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realized he had seen Hole in the Wall. Had probably realized he was on an actual path, too. Oh dear and Oh God stopped, and the guy began to run toward the sound of the generator, rocking from side to side like a man on the deck of a ship. Jonesy could hear the stranger’s short, sharp gasps for breath as he pounded toward the roomy cabin with the lazy curl of smoke rising from the chimney and fading almost at once into the snow.
    Jonesy began to work his way down the rungs nailed to the trunk of the maple with his gun slung over his shoulder (the thought that the man might present some sort of danger did not occur to him, not then; he simply didn’t want to leave the Garand, which was a fine gun, out in the snow). His hip had stiffened, and by the time he got to the foot of the tree, the man he’d almost shot had made it nearly all the way to the cabin door . . . which was unlocked, of course. No one locked up, not way out here.
    5
    About ten feet from the granite slab that served as Hole in the Wall’s front stoop, the man in the brown coat and orange hat fell down again. His hat tumbled off, revealing a sweaty clump of thinning brown hair. He stayed on one knee for a moment, head lowered. Jonesy could hear his harsh, fast breathing.
    The man picked up his cap, and just as he set it back on his head, Jonesy hailed him.
    The man staggered to his feet and turned tipsily. Jonesy’s first impression was that the man’s face was very long—that he was almost what people meant when they called someone “horsefaced.” Then, asJonesy got closer, hitching a little but not really limping (and that was good, because the ground underfoot was getting slippery fast), he realized the guy’s face wasn’t particularly long at all—he was just very scared and very very pale. The red patch on his cheek where he had been scratching stood out brightly. The relief that came over him when he saw Jonesy hurrying toward him was large and immediate. Jonesy almost laughed at himself, standing up there on the platform in the tree and worrying about the guy reading his eyes. This man wasn’t into reading faces, and he clearly had no interest in where Jonesy had come from or what he might have been doing. This man looked like he wanted to throw his arms around Jonesy’s neck and cover him with big gooey kisses.
    â€œThank God!” the man cried. He held out one hand toward Jonesy and shuffled toward him through the thin icing of new snow. “Oh gee, thank God, I’m lost, I’ve been lost in the woods since yesterday, I thought I was going to die out here. I . . . I . . .”
    His feet slipped and Jonesy grabbed his upper arms. He was a big man, taller than Jonesy, who stood six-two, and broader, as well. Nevertheless, Jonesy’s first impression was of insubstantialness, as if the man’s fear had somehow scooped him out and left him light as a milkweed pod.
    â€œEasy, fella,” Jonesy said. “Easy, you’re all right now, you’re okay. Let’s just get you inside and get you warm, how would that be?”
    As if the word warm had been his cue, the man’s teeth began to chatter. “S-S-Sure.” He tried to smile,without much success. Jonesy was again struck by his extreme pallor. It was cold out here this morning, upper twenties at best, but the guy’s cheeks were all ashes and lead. The only color in his face, other than the red patch, was the brown crescents under his eyes.
    Jonesy got an arm around the man’s shoulders, suddenly swept by an absurd and sappy tenderness for this stranger, an emotion so strong it was like his first junior-high-school crush—Mary Jo Martineau in a sleeveless white blouse and straight knee-length denim skirt. He was now absolutely sure the man hadn’t been drinking—it was fear (and maybe exhaustion) rather than booze that had made him unsteady on his feet. Yet there was