Hank's father built the cistern. And one time he brought home some live fish in a bucket and dumped them in there. And they grew. And multiplied and refurnished the earth, as the Good Book says. That cistern full of fish had got to be a family custom. It was a comfort to Hank, for all the Walterses were great fish eaters, though it never went to brains any. We fed 'em now and then, and threw the little ones back in until they were grown, and kept the dead ones picked out as soon as we smelled anything wrong, and it never hurt the water any; and when I was a kid I wouldn't have taken anything for living in a house like that. One time when I was a kid about six years old Hank came home drunk from Bill Nolan's barroom, and got to chasing Elmira's cat, because he said it was making faces at him. The cistern door was open, and Hank fell in. Elmira wasn't at home, and I was scared. Elmira had always told me not to fool around that cistern door any when I was a kid, for if I fell in there, she said, I'd be a corpse, quicker'n scatt. So when Hank fell in and I heard him splash, being such a little fellow and awful scared because Elmira had always made it so strong, I supposed that Hank was probably a corpse already. I slammed the door shut over the cistern without looking in, for I heard Hank flopping around down there. I hadn't ever heard a corpse flop before and didn't know but what it might be somehow injurious to me, and I wasn't going to take any chances. I went out and played in the front yard and waited for Elmira. But I couldn't seem to get my mind settled on playing I was a horse, or anything. I kept thinking of Hank being a corpse down in that cistern. And maybe that corpse is going to come flopping out pretty soon, I thought to myself, and lick me in some new and unusual way. I hadn't ever been licked by a corpse. Being young and innocent, I didn't rightly know what a corpse is, except I had the idea there was something about a corpse that kept them from being popular. So after a while I sneaked back into the house and set all the flatirons on top of the cistern lid. I heard some flopping and splashing and fluttering, as if that corpse was trying to jump up and was falling back into the water, and I heard Hank's voice, and got scareder and scareder. When Elmira came along down the road she saw me by the gate crying and blubbering, and she asked me why. “Hank is a corpse!” says I. “A corpse!” says Elmira, dropping the pound of coffee she was carrying home from the general store and post-office. “Danny, what do you mean?”