HE ATE, HE STARED AT THE walls. He used the bedpan or chamberpot. Sometimes he could hear a radio in another room. One evening what appeared to be some hunters came to see him.

They talked for a while without the door. Then the door opened and the room filled up with men. They gathered about Ballard’s bedside. He’d been asleep. He struggled up in the bed and looked at them. Some he knew, some not. His heart shrank.

Lester, said a heavyset man, where’s them bodies at.

I don’t know nothing about no bodies.

Yes you do. How many people did you kill?

I ain’t killed nary’n.

The hell you ain’t. You killed that Lane girl and burned her and that baby down in the house and you killed them people in them parked cars on the Frog Mountain.

I never done it.

They were quiet, regarding him. Then the man said: Get up, Lester.

Ballard pulled at the bedcovers. I ain’t allowed up, he said.

A man reached and pulled back the covers. Ballard’s spindly legs lay pale and yellow looking on the sheet.

Get up.

Ballard tugged at the hem of his nightgown to hide himself. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there a minute. Then he stood up. He sat back down again and gripped the little table. Where we goin? he said.

Somebody in the back of the crowd said something but Ballard didn’t catch it.

Is that all of a thing you got to wear?

I don’t know.

They opened a closet and looked in but there were only some mops and a bucket. They stood there looking at Ballard. He didn’t look like much.

We better get out of here if we’re goin. Earl’s likely gone to fetch the sheriff.

Let’s go, Ballard.

They raised him up and pushed him toward the door and closed ranks behind him. He looked back once at the bed. Then they were going down the wide hospital corridor. Past open doors where people in bed watched him leaving, the linoleum cold under his feet and his legs wobbling a bit as he went.

It was a cool clear night. Ballard’s eyes went upward to the cold wash of stars that lay beyond the polelamps in the hospital parking lot. They crossed the black asphalt, damp from recent rain, and the men opened the door of a pickup truck and motioned Ballard in. He crawled up in the cab and sat with his bare legs together in front of him. Men got in on either side and the motor started and the lights came up and the lights from other cars and trucks down the parking lot. Ballard had to shift his knees like a child for the man to get to the gear lever. They pulled out of the parking lot and down the street.

Where we goin? said Ballard.

We’ll all know when we get there, said the driver.

They drove out the highway toward the mountains, a caravan of trucks and cars. They stopped at a house. A man left the car behind Ballard and went to the door. A woman let him in. Inside under the glare of a naked bulb he could see the woman and some children. After a while the man came out again and came down to the truck and handed in a bundle through the window. Tell him put these here on, he said.

The driver handed the bundle to Ballard. Put them on, he said. It was a pair of overalls and an army shirt.

He sat in the truck with the clothes in his lap and they started on up the road again. They turned off onto a dirt road and wound through low hills with black pines sprocketing across the headlights in the curves and then they took another road, grass growing in it, coming at last out onto a high meadow where the remains of a sawmill stood in the starlight. A shed with the windows stoned lightless. Stacks of gray lumber, a sawdust pile where foxes lived.

The driver of the truck opened the door and stepped out. Other vehicles pulled alongside and men began to crowd about. A subdued sound of voices and cardoors closing. Ballard alone bareshank in his nightshift on the seat of the truck.

Let Otis watch him.

Why don’t we just take him up here.

Let him set there.

How come he ain’t put them clothes on.

The truck door opened. Ain’t you cold, said a man.

Ballard looked at him dumbly. His arm hurt.

Tell him put them clothes on.

He wants you to put them there clothes on, the man said.

Ballard began to sort through the bundle for arm or leg holes.

Otis you watch him now.

Reckon we ort to tie his hands.

You could tie his hands to one of his legs like a mule.

Jerry you can put that jar right back where you got it from. This here is serious business.

Ballard had on the shirt and was trying to do the buttons. He’d never tried to button a shirt with one hand and he was not good at it. He got the overalls up and the straps fastened. They were soft and smelled of soap and there was room inside for a whole Ballard more. He tucked the loose sleeve of the shirt down inside the overalls and looked around. A man squatted in the bed of the truck with a shotgun watched him through the rear glass. Up on the hill by the sawmill a fire licked in the wind and the men were gathered around it. Ballard pushed the button on the glovebox door in front of him and it fell open. He felt among papers, found nothing. He shut the door again. After a while he cranked down the window.

You ain’t got a cigarette back there have ye? he said.

The man leaned forward and held a pack of cigarettes up to the open window. Ballard took one and put it in his mouth. You got a match? he said.

The man handed him a match. How you fixed for spit? he said.

I never ast to come out here, said Ballard.

He popped the match on the dashboard and lit the cigarette and sat smoking in the dark, watching the fire on the hill. After a while a man came down and opened the door and told Ballard to get out. He climbed laboriously down and stood there in his overalls.

Bring him on up, Otis.

Ballard at gunpoint shuffling up the hill. He must pause to roll the cuffs of the overalls. At the fire he stood and looked down at his bare feet.

Ballard.

Ballard didn’t answer.

Ballard, we’re goin to let you make it light on yourself.

Ballard waited.

You show us where you put them people so they can be give a decent burial and we’ll put you back in that hospital and let you take your chances with the law.

You got it all, said Ballard.

Where’s them bodies at, Ballard.

I don’t know nothin about no bodies.

Is that your last say?

Ballard said that it was.

You got that cable, Fred?

Sure do.

A man stepped from the circle and came forward with a coiled and greasy braided steel cable.

You goin to have to tie that one arm down. Anybody got a rope in their truck?

I got one.

Ask him about that, Ernest.

Yeah Ernest.

The man turned to Ballard. What did you want with them dead ladies? he said. Was you fuckin em?

Ballard’s face gave a funny little jerk in the firelight but he said nothing. He looked about at his tormentors. The man with the cable had uncoiled a part of it along the ground. There was a ring spliced into the end of it and the cable was pulled through in a loop like an enormous rabbit snare.

You know he was, the man said. Just take him on.

Someone was tying a rope about Ballard’s arm. The steel cable slipped over his neck and rested on his shoulders. It was cold, smelled of oil.

Then he was walking up the hill toward the saw-mill. They helped him along, down the skids, stepping carefully, the flames from the bonfire stringing them in a ragged shadowshow across the upper hillside. Ballard slipped once and was caught up and helped on. They came to rest standing on an eight by eight above the sawdust pit. One of the men was boosted up to the overhead beams and handed up the slack end of the cable.

They ain’t got him doped up have they, Ernest? I’d hate for him not to know what was happenin to him.

He looks alert enough to me.

Ballard craned his head toward the man who’d spoke. I’ll tell ye, he said.

Tell us what?

Where they’re at. Them bodies. You said if I’d tell you’d turn me loose.

Well you better get to telling.

They’re in caves.

In caves.

I put em in caves.

Can you find em?

Yeah. I know where they’re at.

BALLARD ENTERED THE HOLLOW ROCK that used to be his home attended by eight or ten men with lanterns and lights. The rest of them built a fire at the mouth of the cave and sat about to wait.

They gave him a flashlight and fell in behind him. Down narrow dripping corridors, across stone rooms where fragile spires stood everywhere from the floor and a stream in its stone bed ran on in the sightless dark.

They went on hands and knees between shifted bedding planes and up a narrow gorge, Ballard pausing from time to time to adjust the cuffs of his overalls. His entourage somewhat in wonder.

You ever see anything to beat this?

We used to mess around in these old caves when I was a boy.

We did too but I never knowed about thisn here.

Abruptly Ballard stopped. Balancing with one arm, the flashlight in his teeth, he climbed a ledge and went along it with his face to the wall, went upward again, his bare toes gripping the rocks like an ape, and crawled through a narrow fissure in the stone.

They watched him go.

Goddamn if that there ain’t a awful small hole.

What I’m thinkin is how we goin to get them bodies out of here if we do find em.

Well somebody shinny up there and let’s go.

Here Ed. Hold the light.

The first man followed the ledge and climbed up to the hole. He turned sideways. He stooped.

Hand me that light up here.

What’s the trouble?

Shit.

What is it?

Ballard!

Ballard’s name faded in a diminishing series of shunted echoes down the hole where he had gone.

What is it, Tommy?

That little son of a bitch.

Where is he?

He’s by god gone.

Well let’s get after him.

I cain’t get through the hole.

Well kiss my ass.

Who’s the smallest?

Ed is, I reckon.

Come up here, Ed.

They boosted the next man up and he tried to wedge his way into the hole but he would not fit.

Can you see his light or anything?

Shit no, not a goddamn thing.

Somebody go get Jimmy. He can get through here.

They looked about at one another assembled there in the pale and sparring beams of their torches.

Well shit.

You thinkin what I am?

I sure as hell am. Does anybody remember how we came?

Oh fuck.

We better stick together.

You reckon there’s another entrance to this hole he’s in?

I don’t know. You reckon we ought to leave somebody to watch here?

We might never find em again.

There’s a lot of truth in that.

We could leave a light just around the corner here where it would look like somebody was a waitin.

Well.

Ballard!

Little son of a bitch.

Fuck that. Let’s go.

Who wants to lead the way?

I think I can find it.

Well go ahead.

Goddamn if that little bastard ain’t played us for a bunch of fools.

I guess he played em the way he seen em. I cain’t wait to tell these boys outside what’s happened.

Maybe we better odd man out to see who gets the fun of tellin em.

Watch your all’s head.

You know what we’ve done don’t ye?

Yeah. I know what we’ve done. We’ve rescued the little fucker from jail and turned him loose where he can murder folks again. That’s what we’ve done.

That’s exactly right.

We’ll get him.

He may of got us. You remember this here?

I don’t remember none of it. I’m just follerin the man in front of me.