Shards of sunlight flickered off the car's bumper as it disappeared over a rise in the road. Josh stared at the bright bursts of light and breathed deeply, winded from his run through the woods behind the shack where he lived. As though it had been hiding until the car left, the silence crept back from the woods, oozed from the wild grass and shrubbery pushing through cracks in the pavement where the two highways intersected.

Josh wondered who would be driving out this far from town so early in the morning. With the exception of a few hunters in the fall, burly old Ned Wilkins, the grocer from town, was the only person who ever drove out to the mill road when he dropped by twice a month. Gruff-spoken as he was, he was company — something Josh had little of since his father's death — and Ned always brought a box of supplies: things like soap, cornmeal, salt, and Josh's favorite, comic books. Josh could not read, but he enjoyed looking at the pictures of brightly costumed heroes and villains. The villains, he knew, were the ones who were zapped in the end because good always won out over evil. On Ned's visits, Josh and Ned played checkers. Sometimes Ned let him win. But Ned had not dropped by in three weeks and Josh was running low on matches.

He walked across the weed-patched pavement of the station drive-in and stopped at the concrete stand where the gas pumps used to be. He glanced at the box and looked down the road. The dust had settled now, but a faint odor of exhaust fumes still lingered in the air. It was a rare smell these days, far from the days when Josh was young, when the mill was open and the mill workers streamed through the junction, stopping for gas from his father's pumps. They were happy days, when his father, a big man with a round, red face, brought his sleepy-eyed customers in with a big smile and a good word and sent them off with a full tank and a friendly glow. Josh cleaned window shields while his father pumped gas. And no one ever made fun of Josh for not being too bright, mostly because everyone loved his father, Calvin Wright. They loved the boom of his laugh and the smile that never left his lips.

Then the mill closed. The woods had been stripped by budworms and fire. The stream of cars and trucks dwindled to a tickle and stopped altogether. But Calvin never lost his smile, even when he had to close down the pumps and travel to town for construction work or whatever else he could find. "Things will get better," he used to say. "Things can only get better."

One day, about two years after the mill closed, Josh's father coughed up some blood. A month later, he was dead.

Ned had driven Josh to see his father in the hospital in town a few days before he died. Josh was scared at the sight of his father, withered and stark like a dead tree in a big hospital bed that had seemed as though it would swallow him up. Ned and Calvin exchanged a few words, almost whispering, and then Calvin asked if he could speak to Josh alone. His voice cracked, his breath coming in gasps. "You'll be looking after yourself from now on, son, but Ned's agreed to drop in from time to time. I wished it was different. You're young yet, but strong."

"You're gonna be alright, Dad," Josh said, but he knew from the hazy film over his father's eyes that the life before him was nearly spent and ready to sink forever into the big hospital bed.

"Yes, I'll be alright now, Josh, but I won't be around to take care of you. I figure you can take care of yourself. You're not smart the same way others are, but your heart is good. An' what they got in schooling, you got in living your days in the woods, learning about living." He broke into a violent fit of coughing and Josh's blood froze. It didn't seem that his father's shriveled body could withstand the rack of the cough. Panicking, Josh cried: "I'll get the doctor, Dad."

"No, stay here. It's gone now." He wheezed a few times, his face gaunt but determined. Grabbing Josh's arm with fleshless fingers, he said: "You might think my life is finished, but nothing's ever finished, Josh, nothing."

Even though his father's hand was shrunken, Josh felt it tightening powerfully on his arm. "You got to start things with a mind to do 'em, but you can never finish. Like keeping with the box. It goes on. You try to finish up, but you never will. Never."

Something deep and incomprehensible thrashed about in his father's eyes. "Never." The word was barely audible, the last thing Josh had heard his father say as he drifted into a deep sleep, his lips curling into a soft smile as though he had known something all along and found out he was right.

Fifteen years had passed since then and Josh had grown into a bulking and contented thirty-three-year-old man. Ned had offered to take him in and let him work in the store, but Josh had refused to leave the junction. The small shack, the woods and the quiet were his home. Fishing the streams, snaring rabbits and watching the clouds were his life.

And the box. The box tied it all together.

Gray and weather-beaten, the box perched on a post by the road. A tattered cardboard sign hung from the front like a piece of shredded skin with a few faded gray letters: D NAT ONS. It had been there since Josh could remember. He was never sure what it was for exactly, but he was vaguely aware that it had something to do with helping people, and that gave it an air of respectability in Josh's eyes. He used to watch his father snap open the huge padlock with a skeleton key and remove coins and paper money, which he kept in a cotton bag under his bed. Once a week, a long black car pulled up at the station with silent, unsmiling men who took the money from the bag and drove away.

After the pumps closed, Josh's father stopped going to the box each evening because there was never anything in it, and the black car had long since stopped coming. One day Calvin saw Josh eyeing the key on its hook by the door.

"Got eyes for that skel'ton key, Josh?" the trace of a smile lined his lips. Josh became flustered. He didn't know what to say. It wasn't the key that was important or all that interesting; it was the box. The key was part of the mysterious act of opening the box and helping others.

"Take the key, Josh, it's yours." Josh stared at his father. "And the box, too. They're both yours."

Ever since then, Josh had worn the key around his neck, tied to a ratty old shoelace. Each evening, like his father had done, he marched dutifully to the box, opened it ceremoniously, looked in and, finding nothing, locked the emptiness back inside.

Now, something moved inside Josh like the smell of gasoline fumes reaching deep into his memory. His hand moved to the key around his neck. His breathing slowed. He walked toward the box and began to hum. It was a low hum, a sound that rose, trailed off and rose again, and the pattern of the hum was the pattern of his life, and he seemed to flow more than walk to the box. Standing before it, he removed the key from his neck and placed it into the padlock, turning it slowly until the lock snapped open with a clunk. He removed the lock, lifted the lid and looked inside. Lying solemnly on the bottom was a shiny new nickel.

He stopped humming.

His first inclination was to drop the lid and leave the coin lying there like a riddle with no answer. He was not used to anything new touching his life. But the coin was there, real and demanding to be acknowledged. He picked it up gingerly and rolled it between his thumb and fingers, studying the relief picture of a beaver hunched on a log on one side and a picture of an expressionless woman on the other. He ignored the letters and numbers. The coin had a nice heft at the end of his fingertips. There was something enjoyable in the weight that seemed so big for an object so small. He was fascinated by the precise edges of the coin, the circularity that came back on itself so smoothly. The roundness pleased him. He closed the lid and locked the box.

Later, sitting on his stool by the wood stove, still gazing raptly at the nickel turning on his fingertips, Josh wondered what to do with it. The men in the black car had not been out to the junction in years, but Josh's father had never kept any of the money in the box. Josh remembered a time when money was short and he suggested they use money from the box.

"Stealing's not right," Calvin said, his eyes icy. "'Specially from folks that are needier than ourselves."

"But it's s'posed to help folks an' we need help, Dad." The reasoning seemed apparent to him.

"Then we'll get our help elsewhere, son." The ice in his eyes softened. "The money from the box belongs to others."

Josh knew what he had to do. If the coin was not his to keep, and the box was his responsibility, then he must take the coin to the right people. But he had no idea who they were or where to find them.

An idea crossed his mind. Ned would know how to find them. All Josh had to do was go to town and find Ned. He hadn't been to Ned's store since his father's funeral, but it hadn't seemed like a long drive in Ned's truck, and there were lots of streams and trees along the way. And maybe he could get some matches. And some comics.

It was still morning and he reasoned that if he started right away, he would be in town before dark. Humming again, he draped his jacket over one shoulder, left the shack unlocked, and started down the road toward town with big, purposeful steps.