1. COURTSHIP

That fall, the songs were all about saying good-bye. The hits were all about the end. The last kiss and the final embrace. The empty room. Waiting alone. Promises you hoped you’d keep.

The boys in town disappeared one by one.

The paper ran pictures of them.

Then they ran more pictures when the bodies were found and shipped home.

Don Thwait couldn’t wait for the basketball season to start, but he was worried there wouldn’t be enough rubber for basketballs.

His friend Mike made jokes: “I don’t know what Thwait will do if he can’t dribble. That guy dribbles everywhere.”

Don Thwait punched his friend Mike. His friend Mike punched him back.

Mike was always a ham.

When the kids walked down the hills into town to go to school, the mill windows along the river were dull with frost.

When the first sun hit the glass, the frost shone in long scratches like the swipe of furred claws.

In church, they prayed for the boys who had gone off to the front. After a while they started praying for girls, too. The minister begged for victory. Thwait took the prayers seriously. When the hymns came, sometimes he couldn’t actually sing because his voice had caught and wouldn’t move. He had to clear his throat and start again.

It hit different people in the congregation on different Sundays. During the Intercessions, when the minister said that people should say the names of those who they held in their prayers, there would be a sob in the silence, and everyone would swing their eyes across the bowed rows to pick out who’d broken. An old man folded in his pew, say, would look down at his kneeler and wouldn’t stand when everyone rose.

The acolytes floated up and down the aisle with candles and white gloves.

Tammy Strickland was in Don Thwait’s class. She had dark hair and freckles. Thwait always thought she was pretty, but he never took much notice of her before the others talked about her once after basketball. The other boys said:

“She lives in — it looks like a witch’s house. How does she get so pretty in that house?”

“She’s real ginchy.”

“She’s a smooth catch.”

One of the team announced: “I laid her.”

Everyone stared.

It was Richie Sledge. He held up his hand. “Yeah. I laid her.” He made a popping noise with his lips. “Belvis laid her too. Tammy’s a swell lay.”

Thwait could not stand talk like that.

Richie Sledge and Thwait got along on the court but not off it.

Thwait said, “It’s not true, Richie. You haven’t.”

Thwait didn’t know whether it was true or not, but he didn’t want it to be. Tammy Strickland looked too beautiful and too sad for that.

“It is very true,” said Sledge. “She’ll do anything if you give her a little firewater.” He jiggled his hand like he was tapping drops from a flask into Tammy’s tipped-up mouth.

Thwait did not want to stay around for this kind of conversation. He did not like conversation of this type at all. He walked out of the gym.

Later his friend Mike said something about it. “Do you think that Tammy really . . . with Belvis and Sledge?”

Thwait shook his head and said, “Sledge.”

The trees on Quick Hill were completely nude. Most of them were silver. The leaves were tangled in sticks near the ground. Briars and dead bracken were wound like barbed wire between fallen trunks.

On the top, there was a tomblike barrow lined with stones.

No one went up Quick Hill. It was too overgrown. It stood between a neighborhood on one side and a loading dock for one of the factories on the other side.

On the side of Quick Hill near Don Thwait’s house on Crab Apple Lane, a grade-school group, earlier in the fall, had strung construction-paper hands up in the branches with colored yarn. The hands looked like they were saying, Stop. Now most of them were curled; the colored paper was blotched.

The children did not trace their own hands to make these hands. If you were a parent or teacher, you did not want anything to be able to detect a child’s particular hand and come to know that hand and seek that child out.

When the cold came out of the north, the paper hands spun slowly where they hung.

Thwait and Mike watched to see which houses got stars. It would happen like this: The house would become more withdrawn, as if it didn’t have people in it at all, as if it were shutting up, and then the mother in the house would tape a star to the window. This meant that their son or daughter had died. They were given the stars by an organization in Washington, D.C.

Their boys had died in North Africa, fighting the Germans, or on messy atolls in the Pacific, fighting the Japanese. Tobruk. Attu and Kiska. The Bataan Peninsula. Of course, Pearl Harbor. The war was going badly. The cabinet radios coughed up news all day of troops trapped in the Philippines and on Guadalcanal. Rommel’s push across the deserts. There was a congressional inquiry into how the federal augurs had missed signs that a whole airborne strike force would sink half the U.S. fleet in Hawaii. Senators held up black-and-white photos of wet entrails and bellowed that the American public demanded answers.

The women whose sons had been killed while serving were called Gold Star Mothers because of the paper stars they got in the mail. They were proud to be Gold Star Mothers. Everyone in town was proud of them.

Despite the pride, no one wanted to be one.

Though the town was gray and full of fear and all the businesses now were staffed by older men standing behind counters where younger men used to stand, Thwait and Mike were still excited about the future. They were newish at living, and so food rationing and reports about armaments and air-raid bells did not seem all that strange to them or all that important.

They talked about the positions they would play on the basketball team when they were seniors. (Point guard, said Thwait, who was a good team player, but who Coach always made play forward on account of his height.) They argued about which branch of the armed services was better to join. They talked a lot about vehicles: whether they would drive a tank or a plane, whether they would pick up their girl one day in a Bugatti or a Horch, when there were cars for sale again, after the war.

“D’you rather fly a fighter or a bomber?” Mike asked.

“Bomber. It’s steadier work. You just fly and then you drop the bomb.”

“If you had to fly a fighter though, what would you fly?”

“I said I’d fly a bomber.”

“I’d fly a Jap Zero. I’d blow you out of the sky. They dance with you like a lady.”

“Grumman F4F Wildcat can beat a Zero.”

Mike gave a wild laugh. “I’m in a Fritzy Focke-Wolf. FOCKE-WOLF.” He riddled Thwait with ak-ak fire.

Thwait rolled his eyes. “It’s pronounced Focke-Vulf,” he said.

Then they talked about cars. Mike described pulling up to the curb in something fancy and a lady in a fur coat getting in and kissing his nose, murmuring, “Mon Michel.”

He said, “She’ll smell like roses and Paris.”

Thwait blinked. For a moment, it occurred to him that driving the one machine in a year might mean they never got a chance to drive the other in five years or ten.

A busload of ladies came to town saying they had the gift of a spirit hive and they would cherish your breath if you would buy war bonds. They put up posters all around town. They were cherishing breath for the war effort.

There was a long line for the cherishing. It was held in the grange hall. You bought your war bonds at a card table by the door, and then you were facing the ladies. They were dressed normally, in blouses and skirts and sweaters and jackets, but they were all chained together in a row with delicate little gold necklace chains that led from neck to neck. You went up to a lady and breathed in her mouth, and she caught your breath. She would close her eyes and swallow it. It was safe with her. Then your breath was kept for if you ever needed it.

A lot of the kids from the high school were sent to the cherishing by their parents. “You get down there!” It didn’t work most of the time — people out on the fronts were still dying in tanks, in gullies, in infirmary beds, in pieces. But there were those stories about someone lying on a battlefield who breathed their last, the death rattle, and there was silence, and then they got a different breath back and rose coughing.

Don Thwait’s lady wore horn-rimmed glasses and was on the old side. He held his face close to hers and she said, “Just blow a soft column of air toward my mouth, honey. Real easy.” He released a breath. She sucked in.

He felt guilty, but he wished his breath were being guarded by more of a looker.

At night he thought about Tammy Strickland and what Sledge had done with her. He crushed his legs together. He tried to bat his own hand away.

Tammy Strickland had never thought much about Don Thwait until that summer. He was tall, but he was quiet around girls. Then one day she had been in line at the grocer’s with her mother, and Thwait was in front of them. Tammy saw her mother read the name on Thwait’s ration book as the boy tore out the stamps and handed them to the grocer.

When the boy had left the store, Tammy’s mother said to the grocer, “That’s the Thwaits’ boy?”

The grocer nodded.

Tammy’s mother said, “Belongs to the hill?”

The grocer nodded. “That family. His great uncle was the last one. During the influenza.”

Tammy’s mother leaned to the side to watch the boy across the street.

“It’s about time,” she said, shaking her head. “They should marry him off.”

Tammy had not understood a word of this at the time. Her mother wouldn’t tell her but just said, “It isn’t decent.”

Tammy Strickland lived on a small dying farm just outside town. The goats gave milk, but they were also her pets, and she had always loved them and gave them glamorous names: Lulu, Anastasia, Esmeralda, Princess Immaculata. You got used to the smell after a while, and from the time she was a little girl, she talked to them. Her mother had once even worried that maybe one of them had become possessed — goats were weaker that way than other animals — and was about to say that Tammy couldn’t visit them anymore, but Tammy’s older brother, Townall, said, “Hush, Mom. Those goats are just plain goats. They don’t talk back.”

He took Tammy’s mother out and showed her that the goats all had their reflections in brass. Even so, she fed them little crosses and signs of warding made of straw. She made Jimmy, the billy goat, sleep on ash shavings.

Townall was always doing things for Tammy. He took her skating with his friends and so on. He taught her to play ice hockey. He made her a dollhouse when she was little and even made her small nanny goats out of spools.

Townall died in the Dutch East Indies. There was no mark of metal on his body from the bomb. He had been bobbing in the sea when he was killed. The impact of the explosion underwater was so great that the face of his corpse turned red instantly, scarlet and beaded from the bursting of all the capillaries right beneath the skin.

Tammy didn’t know what do with herself after they got the telegram. A few months later, Tammy and her father tried to figure out about where Townall must have been in the Pacific when he died. Tammy went to the library and looked for a record of the action, but the newspapers didn’t report a lot of things, especially because the war was going so badly. Based on the date of Townall’s last letter, the Stricklands figured he’d died in one of those naval encounters where the papers said, “. . . escaped with only light casualties.”

The late Townall Strickland was not statistically significant.

After they got the telegram, Tammy spent more time taking care of the chickens, which didn’t need taking care of, and the goats, which weren’t interested in pampering. Tammy’s mother — who spent her days clutching at her husband’s sleeve and, as Tammy thought, generally making herself a nuisance — decided that she’d been right all those years before and one of the goats really did have a secret rider. After Townall’s death, it was a bee in Mrs. Strickland’s bonnet. Tammy’s mother sent away for a U.S. Department of Agriculture pamphlet on the spirit possession of livestock and spent most of the summer of ’42 sprinkling the goats with human mother’s milk and walking them widdershins around Quick Hill.

She wouldn’t let Tammy go near her own nanny goats, though of course Tammy slipped out sometimes to talk to them and whap their ears around. Tammy and her mother fought all the time about the goats.

It was after one of these fights that Tammy had slammed the front door shut and stomped into town. The mist coming off of the lawns was lit by the summer lights. She could feel things growing all around her. Water was running in all the ditches.

She walked up and down Front Street. That’s where she saw Richie Sledge.

“Hey,” she said, walking past him.

And he said, “Say, Tammy.”

It was dull and uncomfortable. It happened a few times, not always with Richie Sledge.

After she had been with one of those idiots, she’d go back to the house and slip into the barn and sit near the goats with the showgirls’ names. They whickered softly and congregated, hoping for handouts. She felt guilty toward the goats, guilty toward the chickens. She felt like all the animals wanted her to still be a little girl, not grown-up.

She held Esmeralda’s long face and said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

The goats looked back at her with eyes that were slit horizontal and alien, as if they peered into another dimension, where they saw around her some magnificence no one else could see.

Tammy could see clearly that Thwait was watching her at school. She caught him looking at her through a window when she walked down the steps. She smiled at him.

She couldn’t tell whether he was handsome. He was tall and he looked strong and friendly, but his face was very pale and strange. His clothes were very neat and tidy.

One night she asked Richie Sledge about Thwait. Sledge said, “You sweet on him?”

“I just asked.”

“He’s a hill fucker.”

Tammy turned her head away. She didn’t know what he meant.

“I’m serious,” said Sledge. “His family is the hill fuckers.”

Tammy sighed dramatically about Sledge’s indecency. She thought maybe too dramatically.

Sledge said, “I’m not kidding you. When they want the spirit of the hill or whatever that thing is to take mercy on the town, they marry it to someone in his family. Quick Hill. With a full wedding.”

“That’s the stupidest thing . . .”

“It’s from Indian times.”

“Do they sacrifice him or something? Like in Chicago?”

“No. Remember his uncle? Did you know his uncle? Crazy Thwait? Back when we were kids? Off his nut. They married him off to the hill back in the Great War or something. To stop everyone dying. My dad says they should marry Don off to the hill now. Before more of our boys in khaki are, uh, you know.”

He had clearly just remembered that her brother had been killed.

He was sometimes nice like that, thinking of her. Then when they ran into some of the other boys, he would walk away from her and leave her behind. He would say, “Me and Tammy were just having a little fun. My pal Tammy, huh?”

Don Thwait had found out when he was very little that someday he might be betrothed to Quick Hill. He and his father had been dragging his sled back home in midwinter.

He asked his father, “Where did you meet Mom?”

“Bean supper.”

They walked a little farther along the ice-scarred road. Little Thwait said, “What did they mean when I fell off my sled?”

“What did they say?”

“That I just met my girl.”

“Don’t listen. You don’t listen to noises that animals make.”

“The Johnsons are people.”

“Those squirts are too short to be people.”

“They’re kids.”

“Don’t worry about it. They’re basically chipmunks.”

But then, when the two of them turned around the base of Quick Hill, Mr. Thwait changed his mind, and stopped, and rocked with one foot on the dirt of the street and one foot in the snow of the hill. He kept rocking. Looking up the slope, he said, “You know, there’s something to be proud of. A tradition. We’re important in the town.”

He told him then about the family’s proud heritage, going back centuries to the burning raids. He talked to him about Great-Uncle Stew, and the Great War, and the Spanish flu, and how people all over town were dying back then and wore masks to keep off the contagion, and how the wedding was held, after which Stew was married to the hill and claimed the hill talked to him and had opinions and darling things to say just like any lady paramour. “Uncle Stew saved the town.”

Young Thwait began to cry. “I don’t want to marry the hill,” he said.

His father shuffled him away quickly. “Hey, quiet,” he said. “We’re right next to it.”

Thwait sobbed, “I don’t want to marry a hill. I want to marry Mom.”

His father hissed to make him quiet down. “It’s all right. It’s all right. Just don’t say anything. The hill gets angry easy.”

From down the street came the rhythmic chock and hiss of someone shoveling a path in snow.

Thwait tried not to think about it. The hill was in front of their windows. It was in front of their front door. When he walked out in the morning, it rose up before him. When he came home in the dark, he could hear it breathing.

He wanted to settle down with a girl in a house. He planned to move far, far away to a distant city. It wasn’t fair. He would have a house in St. Louis, where no one knew about the Thwaits and the town. He could already picture his wife’s legs. He couldn’t believe that someday he would be allowed to touch a woman’s legs when he wanted to. He would be allowed to run his hand along her calf and have her laugh like a cricket rising up out of hot grasses. He wanted to love a woman and to be proud of their child.

He already pictured the angle at which they’d hold the newborn tilted, to bounce the kid to sleep.

They played a game against some kids from Pepperell. Thwait’s team won, 58–50. It was close for most of the game. Afterward, they went to Lucian Belvis’s house, and a few of the players from Pepperell went with them. One of the fellows from Pepperell was Belvis’s cousin.

They went to Belvis’s house because he lived with his grandmother and she didn’t really know what was going on. Also, Belvis lived in a neighborhood where the air-raid wardens never told anyone to shut up, because they didn’t go out much in winter.

It was starting to snow when they got there.

Some of the girls were there, too, and at first everything was very quiet, because Mrs. Belvis, Belvis’s grandmother, kept bringing in things to eat and drink, like hot chocolate. They thanked her. Everyone murmured and there was some laughing.

Thwait kept looking at Tammy Strickland, but he couldn’t look at her for too long. He was embarrassed. His friend Mike made jokes about him staring, like saying, “Clamp up your jaw, sonny.”

Thwait looked away.

Mike said, “Just kidding, Thwait. Feast your peepers. She’s poetry on a davenport.”

Thwait glared at him.

Then Mrs. Belvis said she was going up for the night and you all make yourself at home. Congratulations to everyone on a magnificent game of basketball. She went up the stairs.

People were only sweet for a few minutes after Mrs. Belvis shut her bedroom door. Then people began petting on the rug.

This always made Thwait uncomfortable because he thought people should do that kind of thing alone, in the comfort of their own car.

Mike muttered, “Now comes the swak parade.” Mike had had a girlfriend the year before, but she had moved away. He was bitter.

Thwait crossed his arms and didn’t know where to look.

Tammy was sitting rolling a mug back and forth in her hands. One of her girlfriends was talking to her, but she was obviously not listening.

Thwait saw Sledge nod across the room toward Tammy. Sledge was standing near the pocket doors, talking to one of the Pepperell kids. Thwait heard Sledge whisper, “Have a tête-à-tête with her. She’ll do more than kiss. Find a place to sit her down.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Sure. Say it’s for the war effort.”

Sledge and the Pepperell boy went over and sat on either side of Tammy. They started talking to her and laughing. She made a face and pushed at Sledge with spidery hands. He didn’t move away but started whispering in her ear. She shook her head. He reached up and held on to her skull and kept on talking at her ear, louder and louder.

She shoved at him again. He just laughed.

“Come on, Tammy,” he argued. “You got two hands.”

Thwait was not aware of anything but feeling a bright deep hurt for her, and he rose up and walked over and pushed Sledge.

He wanted Sledge to push back. He wanted to fight, and looking at Sledge’s clever face, he wanted to hit it. Sledge stood up.

Thwait found himself moving closer to Sledge.

Thwait knew then a little bit of what it must be like being in one of those bombers near Midway or the Coral Sea, slanting sharply down toward the deck of an enemy cruiser — tumbling toward the target — the pleasure of speed, anger, inevitability, and immense detonation.

Sledge stared him in the eye. “Hey, Hill Fucker,” he said.

Thwait explained to Sledge, “We can fight, but you know I’m bigger than you.”

“Got to be big, to fuck a whole hill.”

Thwait explained, “I try to use my strength with gentleness.”

Thwait wondered why he had just said that when just a second later he punched Sledge in the face.

It felt very good, and Sledge went backwards. Everyone was talking in the papers about the effectiveness of surprise attack.

The boy from Pepperell had his hand on Tammy’s knee, but she wrenched it off and stood up. She furiously flung her way across the room and hurled around coats, looking for hers.

Thwait looked down at Sledge, who was pushing himself upright on the back of the davenport, holding on to his face. Sledge was twitching. Thwait could tell Sledge was trying to decide whether he could hit him back safely.

Thwait said, “My left is slower than my right. You should try for that side.”

The boy from Pepperell said, “Who is this guy?”

Thwait walked away from them. He felt good. He said to Tammy Strickland, “Mike and I will walk you home, if you want us to.”

She said, “Mike could want to stay.”

“No,” said Mike. “Everyone will look at me funny, and it will be terrible.”

Sledge said to Tammy, “Go back to the goat farm, chippy.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Mike, and bundled the other two out the door.

It was beautiful and still and cold outside. The snow, which was small and bitter, still fell. It felt nice and new to be outside after the greasy air of Belvis’s parlor, the thick breath of petting. Tammy and Thwait were looking at each other. They both felt like they had just put on a play.

It didn’t matter that Mike was along. They knew that they would have plenty of time to talk alone in the weeks to come.

They skated on small puddles in the road. All three of them grabbed at one another for balance. Tammy was the best at skating. Thwait watched the snow land in her black hair.

An hour later, after he left Tammy at her house, he got to his own house and felt the hill watching him as he turned up his walk. It loomed in the dark.

He walked her home from school on Monday. She did not invite him in.

On Thursday afternoon, he came over and knocked on her door. She saw him through the window and ran outside, still putting an arm in her coat. He thought it was because she was excited. She was — but, more importantly, she didn’t want her mother to see him. Tammy was afraid that her mother would yell at her in front of him or say something about Don marrying the hill.

The leaves were all wet and clogged on the ground and gave forth a dark leaf wine. The air smelled like vinegar.

Tammy took Don’s arm first thing.

Don and Tammy had just a marvelous time that day. They talked about everything in the world. They walked out to where the town got thinner. There were more pastures there.

Don said, “Don’t you want to go into town? We could get a sandwich.”

Tammy shook her head. She didn’t say anything, but the truth was she didn’t want to see Sledge. She knew Sledge would ruin everything. She said, “Look! Everything you say is all steamy.”

Don blew in the air and pretended he was smoking a cigarette.

They talked about their families. Don did not mention that his family belonged to the hill. He talked about his mother and father being nice. He thought they were swell parents. Nothing about the mystical marriage in times of civic need.

He listened when Tammy said that her mother was crazy since her brother died.

“I’m sorry,” said Don. He did not know what to say about someone who had died, and he didn’t want to say the wrong thing. “Was he in the service?”

“Yeah. Navy.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tammy scuffed her heels through the mud. It was a more playful thing to do than her face looked. She said, “We miss Townall all the time. My mother has been awful since he died. She got real protective of me.”

“You mean she can’t see me with you?”

“Probably not. She’s afraid of everything. U-boats in the goat pond.”

Don Thwait laughed. Tammy smiled. It didn’t seem as bad as it had before.

Don did not know what to do about kissing her. It got dark around four thirty, so he had to take her home. They were almost at her house. He wanted to kiss her, and he figured he should, just so she knew he liked her. But he didn’t want her to be afraid he was just like Sledge and Belvis — pretending to be nice just to get fresh.

She was hopping along next to him, avoiding puddles. It was even better that she was hopping. That made him like her even more. She was like a different person than at school.

So he took her arms and said, “Someday I want to kiss you.”

Tammy didn’t look at him.

He didn’t know what to say. He thought that maybe saying that had made it okay, so he leaned in.

He saw her duck, as if she were ashamed of the kiss. She smiled politely at him and backed away.

She ran into the house.

He stood outside like an idiot.

But he saw her wave through the window.

On the court, Richie Sledge and Belvis acted like jerks toward him. They never passed to him. They always went in for the shot themselves, even if that meant they lost the ball. They passed to each other or to other team members. It was as if Thwait was a ghost on the court: not there at all.

Tammy and Don walked home together every day. They wrote each other notes throughout the day and slipped them to each other in classes. The full winter snow came and lay on all the mills in town around the black river. Don and Tammy were falling in love, so it looked beautiful to them.

The Carmichaels’ son David was killed in Tunisia. The Saltonstall boy died of malaria somewhere in the Pacific. Louis Franco drove over a mine; there was nothing left of him to send home. Danny Loesser, who was looking forward to seeing Rome for the first time, having spent all those years learning Latin (I love, I will love, I have loved), had his head taken off by shrapnel in Sicily. The Gagnons’ kid was seized on by a tactical ghost, something sent by a hell of a shaman, and hanged himself from a railing on his carrier.

In the Great Lakes, there were seen serpents, monstrosities, leech-like and heaving.

All up and down the East Coast, U-boats sounded near lonely beaches and slid off to torpedo the shipping.

There was constant expectation of German victory. The winter was harsh, and many thought it had in its winds the stench of Teutonic curse. Every letter from a kid at the front read like the last, quavering words of a patsy about to be beheaded in the Niebelungenlied.

No one thought that the war could be won anymore.

Still, the Andrews Sisters harmonized about how grand it would be when the boys got home, come apple-blossom time.

The goats pushed their foreheads against Don’s hands. It was like a sporting event with them. They all jostled to play with him first.

Tammy told him their names. Don fed them potato peels out of a squashed pie tin.

Don and Tammy had sneaked out together to visit the goats. They had to disguise their footprints inside of Mr. Strickland’s big boot prints so their tracks wouldn’t show up in the snow. Then they had to be careful when they went into the barn that the goats didn’t run around too much. Mrs. Strickland in her mania had hung bells around all their necks. She said that if a bell helped St. Anthony Abbot warn off the devils in the deserts of Libya, it would work for goats, too.

Don and Tammy stood among the herd and handed out kitchen rubbish.

Don asked, “Did the bell work for St. Anthony Abbot? He still was tempted by all those monsters with chicken feet.”

Tammy shrugged. “Saved his pig, anyway. He had a cunning little pig.” She added, “I can’t believe I eat ham.”

The goats milled around them and drew their lips across Don’s fingers.

Tammy asked him, “What do you think of them?”

“I think they’re swell.”

“I always want to keep goats and sheep when I’m older. And a border collie.” She shifted her back against the railing. “But I don’t want my husband to be a farmer. It just goes on and on.”

She looked at Don, and she could tell Don wanted to say something about her husband in the future. He was trying to say something.

All he said was, “I don’t want to be a farmer.”

Gently, carefully, she said, “You planning on getting married?”

Don blushed. She could feel him looking at her, at the shape of her, at her arms and her neck and her mouth.

“Yeah,” he said, gutturally.

Then they kissed for the first time right there in the barn. They stood with their arms around each other and really kissed, and there was nothing wrong about it.

They laughed for a long time after that, because they both felt like they had found a place away from everyone else. They whispered and kissed again and whispered until Don realized what time it was and had to get away. He slipped out of the barn and staggered along the footstep holes left by her father, while Tammy hissed after him, “Keep away from the house! Mother will think we’ve been tying the billy goat’s beard into elflocks. While it told us poetry.”

Don snorted one laugh, and then she couldn’t see him anymore. His crunching was faint. He was trying to step softly.

She closed the barn door and felt like she was full up to the brim with nectar. She couldn’t believe that things could be so good. She saw her flock, her family, watching her attentively. They wanted more peelings. She would have given them fresh home fries, if she could have, and carrots and beets.

She could not contain herself. She took Esmeralda by the ear and said into the goat’s sloping face, “He loves me! I think he loves me!”

“Yes,” said Esmeralda kindly, as Tammy reared back. “Anyone can see that.”

Quick Hill was buried in snow. It stood above the town. At the top, around the empty barrow, there was a grove of beeches. Their skin was smooth and silver. Their leaves, though dead, did not fall down but clung, cupped with little ribs like chrysalids.

They chattered in the wind. They were agitated all around the empty barrow.

Don and Tammy sat on either side of Esmeralda. They asked for an explanation. She told them that she was the only possessed goat. The others were all dumb brutes, though easy, she said, to live with, except Queen Claire, who bit.

The spirit in Esmeralda had fled from the Midwest, beast to beast, because she said that things were not good in the plains. Something was eating the heartland. Livestock out there was being killed in barns, and the papers had been told not to report it. There were stories of squat metallic shapes that came from the north warping across the grassland — that before they set out, some Wehrmacht Zaubergruppe assigned each one a town to havoc. On farms there were rumors that metal twists lurked in culverts during the day, then bandied out at night to cut the throats of cattle. They especially searched out spirit-riders, since the riders otherwise could cry warning.

So Esmeralda’s rider had jumped into animals being shipped east, one touching another, her leaping between hearts and hides and leaving behind scent and color and many mulching bellies for dim eyes or twitchy ears. She had made it to New England in a Guernsey, which was about as stupid as she could go before she lost clarity.

“I am here since September,” said the goat’s rider through the goat’s mouth. “I looked around in a white-tailed deer, and I knew I wanted to stay with you, at your farm.” Esmeralda said to Tammy, “I could tell you were someone I was safe with.”

Don Thwait smiled with love at his girl. “Isn’t that something?” he said. “That’s how perfect you are.”

“You two,” said Tammy, embarrassed. “You’re both too much.”

The train tracks ran into town from the south. There was a switching station there near the factories, which was all confusion. The snow between the sleepers was painted black with soot.

The factories had all been turned to war work. They were making blankets and uniforms. The trains brought people from far away to work in the sewing rooms and machine shops. They got off at the station with their cardboard suitcases. They were staying four to a room in the hotels, and couples were taking in lodgers. You couldn’t recognize people on the street anymore. Now there were gangs of men walking with sandwiches.

The newcomers complained about the cold and about the snow. They razzed the locals about it while they waited for change at the cash register.

North of the town, the tracks continued. They split at that point, and each headed its own direction, into the forests, the White Mountains, the Green Mountains, Quebec.

Up there, darkness fell even earlier.

The first body was found in an alley beside the tracks. His name was Lavalle, and he was new to town. He worked as a mechanic at the woolen co. His face was slit and so was his neck, as if something had taken three swipes.

Some people said it was a spy who had done it, sent to cause panic and lower morale. Some people said it was a madman who’d shipped in with all the workers. Some said it was a monstrosity.

The body was found at a time when battles were being lost everywhere.

It was about then, late in the winter, that people began to say it was time for a Thwait to marry the town hill.

Tammy and Don sat side by side on the sofa.

Don’s mother tried to smile. “So you’re Tammy,” she said. “Who we’ve heard. . . . So. Much . . .”

Don’s father said, “It’s good to meet you, Tammy.”

Don’s mother and father exchanged a look. No one seemed very comfortable.

Don offered, “Tammy is a swell drawer.”

They both sneaked out once to skate together by moonlight. It was harder for Tammy to slip out than Don. She was late, and he spent fifteen minutes standing under some big old white pines, shifting his shoulders up and down and clapping his hands together. He bounced on his toes. The pines fumbled over his head.

She arrived. They grabbed at each other’s hands and raced toward the pond.

It wasn’t frozen enough.

Instead they kissed and went home.

Walking through the town at night, they both felt a great love for the place — for all the little boxy houses and all the people they had known since birth. Something about sleep and about snow, which was like sleep, made it beautiful. Don said, “It’s the best town ever.” Tammy started to sing “Silent Night,” even though Christmas was over.

The next morning Isobel Michaels, a girl eleven years old, was found slaughtered in her bed on Harmon Street.

One of the city councillors came to see Mr. Thwait. They sat in the living room.

Don knew what the councillor had come about. He went upstairs and crouched down quietly by the cast-iron vent in the floor. He knew it was wrong, but he had to listen.

“There was an editorial in the newspaper,” said Mr. Lumley, the city councillor.

“Just because Dick Baker writes an editorial doesn’t mean my son has to jump.”

“This killer . . . Some people say it’s a spy. Kraut who parachuted in. But you know what other people . . . They’re saying it’s the hill.”

“It’s not the hill.”

“How do you know?”

“The hill isn’t like that.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It’s a hill.”

“Mr. Thwait.”

“Do you think it has some kind of servant?”

There was a long silence. Then Mr. Lumley said to Don’s father: “I don’t know. Do you?” He sounded almost menacing: “Maybe you know.”

There was another long silence.

Mr. Thwait said, “It’s not time yet.”

Mr. Lumley said, “How many have to die before it’s time?”

Don was giddy with anxiety. He wished he could see his father’s face. All he could see was the cast-iron vent, which was a rosette thick with scratched white paint. Light came from below.

Mr. Lumley said, “You know his girl? Tammy Strickland? We called the principal. She’s not a good girl.”

“That’s outrageous. I met her, and she is —”

“She has a reputation.” Don heard Lumley’s lighter flip open and the flint strike. He heard Lumley exhale. He smelled the smoke of Lumley’s cigarette.

Lumley said, “She is not of a good moral, uh, standing. You understand what I mean, Mr. Thwait? If Donald does something . . . A girl like that could ruin our chance, see? She is not a good match for your boy at this time. Not for a Thwait.”

Don Thwait spent the next day training at the Y. He thought it might make him feel less violent. He didn’t like those emotions.

He lifted and punched until lunch. He ran until it was dark and sleeted.

Mike’s older brother came home for a week, furloughed before he shipped out again. He had been in the Pacific, but he suspected he would be sent to the Atlantic.

The kids went to Mike’s house to see him. He was different from when he was in high school. He didn’t pay them much notice.

Kids who’d be enlisting the next year asked him about whether it was better to be in the navy or the marines or the army. He talked a little about it, but he didn’t seem very interested in their questions. Mainly he said that on a destroyer, it was so goddamn hot that the metal walls sweat. Over a hundred degrees belowdecks, and above decks so goddamn hot that rubber-soled shoes got tacky and stuck starting around fourteen hundred hours. The men all crammed down below, bathed in one another’s water, waiting for a Jap torpedo to blast through the wall. Then, on one of the islands, the constant rain, nothing dry, you’re sitting in a hole with water up to your waist, and at night all the bushes and trees are rattling on every damn side of you, and in one of them’s a Nip Type 96 with your name on it.

Mike did not joke like usual. He watched his brother smoke.

Tammy and Don didn’t talk at all. They were worried Mike’s brother would suddenly get angry and yell at everyone. You could feel the anger just under his skin.

One of the boys — slated for the army — shook his head with sympathy and said, “You fellows give so much. You’re heroes.”

Mike’s brother said, “Once. I was a hero one time.” He held up a finger. “After a skirmish, heard some whimpering, and saw it was a Jap we’d shot, almost dead. One of the other boys — Saunders — was teasing him with a knife. Even though the Jap was almost dead anyway. Saunders was yelling all sorts of bull crap at him about torture and started to scalp the kid. But I couldn’t stand hearing the screaming. So I took my pistol and stuck it in the Jap’s eye and killed him.” He stood up. “That’s the closest I got to being a hero.”

The army boy argued, “But all of you fellows are making a sacrifice.”

Mike’s brother crossed his arms. “Making a sacrifice doesn’t mean being a hero. Making a sacrifice is about sacrificing something.”

He looked at Don. “Thwait,” he said, with menace. “You thought about making a sacrifice?”

A week after the editorial about Quick Hill, the newspaper ran a bunch of letters in which people said that the Thwait heir should realize what had to be done for the town and do it immediately. They said there was no time to lose.

People did not have to sign letters in the newspaper, except with a fake name like “Concerned” or “Had Enough.”

Then there was an article about how Donald Thwait’s cousins were girls and so couldn’t marry the hill, because the hill was female. The article ran a picture of Don from one of the basketball games. There was a quote from Don’s father saying that it wasn’t time yet to marry the boy off. Mr. Thwait pointed out that because Don didn’t have any brothers, there would never be another Thwait — no Thwait named Thwait — if Don married the hill. Don would be the last Thwait.

Then the town’s compact with the hill would be over, said Mr. Thwait. Did people really want that to happen? The article suggested that people were willing to take that chance.

Now that everyone knew Don’s name and everyone — even new kids at school — knew his face and that he was betrothed to the hill, he never felt easy. People talked to him about it wherever he went. His history teacher, Mr. Allen, had a son overseas and watched to see what Thwait would do. Don did not go to the snack shop anymore. He did not know who “Concerned” was — the person who had written into the paper, talking about him as “Don,” like a friend, complaining that “Don” did not take his duty to the town seriously. “Concerned” was furious that Don was dating. Don realized that anyone could be “Concerned.” Don saw “Concerned” in every pair of eyes, blaming him. He did not feel safe anywhere because of “Concerned.”

The closest he felt to safe was huddled on a stool in Tammy’s barn with her huddled next to him. Esmeralda sat on the straw in her pen and watched them benevolently.

They tried to talk about simple things, the tokens of small talk — pets, teachers’ romances, the mob under the basket on the court, how to set picks and stop the other fellow from shooting — but really all Don and Tammy wanted to do was hold on to each other. They hugged so hard they could feel the sticks in their arms and in their fingers beneath all the wool of jackets and coats.

She said to him, “We could save you.”

He pulled his head back from hers so he could look at her face.

She repeated, “We could.”

He said, “Go away? Off to St. Louie or something?”

She blinked. She looked miserable.

She said, “No. Not go away. We . . .”

Then he understood. They didn’t know what to say to each other.

“They’ll kill me,” he said.

“If we don’t?”

“If we do.”

She thought about it. She said, “Then what if we did go away?”

He was amazed. He said, “You’d go with me?”

She considered. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe. All right. All right, I’ll go.”

He cackled and hugged her. She kissed him too hard and hurt his nose.

Then they started to think things through. He said, “I wish I could just join up. I always thought I’d join up when I was old enough.” He sighed. “I could lie, I suppose.”

“You don’t want to go someplace together? Until you’re old enough?”

“What’ll we do?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Tammy.

They both knew that this was not a good answer — so they grinned at each other, thrilled by the excitement of it all. They started to make their plans.

Mrs. Bateson was a friend of his mother’s. She was pregnant, and got down on her knees in front of him.

“You don’t understand,” wept Mrs. Bateson. “I had a dream I gave birth to a wolf.”

Don stood awkwardly. “Mrs. Bateson,” he said, “I’m real sorry you . . . Well, I’m sorry you knelt. Can I just help you up . . .?”

“It’s for the next generation.”

“Mrs. Bateson . . .”

“The wolf was tearing at my . . . when I was nursing him, he . . .” She waved her hand back and forth in the air.

“It was a dream.”

“No,” said Mrs. Bateson. “It happened to a woman in Ohio. Please. I’ve known you since you were three.”

Don stood, holding out his hand to help her rise. She did not take it. His parents did not come back into the living room to lead the woman out.

His parents did take him to the Episcopal Church to talk to his minister and the Congregational minister, who would conduct the marriage service. Several of the town council were there, too. Everyone talked to him quietly about duty.

Don admired the Gothic woodwork in the church office and wondered how the cherry was milled. While they talked to him, he couldn’t help but almost smile, because he knew that in a couple of days, he would be on a train, and Tammy would be asleep with her head on his arm. He would watch new places come toward him. He would go out to where it was flat and there were no hills.

When Don looked up at Christ, Christ’s arms were spread wide, not in pain but in welcome. And Don could already feel them wrapped around him and Tammy, the three of them standing together.

Don and Tammy had a strategic meeting with Mike and the goat.

Don was afraid that when he bought his ticket to flee, he’d be recognized by the stationmaster. Too many people knew Don’s face. All the police officers in town knew him now and glared at him when he walked with Tammy. Don asked if Mike would buy the tickets for them. Mike said sure. Don could tell Mike was trying not to show fear. Don pulled out a lot of bills from his pants pocket. He had made the money in the fall, stacking wood and helping people from the church with odd jobs. He handed it to Mike and said, “Thanks.”

Mike and Don, strangely, shook hands, as if it were already years later, and they were men.

The four of them planned that Tammy and Don would not enter the station together. Tammy would get to the station about ten minutes before the train and wait on the platform. Mike would walk by the gate and give her the wave to say that everything was on schedule. Don would stay inside the station until the last minute. She and Don would ignore each other if they ran into each other. They didn’t want anyone remembering them together. Once the train had gone an hour or so toward Boston, they would find each other. From Boston, they would take a train west. Tammy had a grown-up cousin in Illinois they might be able to stay with for a couple of days, until Don got a job jerking sodas or something.

That was how they always talked about his future job: “jerking sodas or something.” Don and Tammy had no idea what they would do for money. But the blankness in front of them was part of the thrill — as if they stood ready to jump from a cliff above the sea, hands gripped together tightly, and what lay before them was nothing but empty sky.

Tammy stood on an oak stump and looked around her house and her yard. She hadn’t really noticed how much the house needed paint. She felt bad that she was leaving her mother and father. She would send them a card from Boston, so they’d know she was safe but wouldn’t know where she was heading.

Tammy wondered what was on postcards from Boston. She guessed maybe the Bunker Hill Monument or baked beans.

In two hours she would be getting on the train. Earlier that morning she had started crying without feeling anything. She figured she must be missing the town already. Whenever she felt upset, she just thought about Richie Sledge’s glances at her — all the boys now, when they thought Don wasn’t looking. She would never see any of them again, until she was a grown woman and came back to visit her parents sometime. She would have her and Don’s children dressed up socially.

Staring at the house, she worried that maybe her mother and father wouldn’t let her come visit. And then she worried that even if they did, the boys around town would make jokes about her to her kids.

She didn’t know whether she would ever see the town again, and, frankly, she didn’t care.

One hour before the train, Mike knocked on Don’s door as if nothing was happening and asked Mrs. Thwait if Don could come out and go goof off with the guys. Mrs. Thwait said she didn’t see why not.

Don trotted down the steps and gave her a hug. It was a long hug. He tried not to cry while he said, “Okay, Mom, I’ll be back late. I’ll probably have dinner at the Cartwells’.”

He looked at her face. He knew he would not see her again for years. He stared at her so he could remember her later, and so she could remember him when she discovered he was gone.

He went out on the stoop. Mike was waiting.

The door of Don Thwait’s house where he had grown up closed behind him.

He stood confronting the hill. It was black and silent. The wind blew past, and all the trees on the hill rattled.

“Let’s go,” said Don. He and Mike treaded off toward Mike’s house. That’s where Don had hidden his bag of stuff, the things he was taking with him.

They didn’t talk. They kept trading glances.

Finally, Mike said, “We should look like we’re having fun. Normally.”

“You’re right.”

Mike said in a loud gangster voice, “Whaddayou? A wise guy? Why I otta . . .” He shook his fist.

It was not a funny or good imitation.

The grove at the top of the hill could still be seen above the roofs of houses.

Tammy had not told any of her friends that she was going. She did not trust them not to gossip. She told her mother that she was staying overnight at Stacy’s. She left with a paper bag of things.

It was forty-five minutes before the train.

By the time they got to Mike’s house, Don’s heart was beating. He looked at his watch and said, “Forty-five minutes.”

Mike nodded. They went inside.

Don said, “We’ll wait here for twenty-five minutes. We can make it to the station in ten.”

Mike nodded. He looked sad. “Okay,” he said.

“Sorry you can’t come with me,” Don said. “We’ll send you a note to tell you where we end up. You can come out and visit.”

“Sure.”

They sat on Mike’s bed and didn’t say anything. Don had his bag on his lap.

Mike said, “Do you think that you left yourself enough time?”

Don said, “I don’t want to get there too early.”

He looked out the window.

Several big cars pulled up in front of the house. One of them was the police.

Don felt his hands go numb.

Out of another car stepped the Congregational minister.

“Damn,” said Don, and dropped to the rug.

Mike stood up, gaping at the cars.

Don headed for the stairs. “We got to go out the back door.”

He thumped down the steps.

He said, “Must be the hill. The hill told them! That — that bitch!”

He did not often swear.

There was a loud knock on the front door.

He loped toward the kitchen.

There were two people pounding on the front door now.

Don thrust off the sink and swiveled around the icebox. Mike was right behind him.

Don rattled the back doorknob. “Locked!” he said. The little floral curtains bobbed.

Mike reached over to a hook by the door and got a key. He gave Don the key. Don unlocked the door. He pulled it open.

There at the kitchen door were his mother and a policeman and Mr. Lumley from the town council. His mother was crying.

“Don,” she said.

Tammy stood on the train platform. It was dark out and very cold.

There were a little girl and her mother both wearing green. The little girl said, “I want the train to come now. I want it to come forever.”

The mother said, “That would be a very long train.”

The 6:38 pulled into the station.

Don didn’t know what to do. There were people at the front and back doors. They had cars.

He tried to pretend nothing was happening. “What’s going on, Mom?” he asked.

She looked at him shyly.

Mr. Lumley stepped into the kitchen. “Thank you, Mike,” he said.

Don looked at his friend.

Mike put his arm out and touched the cabinet for a long time. Then he turned and walked away down the hall.

Mr. Lumley said kindly, “This is what everyone wants, Don. Mike too. His brother shipped out. He’s going to be in U-boat territory until who knows when. Now come along.”

Don Thwait could not think right. He was supposed to be on a train. There was something wrong, and he was supposed to take her hand or put her head on his arm.

Tammy waited at the station. The train sighed. A man in an old beaver coat climbed up the steps and got on. Tammy hung on to the metal railings of the fence with both hands and looked for Mike. Cars went past with their lights on. There were people on the other side of the street wearing hats, hurrying back and forth.

Any minute, she knew. Any minute, Don and Mike would be there. She reached down and picked up her paper bag of things. The lip was curled and soft.

Don was supposed to be in the waiting room, where he wouldn’t run into her. It could not hurt to see if he was, if she just peeked.

There was no one inside except the stationmaster.

She waited. A few more people got on.

Mike did not come.

Finally, it was 6:38, and the 6:38 left the station.

The barn was dark when Tammy got home. She sat there in the cold. The wind pressed up against the old grimy windows. Esmeralda sat on the hay, her legs folded under her. She chewed from side to side.

“Mike came by,” said Esmeralda. “He told me that there was a problem. He said that you should just wait here and Don would be by in an hour.”

“Wait here? What was the problem?”

Esmeralda just chewed. “Ask Mike,” she said. “No one’s let me out of this stall all afternoon.”

“We’re just going up the hill. We’re just going up the hill,” said Reverend Baxter as they half dragged Don Thwait through the snow. “We’re just going up the hill. Just going up the hill, Don.”

His mother said, “We can’t make you do anything.”

Mr. Lumley said, “It’s a war. You’ll damn well marry the hill.”

It was not an easy going. Twigs scratched at them all. Old thorns clacked as they kicked at them. The wind was high now and shook all the trees. Their flashlights swept across patches of snow and flailing branches. There were strange marks in the snow as if something had made its way there earlier.

As they went up, Mr. Lumley kept shouting the names of the men who’d died overseas.

An hour passed and Tammy waited. She waited for another hour before she realized that someone was lying to her.

She said, “This is wrong. Something’s wrong.”

Esmeralda said, “He’s probably married by now.”

Tammy looked at Esmeralda. Tammy was aghast.

Esmeralda said, “We all want safety. I don’t want to move again.”

“What do you know?”

“He’s not coming. Mike told me they found him.”

Tammy shrieked and ran at Esmeralda. The goat backed into the herd, but Tammy half climbed, half toppled over the fence and scrambled toward the possessed. She grabbed Esmeralda by the head and yanked the long face around to hers. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

The face she looked at did not show any sign of being able to speak back.

Tammy let go of Esmeralda the goat. She stepped backward and looked at all ten females.

All of them looked back at her with their alien eyes. None of them spoke.

Tammy left the barn and ran for Quick Hill.

Don Thwait did not know exactly what was happening. On top of the hill, he felt very at home. He saw the lights of his town through the trunks of the trees. It had been his family’s home for three centuries.

Don’s father said to him, “You want to serve, don’t you? You’ve wanted to serve.”

“In the air force,” whispered Don.

“You’ll be safe here,” said Don’s father. “And it’s better for the town. It’s like you took all these young men and pulled them out of the water after their ship had been bombed. You’ll save their lives.”

Don said, “But I’ll be giving up my life.”

The adults exchanged looks.

“She’s just a girl,” said Mr. Lumley. “Is your, ah, romance really more important than those boys out there in the ocean? Do you see how selfish? Right? How incredibly selfish your dream is?”

Tammy found the paths where the snow had been trampled. She heaved herself up toward the grove at the crown of Quick Hill.

She found some of the men of the town standing with the Thwaits near the door of a tomb. Don Thwait sat on a piece of cut stone. His elbows were on his knees and his head was hanging down.

He looked up when she came into the grove.

She stopped dead. She could tell he had made his decision.

“Don?” she said.

He did not smile to see her. He just said, “I want to be a good person.”

She told him she loved him. He nodded.

Even as she said it, she was not sure it was true anymore. She wondered if she would love someone else some time.

He said, “I love you.”

She went to him and put her arms around him. He put his arms around her. They already knew they were saying good-bye.

He said, “We’ll talk every day. It doesn’t matter that I’m married to the hill. We can still talk.”

Tammy was crying. She thought she maybe actually did love him. She put her face in his neck. Her nose ran on his collar. She thought about the hill receiving him with his collar wet from her nose.

She wanted the hill to reject him.

He let go, and then held on to her again. She was solid and real in the moment; he was solid and real, and they were together on top of Quick Hill in this time.

They knew they could not stand like that forever.

Neither one wanted to step away from the other.

The wind blew on the heights.

“All right, now,” said the Congregational minister.

He put his hand on Don’s shoulder.

Both Don Thwait and Tammy Strickland stepped back. Each one thought about who had let go first. Tammy thought it was Don and was surprised that she blamed him, just for the single step with his heel.

Don was already walking into the barrow.

The minister walked in behind him.

Snow began to fall softly as the rites were read underground.

2. MARRIAGE

Through the frozen apple boughs, the lights of town are ringed with woven coronas of mist and ice, and far away there is motionless smoke. All dark in the trees and he is alone. He thinks the other people have gone now, the people who were on the hill; some time they went and left him, perhaps some days ago.

And he curls closer to the dirt and winds himself in taproots, from which come warmth. Among frozen beeches he sees the girl Tammy, who watches for him. The small falls are whiskered with ice.

Let them slumber sweetly, says the hill, all my creatures.

And comes new time wakeful, all unlocking. First felt in blinking of water behind ocular ice and lidded oak leaves, then rains. He huddling in the barrow, no chill there to him. His delivered bread is no longer frozen. Through bark the tree sap rises like matins light crawling across cathedral columns, and it is full day. I’ll be seeing you in apple-blossom time, says Don to hill, say the Andrews Sisters, and he laughs, because it will be that time soon, in the old orchard on her flank where he lies and watches clouds.

The deaths, the scored edge of metal that kills these people — it has to stop. And he and the hill excise it from their dream.

A rupture it is, the killer, and a girl on her bike is screaming in the woods and, slumbering, Don and hill swaddle the sharp edge away. Don can feel it kicking as it is removed, soothed, smoothed into vacancy. The girl emits a high radio whine as she stumbles toward lights, leaving the bike with wheels spinning. The sharp edge still fights, but he and hill muffle it further, and then he cannot remember it or what it was any longer, because it is past and gone. The hill quiets him.

And throughout him and his limbs spread upon the clod extends the love of this place and its people, loved with her (smilingly), the thoroughfares and busyness, its quiet moments and soiled windowpanes (gaze through to brick walls or far swales; the people alone or several, in stuffed chairs that face in different ways, so they can make their noises at each other). And bless Myron Glikman of Fitzwilliam Street, who parades and trains in the Arizona heat. And bless Sarah Pratchett, who liked jigsaw puzzles with her gran, who now is set to ship out and nurse in Europe. And bless — and bless — and with each one, the hill asks him of them, and he knows them as he did not before, and knows too what scratched in their walls. He feels the hill’s vast expertise at benediction (cereals; furrows; bird eggs; expressive parasites).

Quickening.

Sleep in heavenly peace, he says, exultant, demanding rest for them all beneath the moon: the little girl tantrum-smeared and sobbing in bed; the cad now snoring next to someone else’s jumpy wife; those who labor in insurance; also the women, new to town, new to these factories, bringing the breath of other places and stories about fast cars or wheat told while they bend over the machines, and bolts spin out between the rollers.

And in those years, he advocates for settled nights and bustling days, and throughout all of it, love for the people of that place. (They leave him baskets at the hill’s foot and seem unenthusiastic when he visits the grocery and exchanges fistfuls of leaves for cans.) Now his knowledge of her is greater, and he knows even of her infancy (glacial moraine) and the long years of waiting, and birds come and go. Her till and sweet humus. And all that vast history, and all those born of the dirt of that town now standing around the globe, and he no longer understands how he could want only eyes, only touch. (He presses against the rock of his barrow and, with joy, embraces it motionless for a week.)

(Thanksgiving. Down to visit his folks — right in the front door! The whole family gathered at the table, even his cousins, nine and fifteen. Thanksgiving, joyful reunion.

You two, over here, says his mother, pulling gently the terrified girls. We’ll all just let him alone. He won’t hurt us. Let him alone.

He has not spoken for two years. He croaks: I would like some pop. The glass shakes in his hand. The things of people no longer fit him well.

He lowers his head to his father’s plate, bites, eats thigh, and lopes out.

Later yellow jackets congregate on his fingers to mob the gravy.)

Blessings, blessings, and his people are winning the war. He overhears the congregations of spirits of other places, their vast stances in prairies and in chaparral, in lagoon and shipping port, their parliaments, their twittering ancient tongue.

The war is won. He cannot stop laughing with delight that night and creeps down to watch the parade from the recessed doorstep of McMurphy’s Electronics. The faces of his children glaring with relief — home. Oh, the dinners that will be served.

Then he is ancient. For a long time he sleeps. The snow falls gently on his barrow, but gently and long mean heavy and deep. She and he whisper their dreams to each other.

(“I saw him at the parade,” says Mike.

Tammy asks, “How did he look?”

Mike shrugs. “Crazy. He smells like shit. Because he sits all day in his own shit.”

Tammy gets up from the table. “He’s a hero,” she says.

Mike eats a sugar cube. “He’s off his nut.” Then, as she leaves the diner: “Tam, Tam! Tam!”)

In the barrow, the hill’s husband dreams of local grasses.

3. THE SOLEMNITIES

When Tammy’s father died in 1973, she came back to town with the kids. The mills were shut up, and Main Street was not doing well. The power lines all hung lower than she remembered.

She was going to be there for a week. She had to move her mother into a nursing home and then shut up the house and prepare it to sell. The kids were ticked off about having to come and spent a lot of time in the empty barn, smoking where their gramma wouldn’t catch them.

Tammy dragged boxes of old documents onto the dining-room table and sorted them while her mother slept on the sofa. She made a stack to ask her mother about. Most of the papers could have been thrown away years ago: offers for aboveground pools; news articles about neighbors winning pageants; utility bills from the ’50s.

She had heard from a high-school friend that the only Thwait had died. He had last been seen sometime in ’67, shambling around the back streets. When no one saw him the next spring or summer, the town coroner went up to the grove on the peak of the hill and found his body. It was buried up there in a pit with the other husbands, according to custom. There were no more Thwaits left for the town.

“Good thing,” said Tammy’s friend over breakfast. “That guy creeped everyone out. Remember him in school? He was really quiet. Then — wow. Humping the hill. Doug used to talk about him to frighten the kids. ‘If you don’t eat all your . . . chicken or whatever . . . if you don’t eat it, the Thwait will break in tonight looking for it. He’s real hungry . . . Real, real hungry.’” Tammy’s friend put up her claws, made crazy eyes, and clacked her teeth.

The realtor suggested that Tammy should have the house painted before she put it on the market. It was going to be expensive to paint, though. Tammy asked whether she couldn’t hire some local teens to do it cheap, rather than pay professionals a mint. She wished she could at least scrape it herself. When the realtor left, Tammy went back to sorting papers. She and the kids dragged all the old crap no one would ever want out to the street. It sat there for a day before the dump came. In that time Tammy was surprised to see the broken things people took.

That week Tammy made the family simple meals like grilled cheese or spaghetti. She couldn’t bear to think about complicated cooking. Everything in the kitchen was dirty and nothing was in its place. Her mother complained that the toasted cheese was burnt.

One day Tammy left her mother in the care of the kids and walked to Quick Hill. It was a warm day in early spring. The clouds were always brief. She discovered a rough path up the slope. Cigarette cellophane and cans of Old Milwaukee Light were tangled in the grasses. Some of the beer cans were bleached white from the sun.

She walked up through the old orchard where she had glimpsed him several times before the war ended. It was not as overgrown as she remembered it. She did not like to think about the weird expressions he had made on his face when he saw her.

She came to the grove at the top of the hill. She could hear the traffic of the highway and the main streets through the branches.

There was the stone he had sat on years ago, with his head down. She suspected it marked the burial pit. She peeked into the barrow. It was empty. There was a condom wrapper on the dirt. Using leaves as a glove, she picked it up and hurled it into the bushes. She didn’t want people leaving their trash.

She stood for a long time in the grove. She said his name once, quietly — Don — and wondered if he could hear.

There was one time, she remembered, that some women had come to town offering to preserve people’s breath. A lot of the kids from the high school had been sent by their parents to ward off sudden death. They had all been so scared back then. The whole town. Don Thwait, she recalled, had been a few people in front of her in line. She watched him particularly, because she had just recently heard about him and the hill, and she was curious. Tammy inspected his sweater. He stood with his hands on his pockets but not in them.

A woman in glasses called out, “Next? Over here, honey,” and he stepped out of the line and walked over and stood there in front of the woman, waiting for instructions. Tammy noticed how quiet he was within himself, how straight he stood.

Then he bent forward and breathed into the woman’s mouth.

Tammy wished she could have been the one to cherish his breath. She would have held it in her chest.

Now, standing in the grove on the top of his hill, over the spot where he lay, she inhaled deeply; and when her lungs were full, she did not let go.