Note to those reading along: Chapter One has been updated to include the yellow-bellied sapsucker.

—

The Vanagon picked up an off noise around Grayson. Durwood figured it was a belt, maybe that serpentine that seemed to wear quick on Volkswagens. By Roanoke, though, the noise had a crunching quality. He pulled off I-79 to an auto parts store. Rolled his sleeves and crawled underneath.

The brake rotor was hitting metal on metal. Durwood bought a twenty-dollar pad and was back on the road in an hour.

He'd meant to push through tonight, but after the delay, he decided to find a motel.

He'd started the drive dead-tired—and certainly didn't trust his eyelids now to stay open.

This pushed their arrival into Elk Garden back to late morning. The weather was clear and humid as they rolled up the gravel drive.

"Dang, that Johnsongrass," he said to Sue-Ann. "Figured it'd be up. Not like that, though."

Durwood stepped from the van and stretched. His neck—felt like his neck anyhow—cracked. He pulled the sliding door open, but Sue's chin stayed put on her front paws. She'd been gimpy since scrapping with Sybil Fitzgerald.

"C'on, girl," he said. "We're home. Bet your old rabbit friends missed you."

As he waited on the dog, Durwood's gray eyes swept over the farm. The split-rail needed a coat of paint. The barn had a few cedar planks up high, looked ready to fall next time a Nor'easter blew through.

Most trees had leafed out—though the big red maple near the house was taking its time. He stepped closer and saw the bark looked worse than before. That ring of divots where the yellow-bellied sapsucker pecked had grown.

His gaze moved up the tree, along the leftward fork, until he saw the gray squirrel's nest. The one they'd used off and on for half a decade. It had a new gash in the side—looked like something had picked out several twigs.

Something like a sapsucker.

Footsteps lumbered over gravel behind Durwood. He turned to find Crole, holding a jug in the crook of his finger.

His neighbor flashed a rot-toothed grin and said, "Look what the cat dragged in."

They embraced. Sue-Ann, seeing a familiar face, forgot her injuries and hopped down to greet Crole too.

They went inside. Crole toasted Durwood with a shot of moonshine. He tried getting Durwood to reciprocate, but the Jolly Rancher stench turned the ex-soldier's stomach.

"More for me." Crole wiped his mouth. "So. Seems y'all made out okay down in Chickasaw."

The newspapers had reported—in big, bold letters—the sweeping fraud that had almost resulted in the dirt-cheap sale of Hogan Consolidated to Raines Financial. The rampant conflicts of interest. The contradictory advice.

Attorney generals across the country were said to be taking a harder look at the cozy relationships between top law firms and Wall Street investment banks, the professionals who oversaw so many of these region-shattering deals—and profited so handsomely in the doing.

Front page spreads showed Raines in handcuffs and a walking boot. Sybil Fitzgerald with her mouth open and finger stabbing the air, proclaiming her innocence on the steps of the Chickasaw courthouse.

"We got ourselves into trouble." Durwood fixed the set of Sue-Ann's ear. "But we got out."

"'Bout how it usually goes," Crole said. "The Statesman didn't go into detail—they mostly ran what the Associated Press said. How bad'd it get?"

Durwood rubbed his jaw.

Crole said, "Jail?"

Durwood nodded.

"Ho boy." Crole helped himself to more moonshine. "Let's hear it."

Durwood explained the foreman's death, how the catastrophic spleen injury had been arranged to look like his work. The night in jail. Escaping with the mayor's pocketknife and hiding out at the lake, and finally, when all was said and done, being exonerated by the coroner.

"That mayor," Crole said with a faraway look. "I saw her on the nightly news."

"She's been on."

"That's the one wrote you the letter, right?"

Durwood said she was.

Crole squinted into his jug like it had things swimming around in it. Which it might well have.

"Look like the sort a man could spend some time with."

Durwood noticed the dust had gathered on the card table. Around the baseboards too. He went to the kitchen and wet a rag.

After the factory standoff, he and Carol Bridges had sat with guns on the culprits until the feds showed. The closest FBI office was San Antonio so it was a fair wait.

Words hadn't seemed right then—in front of others, after so much violence. Once the G-men arrived Durwood and the mayor were asked a million questions each. Who brought the guns? Who fired first? Why's the factory still running? How many hostiles? Where'd the last one gone?

(Nobody had seen hide nor hair of Chester Lyles since he left to fetch Rudyard Raines his gas cans.)

The whole bureaucratic kit and caboodle.

It was obvious what'd happened. The East Coast moneymen tried cheating the town, and Durwood, Carol Bridges, and her deputy stopped them.

Did this FBI fella, pen wagging off his thumb like grasshopper wings, truly need to know the precise instructions Deputy Gomez had given Carol Bridges before firing his gun?

Durwood hit the road the minute he could. He knew he ought to catch up with Carol Bridges first. They'd only seen each other passing in the halls, on their way to another debrief—another rehashing of the same story.

He ought to have thanked her properly for the pocketknife. For believing in him.

He ought to have told her he'd enjoyed their afternoon at the lake.

Back with Crole, Durwood cleared what dust he saw.

He asked, "What's new here? River looked high coming in."

Crole had a funny expression, like he was deciding whether to let the change of subject stand.

"We got rain two days back, good rain," he said. "I had four inches for swimming in the crawlspace."

"Need to fix your gutters. Damn near all those downspouts are plugged."

Crole said, "I know it. Been waiting for you to come back and do it for me."

Durwood finished tidying, then they fished. For bluegill first, Crole using woolly buggers and Durwood live crickets. Sue-Ann watched from the banks. The two men hooked a dozen between them, the larger share belonging to Crole.

Next they fished trout on an assortment of spinners and rooster tails. The sun climbed high over the Appalachians, then found a chair and sat. Durwood stretched his swollen knee out on a rock. Crole went too hard at the jug and gave himself a nosebleed.

"Ah, enough with these guppies," said Crole, after catching three juvenile trout. "Let's take us a run at old Walter."

Walter was a legend of the Hatfield-McCoy region of the state, a blue catfish said to weigh north of two hundred pounds and measure six feet fin to whisker.

A woman from Kitzmiller claimed to have seen Walter in the very Potomac that fed the river they were fishing. She said her husband wrestled Walter aboard their boat, then yelled at her to go and bring back a camera. When she returned with the Polaroid, Walter was flopping back into the water. Fifteen yards upriver, he spat out one of her husband's shoes.

"Fine by me," said Durwood, who'd caught no trout. "Maybe the catfish'll change my luck."

Crole opened his tacklebox. He took a finger of stink for himself, then offered the tin to Durwood.

After a moment, he said, "You alright, partner?"

Durwood was looking at the stink.

"I know you smelled it before," Crole said. "Now I did let the hog brains sit an extra day, but—"

"That's not it," Durwood said.

Crole blew a breath through the gap in his teeth. Finished shaping the stink over his hook and cast.

Durwood did the same.

As they dragged their bait along the riverbed, Sue rolled from her left side over onto her right. Then back over left. She scratched behind her neck with her hing foot but couldn't get it, whatever it was.

"Maybelle was a fine woman," Crole said. "But she ain't coming back from the dead."

Durwood flicked out an angry cast. "They oughta put you on daytime TV."

"You think?"

"Sure. Give you a show."

Crole chuckled. "Me and Oprah."

But Durwood's dark mood fell away with the afternoon. Elk Garden felt like the lushest place on earth after Chickasaw—like the mountains and sorghum stalks could wrap time itself in their great number and master its march.

The sun winked behind the tallest of the Appalachians near eight o'clock. Durwood said goodnight to Crole and started for the house. Two squirrels chased each other over the gravel ahead.

Through the line of cypress to the west, he saw a car approaching. Funny colored. A checked pattern of black and yellow squares.

Taxicab.

Not too many taxicabs worked Elk Grove.

Durwood's heart jumped.

The taxicab turned onto Durwood's property and came up the drive. The driver was easily identified by his shock of orange hair: Bucephelus T. Taggart. Nutty Buce had a different hustle every week. Durwood remembered him selling pet rocks forty years ago. According to the scuttlebutt, his latest deal was "introducing "the gig economy" to Elk Garden.

The passenger was Carol Bridges.

Durwood covered ten yards in a blink to get her door.

She stepped from the car with a straight mouth.

"You ran off," she said.

Her mouth was still straight.

"Well..." Durwood said.

"Left before you got your keys to the city."

"Chickasaw has keys? The big gold ones?" He held his calloused hands a foot apart.

She took a step closer. "Ours are plastic."

"Plastic keys." He shook his head, wistful. "I should've stayed."

"Yes," she agreed. "You should have."

But her mouth was no longer straight. She smiled.

They kissed again. Durwood would've sworn her lips tasted sweeter in this, his native air. He felt the back of his thighs falling into Taggart's hood as Carol Bridges pressed forward. Their mouths traded initiative—she'd probe deeper, then his would cover hers, then back.

Several minutes in, with Durwood safely off his car, Bucephelus T. Taggart restarted his cab and drove off.

"I didn't bring much," Carol Bridges picked a duffel bag off the gravel. "Toiletries and a change of clothes."

"We got stores," Durwood said.

He took her bag, and they started for the house. Sue-Ann came loping off the porch to say hello.

"There you are!" the mayor said, rubbing Sue's chin. "I have Deputy Gomez watching my German Shepherd Ace—I should've brought him along."

Sue-Ann panted with pleasure.

Durwood's chest filled as they approached the house. He planted nothing he couldn't eat himself or sell to Nethkin's Feed and Fertilizer, but wildflowers sometimes popped up in the yard. Now he saw simple white mayapple, five-pedaled purple geranium. Even a Jack-in-the-Pulpit over by the wheelbarrow. Sun and rain was all they'd needed.

He had one foot on the porch steps when he heard a distinct call. It was sharp, then withered, replaced by drumming.

Durwood froze. He looked up.

Moving up the red maple, stopping to drill at regular intervals, was the yellow-bellied sapsucker. He was eying the squirrel nest.

"Excuse me," Durwood said, letting go Carol Bridges's hand.

He reached around the door-jamb for the slingshot he'd made for just this chance—out of two cattle ribs and the rubber Yakov had used to pack Durwood's last shipment of frag grenades.

"Durwood..." The mayor crossed her arms over her chest. "What are you up to?"

He said, low, "I'm setting a thing right," and tiptoed backwards into the yard until the sapsucker was in his sights.

Carol Bridges looked at Sue-Ann. The dog yawned.

Durwood placed a healthy-sized gravel pea in the rubber crotch, then pulled it back between the cattle ribs. He closed one eye.

The sapsucker moved in jukey hops—sideways, diagonal. His pecks sent good wood falling to the ground as dust. Where the creature stood now, the foliage was too dense for a clean shot.

Durwood moved stealthily to improve the angle.

"Durwood Oak Jones," he heard behind him.

Finally the sapsucker reached the squirrel nest. The little devil took two skitters around the edge, like a football player celebrating in the endzone. He bent and pulled a large twig from the structure, then dropped it over the side. Then he took another happy skitter—which cleared him of the foliage.

His beady black eyes found another twig. A twig the squirrels had carried a hundred-odd feet into the sky to make a home in this lovely maple tree.

Durwood released his pea. That was the end of the thieving sapsucker.

—

And that's it for Dear Durwood!

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