We could all read (though Samuel was just starting to get the hang of it) and speak the language of numbers, and we all knew about wars and presidents and the crash that had driven us from the gray, starving town into the green and generous mountain. But I pictured the bedlam when Esther found the snake, and I imagined coming back to something besides reading and writing and arithmetic.

I didn’t see Samuel on the path up-mountain. “Samuel!” I called more than once, but he didn’t answer. Surely he was somewhere back near the cabin, maybe trying to start his own little fire with a couple of hopeless rocks.

At the turn to the Andersons’, I paused and looked up the path to where it dwindled into the undergrowth.

Nobody went up there, except to hunt.

Nobody lived up there, except the hag.

Samuel wouldn’t have gone up there on his own.

I was sure he was somewhere down by home, maybe even in the yard by now, pestering my mother for a taste of butter straight from the churn. I pictured them all back in the cabin, Esther going along to check on my father, finding the snake, screaming like she’d been scalded, running from the room, her mouth a dark hole. My mother racing into the bedroom, the snake in a slick frenzy, thrashing toward escape, my mother slashing at it with her big knife.

I told the snake I was sorry. Hoped it reached the drain hole and through to safety.

And then I pictured Esther and my mother, trembling with fury, knowing that someone had shut that snake in with my father, knowing that it had to have been me, and I turned away from the Andersons’ and went farther up the mountain instead, following the path that the wild ones had left, threading my way through the undergrowth as if I were a needle looking for something to mend.

—

I expected to see the dog up there, and before long, I did.

I was navigating an especially steep, rocky place when I looked up and saw him above me, staring down. One tooth hung below his lip, but I decided that didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t growling. He wasn’t snarling. But he didn’t look very friendly, either. The tick on his face was revolting, and I made up my mind to yank it off when I could. If I could get close enough. If I could do it without dog-bite.

I said, “Hey, boy,” in my calmest voice.

I could smell the fish in the pack that hung from my shoulder, so I knew he could, too. I had meant to trade it for eggs, but I was not in that world anymore.

“I have a fish for you,” I said. “For you and . . .” But I didn’t want to call her the hag. It didn’t seem polite.