When she stepped on the footpath and into the shady woods (lush vegetation, crackling through the ruins of her death-stilled city, buckling up the sidewalks, snaking through the houses) the passage from warmth to cool was like swimming into a cool plume of spring water in the lake. Airy clouds of gnats swirled away from her, spinning from the sudden movement like pond creatures in green water. In the daylight, the path was narrower and more choked than she had imagined it to be in the dark; barbs of fox-tail and witch grass prickled up in tufts, and the ruts in the clay were coated in scummy green algae.
Overhead, a raucous scream that made her jump: only a crow. Trees dripping in great chains and swags of kudzu loomed high on either side of the path like rotting sea monsters. Slowly she walked—gazing up at the dark canopy—and she did not notice the loud buzzing of flies, which grew louder and louder until she smelled a bad smell, and looked down. A glittering green snake—not poisonous, for its head was not pointed, but unlike any snake she had ever seen—lay dead on the path ahead of her. It was about three feet long, stomped flat in the middle, so that its guts were smashed out in rich dark globs, but the remarkable thing was its color: a sparkly chartreuse, with iridescent scales, like the color illustration of the King of the Snakes in an old book of fairy tales that Harriet had had since she was a baby.
By the side of the path, Harriet saw the ridged print of a boot—a large boot—stamped distinctly in the mud; and at the same time she tasted the snake’s death-stink in the back of her throat and she began to run, heart pounding, as if the very devil was chasing her, ran without knowing why. The pages of the notebook flapped loudly in the silence. Drops of water, shaken loose from the vines, pittered all around her; a bewilderment of stunted ailanthus (varying heights, like stalagmites on a cave floor) rose pale and staggered from the strangle of brush on the ground, their lizard-skinned trunks luminous in the dim.
She broke through into sunlight—and, suddenly, sensed that she was not alone, and stopped. Grasshoppers whirred high and frantic in the sumac; she shaded her eyes with the notebook, scanned the bright, baked expanse—
High in the corner of her vision a silver flash jumped out at her—out of the sky, it seemed—and Harriet saw with a jolt a dark shape crawling hand over hand up the ladder of the water tower, about thirty feet high and sixty feet away. Again, the light flashed: a metal wristwatch, glinting like a signal mirror.
Heart racing, she stepped back into the woods and squinted through the dripping, interlaced leaves. It was him. Black hair. Very thin. Tight T-shirt, with writing she couldn’t read on the back. Part of her tingled with excitement but another, cooler part stood back and marveled at the smallness and flatness of the moment.
A branch was in her face; she ducked so she could see him better. Now he was climbing up the last rungs of the ladder. Once he’d hoisted himself up onto the top he stood on the narrow walkway with his head down, hands on hips, motionless against the harsh, unclouded sky. Then—with a sharp backwards glance—he stooped and put a hand on the metal railing (it was very low; he had to lean to the side a bit) and limped along it quick and light to the left and out of Harriet’s sight.
Harriet waited. After some moments, he came into view on the other side. Just then a grasshopper popped up in Harriet’s face and she stepped backwards with a little rustle. A stick cracked under her foot. Danny Ratliff (for it was him; she saw his profile plainly, even in his crouched animal posture) swung his head in her direction. Impossible that he’d heard, such a slight noise and so far away yet somehow incredibly he
