Counting Miracles

Chapter Three

I

Earlier that day, the old man and the boy had sat in a gazebo. It had started to rain after they arrived, and water sluiced off the roof on all sides, forming puddles beneath the nearby swing set and slide. It was a soft, steady rain that followed more than a week of warmer than normal spring days, and Jasper smiled to himself, knowing exactly what that presaged.

They were whittling basswood with pocketknives, as they did every Saturday afternoon. The gazebo and the grassy play area were about a quarter of a mile from Jasper’s cabin but within sight of Mitch’s house. It allowed the boy’s mom to keep an eye on them, which bothered the old man not in the slightest. Instead, he continued to work the pocketknife, putting the finishing touches on a lion with a flowing mane. The boy, he knew, had a fondness for zoo animals, and he was working on something that resembled a turtle, though on closer inspection, Jasper concluded it might be a spider. A small pile of shavings accumulated at their feet, the flecks sometimes landing on Arlo.

The dog was a part Labrador, part mystery mutt who’d darted, shaking and quivering, into the old man’s cabin during a thunderstorm more than twelve years ago, when the Jasper had opened the door to peer out at the sky. At the time, Arlo wasn’t much past the puppy stage, and the old man had given the dog an egg sandwich and some water, waiting for the storm to pass. The following day, Jasper had tacked up flyers and visited the veterinarians in town to find the owner, but no one ever claimed the dog. Jasper figured that Arlo, in his panic and fear, had jumped from the back of a pickup truck, his original owners none the wiser until they’d reached their distant destination, wherever that might be.

As for choosing the name Arlo, the dog had reminded Jasper of the young Arlo Guthrie, with his long shaggy locks and serious gaze; Jasper had been a fan of Guthrie’s, back in the day. Now, with the dog’s black muzzle that had turned largely white, and jowls that resembled the singer’s droopy mustache, the name seemed even more appropriate. These days, Arlo was content to spend most of his time lying at Jasper’s feet and snoring, or aimlessly wandering to his food bowl on the off chance something extra had been added.

For more than a decade, it had been just the two of them; in the decades before that, Jasper had lived alone. But the boy was nice company, and Jasper liked the kid’s mother, too. Not in that way, mind you. Jasper had loved his wife, Audrey, and though she’d been gone for more years than they’d been married, her absence still left hollow places in him that he knew he’d never fill again. But Jasper had come to trust the boy’s mother with all matters related to his health, which probably could have filled a small medical encyclopedia. His immune system was endlessly wonky, his heart prone to fibrillation, and both his blood pressure and cholesterol were high. Bulging disks in his lower back often led to painful spasms and numbness in his feet. Throw in mild tinnitus, slow-motion prostate cancer, and joints so arthritic that they crackled and popped and ached whenever he moved, and it was clear his body was slowly giving up the ghost. It was his skin, though, that most concerned her. It was a horror show, and though she hadn’t been able to fix the problems, she’d largely kept it from getting worse, which he considered a blessing.

It was her nature, though, that he most appreciated. She didn’t fuss at him about his diet, which mostly consisted of canned soup, canned chili, or sandwiches, or lecture him about the importance of eating even when he wasn’t hungry, since he’d been losing weight the last couple of years. She never complained that Jasper brought Arlo with him to his appointments. And, most notably, she hadn’t dropped her gaze when he first took a seat on her examination table three years earlier. Dr. Jenkins had retired, his patients were assigned to other physicians, and Jasper had expected the lady doctor to reflexively look away. Most people did, after all, and Jasper didn’t blame them. Burn and grafting scars covered more than half his body and had robbed him of his hair; other patches of skin, including the parts of his neck and face that hadn’t been burned, were plagued by chronic psoriasis. In that first meeting with her, he’d joked that on Halloween, he could scare all the kids without even wearing a mask. Responding in a gentle but firm voice, she said she doubted that, since his eyes were so kind. A lie, obviously, but he accepted it because her eyes were kind as well.

Jasper had recognized the boy from a photo on her desk. Small talk revealed that they didn’t live too far apart. The doctor’s house was in a subdivision near Jasper’s property. His land was bordered on three sides by the Uwharrie National Forest, and from the subdivision, the quickest way to get to the forest was to cut across the old man’s property. Jasper had posted No Trespassing signs and painted half a dozen of his tree trunks purple; nonetheless, some folks were perfectly content to traipse across his land. Including the boy.

He’d seen the kid for the first time last summer; he’d been sitting on his porch, and the boy cut through his yard alone. He was slight and sported thick black-framed glasses and overalls; he carried a slingshot and a handful of paper targets. He reminded Jasper of his sons when they’d set out on quests for boyhood adventures, so Jasper kept quiet and merely continued to whittle.

A few days later, when the boy walked past his cabin a second time, Jasper recognized him as the kid in the photo on his doctor’s desk. He’d set some of the animal carvings he’d whittled over the years on the ancient porch rail, and when the boy walked past on the way out of the forest, he slowed and then stopped to get a closer look. He asked Jasper what he was doing.

“I’m whittling an owl,” Jasper responded, his head bowed. He knew from experience how the boy would react as soon as he revealed his face.

“Is whittling the same as carving?”

“It is,” Jasper said, before finally raising his head. The boy took an involuntary step back. The lenses on his glasses were as thick as jelly jars, magnifying the size of his eyes.

“You’re him,” the young boy stammered. “The man in the cabin.”

“I suppose I am,” Jasper growled, already anticipating what would come next.

The boy swallowed. “Do you really eat children?”

Jasper had heard the rumor before but wasn’t sure where such ideas spawned. Teenagers, probably, who wanted to scare their younger siblings, or maybe people with evil hearts.

“No,” he said. “I’d rather have tomato soup or chili.”

“I didn’t think so. My mom told me it was a lie and that you were actually a nice man.”

“She’s a kind lady, your mom. Good doctor, too.”

“What happened to your face?” the boy ventured.

“Life,” Jasper answered, the way he always did. Then, because he was finished with the figurine he was whittling, he tossed it toward the boy. The boy scooped it up from the dirt and turned it over and over, inspecting it closely. “You made this? From a piece of wood?”

“I did.”

“You made all of them?” he asked next, pointing to the railing.

“Yes.”

The boy finally drew near, peering at them. “They look like they came from a store!”

Jasper knew it was meant as a compliment and he smiled, but because his smiles often looked like frightening grimaces, he quickly ducked his head again. He cleared his throat. “You can have the owl if you want. I have plenty of animals, as you can see.”

Later that day, the boy returned with his mother, the doctor. She carried with her a covered plate, and as usual, she met his gaze directly. In addition to saying that she’d grounded her son for entering the forest without permission ( Because his sister said he could, even though she was supposed to be watching him, so she’s grounded, too! ) she made the boy apologize for trespassing. And she made him apologize for the rude questions he’d asked.

Jasper accepted both apologies and said that her son could cross his property anytime he wanted. She then instructed the boy to return the carving, but Jasper insisted that he’d intended it as a gift and said again that the boy could keep it. It was then that she uncovered the plate and proffered it to him, revealing a mountain of homemade cookies. After biting into one, he was startled to hear the boy ask in a timid voice if the old man would teach him to whittle. Jasper chewed silently as he considered it. He was out of practice talking to people and hadn’t spent time with children in decades, but in the end, maybe because he liked the doctor, he agreed. And he’d met the boy at the gazebo ever since.

It was a good thing, he came to learn. He enjoyed watching the way the boy puffed up with pride whenever the old man handed him a pocketknife. He liked the way the boy called him Mr. Jasper—using his first name as opposed to surname—like many southerners did. Best of all, the boy no longer refused to meet the old man’s eyes or seemed perturbed by his appearance, which made it matter not at all that the boy still couldn’t whittle worth a lick.

II

“Wow!” the boy had exclaimed that day. “Is that a lion?”

“Yup.” Jasper nodded, making little grooves to highlight the mane, putting on the final touches. In his mind, he still sometimes liked to think of him as the boy, rather than Mitch.

“How’s this?” the boy asked, holding out the turtle or spider or whatever it was supposed to be.

“Hmmm…” Jasper struggled with what to say.

“It’s going to be Arlo when I’m finished.”

“Hmmm,” Jasper repeated.

“I did just what you said,” the boy said. “I imagined it first, but I think I might have messed up the legs. Do you think you can fix it?”

Jasper set the lion aside and took the carving. “Let me see what I can do.” He peered more closely at it before asking, “How’s school?”

“It’s fine.” The boy shrugged. “Kinda boring, though.”

“How’s your mom?”

“She’s fine. She works a lot.”

“And your sister?”

The boy’s sister was eight years older and the boy was crazy about her.

“Okay, I guess. She made popcorn and watched a movie with me when Mom had to work, but usually, she goes out with her friends. My mom says it’s because she’s a teenager.”

“Hmmm.”

“What else did you carve this week?”

“I didn’t. My hands were hurting too much.”

“Did you take a Tylenol?”

It was the same question he always asked when Jasper mentioned the pain.

“Sure did.”

“Good,” the boy said, sounding authoritative, like his mom. He even looked like her, come to think of it, something about the gentleness of his mouth, the way his slow smile spread across his face. They were alike, those two. Sensitive souls.

For a long moment, neither of them said anything else, but that wasn’t unusual. Jasper began to work the pocketknife, and it took a few minutes for Arlo’s legs to vanish, the dog’s body eventually rounding into a curl of sleep. It was all Jasper could do to keep Arlo from looking like he’d been run over by a steamroller, starfished on the pavement.

“Did you hear about the white deer?” the boy asked.

“White deer?” Jasper paused his whittling.

“It was on the news. My mom showed me. There’s a big white deer in the Uwharrie forest. There was even a blurry picture of it. Have you seen it?”

“No,” Jasper said, a childhood memory rising unbidden, like the ghost of something from another life. His hand began moving again, continuing to sculpt the wood. “I’ve seen lots of deer, but never a white one.”

“I don’t think it’s real. I mean, is there even such a thing as a white deer?”

“There is,” Jasper answered. “It’s an albino, which means that the deer doesn’t have the usual pigment in its coat or nose. They’re rare, though. Most of them die when they’re young.”

“Why? Are they born sick?”

“They don’t blend in like other deer, so they can’t hide as well. They tend to get killed.”

“By bears?”

By hunters, Jasper thought. The kind of hunters who wanted to kill something rare and beautiful, simply because it was rare and beautiful. “Maybe bears,” he said.

“Wow!” the boy suddenly piped up, leaping to another subject as he often did. “Arlo looks like he’s sleeping!”

He was referring to the carving but could easily have been talking about the dog, who had begun to snore at their feet. Arlo’s back leg was twitching, albeit slowly; he was no doubt lost in dreams of running through meadows or fleeing from the sound of thunder.

“Even if there isn’t a white deer,” Jasper confided, “there’s another secret in the forest.” Kids loved secrets; his had been the same when they were young.

“What secret?”

“Morels,” Jasper announced. “It’s a kind of mushroom. The weather’s been cooperating lately, and they’ll be ripe for picking tomorrow.”

The boy crinkled his nose and looked at the old man as though he’d proposed eating worms. “Mushrooms?”

“Not just a mushroom. A morel. Which is why it’s important to keep it secret.”

“Why is it a secret?”

“Like white deer, they’re special, the best-tasting mushrooms in the world. If word gets out, people will drive here from all over the state to hunt for them.”

“How do you know where they are?”

“That’s a secret, too. But I’ll make sure to get enough for your mom. I’ll even clean ’em for her, to get all the dirt and little bugs out.”

The boy looked even more skeptical. “Bugs?”

“Like I said, you have to clean ’em first. And after that, you cook ’em in butter with a little salt and there’s nothing better in the whole world.”

The boy pondered this. “I think pizza is probably better,” he finally declared.

“Hmmm.”

When Jasper finally finished, he handed the carving back to the boy, who looked from it to Arlo and back again.

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “I’m going to put this with the others in my room.”

Jasper nodded, amazed at how much he still missed his children. If only he could do it all over again . Somehow make everything right.

“Let’s clean up the shavings and get you home, okay?” He sighed, handing the boy his jacket. “Your mama probably has supper going.”

III

After grabbing his umbrella, Jasper removed his bandanna from his back pocket and wrapped it around his face like a mask. It was mainly for the benefit of others, especially little kids. For a couple of years there, when the world was going crazy with fears about Covid and everyone wore masks in town, he’d been able to shop for groceries while feeling almost normal. Though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, he sometimes missed those days.

They set out toward the boy’s house, Arlo wandering along beside them. Years earlier, Jasper remembered, he’d tried to stop the developer from building the subdivision the boy’s family lived in. The town of Asheboro had been creeping ever southward, getting closer and closer to his cabin, and he’d complained to the county commissioner at a public meeting about the revised zoning laws. But deals had been made and pockets had been lined and now there were tracts of identical homes where once there was nothing but virgin forest and farmland.

In his youth, there’d been trees to climb and caves to explore and forts to build and creeks to fish for miles in every direction outside the town limits. He was grateful for the Uwharrie National Forest, but even that had changed over the years. These days, he knew, the forest was organized, from official parking lots and camping areas to designated paths instructing people exactly where to walk and specific trails where Jeeps were allowed to bump over rocks. As though people couldn’t be trusted to figure out what to do or where to hike or pitch a tent on their own. It was just another example of the world leaving him behind. These days, it was all computers and phones that took pictures and screens that hypnotized adults and children alike. Last week, he’d walked past a restaurant and seen four people eating lunch together without speaking, all of them lost in their phones.

Jasper knew the lady doctor worried that walking the boy home might be too strenuous for him, what with his arthritis and all, but walking was just about the only exercise he could still do. He hadn’t even been able to chop wood for the potbellied stove in the kitchen the previous winter; he’d had to order it already split, which had been downright discouraging. Anyway, the boy seemed to understand that Jasper could only go so fast.

At the boy’s house, the porch light was already on. Jasper closed the umbrella, remaining on the porch as the boy pushed through the front door. He removed the bandanna from his face—the doctor always insisted he take it off—but reminded himself to put it on again as soon as he left.

“Mom! I’m home,” Mitch called out. “Look what I carved!” A moment later, the doctor was walking toward him, wiping her hands with a dish towel.

“Hi, Jasper,” she said.

“Hi, Dr. Cooper.”

That slow smile dawned on her face. “How many times do I have to tell you to call me Kaitlyn? Do you want to come in? I can make some coffee if you’re interested.”

“No thank you, but I appreciate the offer,” he said.

“Can I convince you to stay for dinner?” she asked. “You’re welcome to join us.”

“Again, it’s kind of you to offer, but I’ll have to pass.”

She’d asked him to join them multiple times and he’d always declined. By this point, he was pretty sure they were both going through the motions. Most evenings, he couldn’t eat much at all without his stomach pitching a fit. “I do have a question, though, if you don’t mind my asking,” he went on.

Her expression took on a professional air and he could tell she assumed it was something medical. “Yes?”

“Mitch mentioned there’s news about a white deer? And a picture of some sort?”

She blinked, looking momentarily confused. “Oh…yeah. It was on the news a couple of nights ago, and yesterday, one of my patients mentioned it. I guess it’s been a long time since there’s been a sighting around here.”

So it’s true, the old man thought to himself, feeling a twinge of amazement.

“Do you know where in the forest? I mean, was the photo taken nearby, or was it near Candor or Mount Gilead…”

The Uwharrie, after all, spanned more than fifty thousand acres.

“It was right off Scenic Road over there,” she said, pointing vaguely in the general direction. “A woman took the photo from her car, which was why it was so blurry.”

“Well, I’ll be,” he muttered, noting that it wasn’t all that far from his cabin. Not far, in fact, from where he’d planned to begin his search for the morels.

IV

The next morning, before the sun had risen, Jasper sat at the wooden table in the small kitchen of his cabin, finishing his second cup of coffee. As he’d hoped, the rain had tapered off after midnight and the sky had cleared. With the temperature already rising, he knew the morning sun would work its magic.

He was placing the empty cup in the sink when he heard the shot ring out, the sound distant but unmistakable. He stepped out onto the porch, but it was still too dark to see much. He knew the Uwharrie was rich with game; hunters flocked to the forest from October through the end of December in search of deer, then returned in early April for wild turkeys. Young people could hunt with their parents for a week before the official season opened, but he’d had those dates marked on the calendar for months and was certain that the youth season wouldn’t begin for another six days.

And why a rifle, not a shotgun? Despite the tinnitus, he could still tell the difference. The sounds of the two were as different as winter and spring, and a rifle didn’t make sense. If someone was getting an early, albeit illegal, start to the turkey season, he should have heard a shotgun.

Rifles, on the other hand, were perfect for deer.

Standing on the porch, he thought about the white deer again and felt his stomach coil. In the distant past, he probably would have said a prayer for the deer’s safety, but he was no longer that man. Still, he debated whether to head into the forest as planned. He had no desire to run into any poachers.

Deciding to play it safe, he took a seat in the rocker. He watched for lights in the forest—poachers often used spotlights to freeze deer—and listened for a second shot. But he heard nothing as the sky slowly began to brighten, bringing detail to the shadows. He heard a red-bellied woodpecker tapping on a tree and saw an eastern cottontail rabbit at the corner of the work shed. A low layer of mist hung just over the ground and began to sparkle as morning sunlight slanted through the trees.

Poachers generally avoided daylight, but there was no reason to take foolish risks. Rising from his seat, he entered the cabin, careful not to let the screen door slam. He walked through the living room, with the ancient TV and wood-plank walls and faded couch, passing into the back porch, where he kept gear. After reaching for a bright orange vest to wear over his jacket, he grabbed one for Arlo, too. Calling the dog over, he fastened the vest around Arlo’s aging, barrel-chested torso.

Back in the kitchen, he stashed a thermos with more coffee in his backpack along with two bottles of water, a peanut butter and honey sandwich, and a bowl for Arlo. He grabbed a bandanna and finally slipped a few small Milk-Bone dog treats into his pocket. Arlo loved those things. He made sure to grab his nitroglycerin tablets in case his heart started acting up. Then, reaching for a five-gallon plastic bucket, he retraced his steps through the house and out the front door, Arlo at his side.

There was a joy in foraging for morels, which Audrey had introduced him to the first time he brought her here. Back then, she’d described it as a treasure hunt, but Jasper would always remember the day for another reason, if only because it had changed his life forever. It was a few days after his father’s funeral and Jasper was so lost in his grief that he could barely think straight. He was seventeen years old and he’d been driving in downtown Asheboro when he stopped at a red light near her mother’s clothing store. Audrey, who was putting out a Sidewalk Sale sign, had spotted him behind the wheel. Like many people, she’d heard what had happened to his father, and on the spot, she decided to hop into the truck with him, much to her mother’s consternation and Jasper’s astonishment.

He drove with her to the cabin, his eyes sometimes blurring with tears. The ache of his father’s death was still too painful to discuss, something she seemed to intuit. Instead of pressing him to talk, she’d taken his hand and simply traced the outline of his thumb with hers. The unexpected gentleness of her touch was like a balm to his stricken soul.

He showed her the cabin that he and his father had built, before slowly wandering the rest of the property. Near the northern edge of it, a few steps from the Uwharrie, at the base of a cracked and toppled elm tree, she discovered the morels. There was another small patch less than thirty yards away, and after bringing them back to the cabin in the hem of her dress, she carefully cleaned them before cooking them with butter and a few pinches of salt on the potbellied stove. It was the first meal they’d ever shared together, and afterward Jasper was finally able to speak about the man who’d raised him.

As for the morels, they were like nothing he’d ever tasted, and it took some time for him to fully appreciate their earthy, almost nutty flavor. But she loved them, and when they were married, Jasper made a promise to always seek them out for her. He found the task easier said than done, however—the morels seemed to have disappeared—so he took it upon himself to learn everything he could about them. He even drove to Raleigh to meet with a professor at North Carolina State, coming away with a method that was said to help to cultivate the spores. It involved mixing distilled water, molasses, and salt, along with morels, all of it strained through cheesecloth, after steeping a couple of days. Jasper spread the mixture in the places he’d originally found the morels, then spread more around other nearby dead and decaying trees. Within a few years, the morels were back, this time in abundance. Since then, until about a decade ago, he’d spread the mixture annually.

In the beginning, there hadn’t been enough decaying trees on his property. The morels only grew where a decomposing tree added nutrients to the soil, so he ended up venturing farther and farther into the Uwharrie, where anyone who stumbled across the morels could have harvested them. With God’s grace—and because the section of the Uwharrie near his cabin wasn’t easily accessible to the public—the secret had held, and for years, he and Audrey had feasted regularly in the spring. Even after she was gone, he had kept up those traditions, in honor of that first dinner at the cabin, but all their other dinners as well. It was a reminder of the good times, before the bad.

But so much had changed since then, and he was no longer the man he once was. Decades ago, he’d been young and strong, and he used to look in the mirror, concerned about combing his hair just right. He used to walk without fear of suddenly toppling. He’d owned a real home and the cabin and a successful business. He’d been a neighbor and a friend and a father and a husband. He’d read from the Bible every morning and evening, gone to church on Sundays, and sometimes prayed for more than an hour at a stretch.

Now, he was old and everything was different. And his prayers—if any—always came in the form of a single question.

Why?

V

In the Uwharrie, Jasper and Arlo were on the hunt. Or rather, Jasper was foraging and Arlo was lumbering here and there, marking his territory and then returning to Jasper’s side, where he’d stare at Jasper’s pocket. How Arlo could smell the Milk-Bones amidst all the other scents in the forest and in the backpack was beyond Jasper.

He reached into his pocket and broke off a piece of a Milk-Bone, tossing it toward Arlo, who didn’t even try to catch it. Instead, he ate it off the ground then looked up at Jasper as if to say, That’s it? I know you’ve got more in there.

“Later,” Jasper promised.

They’d been in the forest some hours by then, and though there’d been a little luck—a few stems he’d cut carefully—there were fewer morels than he’d hoped. Years ago, he’d wondered whether Arlo could be trained to hunt for morels, like those truffle dogs in Italy. When he was a boy, his father had told him that if something had a scent, a dog could be trained to track it. With that in mind, he’d set out morels and had Arlo sniff them; he even smeared some ground morels in a clean handkerchief and had Arlo sniff that, too. In the house, he’d hidden the handkerchief over and over, and rewarded Arlo with a Milk-Bone whenever the dog found it. After that, he and Arlo hit the Uwharrie, but Arlo promptly forgot everything he’d learned and seemed content to stare at Jasper’s pocket instead. And now, Jasper was certain, Arlo was too old to be bothered with trying to learn anything new.

So Jasper had to use his eyes, which, aside from needing readers, were among the few parts of his body that had held up over time. He walked, noting the trees, looking for elms and oaks and poplars, keeping an eye out for decaying trees and patches of sunlight amidst the shade. He scanned near the roots, sometimes bending lower to brush the debris aside. It was slow going and hard on his back—morels could hide— and he was careful; he never cut any false morels, which were toxic. As he searched, he found his thoughts returning to Audrey.

Most people, including Jasper, had been puzzled by Audrey’s sudden interest in him, which persisted after that first trip to the cabin. His feelings for Audrey, on the other hand, had taken root long before that day, when he’d seen her practically skipping into the classroom on their first day of kindergarten. With reddish blond hair and a light spray of freckles across her cheeks, she looked like a blue-eyed angel, and he had stared with wonder as she took her seat at the desk beside him. She said hello, but all he could do was nod, setting in motion a pattern that defined their relationship from one grade to the next. Even though they shared the same classroom year after year, Jasper remained too shy to ever strike up a conversation. Instead, he was content to steal the occasional glance from across the playground or marvel from afar at the elegance of her wrists and hands. Her fingers, unlike his, were long. She held a pencil with such delicacy that Jasper couldn’t figure out how it never slipped from her grasp. When she turned the page of the book she was reading, she touched her finger to her tongue, a habit he found irresistibly seductive. Pretty much every boy in school was in love with her at one point or another, though Jasper did his best to keep his own feelings completely hidden.

They were nothing alike, after all. Unlike him, she was an excellent student; unlike him, she was popular, with a laugh that drew others into her orbit. She was also rich, especially compared to Jasper. Her father worked at the bank and her mother owned a successful clothing store; they lived in a two-story house with white columns gracing the front porch. Over the years, she was seen holding hands with various boys on the way to class, but in the end, everyone assumed that she’d marry Spencer, whose father owned the bank and had been one of the founding members of the country club. But a few days after Jasper had buried his father, she’d inexplicably climbed into his truck, and in that moment upended the expected course of both their lives.

After they’d married, Jasper lived his life wanting nothing more than to make her happy. Because she liked to read, Jasper built walls of bookshelves; because she wanted the cabin to feel like their home, Jasper helped her redecorate, moving furniture and placing colorful rugs and throw pillows until she was satisfied. In the evenings, she would sit beside him on the couch with a book in her lap, and Jasper would wonder again why she’d chosen him when she could have chosen someone like Spencer and spent her Saturday afternoons playing tennis instead of living in a ramshackle cabin on the outskirts of town.

“Don’t be silly,” she’d respond, rolling her eyes, whenever he said as much to her. “I knew exactly the kind of man I was marrying.”

He’d wonder how she could sound so confident about such a thing, if only because he wasn’t always sure he knew who he really was back then. He had few memories of his childhood, or of his mother, who’d died when he was a toddler. When asked, he’d say that his upbringing had been ordinary; he’d been neither particularly good or bad in school, nor particularly good or bad in sports, nor particularly good or bad in anything else for that matter. He lived in a small house in Asheboro that so closely resembled the neighbors’ homes it wasn’t uncommon for owners to accidentally enter the wrong house after a few hours at the local bar. He palled around with friends, but like a lot of kids in the late 1940s and early ’50s, he was expected to help out the family, which meant working after school and in the summers at the peach orchard, of which his father was the foreman.

His father, Jasper sometimes thought, loved only five things in his life: his country, peaches, his only son, whittling, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. On their porch hung an American flag, which his father raised in the morning and took down in the evening. Even before Jasper started school, he would spend days walking with his father through the rows of trees, absorbing everything his father told him. When it came to peaches, his father was one of the most knowledgeable men in the South. Jasper learned that there were roughly 150 peach trees in an acre, each of them needing space that measured roughly fourteen by twenty-two feet. He was taught that peaches grew best when the soil drained well. He was taught the importance of irrigation, regular pesticide application, and temperature’s effects on crops. He listened closely to his father’s lectures on treating infestations and diseases. By the age of ten, he was working in earnest at the orchard, where he cleared weeds, thinned the crop, or plucked peaches, loading basket after basket into trucks for delivery to canners.

At home, his father often read to him from the Bible. In the winter, they went hunting, filling their freezer with venison; sometimes they’d go fishing. His father taught him to whittle, their efforts eventually populating every surface of both the house and the cabin.

His father neither cursed nor drank, and Jasper couldn’t remember ever seeing him angry. He often clarified quotes from the Bible, scribbling their meaning in his own words into the margins, and when Jasper had questions or shared something about his life, his father would often gaze at him over the top of his reading glasses and say something like “You might want to examine Luke 16:10.” Opening the Bible, Jasper would read. Unless you are faithful in small matters, you will not be faithful in large ones . Even with the occasional rephrasing in the margins, half the time, he wasn’t sure how the verses his father pointed out pertained to his questions in the first place.

Over time, he came to decipher his father’s references with greater ease. Scripture was part of his heritage; after all, Jasper’s grandfather had been one of the most prominent preachers in North Carolina and had supposedly briefly mentored Billy Graham. Jasper suspected that as much as his father wanted him to find meaning in his life, he ultimately wanted him to stay focused on the everlasting. Jasper might mention that he hadn’t done well on a test at school and his father would say, “Second Corinthians 4:18.” ( So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal. ) Or if Jasper boasted that he’d hit a home run to win a baseball game, his father would respond, “Romans 11:36.” ( Everything comes from God alone. Everything lives by his power, and everything for his glory. )

On Sundays, they would attend the church that Jasper’s grandfather had founded. They prayed together in the mornings, before meals, and again before bed. They prayed for neighbors and friends who were struggling, and when they hunted, his father would say a prayer for the deer or turkey he’d killed. Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Often, his father would then deliver some of the meat, along with peaches, to folks who were worse off than they were. Whoever is generous to the poor gives honor to the Lord (Proverbs 19:17). He was kind to everyone he met. Be kind one to another, tenderhearted, and forgiving (Ephesians 4:32). Though Jasper’s father was far from rich, his faith was radiant, and Jasper sensed that he had the respect of practically everyone in town. Jasper loved him, not only for his wisdom but for his demeanor and patience. Unlike many of the other boys in school, Jasper never showed up with bruises or welts inflicted by a father after an evening of drinking.

If his father had a single dream—aside from the caretaking of his son’s soul—it was to one day build a cabin in the woods, where the two of them could spend their weekends surrounded by the beauty of nature, instead of being stuck in town. When Jasper turned fourteen, his father began scouring the newspaper for property listings. Jasper asked about it while they were loading crates of peaches in the bed of a pickup truck.

“But you’d never be able to afford it…”

“Matthew 19:26.”

With God, all things are possible.

“But…”

“Mark 9:23.”

All things are possible to him that believes.

“I don’t believe miracles happen to folks like us,” Jasper finally forced out with a touch of teenage defiance. “Not real miracles, anyway.”

His father set his crate down and motioned for Jasper to do the same. “Did I ever tell you the story of how your grandfather became a pastor?”

Jasper shook his head as he set the crate in place.

“You should know that my father wasn’t always a religious or righteous man. In his youth, he wasn’t even a particularly good man. Before he met your grandmother, he was a gambler and even spent time in prison.” His father paused, scanning the sky as if searching for the right words. “For a long time, he didn’t learn the appropriate lessons, I guess you could say. Instead, he doubled down on the bad things he was doing, and though he was pretty good at poker, he got himself into debt with the wrong people. This was down in Texas, by the way.” He took off his hat and wiped his forehead, then fixed Jasper with a serious gaze. “They took a knife to him and left him for dead.”

Jasper remembered going silent as he waited for his father to go on.

“Anyway, he didn’t die. Instead, met a nurse in the hospital. She read him stories from the New Testament that described Jesus’s miracles. My father didn’t care one way or the other about the stories or Jesus, but he came to care a great deal about the nurse who was reading them. He fell in love with her, but she wasn’t blind to my father’s flaws. After he was released, he found himself questioning the choices he’d made for the first time in his life. He started praying to God, even though he wasn’t a believer, and he asked to witness a miracle. He wanted a sign from heaven, and if God would give him one, he promised to turn his life around.”

His father paused, but Jasper knew there was more.

“Not too long after that, my father was out walking one morning, trying to loosen up the scar tissue where he’d been stabbed. He swears the weather was perfect, with clear skies as far as the eye could see, and when he reached the top of a hill overlooking the town, he decided to take a rest. He was sitting on a rock when a huge black thunderhead suddenly blew in from the east, the largest cloud he’d ever seen. One minute, it was blue skies, in the next minute, it was as if a curtain fell over the world. And all at once, it started raining, but it wasn’t rain that fell from those clouds. What fell from those clouds were fish.”

Jasper wasn’t sure he’d heard him right. “Fish?”

“Fish,” his father emphasized. “Most of them were still alive and they landed on the ground, twitching and flapping. Hundreds of them, thousands maybe. And all at once, he found himself thinking about one of the stories from the Bible that the nurse had read to him, the one where Jesus fed the whole crowd with bread and fish, even though there wasn’t much to begin with. And in that moment, with fish still raining from the sky, he gave thanks to God for allowing him to witness a miracle, and he vowed to change his life. He became a traveling preacher, then a pastor, and eventually convinced the nurse to become his wife. In the end, he moved to Asheboro and founded the church where we still go on Sundays.”

“Do you think it’s true?” Jasper squinted at him, skeptical. “About the fish?”

His father nodded, and Jasper asked no more about miracles. But not long after that, his father found a notice for land near the Uwharrie that had been foreclosed upon by the bank and was about to be auctioned live to the public. The auction was to be held on site, and as fate would have it, the day dawned with a rainstorm heavy enough to wash out some of the roads leading to the property. Jasper’s father ended up being the only bidder present at the auction, and he was able to buy the land at a shockingly low price, which meant he had enough remaining money for construction. Granted, the miracle might not have been as dramatic as fish falling from the sky, but to his father it was proof that the Lord had heard his prayers. And shortly after that, when Jasper was fifteen, he and his father built the cabin that Jasper now called home.

VI

It was Arlo who found the dead deer.

Jasper had been searching in a thicket when he heard Arlo bark. It wasn’t something Arlo usually did, not in recent years anyway, probably because it required a bit more effort than eating or sleeping. Curious, Jasper turned and watched as Arlo trotted toward him, then suddenly doubled back.

Jasper followed as Arlo continued tracking back and forth, sick at the prospect of finding the carcass of the white deer. Instead, Jasper eventually found himself staring at a yearling, not much past the fawn stage, of ordinary color. Undersized, it probably weighed less than fifty pounds, and a single glance was enough to reveal that the shot had been a poor one. Instead of directly behind the front shoulder, the wound was about six inches back, closer to the belly. A blood trail led to the deer, and Jasper winced. The deer had been wounded and in pain, and it ran and crawled until it finally collapsed here.

The animal was cool, meaning it had died more than a few hours earlier. The shot I heard this morning, he surmised. Likelier than not, because it had been dark then, the poacher had used a spotlight to freeze the deer.

Jasper tensed, his anger rising. Regardless of how a person felt about hunting, there were rules: spotlights were illegal, hunting in the dark was illegal, hunting in the Uwharrie out of season was illegal. But no matter what, whoever had taken the shot should have done their best to track the deer afterward, to put an end to its suffering. The deer—undernourished and losing blood—couldn’t have traveled more than a few hundred yards after it had been shot. It would have been easy to track. This was not merely poaching, it was target practice. It was killing simply for the sake of killing, and though it had been years since Jasper had opened a Bible, his mind suddenly flashed to Proverbs 12:10:

A righteous man regardeth the life of the beast: But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

His mind held on to the words wicked and cruel, and as he continued to stare at the animal, his anger gave way to sudden fatigue. He’d long since given up trying to understand why a loving God would allow such suffering in the world, and it reminded him of the suffering that he himself had endured.

Arlo was nosing at the deer and Jasper nudged him back. He’d have to report the poaching. To mark the location, he removed the bandanna from his back pocket and tied it to a branch on the nearest tree.

With nothing more to be done, he left the deer in place.

Though his desire to find morels had waned, he’d promised Mitch that he’d bring some to the boy’s mother, so that’s what he was going to do.

VII

Jasper continued to forage for another two hours, finally getting lucky near a fallen elm. By then, the sun had risen high enough to brighten much of the forest and he’d filled a quarter of the bucket, which was more than enough. It was time to head back, but he needed to rest first. He was in an area of rolling hills, and spying a good-sized rock near one of the crests, he made his way toward it.

He took a seat, knowing the tightness in his back was close to spasm, his hips and knees killing him. He tried his best to ignore the pain and concentrated on the sight of a hawk circling overhead. Arlo wandered over and plopped at his feet, panting. From the backpack, Jasper removed the bowl and filled it with water. As Arlo started drinking, Jasper poured himself some coffee from his thermos, then found the sandwich he’d packed earlier.

He unwrapped it, stuffing the cellophane into the backpack. He was taking his first bite when Arlo moved away from his bowl and began staring at his pocket. He tossed the dog a Milk-Bone and returned to his lunch.

Like most days, Jasper wasn’t hungry in the slightest and he wondered where that feeling had gone. He recalled that in his youth, he had always been hungry; when Audrey made dinner, he often ate two platefuls. But after half of the sandwich, he felt as though he could force no more down and he tossed the remainder to Arlo.

On the gentle breeze, Jasper caught a foreign scent, something metallic, industrial. It took him a few seconds to identify the odor of gun oil, and by then, he heard voices and a snort of laughter before three figures finally emerged into view.

They were older teenagers, he guessed, dressed in camouflage jackets and pants. They wore sneakers rather than boots and hadn’t bothered with orange reflective gear. The shortest one, who also looked the youngest, had a dimple on his chin and acne, and the boy next to him wore a T-shirt that read asheboro high school wrestling beneath his jacket. The tall one, walking out front, was obviously the leader, and Jasper noticed that he carried a rifle slung over his shoulder, in addition to a large backpack.

Large enough to hide a spotlight?

No doubt about it.

Arlo raised his head as Jasper continued to study them. Even from a distance, he could see they were good-looking kids, with short, neatly trimmed hair, and straight, white teeth, like they’d all spent a lot of time at the orthodontist’s office. Jasper suspected that their fancy sneakers cost hundreds of dollars a pair. When they finally spotted him, Jasper could read their puzzlement at his presence in this secluded part of the forest, but it quickly gave way to a swagger as they approached, almost as though they sensed a creature weaker than they were.

A low growl rose from Arlo, startling Jasper. It had been years since he’d heard Arlo growl; the dog seemed to unconditionally love everyone he met. Jasper reached down to pet him and felt the tenseness in the dog’s muscles, the growl lowering to a steady rumble.

The teens stopped a few yards away.

“Damn!” the younger one suddenly called out. “Are you okay? What the hell happened to you?”

Jasper knew his appearance had finally registered.

“Oh wait, I know you,” the boy in the wrestling T-shirt piped up. “I’ve heard of this guy.”

“Yeah. He was in a fire,” the tall one said. “Grow up.” He offered an apologetic smile to Jasper, but Jasper sensed only emptiness behind it. Arlo must have sensed it as well; though he’d stopped rumbling, the dog’s muscles remained bunched, the fur on the back of his neck bristling.

“What are you doing out here?” the tall one went on. “Are you lost?”

“I know where I am,” Jasper answered.

“Out for a walk? Doing some bird-watching?”

Jasper didn’t answer and the taller one’s gaze flitted to his friends then back again.

“What do you have in the bucket?”

“Mushrooms,” Jasper answered.

“From the forest? You gotta be careful with that. Mushrooms can kill you if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I do.”

“You mind if I take a look?”

“Feel free.” Jasper nodded.

The tall one stepped closer and Arlo began growling again, this time loud enough for all of them to hear. Arlo’s lips lifted, exposing his teeth, and the teen froze.

“What’s up with your dog?”

“He’s all right.”

The teen, however, remained wary and moved no closer. Instead, he merely leaned forward, angling for a glimpse of the morels.

“That’s a lot of mushrooms. How long have you been out here?”

“Some hours.”

“You wouldn’t have happened to have seen that white deer that people have been talking about, have you?”

No, but I found the one you shot earlier. “No. No turkeys either.”

“We’ll get those when the season opens.” The tall boy smiled his empty smile again, as chilling as it was unconvincing.

“I hope you don’t try hunting them with that rifle of yours. What is it? A .30-30?”

“Actually, a .30-06,” he responded. “I just got it, in fact.”

“You might want to clean the bore,” Jasper remarked. “Get rid of any solvents or preservatives. I can smell the gun oil.”

“I know how to take care of a rifle,” the teen huffed, narrowing his eyes. “I’ve had guns since I was a kid.”

Maybe so, but you’re still a poor shot. “You wouldn’t have been looking for that white deer yourself, would you? With that rifle?” Jasper nodded at the gun.

“Of course not. That would be illegal,” the kid answered. “But you never know when you might come across an angry bear. It pays to be safe.”

There were few, if any, bears in the Uwharrie, and the kid’s tone made it clear he knew it. The kid was lying to his face, his insolence on full display. Around them, the forest seemed to have suddenly quieted.

“Let’s get out of here,” the younger one said, trying to dissipate the tension. Jasper caught a nasal whine in his tone. “I’m getting hungry.”

“Me, too,” said the one in the wrestling shirt. “I’m starved.”

As they turned to leave, Jasper cleared his throat. “I heard a shot earlier this morning,” he said. “Around six, maybe a few minutes later. It sounded like it came from a rifle like the one you’re carrying.”

They froze. The one in the wrestling shirt glanced at the kid who spoke with a whine. The tall one locked eyes with Jasper.

“It wasn’t us,” he said. “We just got here.”

Jasper met his gaze. “I also found a dead deer just over yonder. Young one. Not much older than a baby. Shot through the belly.”

At that, all three of them grew silent. When the tall kid stepped closer, Arlo began to snarl, his body thrumming with the sound.

“Are you accusing us of something, old man?”

“Not them,” he rasped out. “Just you.”

The tall one’s eyes flashed, and he took another stride forward. Though Jasper might have been able to stop Arlo in his younger years, those days were long past. Before he could react, Arlo snarled and suddenly charged the kid, moving faster than he had in years and zeroing in on his leg. The tall one barely had time to react as Arlo latched onto his pants, causing the teen to stumble backward before toppling over, landing hard. He kicked furiously with both legs, somehow managing to twist the rifle free in the process. Grasping it by the barrel, he began swinging the stock at Arlo and connected hard a couple of times. Arlo yelped and backed away before trotting off toward a nearby thicket.

A good thing, Jasper suddenly thought. He wasn’t sure what the kid would have done had the dog scurried back to his side. Anger and guns were a combustible mix, and when the tall one finally got to his feet, Jasper watched in horror as he quickly raised the rifle and took aim at Arlo’s retreating figure. Jasper lunged forward and barely managed to flick the barrel upward as a shot went off.

The shattering sound made Jasper’s ears ring, exacerbating the tinnitus, and the kid suddenly swung the barrel in his direction. Jasper felt his gut tighten.

Opening my mouth, he thought, had been a bad, bad idea.

Jasper raised his hands and took an immediate step backward.

“Your dog attacked me!” the teen screamed, spittle spraying Jasper’s face.

Jasper slowly retreated another step, aware that saying anything might land him in even more trouble.

“What the hell’s wrong with your dog?” he shouted again.

Jasper said nothing, waiting, hoping the sudden flood of adrenaline the teen was feeling would recede just as quickly. Whether it happened in time was the question.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Jasper remained silent and the tall one continued to glare at him. He wasn’t hurt, probably not even bruised from the fall, but his eyes flashed with rage. His ego was wounded, and with his buddies looking on, he needed to show Jasper who was in control.

Jasper raised his hands higher. The barrel of the gun was still pointed in his direction. The sight of it made it difficult to see anything else.

“You need to have that dog of yours put down.”

Jasper stayed quiet, inching back imperceptibly.

“C’mon! Knock it off! Stop pointing the gun at him!”

It was the short one. Perhaps it was the panic in his voice that broke through, but whatever it was, the tall kid finally lowered the gun barrel. Jasper flicked his eyes to the shorter one, noting for the first time a resemblance between the two. He wondered if they were brothers.

“Let’s just go!” the other one pleaded, sounding equally panicked.

But the tall kid continued to glare at Jasper. Then, with a quick step, he kicked at the bucket, toppling it. He began crushing the morels beneath his sneakers, grinding them into the dirt. When he was finished, he spit on the remains.

“Next time, maybe keep your accusations to yourself. And make sure that psycho dog of yours is on a leash.” His affect was oddly flat, but Jasper could sense the fury beneath his words. “If I see him again, I just might panic, and he could end up dead.”

“Please!” the shorter one whined again. “We need to leave!”

“You got any money? For the pants your dog ripped?”

“No.”

“Then how are you going to compensate me?”

“Jesus!” the one in the wrestling shirt cried out. “Quit screwing around! Just leave him, okay? Who cares about your pants! Seriously! Let’s go .”

After a few moments the tall one smirked, sensing Jasper’s fear. Finally, he took a step back and turned around before motioning to the others.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Jasper watched them leave, his heart tripping unevenly in his chest. When they were out of sight, he turned, staggering back to the rock. He pulled out a nitroglycerin tablet and popped it under his tongue, allowing it to dissolve. His hands and legs were shaking.

Worried about Arlo, he listened for the sound of another shot. He knew the teen would kill his dog if he could: Jasper had not the slightest doubt of that. To his relief, he heard nothing. Only when his heartbeat regained some semblance of normalcy, and he was sure the boys had left the area, did he allow himself to stand. He felt frail and hollow, his skin a tight drum. Using his fingers, he whistled. When Arlo didn’t appear, he whistled a second time, and after another minute, Arlo finally emerged, his head poking through some shrubbery. As he lumbered over, looking as worn-out as Jasper felt, Jasper spotted a gash on his muzzle and another on the top of the dog’s head. Both had already begun to clot, so they probably weren’t too deep. But he’d clean the wounds when he got back home.

From his pocket, he removed two Milk-Bones, watching as Arlo gobbled them up. He picked up the empty bucket, eyeing the remains of the scattered morels. Audrey, he knew, would have been brokenhearted.