her voice a whisper now. He was in some sort of trance. Could be a seizure, could be something for that ambulance she’d considered a few minutes ago, but for some reason she didn’t think it was, didn’t think she ought to go for the phone.

Give him a minute, she thought.

And so, as the thunder continued to roll, softer now, pushing east, and a light, fading rain pattered off the porch and the windows, she sat there in the dark living room and watched him slip off into a place where she could not follow.

IT WAS TWILIGHT, the treetops lit by a gray gloom, and long shadows beneath, and the shack on the hilltop was creaking under the force of a strong wind. Stray raindrops splattered the ragged boards of the porch and plinked off the big roadster parked in front. Both doors opened and the two occupants stepped out-Campbell Bradford and the boy.

“Hold on there,” Campbell snapped, and then he took the violin case from the boy’s hand and flicked up the latches and opened it, lifted the instrument out. He handled the violin roughly, and the boy winced. Inside the case were a few handfuls of bills and coins. Campbell took all of the bills, folded them, and put them in his pocket. Then he dropped the violin back in on top of the coins and latched the case.

“There. What’s left is yours. Now go on and get your uncle. I need a word.”

Lucas took the case and went to the front door, stepping carefully around one gaping hole in the porch floor. A moment after he went inside, the door opened again and the old man stepped out, clothed in the same dirty overalls and with a hat on his head. The hat had holes in the brim.

“I don’t got no liquor for you tonight,” he said.

“I know it. Now come on down here so I can speak without shouting.”

The old man didn’t seem to like that idea, but after a hesitation he walked slowly down the steps and out into the yard.

“I wish you wouldn’t drag the boy down there with his fiddle,” he said. “He don’t like playing in front of folks.”

“He makes some money at it, and so do you,” Campbell said. “So kindly keep any more such thoughts unspoken. I like the sound of his playing.”

The old man frowned and shifted his weight but didn’t answer.

“I got a business dilemma,” Campbell said, “and you’re the cause of it. You ain’t given me but eight jugs in a month. That’s not enough.”

“It’s alls I had.”

“That’s the problem. What you have is not enough.”

“There’s other places for ’shine, Campbell. Lars has a still not two mile from here. Then there’s them boys from Chicago, they’d bring you down booze in barrels if you was to want it.”

“I don’t want their damn swill,” Campbell said. “Ain’t none of it the same as yours, and you know that.”

The old man wet his lips and looked away.

“How do you make it?” Campbell said, voice softer. “What’s the difference?”

“Make it same as anybody, I suppose.”

Campbell shook his head. “There’s something different about it, and you know what it is.”

“Figure it’s the spring water, maybe,” the old man said, shying away from Campbell’s stare. “I found me a good spring. Small one, but good. Strange. Water don’t look right coming out of it, don’t smell right either, but it’s got a… quality.”