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cheeks were rosy from scrubbing off the buck scent and he grinned between bites of greasy venison loaf. The film of smoke on the kitchen’s picture window distorted the snowflakes that had started falling.
    “Grandma gave us tips on crime,” Joel said.
    Mike spread fried onions over his slab of meat. “I’m glad you spent time visiting together. Mom and Dad have their quirks, but they’re good people. I think that camper helps. Mom feels secure in it.”
    “Can we sleep out in the motor home?” Joel asked.
    “Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” Mike said. “Give your parents some privacy tonight.”
    “That might be nice,” said Audrey. “I think I’d like that.”
    Mike’s smile broadened. “I got my doe tonight.”
    Audrey’s mouth tensed.
    “I aimed straight down at her. Easy shot. I bull’s-eyed. Strong, clean chest shot.”
    “Where is it? Did you bring it home?” Joel said. My little brother loved dead animals. When Mike plucked ducks, Joel collected the chopped-off wings and ran down the driveway, flapping them and leaping.
    “The deer’s still out there. It bolted. Then the sun set. I’ll find it tomorrow,” Mike said. “She left a blood trail.”
    “You’ll find it tonight,” said Audrey. “Jesus Lord …” She stood up with her plate and scraped it into the garbage can.
    “Fine,” Mike said. “I’ll get a sleeping bag and track the thing at first light.”
    “The
thing
,” said Audrey.
    “The animal, then.”
    “Just stop it.”
    “The precious Bambi.”
    My grandparents were right: life was nicer in the Horizoneer.

    With Grandpa drinking bourbon sours and Grandma woozy from a sleeping pill, it was like a party in the motor home. To make up for dinner, which I hadn’t touched, I shoveled down ice cream during our game of Scrabble. Grandma won by making nonsense words, including “plip”—a sound like
plop
, she claimed—and “clasque,” which she said she’d forgotten the meaning of. Outside, the snow had turned to slush and sleet, and I thought of Mike in the forest, tracking the doe. The sleet would erase the trail and soak his sleeping bag, but facing difficulties in the woods was Mike’s idea of fun.
    After the game we popped popcorn in a popper whosefoil lid rose like a chef’s hat during heating. Grandpa gave Joel and me pillows and wool blankets and we lay down in the aisle head-to-toe. Scattered popcorn hulls pricked my legs and back, and I was convinced I hadn’t fallen asleep yet when suddenly I woke and noticed traffic lights in the small round window overhead.
    The camper was moving, with Grandma at the wheel. Wearing only a flannel nightgown, a cigarette stuck in her mouth like a lit fuse, she stared at the fast-sweeping windshield wipers, eyes glazed. Grandpa was still on his stool at the table, his head down on the checkerboard, passed out.
    I stumbled past him to the camper’s passenger seat. Through the sleet-blurred glass I saw a town: rows of unfamiliar stores, all closed.
    “Where are we? Where are we going?” I asked Grandma.
    “Sometimes those pills have the opposite effect. They jazz me up,” she said. “They make me restless.”
    The town petered out and we drove along through cornfields on a muddy, potholed country road. The gusting dashboard vents blew Grandma’s hair back and pinked the tip of her nose. “We’re lost,” she said.
    “This might be Wisconsin. Did you cross a bridge?”
    “I might have. I wasn’t looking down,” she said.
    She couldn’t tell me how long she’d been driving or in what direction she’d set out. The fields grew flatter and went from corn to soybeans, indicating that we wereheaded west. We passed a few cars and another Horizoneer, which honked its horn in late-night solidarity.
    Grandma eyed my reflection in the windshield. “We’ll go to New York. You’ll meet the other Cobbs. We’re quite a clan out there—we have position. No one says boo to us; we protect our own. Your father thinks