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together at the back of my neck. To keep the hair from falling in my face.
    The river ice, gritty with dirt, but slippery under my shoes. Under the ice, water so deep it looked black. With two fingers, I pinched the coin out of the dirty frost.
    From somewhere in the woods and cattails along the riverbank came barking, dogs snarling and snapping.
    Between my teeth, the coin was hard, not breaking, sticking to my lips with the cold. A real coin. Treasure. My tongue tasting gold, dated
    And: “Hello.” Someone said, “Hello.”
    Dogs you couldn’t see, off a ways, howling.
    In back of me, a man came walking upstream on the deepest stretch of water, flat as a glass road. Ice all around us. He said, “Well, don’t you look nice…” The Christmas sky floated over him, blue as embroidery floss.
    Echo Lawrence: They don’t know I saw, but I woke up in the backseat of the car and saw Shot kiss Neddy Nelson on the lips. Shot said, “There, now you’re infected.”
    And Neddy said, “I’d better be, because I’m not doing that again.”
    Irene Casey: The man reached to finger the sleeve of my sweater, and he said, “Isn’t this pretty.”
    I started to step back, making my fist tight around the gold coin, to hide it in case it was his. Nodding at the cattails, I told him, “There’s wild dogs, mister.”
    His eyes and mouth made just a look. Not a smile or frown, more how you’d look if you was alone. The man’s fingers worked into the knotted yarn, and he said, “Relax.”
    I told him, “Don’t, mister.” I said, “Quit pulling, please.”
    He stretched the sleeve toward him, so hard you could hear the seam at the shoulder creak, a thread popped, and he said, “I’m not hurting you.”
    Holding the coin to hide it, saving it, left me with only one hand. My shoes sliding on the ice. To save my sweater, I stepped closer, saying, “You’re going to ruin it…”
    Neddy Nelson: Don’t you know rabies is key?
    Irene Casey: The sweater, the white yarn worked like a net. An acrylic spiderweb. With both hands, his fingers were tangled, worked deep into the knots and stitches, and when he dropped to his knees, his weight dragged me down. Buttoned to my neck, I twisted away from his clouds of ghost breath, and when he slid flat onto the dirty ice, he pulled me with him. The two of us tied and knotted together.
    In the brush around us, dogs barked. The man put his lips together in a kiss and said, “Shhhh. Hush.” The heart inside his coat, beating one thud for every four times mine jumped.
    His eyes rolled to look toward the barking, the dogs, and I told myself he was saving me. I was fine. He’d only grabbed me and pulled me down to protect me. He heard the dog pack coming, and he wanted us to hide.
    As the barking faded, moving down the river, his fingers still knotted in my sweater, he looked at me, from too close to see anything but my eyes. His eyelashes brushing mine, he said, “You ever wonder about your real daddy?”
    Neddy Nelson: Isn’t rabies what wrecks your port so you can’t boost peaks? After that, aren’t you free to flashback?
    Irene Casey: I remember trying to hold my breath, because, every time I breathed out, he settled on top of me, heavier, making my next breath smaller. Crushing my insides, smaller, until stars of light spun around in my eyes. In the blue silk sky.
    He said, “I’ve been watching your trash.”
    I remember the long sleeves of the sweater, wrapped and twisted around me, tight as those coats that crazy people wear in movies so they can’t move their arms. My, each of my fingers, tied a different way.
    From watching the trash, he said, “I know the hours and minutes since your last period.” And he said how the baby I’d have, right now, would almost for sure be a boy. He would be a king, that boy. An emperor. A genius who would make me rich and exalted above all other women.
    And with my every breath out, he settled heavier on top of me, making my next breath more