When they found his leg in the poison ivy patch, they knew they were close. One of the cops hollered out, “Hey, John, what does Harce’s leg look like?”

I started in his direction, answering, “Blue titanium with a rounded plate on the bottom. Kind of like it was made out of the shank from an expensive tennis racket.”

“Well, come over here and look.”

I looked at the undergrowth in the clearing where the cop was standing.

“No, you come over here,” I yelled. “Didn’t your daddy teach you about poison ivy?”

The cop jumped back and ran out to where I stood. He must have been a Yankee. He was holding the leg. It looked like Harce’s leg, but there was one way to make sure.

I pointed. “Turn it over and look just above where the ankle would be. There should be a small, almost invisible sliding plate. That’s where he kept his pot.”

A detective walked up and examined the leg. He found the plate and slid it to the side, obviously admiring the craftsmanship. The hole was empty.

Bud had called me that morning and told me that the police needed help finding Harce. They had found his truck stuck in a ditch and figured he was lost in the woods behind the bauxite quarries.

Bud and I knew he wasn’t lost. We knew something bad was wrong. Harce would never get lost in those woods.

Bud explained it to the detective, “Officer, there ain’t no way Harce got lost in them woods. He was a carpenter—”

“Bud, what does that have to do with it?”

“I’m getting there, officer. You see, Harce could build anything you want. Do a real good job, too. But he never understood fences.”

“Bud, I don’t see how that enters into—”

Bud bowed up. His face turned red, and he got that look on his face that told the detective to shut up. “Jest give me a damn minute and I’ll tell you. You see, Harce couldn’t never build a fence that was worth a damn and his cows and hogs and chickens kept getting out.

Before his leg got cut off, he chased every animal he ever had all over every square inch of this mountain. He knew these woods. He knew them like the back of his hand. He knew these woods so well that you sumbitches never even found his dope patch or his still. He ain’t lost.”

They found Harce’s body about an hour later. He had crawled up under some brush that had fallen across a ditch. They pried his cell phone from his stiff fingers. The detective checked to see who Harce had called last.

I looked at the number. I looked at the detective. “That’s my number,” I said. “He called me the night before last.” I knew right then what had happened.

Bud looked at me and said, “Aw, hell, John. Does that mean—?”

And now you know that Harce is dead. Now I can tell you about him and not have to come up to the end of the story and say something like: “Oh, yeah, Harce died.” Nobody likes that part.

But Harce was the one who started me writing again. I have a debt to pay.

Before I quit drinking, before I kicked him out, Harce used tocome over to the house and sit by the wood heater, start on a six pack and say, “Hey, John, tell me a story.”