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he’d do anything they needed done and struck out each time. He tried two strip joints on Eight Mile, asking if they were looking for a bouncer. They weren’t.
    He stopped at a neighborhood saloon and sat at the dark bar that was crowded with afternoon drinkers. He sipped a beer and considered his options. Say he did get hired somewhere: now that he didn’t have the motivation to make probation, how long could he work some menial, chickenshit job? The answer was not very, if at all. He didn’t see himself showing up for work every day, doing something he didn’t want to do. He couldn’t see himself starting over, like he’d ever started in the first place. He was the way he was and wasn’t going to change. Not at age thirty-eight.
    For the first time since leaving Arizona, he thought seriously about getting a gun and hitting partystores, small markets and retail shops that one person could manage. He’d just be more careful this time around, the fear of incarceration fading after six months on the outside.

F OUR
    She remembered the day it happened, waking up to a creaking noise, the sound of someone coming up the stairs. She was in her bedroom at the lodge, varnished log walls and a cathedral ceiling with interlocking oak beams. The clock on the bedside table said 5:07 a.m. There was a log smoldering in the fireplace, giving off the faint smell of wood smoke. She got up, crossed the room and opened the top drawer of her dresser, took out the Smith & Wesson .357 Airweight and went into the hall. She saw a man in mossy oak camouflage come up the stairs and head for Luke’s room. She snuck up behind him and aimed the pistol at his back.
    He heard her and turned.
    “Hey, Rambo,” Kate said, “better take this. Del Keane said he saw a bear last week.” She handed the automatic to Owen, and he slipped it in his pants pocket.
    “Del doesn’t need a gun. Bear probably smelled him and ran away. What’re you doing up?”
    “I’ve got to see my men off,” Kate said.
    Luke came out of his room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. They went downstairs and Kate made coffee, carrying steaming mugs into the room. A backlog burned in the big fieldstone fireplace. Owen was kneeling on the oriental rug, putting gear in his backpack. He closed the top and laid it next to his compound bow that had a built-in quiver of arrows. She handed Owen his coffee, pulled her robe closed, and stood over by the fireplace to get warm.
    Luke came in the room now, a skinny teenager dressed in Skyline Apparition 3-D camo, an iPod dangling from his neck like white plastic bling.
    Owen said, “What’re you listening to?”
    Luke pulled the earplug out and said, “White Stripes.”
    Kate said, “I don’t know that bucks are partial to Motor City garage bands.”
    Owen said, “Maybe he’s on to something. Rock instead of doe scent, the new deer lure.”
    Luke picked up his dad’s bow and tried to pull the string with its seventy pounds of draw, face straining. He couldn’t do it.
    “Lock your arms,” Owen said. “Use your shoulders.”
    Luke took a breath and tried again, and this time, drew it about three quarters.
    “You’re close, almost there,” Owen said. “Couple of months …”
    Kate put her arms around Owen. “Be careful. You don’t know who’s out there drunk with a bow or a rifle. Man has enough bourbon, I’d look like a whitetail.”
    “A cute one, too,” Owen said. “I’ll tell you that.”
    Now Kate hugged Luke and kissed his cheek. She could see sparse, blondish fuzz on his chin and upper lip. He squirmed and tried to pull away from her, a look of pain on his face.
    He said, “Mom …”
    She let him go. His voice had changed in the past few weeks. It was deeper now and she wasn’t used to it. “I’ll bet you don’t mind if Lauren kisses you.”
    Luke said, “We broke up.”
    Kate said, “Why didn’t you say something?”
    “I don’t know,” Luke said. He seemed embarrassed, eyes looking down at the