A man walks down the row of crossed sticks, shaking dirt from his brown paper wings. The turned earth smells like bread. The Moth Man shapes the loaves. With fish eggs for eyes he turns a dead gaze on you and does not smile. Move, and he vanishes.

I could tell of spooks and how we made them. Antlers talking from the wall; the little spruce shivering off the popcorn; a sun-pink truck toddling the graves until it too mosses asleep. I could tell you we cared, or would stop.

But the living beget ghosts and will keep on and on. Better scream at Grandma come back in a clean sheet than the real haunts that don’t make you cornbread. When we all fall down maybe we can stop making spirits and pretending hatreds, all of them phases of a body. We can square that we are what we dread and that we don’t cross over. We become, if we must. My thought is, why trouble the living more than they are? The dead should have grace enough to let us alone. Turn we pigeons to doves and watch them scatter.

I ought not to think. Look at my hands. Fatly veined, pale. The flour hides the rough red beneath. Maeve likes that. If I leave off washing up, just for kicks, I can come home and clap a puff of white over her head. Fairy dust, she says. The next morning I’ll be slapping her pillowcase as she shakes out her hair, tittering like a fox. Trouble, I think.

I hope. Trouble is a sure ticket out of town, and I’d like her to make it out someday. Be the first of the family to break the tree line, laughing at the rest of us stuck in the mud.

Don’t lose that laugh. Please, baby, don’t.

It was mine ’til I broke it in screams the day she was born. Or so I romance it. We’ve all got bum windpipes from smog or from smokes, so the only clear voice is the wind through the pinecones. But it’s romances like these that pass the time. And if they weren’t halfhearted, maybe I’d have tried harder, gone further and gotten out years ago. I would’ve turned my nose up the second he came round and—

These thoughts don’t do.

Back to the hands. The swelled knuckles. The dough. Slap, pound, twist.

Boy, it’d be nice if the nose were enough. All day breathing butter and eggs, and you’d hope the cougar claws of hunger would lay off. Stupid idea, but who hasn’t thought it?

Who hasn’t thought—I’d like to be her.

Wormwood. Buckshot. Katydid and crawdad.

What was it he used to mutter?

The thundering vents, the glare of the ovens. I could use a smoke. Sweet Jesus, keep me another six months. How did I get through the first one?

Must have been romancing that he’d come back for Maeve, if not me. That when he saw his chin on her, he’d fall in that quicksand kind of love and stay awhile.

He didn’t then and he wouldn’t now. So I bake my sweat into the loaves. That’s the secret, no need for salt. And they come out smelling like heaven, even the burnt ones I get to bring home. Take the crusts for sop and they’re Aunt Lily’s favorite. (Lily’s a witch-doctor. She doesn’t have a white coat and she takes her medicines from the weeds on the lot, this and that off the turnpike. To people who don’t know Lily I guess that makes her someone or other devil woman. She’s got the cackle for it. Her cures do the trick and she looks like an old bag. So, they figure, she signed off her soul. They forget Lily can’t read.) She’d lick the bowl two-handed and say something that’s only funny because she’s getting too old to say it. And Ben would come banging home, take his place in his undershirt and say grace before asking if we had any pepper—our unspoken observance. I fetch it for him every night as if I’d forgotten to set it. He’d play along. He knows I like serving him, saying sorry without saying it because he’d only reply, Don’t be sorry to me, and I wouldn’t know how to fix his guilt.

Ben isn’t like other fathers in town, and that’s a mercy on me. Where they might have kicked me to the curb, he gathered me in his arms like pieces just broken—though that I wasn’t—and provided. Such was his self-image that he doubled down, always the provider, and spent extra hours in coughing toil to ramp up our savings now that we’d have another mouth to feed. He did it all with a goodwill that frightened me. Like the sorry child who rushes to repair, Ben was hell-bent on penance. He had it in mind that my mess was his mortal sin, as if the bruised apple meant the tree was rot.

With respect, Ben, don’t you grow weary? I’m tired of being your martyrdom.

Ingrate. Only in my reddest moments would I think such a thing. When cornered or sore or simply embarrassed—because this isn’t our first rodeo.

It was one thing to have gotten knocked up. Another gotten twice off the same Gypsy Joe. What can I say? A better woman might have guarded the hurt of the two years he’d spent drifting and dealt him a swift kick in the pants for daring to show face with a penitent smile and a knot of daffodils, as if they could beg pardon on his behalf. And yet, I’d be kicking myself to batten the hatches and turn him out. Hadn’t I known the boy I’d fallen in love with? Couldn’t I dig out a vase and thank him for coming at all? It’d be false of me to pretend anger when spotting his car out the window I almost woke the whole house whooping for joy.

He was the same shock of curls and sinewy forearms, but an inch or two taller and chipped in one tooth. His voice had grown richer and he smelled of sweet pea motel soap and seat leather. I wondered what I looked to him. Soft and gray, I figured. Small.

He brought stories of the coast, which should’ve made me boil for the adventure he had and I hadn’t. But I could only whine and wag like a hungry mutt after the scraps: boardwalk brawls and sunrises, gas prices county to county, odd jobs in seedy joints, the kindness of strangers. A life past the tree line.

Come with me, he’d said. I’ve got it figured this time.

That night I curled up on his strange, hardened chest and listened for the ocean. I heard only the night through my other ear. The robins and the clothesline. The wind through the shingles. Ben asleep in the next room, his breath spreading, filling, resounding.

I kissed Danny until he stirred and silent as the grave we made love knowing we’d already thrown our lots. Nothing figured, nothing changed.

I’ll always want a life with him, but there’s no use begging what won’t do well. Much as I love Danny, he is no husband. He’s a prince of air come down on a moonbeam, wisping off when the wind stales. Sometimes I wonder he still has a skin to contain him.

I could resent him his free rein, but there’s no use faulting what shines him in my eye, what begot my daughter at all. And in her case I am mother and father enough. No begging, no chest-thumping for a change in the winds to bring Danny round again. Let him come, let him go. I will not have him shackled and drunk to put up with a life he can’t handle, sawing at his ankles or screaming down the house in a fever to fly. Let him walk free to the shame of the family because that’s the only way we are one. I’ve seen others link up in the name of kinship or God, and I’ve seen such links drop off the chain one way or another.

If ever a child came by stork, it was Danny. He had a taste for skies and migrations. Nothing could settle him. Not even the make-believe games we played as children—we could say, do or be anything then—could soothe the flight instinct nipping his heels, the spur in his side. Not even our favorite game, Animals. In hindsight we were animals plenty without the drawn-on whiskers and newspaper tails. But we wanted to run, scratch and howl like we’d heard in the night.

I dream of those games and think that’s when I fell for Danny, who was always Danny. He ran beside us foxes and badgers, wolves and bucks, on his own two legs. The appaloosa light would glance his brow and pool in his eyes, ice blue and gold like a blind kitten foundling if any animal he had to be. I was dazzled. I’d keep a pail of milk on the porch, so to speak, and could measure his state of happiness by the volume left each morning.

I remember him standing rib-high in the creek with a bucket on his head. He swore he’d seen a kingsnake in the water, and he wanted to catch it. He stood there for hours, turning white and blue and purple in the March cold. He’d expected the wait, hence the bucket. Provisions. End slices no one would miss, dropped apples. But the birds came for their share so that, when I came with the laundry, there Danny was, soaked to the bone and crowned in live crows.

The snake never showed. His mother Willa pulled him chattering mad from the water. He sobbed as she beat the warmth back into him and wouldn’t keep anything down for a week. He told me snakes left skins and he’d follow the trail as far as it went.

It wouldn’t be far enough. He needed a place people wouldn’t hide him for risking pneumonia on a headful of whims—which to him weren’t whims, but flickers. Echoes. They come from the wider world, teasing us out. Danny heard their summons, and I imagined I did, worrying sometimes about death—not the dying, but the lingering. I’d belong to these mountains for the next thousand years and never know the taste of the air under the open sky.

I could only imagine Danny’s terrors. I got it if he ran for the hills like a mustang on fire. I’d pray he doused quick and found his way to peace, and if that brought him back under the purple-green timberline, I’d catch him before Uncle Oz mistook him for game. Oz had a sharp eye, but a quicker finger.

As the bakeshop winds down around four o’clock, I hang up my apron and think on those kills. How we hushed after the thump of a warm body to the ground, like that of the cut stag whose bloodspots Oz hounded as if in a lover’s thrall. How against the blue snow the cut stag lay steaming from the chase. How the ghost of it sucked through the whistling pines and into high purgatory, almost unheard:

Goodbye, foe. Goodbye, doe. I die.

* * *

It was seeing him off today that got me on Danny.

He made it a few weeks before going stir-crazy, down about the town that never changed. He had driven up in coat and tie, a teddy for Maeve and a baby blanket for me, after the latest two-month hiatus. He’d gotten Willa’s calls and wanted to do better by us, intending to roll up his sleeves and dig into fatherhood as if a new kid—never mind the first one—would sift him of the echoes and flickers that have always ruled him. I made Ben promise to say not a word. We waited for Danny to come to his senses. He held out longer than expected, but he took it hard that no one would give him a lick of work. Harder that we didn’t share his dismay but instead went to work, dumb, it seemed, to the hardness of it all.

We didn’t have time for It All.

Annie shouldn’t have let it shock her when she saw his car gone this morning. I guess the new haircut and the easiness with which he and Maeve played together had convinced her he would claim Ben’s head of the table, now that Danny would have two children to Ben’s one.

But Annie had her own fancies and was glad nonetheless to find the curb empty. Danny and Maeve would have grown very close.

Maeve crawls around Annie’s lap. Annie is rocking her to a lullaby that keeps changing rhyme while Maeve giggles. They’d be like Danny in that respect. Little witches bending heads over a dandelion. If I had one foot out the door, they had both over the edge, kicking at angels. They were good cronies and it kept Annie young. She shines when she plays with Maeve and hasn’t quit these last four years her baby croon, which she started all the way back when there was a bump to my belly.

Annie can’t go much longer with those hips, getting down and up and down again with Maeve on the floor, Maeve in the grass, Maeve in the puddles. But Maeve will grow up and then Annie will have to. The full of her age will hit Annie at once. She’ll shun spoons and mirrors, or fixate on them, and stow her spotted hands in her apron when they’re not needed.

But let the children be children while they are.

Annie didn’t used to be that way. In the wedding album she has an arch to her brow, a sniggering grin. Every joke had a bite, you just knew. I want to meet that woman but won’t ask Ben about her. I know drudging the past upset him more than he could shoulder or feel right letting me carry with him. My only clue is the rocking horse. Oz made Ben and Annie a present of it, which I then christened when I came along. But it had been there before me and was painted blue.

I kick my shoes off and call the girls to wash up. I’ve brought rolls this time, the burnt or stale scrap ones, and I nuke some leftover mutton soup to soak them up so no one cracks a tooth. We’ll all smell of that soup tomorrow, no matter how much water it’s got to stretch it. But we can’t all smell like sweet pea and ocean, can we?

I set the places. Milk, tonic, beer, water. The girls come in holding hands as the stomp of boots up the creaky front steps tells us Ben’s home and getting ready too.

He takes his seat as the rest of us hurry in. I take a dishtowel after the dust on his neck and he cracks a smile. Annie tells me to stop fussing, her palms already faceup on the table. We link up and say grace, then chow down.

Maeve talks the whole time. She’s got on the fairy wings, a colorless set of wire and mesh loops that splay sideways against the chair back, and holds Danny’s teddy hostage on her lap.

“We have to play Hide and Seek,” she declares.

Annie agrees with a hearty sip of tonic.

“Mommy’s gonna play with us.”

I snort. “I don’t think so, Maeve.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport!”

Spoilsport. Where in the world does she get this stuff?

Danny. I dip a puff of bread into my soup and swallow without chewing.

Ben butts sagely in. “You’re mother’s not in shape to be running around, Maeve.”

Always the knight. I pat my belly for effect. Strangely, sometimes, I forget about it. I’ll have to remember, though. Good excuse in my back pocket.

Maeve thrusts her chin out and redoubles her efforts on Annie. “But you can run. That means we have to play.”

I catch the sparkle in Ben’s eye. We’ve spoiled her bad, haven’t we?

“Sugarbear,” Annie says. “You know we’re not supposed to play because… until…”

She looks to me to be the bad guy.

It’s an easy role after a day at the bakeshop. “When the ground dries up,” I say, “then you can play. We’re not tearing up the yard again.”

Maeve kicks her chair leg and pouts. “I said I was sorry.”

“Sorry means you don’t do it again.”

“How do I know that?”

She’s a funny one. Talk too long, and Annie might get nervous, thinking about school and how many hours a day the house would be quiet. I don’t let myself pity her. Like hell my kid’s staying home, singing about wizards and weevils, just to keep my mother company. Let Lily and Oz do that, not my Maeve. I don’t remember much of mine, but that kind of loose upbringing might have gotten me where I am today, which is nothing I regret but nothing I want for my daughter.

I understand now the heartbreak Ben must have felt when I told him about Danny. And Maeve, who hadn’t a name at the time. Ben hadn’t spoke for the longest time. Then he hugged me and told me to come back inside, he’d take care of everything. He carried my bag for me—I’d expected the worst—and left me at my bed. I sat listening to his pacing as the house went dark and hadn’t a clue who he was calling. Then the front door banged shut, an hour or two passed, and Ben returned having taken care of everything.

I didn’t ask what that meant, but I didn’t like it. Not that I could question Ben after shacking up with the town deadbeat and spitting on years of Ben’s life put toward my schooling. And now, for Maeve? How do we give her the life I threw away? How for this next one?

Ben knew I was pregnant again before I told him. I’d tried hiding the signs, going early to the bakeshop so I could vomit in the woods on the way there. But he found me out, forgave me and kept working. He knew better than to rage. It wasn’t in his character, though the first time he was angry at Danny and angry at me for loving him. Wasn’t I raised better? And that was the real sting. It pitched Ben into a hangdog funk where he wouldn’t talk to me out of guilt. He faulted himself for my feelings, which hurt me worse than any punishment could. Then Maeve came along and turned my mother to mush, drudging the past behind that damned rocking horse, and Ben knew looking at his wife on the floor, in the grass, in the puddles, what it was to love a broken thing.

We walk together to work.

* * *

There’s a car scattering leaves as it guns anywhere away and I could wave it off with a hanky if only it’d drag the sky with it. Pitch us in darkness and give a good night’s sleep. This waking is distraction.

Toadstool. Crane fly. Baby’s breath.

The piper mourns the wanderer. She skips bottle caps on the river and almost knocks the last leg out from under the heron. But the heron still stands, proud as a pinwheel. The blows and buffets rather make it come alive. It doesn’t hear the grumble from the black bogwater. There’s a ripple, a crest, and a spray.

***

The service bell dings, and I’d bet you a dollar it’s a gang of teens having fun at the counter, out for trouble on a clear day. It goes off again, though, and I wonder where Ida went. Probably out back on a smoke break.

Jesus, Ida. One job.

I call, “In a minute,” and rinse off, then come through the swing door to take their order or tell them to beat it Or Else. It’s actually a kind of treat to watch them sober up quick at the threat of a phone call home. We all have demons, punks with their parents.

But they aren’t punks in the shop.

A couple of Boys. Just two, but enough to keep me well behind the sneezeglass.

They used to come by the house when I was younger, the Brewer Boys. They work at the distillery two miles uproad. It’s a massive compound with on-site logging, oak and hickory, and a showroom of black and white pictures that shows brewers capped incognito and grinning through Prohibition. On a downwind the town proper smells that inky vanilla smell that every Boy wafts to the roots of his hair.

Ben used to work with them. At least, he’d shape the barrels while they tended the malting plant. He asked questions and chummed easily with them, wanting one day to have his own brew. The Boys got him moved into the plant and showed him the ropes. Trade secrets and Brewer Boy secrets.

He split quick.

It was around then the police started sniffing around. They asked after the books, scouted the floor space against the blueprints. Ben had nothing to do with either the investigation or the rumored backroom, but he didn’t take risks as a rule. The Boys might have understood but, at the time, a flake was as good as a rat.

They stopped coming by for gravy and apple stack. They came for other things. The mailbox one night, whacked clean off its post. The propane. Mine and Annie’s underwear right off the clothesline.

The Boys cherish a grudge. It’s sport for them, yucking it up like peeves in the bushes. It goes like this: crash, hee-haw, mad scuttle. Ben plays along with a slow flashlight sweep of the yard. Who’s there? The chokecherry shakes by the headless mailbox.

I figure half the time the Boys are toddling off their own mountain dew—alleged, as we townspeople say—but you can never tell what’s booze from what’s pack mentality from what’s workingman mania. Cooped up all day making hooch you can’t afford, filching dusties from the exhibit shelves—the Boys had reason to go cuckoo.

But that much has died down. There was an incident with Annie on her way back from the store. A couple of Boys, staggering high, had bullied her over her bags, flashed her and run. She came home in tears with a carton of cracked eggs and a fear of grocery shopping. Ben raised holy hell. He and Oz stormed the distillery and got them to fire the offenders and agree to a truce. The Boys no longer bother the house. I see them through the order window every now and again getting coffee and sandwiches.

But never this hour. Not with those curdling grins.

There’s Hank with the cheek wart and Death-Rattle Dylan. I keep an eye on the bat Ida hides under the register and welcome them through my teeth.

“Afternoon, Minnie.”

Hank knows he’s got my goat and slides two quarters over the counter for a pop. I trade the coke can for the change, knowing if I take the money first he’ll probably grab my wrist and fix me one of his sweet, sticky grins, teeth glinting like pikeheads.

He does so anyway, minus the grab, and chugs his soda. I hear the fizzle down his gullet and turn bristling to Dylan. “Anything for you?”

Years ago he was good-looking. I’d sit at the foot of Grandma’s rocker like one of her cherub knickknacks and spin her yarn into perfect globes that I imagined he saw from the table and admired.

He’s actually going to order something when Hank burps loudly and gets down to business. “Just tell us where he is.”

I blink a couple times, then make a game of trying to restick the plastic film that peels off the register keys. “He’s not at work?”

My voice comes out tinny. If they’re looking for Ben they will have shook down the quarry already. And why wouldn’t he be there? And what did they have against him?

Hank laughs, stomping hysterical. “Your beau, working? Shit, Minnie, you got the wool over your eyes, or little silvertongue’s made you dumber.”

Danny.

My chest thuds. What does Danny have to do with the Boys? The thought of them hurlyburlying over a cheap stout makes me taste sick.

I swallow and say I haven’t seen him.

“Easy, girl. We owe him a visit is all. Thought we’d come by, see if you didn’t know where he’s holed up this time.”

Dylan sniggers, catching a flea of phlegm in his throat and doubling in fits. I feel my lip curl. He took me once to skip bottle caps on the river. He said I had a mean arm and I felt like a princess. Now he’s ugly, and I can’t peg why. Something’s eaten him inside, like an apple gone to rot from worms.

He had kind eyes, I realize. Now they’re hard, black dimes.

“He left yesterday,” I say. “I don’t know for where or how long.”

Hank pouts. “That’s not right, Mama. Dylan, what do you call that?”

“Indecent,” he says, rolling his neck. His eyes linger over my belly and his lips twitch.

“Indecent. Now, as a gentleman, I thought Danny Boy mighta done you better this time. But some chimps don’t dance, do they? Dylan thought we’d come round just the same. Check if Danny Boy didn’t leave you a number or anything, maybe pick up a poppy loaf to take over to Willa’s.”

They watched me squirm. Willa couldn’t hold her own against a possum. She was a stern churchwoman who cowed to tall men. On back of her neck were these pearly pink nubs from years of looking humblelike at the floor. If the Boys came knocking, she’d be the same sniveling mess as Annie, which might piss them off even more.

“Leave her out. If Danny’s gone,” I say, “he’s gone.”

And I’m never gladder that he is.

Hank rolls his eyes, but he knows from the town talk there’s no point pushing the subject of Danny. He’s a wastrel, so it goes, and I’m the slut in his rearview.

“If you see him…” says Hank, pointing a finger for menace.

I wouldn’t wait up, I want to say, but I won’t rain on the Brewer Boys’ shakedown. It’d be stupid to get cavalier. They still have tempers, and there are two of them. Well, them two against my two. And Ida’s bat. I almost laugh.

“If I see him…” I return, with all gravity.

Hank nods. “Good girl. Just like yours. Maeve, isn’t it?”

I go cold. He didn’t just drag her into this. My face drains, giving him the satisfaction he wants.

He drops the almost done coke on the floor and walks out into the sunshine.

His crony gone, Dylan steps over the spill and orders a cookie.

* * *

Ben’s checking the traps when I get back, and the house, dare I jinx it, is empty.

I’m too tired to guess what Danny’s done to get the Boys on his tail, but I can’t get their visit off my mind. I start water on the stove and stand over the open pot, gathering steam over my mouth and nose until it’s hard to breathe. Pull back, and the cool shock snaps me to.

Voices.

They’re real, and they’re coming. I look out the window.

A posse of brewers, seven and counting, advance through the tall grass. Hank spearheads. Dylan trails, not halfway through his cookie. He’s picking it apart with schoolgirl precision, bite by dainty bite.

They don’t look dangerous, but I can’t expect a cordial house call. They know Ben’s not home.

I kill the burner and go for my shoes to meet the Boys outside. They won’t come in if I can help it.

“Minerva!”

Annie comes out of nowhere, clinging to my elbows. She’s got such a light step, I could kill her for startling me at a time like this, but I feel her trembling and catch her face in my hands. Her tears run hot over my fingers as she blubbers about the Boys outside. I keep her steady and still, but she won’t calm down.

“Annie,” I say, over and over. “Annie. Mother.”

She whimpers. “Where’s Ben?”

With all my might, I will her to some shred of composure. “Mother, this is important. Where’s Maeve?” I hear the kick and spray of gravel up the walkway. I squeeze her jaw. The pressure will focus her. “Where is she exactly?”

Annie squeaks like a broken faucet.

Hide and Seek. They always play when the sun comes out. With any luck Maeve is giggling behind the backyard pencil pine, far out of the way.

We don’t have time for an interrogation, so I wheel Annie around and rush her out the back, pointing the way she already knows. “Go to Oz and Lily’s. Wait for us there.”

Annie does as I say, stumbling between the clotheslines. As I catch the screen door from banging after her, I double back to the kitchen entrance. I hear Death-Rattle Dylan’s namesake wheezing and turn the knob.

“Boo!”

I whirl. Maeve’s wings flop behind her as if of their own mind. Her forehead shines from the chase, and she can’t for the life of her figure why Mommy looks as if she’s seen a ghost.

That’s not how you play Hide and Seek. If ever I want to paddle her with the wooden spoon—but I’d never. She doesn’t mean any harm. She’s such a good girl.

I remember Hank’s words and try not to panic as the front steps creak.

Switching the deadbolt, I grab Maeve and duck out of eyeline just as a smartass rhythm of knocks tests the door. Around the bend from the kitchen is the short hall that leads out back. I curse myself for getting rid of Annie so fast. She could’ve taken Maeve with her. But it’s too late. Opposite the door is Ben’s cupboard. I don’t like it, not one bit, but I stuff Maeve inside and tell her not to make a sound or touch a thing.

“I’m playing now,” I say. “Mommy’s playing Hide and Seek.”

She stares at me in openmouthed awe. My heart cracks.

“But we’re doing my rules, so listen up because we don’t like spoilsports.”

Maeve lets out a disgusted uh-uh, then remembers her silence and zips her lips.

“It’s you and me against Granny. And you know what Granny says.”

Maeve hesitates and unzips, “Don’t go in the cupboard,” and zips again.

“Exactly. She’d never expect a good girl like you to be here against the rules, right? So she won’t catch you here as long as you stay nice and quiet.”

The door pounds in earnest. Not knuckles, but fists.

“I’ll come get you when the coast is clear. No exceptions. No spoilsports. And no touching.”

Then I shut her in darkness and convince myself down the short hall that Ben always keeps the safety on, the bullets in their box. He’s on his rounds anyway and could just as well have taken the rifle with him, not that I checked when I had plenty of time to.

Harebrain! It happens when I’m expecting, but this was my kid. Why the hell would I have locked her in the gun cupboard? I turn heel to double back—

“MINNIE.”

Back in the kitchen, I see Hank’s eye through the front door window. He’s bending over to look through the gap between curtain and pane, and he’s fogging the glass from the strain.

I wedge open the door and frown. “It’s been awhile.”

He’s resting his forearm high on the frame, and his pit stinks so bad I could retch into it. I recoil enough for him to sweep inside, leaving me wondering if that was a cheap trick on his part. Either way, I’m a shitty mother for caving so easy.

“Shoes off, boys,” Hank says. “And say thank-you to the lady.”

So he’s the ringleader. I don’t recognize all the guys that pause before me, hand me their reeking ratty shoes and mutter thanks before going to loaf around my kitchen. Dylan puts his boots with mine against the wall and slinks sheepishly past me. Was that an olive branch, or what?

The head count comes to nine, and I’m glad Hank has decided to play the gentleman boss. I bid them all sit between the kitchen table and living room. Someone takes Grandma’s rocker, and I bite my tongue. Not that I get to be annoyed. I’ve let nine men into my home and locked my daughter in an arsenal.

“So, where’s the pretty one?” Hank asks.

I’m choosing to take it as a cheap dig at Danny, so I say, “He’s not here.”

“The little investor!” Hank chuckles. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

We won’t, you dumb shit. If I shook him by the scruff I couldn’t scare out the stupid. And there he stands, arms crossed, muscles fluffed, as if by pushing me around he’s got something on Danny. For Pete’s sake! Danny could be gone years.

“I can’t help you, Hank,” I say. “Neither can Danny. Whatever he’s promised you, he can’t deliver. It’s just not him.”

“Oh, I’ve got time. Not a whole lot, but…” he reaches around me, switching the deadbolt. “We got a deal, see. Danny thought it up, mutually benefitting. I thought, Kid’s got the balls Ben never had and the good sense not to shy from what really makes money. Then you tell us today the kid’s skipped town again, and that just doesn’t sit right. I get to thinking, Well maybe he’s not so different from Old Flake. And then I think, What’s the link?”

His hot hand spreads the small of my back. The oil of his pores, the stink on his breath, the vermin malice in his eyes—I burn.

“Go on, Mama. Call him. See if Danny Boy won’t hightail it home for you.”

My legs twinge up and down, ready to fly, but I imagine what happens when a girl in my place causes an upset. I imagine Maeve stuck within earshot.

I master the sandpaper in my throat. “You know Danny doesn’t leave a number.”

Hank knows full well, but he’s having fun. His hand slips lower.

I jump him off. It was kneejerk, not the stony calm that would have been wise. Hank laughs to have gotten a rise out of me, earning a hoot or two from his cronies.

He lumbers toward the fridge and starts passing out beers. They’re here to scare me is all, I think. They know Ben’s gone and Danny’s not coming, and if they twist my arm I’ll have to get one or the other to give them what they want. It’s the Boys, remember. It’s not about me.

I can’t decide if that makes it any easier.

A chorus of groans brings me back to the moment. Hank’s waving the last bottle. There aren’t enough to go round, and the Boys who’ve been served are snickering over their good luck while the others are happy to have a problem. They like the excuse to get rowdy.

“How now, Boys!” Hank calls. “The lady’s doing her best. I’m sure she can dig up another four? Five?” He does a count, takes counsel and speaks for the crowd: “Just bring what you have.”

So this was the long haul.

Fine by me. Hank knows where we keep the extra, in a cooler out back by the propane. When they’d stolen that, they’d left Ben a box full of bottle caps. That was a low blow.

I make sure not to walk too fast, but I don’t have much time. At the end of the hall, I’m not wholly out of sight of the living room. But the rocker faces the kitchen table and the Boys are all watching Hank by the fridge. Praying to Mother Mary and all the ghosts of the Adirondacks, I stop and kneel before the gun cupboard.

Maeve squints as the light opens onto her face, but she’s grinning like mad thinking we’ve won our game. I put a finger to my lips, practically crying. Sure, kid. I’ve got Maeve, at least, and I’m brimming with pride for her fearlessness. Not many kids can just sit in the dark, surrounded by—

I check. The rifle’s gone. Ben’s got it. I should be relieved. I’m an idiot, but I didn’t endanger my daughter. Well, not as gravely as could be. We’re still in a house crawling with hostiles. Frankly I could use a gun, if only to hold and feel as dangerous as they must in their hulking frames.

I scoop Maeve into my arms and slip out the back, careful the door doesn’t bang too loud. The sun hits my eyes at the killer angle. Everything’s a shapeless dazzle. I duck between the clotheslines, the nightgowns and sheets hissing and catching at me, and move slower than I’d like. Parts of the yard are still wet from the rains, and the stretch between us and the woods is a sty that sucks my heels with each step. I worry the Boys will hear me squelching to safety and yank me—us—back in the house.

But we’ve almost made it. Shouldering through the evergreen border, raking my arms, neck and face through the wall of needles, we disappear. On the other side, I check Maeve’s okay. Her wings have taken the brunt of the hurt, but even in shreds she’ll still wear them. Apart from a sprinkle of green in her hair, she’s thrilled.

Didn’t think Mommy could play, huh?

I hoist Maeve onto my hip and pick up a run.

We’re not going to Oz and Lily’s. The Boys will figure out soon enough that I’m not coming back with those beers, and they’ll pick up the trail and blow down Oz’s door—which would make his day. He’s got a row of Winchesters on the mantle and always jokes that any intruder is welcome on his wall, next to the deer. The edge in his voice makes you doubt he’s joking.

But Annie’s there, and she’d be beside herself. I won’t risk bringing the Boys her way. I can manage. The forest floor is soft, but drier than the yard on a mild incline from the house. My tracks won’t show as much, and the leaves will help throw off the trail so I at least have a prayer of making it to the turnpike. From there I can follow the guardrail to the rest stop and get someone to call the police.

A gun cracks.

I dive to my knees, covering Maeve. I can’t tell what direction it’s come from, but something tells me it’s not Ben. I listen for the onrush. Boots, shouts, hot sticky hands.

Nothing. I pick up and keep on. It could have been anything from a busted engine to a stick underfoot. It could have been in my head.

But there’s something in the distance. A glimmer, a form. It brings me back two mornings, when I woke to a cool gap in the bed and saw Danny loading his car with a strange gusto. Not agitation, as usual, but gusto.

I took off the shirt I’d been sleeping in, Danny’s, and went out in an old robe of Ben’s. The dew soaked my toes and raised my scalp as I traded Danny the shirt for another false promise.

I had always understood him, he said, and he loved me for it. He was trying to reckon with the closeness of it all, the houses and trees that crowded and choked him, and he wanted to get it right someday. He had to take care of some things, that was all. He’d said it before, but this time was different.

Another thing he’d said before.

I closed the door on him and waved him off. I trusted his conviction and knew he’d be back. He just wouldn’t stay.

But there was something different about him. A freshness, a hardness, as if he had woken from a lifelong spell, blinking against the light yet rising into it. Or so I imagined.

And here he is now, come again. So soon.

I set Maeve down facing a tall oak tree and bet her she can’t smell the sap underneath. She puts her nose to the bark and will stay like that until someone pulls her off.

Someone will have to, I think, as I approach the form in the distance, sprawled on the brown paper leaves, giving off steam.

But why is he wearing a suit?

I laugh. I’ve never seen Danny in a suit. He looks awfully handsome. But the suit has dirt and wet on it. What a waste. Why can’t you be more responsible, I want to ask him. This is why nice things don’t come in these parts.

I kneel by his side and put my hand to his cheek. His eyes don’t see me. The blind kitten blue takes in the light and gives nothing back.

There’s a bulge in his jacket. I unbutton it and pull out a small bank envelope. There’s a wristwatch inside. Someone’s polished it up, and I believe its value. From the initials on back it must be Danny’s father’s, but it’s much older.

I shouldn’t touch. I’m getting blood all over it.

The wheels are working in back of my mind, and I dimly piece together what happened. With all the clarity I can muster I put the watch back in the envelope and put the envelope in my pocket. I take Danny’s keys and put them also in my pocket.

The shrubs rustle ahead. I lick my lips to prepare some excuse, some plea, for whoever comes out. I imagine his muzzle trained between my eyes.

But it’s not a man that emerges.

She moves like water, a silver flicker that cuts in and out of visibility between the sun and shadow of forest light. She stops mere paces away, blinking her ancient eyes.

The bobcat licks her right paw and waits.

I don’t want to spook her. I back off on my hands and knees before standing all the way to leave. Before I go, though, I watch her nose Danny’s outstretched hand. Maybe she tastes ocean salt.

She follows his arm to his body proper, probing him with her whiskers. With my full pocket, I can’t grudge her her share. The dead is the dead and she has kits to feed. Her black lips part, and I turn and lead my daughter toward the sound of passing cars.

* * *

The boy at the counter is real nice. I’d put him at five or six years my junior. He has a long way to fill out and toughen up if he wants to be one of the Boys, but I hope he stays kind. Girlish, even. I told him what happened at the house, and by the state of us two he let Maeve open a box of frozen pancakes and a jug of syrup, now that she has tree sap on her mind, while I phoned the police.

Turns out they’re close to the gas station.

For years the boys in blue had suspected the brewers of making more than just bourbon, but Hank wasn’t stupid. He only looked it. Lacking hard evidence, the cops couldn’t get their investigation off the ground. But, two days ago, an inside source informed them of a new player, a rooky investor who might talk or leave a paper trail. If he cooperated, he could get off with a slap on the wrist and land Hank & co. behind bars. When news circled back of the investor’s sudden departure, however, the station put out a BOLO on his plates and got a tip outside Lexington Bank this afternoon. They sent a squad car to pull him over, but the guy bolted on foot. A gun went off during the pursuit, but no body’s been found. He can’t have gotten far. And since the car turned up nothing, he must have something, a fat wad of cash, on his person. Real waste if he slips through their fingers.

Now, what seems to be the problem, dear?

Officer Mick has quite the mouth. Maybe I’ve pulled all the right faces to make him feel important. It isn’t hard to look mystified as he fills me in on Danny’s stupid operation. Can’t hold a job? Danny must have thought. Well, no need.

A hefty stake in the mountain dew ring would turn him from tramp to fat cat. He went to Lexington all right, but it wasn’t for cash. His family has a safe deposit there, and that’s where he got the heirloom watch that weights my pocket now.

I keep that under wraps and tell Mick about the brewers.

“They came uninvited and looked to be after something. I couldn’t tell you what, it all happened so fast. With them horsing around the kitchen, I snuck me and my daughter out back and we ran to the road. Now here we are.

“You can get them on something, can’t you? Trespassing, intimidation?”

What I want to know is, Would a house check send the Boys underground, or poke them to lash out?

“I’m not sure, but tell you what. I’ll get a car to go over and see what’s the matter. And who knows? Maybe your visitors are gone by then.”

The hopeful uptick in his voice gives me the sense that any car on deck would be Mick’s, and that Mick would rather let the Boys clean out our fridge and starve themselves out of the house than risk facing them off.

I thank Mick for his support.

“Much obliged, honey.” He turns to Maeve, who’s swirling syrup over Lord knows which number pancake, and brightens. “Why, you’re quite the fairy princess, aren’t you?”

She sticks out her tongue. Mick unclips his radio and fakes calling in a hostile lady with wings. Very small, very dangerous. He asks if she’s carrying fairy dust.

Like she needs the encouragement. I tell them not to muss up the nice boy’s store and make a quick call to Oz, asking if he’ll do a sweep of the woods. Since Oz helped us set most of our traps, he’ll know where to look for Ben.

“Make sure he goes back with you,” I add. “The police might swing by the house, and things could get ugly.”

For the Boys and for us. If Ben came back slinging carcasses, the cops could start sniffing around Oz, whose idea of hunting season was any of the big four.

“Plus Annie could use him. How’s she getting along?”

“Lily gave her some lemon balm and a hot water bag, but not well. She keeps asking after Maeve. How’s the little one taking it?”

I glance down the aisle. She’s put Mick to work reshaping the wire of her wings. He’s frowning over how to make the top and bottom loops match on either side.

I roll my eyes. “She’s making the best of it.”

The line crackles with Oz’s gravel laugh. “What else can she do?”

* * *

We’ve had quite the party, it looks like. Ben and I sit on the back porch, too beat to sweep up. Annie’s sleeping sound in Maeve’s and my bed, and the robins coo through the night fog. They can’t turn in either.

I pass the envelope to Ben. He takes out Danny’s watch and holds it close to the lantern, which sparkles the chain like fool’s gold.

“What’s this on the back?” he asks, thumbing the timepiece initials.

I take the watch from him and wrap my shawl tight. “We’ll file it off and have it appraised. Not Pawnshop Chuck,” I say, before Ben can point out that burned bridge.

He warms to the idea. “That kind of money goes a ways. You and Maeve could get a proper place. She could go to school. You…” He puts his arm round me, his eyes shining like chestnuts between the bloodshot whites. “You could go to college.”

I tip my head on his shoulder and we sit awhile, watching the line dance of shirts and sheets. First thing tomorrow I’m going down to Pikeville. Ida’s got a cousin in antiques who always pays fair. I’ll turn a payday and drive straight to the distillery to square the debt with Hank. Annie can rest assured they’ll not bother us again. Ben can stop pulling doubles, given a surplus. Maeve can have a whole costume of glitter and rainbow tulle for her first day of school. And I can repaint the old rocking horse for when this baby comes singing into our world.

The cold starts to bite, and we get up to turn in. Ben holds the door as I blow out the lantern. Through the afterlight haze I see two distant spots.

Between the evergreens, two ancient eyes.