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timekeeper in a palladium mine, then dealing cards, downhill all the way. Three years in a casino left me so fucked up I was speaking in tongues, but Grandma got me back on my feet with pearls of immortal wisdom like “Pull yourself together.” And while I waited for her to give me a little walking-aroundmoney, a pearl or two would come to me, too, like “Shit or get off the pot.”
    Grandma owned several buildings in the middle of our small town, including the old hotel where I lived. I looked after them, not exactly as a maintenance man—I don’t have such trade skills—but more as an overseer, for which Grandma paid me meagerly, justifying her stinginess with the claim that I was bleeding her white. Another building housed an office-supply shop and a preschool, where I was a teaching assistant. That is, a glorified hall monitor for a bunch of dwarfs. I also tended bar two nights a week—the off nights, when tips were scarce, but it was something to do and kept me near the hooch. Grandma had bought the bar, too, back when it was frequented mainly by sheepherders. Sheep have mostly disappeared from the area since being excluded from the national forest, which they had defoliated better than Agent Orange. I didn’t see much point in tending an empty bar, but Grandma required it. It was part of my “package,” she said, and besides she was sure that if we closed it down, it would become a meth lab. Grandma was convinced every empty building housed a meth lab.
    The preschool thing was another matter. Mrs. Hessler, the teacher, considered me her employee, and I played along with this to keep the frown off that somewhat-shapeless face she had crowned with an inappropriate platinum pixie. I regularly fed her made-up news items from imaginary newspapers, and she always bought it.
    “Drone Strike on a Strip Club,” for example. In return, Mrs. Hessler made me wear clothes she supplied and considered kid friendly; loud leisure suits and sweatpants, odd-lot items that gave me the feeling I was at the end of my rope.
    Barring weather or a World Series game, on Sundays I’d pick up a nice little box lunch from Mustang Catering and take Grandma someplace that smelled good. I was often in rough shape on Sunday mornings, so a little fresh air helped me dry out in time for work on Monday. We’d have our picnics in fields of sage and lupine, on buffalo-grass savannas north of town, on deep beds of spruce needles, and in fields of spring wildflowers. I’d have enough of nature pretty quick, but we stayed until Grandma had had her fill; she told me it was the least I could do, and I suppose she’s right.
    Today’s nature jaunt turned out to be one for the ages: we went to a bend in the river near Grandma’s and set up our picnic under the oldest of cottonwoods, so that the eastbound current raced toward us over pale gravel. It smelled wonderful. Once out of the car, I led Grandma with a light touch on the elbow, marveling at how straight and tall she was—how queenly she looked with her thick white hair carefully piled and secured by Mrs. Devlin with a broad tortoiseshell comb. I had just settled Grandma on her folding chair and popped open our box lunch when the corpse floated by. Though facedown, he seemed formally attired, and the tumult of current at the bend was strong enough to make him ripple from end to end, while his arms seemed lofted in some oddly valedictory way, and his hair floated ahead of him. The sunlight sparkling on the water made the picture ghastly.
    “Oh!” said Grandma as though she could see it.
    “What?”
    “That divine smell, of course! I can still smell snow in the river!”
    The corpse had rotated in such a way that I could now seethe heels of its shoes and the slight ballooning of its suit coat. Just then I remembered that cheap Allegiant flight I’d taken back from Las Vegas. I’d lost so much money, I got drunk on the plane and passed out, and someone scrawled LOSER on my face in eyebrow