He picks through what’s left: scraps mostly, bits of rag, tin, colored glass that he tucks...

He picks through what’s left: scraps mostly, bits of rag, tin, colored glass that he tucks into a dicky bag.  Sometimes he finds food— voles, centipedes.  After a rain, earthworms emerge through the upper soil.  He catches them, winds them on his knife blade until they clear their holes.  It takes half a day to circle the lake.  At sunset, he beds down under a blanket of moss and dried duff and watches the mountains, the last light scraping across rock.  Sometimes he sees a fire somewhere up on the ridge.  Turner.  Who was it that’d come here first?  He has trouble remembering.  Their paths had only crossed once before— a rainstorm, with the gulches washed and both men seeking refuge in the same narrow crag.  That night, neither man slept, afraid of getting his throat cut.  They simply glared at each other from across a fire, not speaking.  When the rain let up, Turner gathered up his things and left first.  He’d hoped he would leave the valley altogether, but Turner only moved out into the mountains.  Somedays it feels like they’re moving in circles, caught in the spiral of each other’s tracks.  He imagines a time when one night he will realize that he has not seen Turner’s fires for some time and he will realize that Turner is dead or has moved on.  And he wonders what feeling will come to him then.  Relief?  Satisfaction?  Or fear, maybe.  Or loneliness.  Or will those things become indistinguishable— hate and love and need confounded together.  He pulls the moss to his shoulders.  Turner, he says.  Then he waits to hear his own name return to him.