There was an old, broken-down Buick sedan parked in the driveway and an even older-looking coonhound tied up on a chain in the front yard. He howled like the dickens when I got out of the car, and I stood there looking at him until he finished and tucked his tail and sat down on his haunches. After that I put on my hat and looked around the yard. Then I walked up on the porch and saw that the front door was flung wide open. I leaned my head inside the house. It was cool and dark.

“Hello,” I said. I waited a second to see if anybody who may be in the house had anything to say. Right inside a set of stairs led up to the second floor. On my right was a sitting room where one chair had been pushed up under a little table. There were a few books scattered on the tabletop. Overhead a single bulb hung down from the ceiling. All I could see of the room on my left was an old cloth sofa with cushions that somebody had tried to keep together with duct tape. “Hello,” I said again. I couldn’t hear a thing except that old hound dog growling at me out there in the yard.

“You’re trying to scare off the good guys, you old mutt,” I told him as I walked by on my way down the porch steps. He quit growling and looked at me hard and cocked his head like he might be trying to figure out what I was saying to him.

I stood there in the yard and watched what was left of the sun fall through the red maples, and I looked up and saw the thunderheads off in the distance. The breeze picked up and stirred the bitternuts and the sweetgums down by the creek across the road. I turned up my nose and caught the reek of that black bank mud and it smelled good, clean and cold, and I thought about the weather coming on and the days growing shorter and shorter. Wouldn’t be long before I’d have us a fire going at night in the front room. Then the snow again.

I walked to the side of the house and stood in front of the cruiser and looked out across the yard and considered the old barn for a minute. It was sun-scorched and just about bleached white and appeared to be leaning to one side as if it might tumble over into the high grass. I set off across the yard to have a look. I don’t hold with snooping because that’ll get you into trouble real fast in this line of work. But I can tell you it doesn’t ever hurt to take a good look around when you got the time. Seemed to me like time was about all I had right then.

The barn didn’t have a door on it, and I walked up to it and stood just outside it and looked in at all that blackness. I could smell the damp earth of the dirt floor, and I watched the dust motes float up and drift in and out of the light. I stood there and listened to the wind pick up on the ridge behind the barn and tumble down toward me and roll out over the road toward the creek bed in front of the house. I thought I saw something move way back toward the far wall, and I squinted my eyes and took a step inside so they’d adjust to the dark.

“Come on in, Sheriff,” a voice said. “I heard your car when you pulled up. Forgive me for not coming out to meet you.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I hate to be a snoop, but I was hoping you’d be out here.”

“Well, here I am,” said Chambliss.

My eyes had finally got adjusted, and I could see the outline of his body, and I could tell he had his back turned to me and his hands were moving like he was working on something. I could feel the wind coming through the cracks in the walls and there was a sound like dried leaves being rustled somewhere in the barn that I couldn’t see. He clicked on a little lamp on the table in front of him, and the edges of his body glowed. I wondered if he’d turned it off when he realized I was there.

“I hate to interrupt you,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you some questions about what happened up at your church this past Sunday night. I just need to get some things cleared up, and then I’ll be out of your hair and on my way.”

“What kind of questions do you have?”

“Well,” I said, “I’ve just got a couple about that boy we had that funeral for yesterday evening.”

He stopped working and stood there for a second just as still as he could be. Then I saw his body move and he turned to face me. The little lamplight behind him shone all around him. The wind picked up again and whistled through the walls and stirred what sounded like leaves somewhere against the wall of the barn.

“I just realized there ain’t hardly no light in here,” he said. “It don’t bother me, but I’ll bet you can’t see a thing.”

“I’m all right,” I said. “It ain’t like I’m looking for nothing anyway. Just talking.”

“But it’s awfully dark,” he said again. “There’s a bulb right above you there on that middle beam. If you don’t mind to turn that bulb on, it would let us see each other a little better.”

I looked up toward the beams running over my head and saw an exposed bulb, and I stepped forward and felt around in front of me until I found a little piece of string where it hung down. I gave it a tug, but the light didn’t come on. Chambliss clicked off the lamp on the table, and his voice seemed to rise from the darkness.

“I’m sorry, Sheriff,” he said. “I think it’s got a little short in it. If you’ll reach up there and give the bulb a turn, then it’ll come right on.”

I stood up on the toes of my boots and ran my hand along the beam until my fingers closed around the dusty bulb. I gave it half a turn and it came right on, and when I looked up at the beam again there was a snake coiled around it with its head reared back like it was ready to strike. My hand snapped back, and I hollered out and fell onto my back in the dirt.

When I looked up, I saw Chambliss standing above me in the light from that bulb, and just over his shoulder I could see where a thick cord of rope with a pulley set to the end of it had been wound around the beam.

“You all right, Sheriff?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said as I got to my feet and dusted myself off. “My mind was just playing tricks on me. That’s all. I just thought I saw something that wasn’t there.”

I took my hat off and ran my fingers over my head and put it back on. I raised my head and took a good look at Chambliss. His flat-top haircut was streaked with little hints of gray and he was older than I’d remembered, but he looked to be strong, like a man who was used to doing hard work. He had on blue jeans and a spotless blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled down. His hands were covered in some kind of grease, and I figured he’d been working on something when I found him. I looked over his shoulder and saw that he’d been beneath the hood of an old Chevy. He rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand; the grease left a smear just above his lip.

“What did you think you saw up there?” he asked, smiling.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

I dusted off the front of my pants and looked around the inside of the barn. It was slam full of rusted old farm implements: a deflated tractor tire with a bent wheel, a couple of broken-down engines hanging on chains from the rafters. There were tools of all sorts scattered all over the dirt. I turned my head to the right, and when I did I saw what must’ve been hundreds of molted snake skins tacked to one whole wall of the barn, and I realized that the sound I’d heard earlier was actually the wind whipping through the slats in the walls and rustling those skins. It was a sound like a dead cornfield being stirred in a breeze. Underneath those snake skins were stacked dozens of little crates fitted with handles and clasps. I quit dusting my pants and just stood there looking at them. Chambliss followed my gaze to the wall, and then he looked back at me. I heard him laugh to himself.

“You’re not afraid of snakes, are you, Sheriff?”

I looked back over at Chambliss. He was smiling again.

“I wouldn’t say afraid. Wary. But not afraid.”