So we’d have our time, two or three times a week. The well-worn grooves of familiar bogs and ponds and creeks. But then he’d bring me back to the farm and go out again. I remember the narrow space around the side of the barn very well, covered over by trees, intruded on by bushes. Because that’s how we’d sneak back onto the property if we thought Shit was around.

“He’s going to do what he’s going to do,” Ned said. “You have to live your life, when he’s not, like you mean to.”

Even in punishment, caught, I saw a kind of light in Ned’s eyes, some lightness to his features that felt like a secret smile. No slumped shoulders. He would look Shot straight in the eye, and, at first, that made Shot worse, but eventually Shot began to look away. As if Ned was showing him something about Shot’s future he didn’t like much.

Except there was cause and effect. I didn’t want to “get shit from Shot” because the more Ned’s stare got to Shot, the more he took it out on me. And I had no way to tell Ned that. Not in a way that didn’t feel selfish or wrong.

The times Shot would smack me when I was doing chores in the barn. The time he finally figured out my “secret” route and popped out of the bushes in that narrow space coming back from a salamander search and crushed me against the barn wall and punched me in the kidneys and then was off again, manic this time, thankfully. If he’d been morose, he would’ve spent more time on me. Me, on the ground, staring up at the tree branches, thinking how beautiful it all looked. It was spring. Everything was green. My belly hurt so much I thought something had ripped open inside.

A lot of people have it worse, I always told myself, even when I couldn’t stop crying.

Ned’s most secret expeditions took place when Shot was in town, and Ned used to nudge our father to suggest getting drunk in town to Shot. It didn’t take much.

Sometimes, as Ned’s adventures seemed to get more frequent and organized, I wondered if he had actually found a giant salamander. Maybe that’s why he took the risk. Maybe that’s why he seemed not to mind Shot so much. Even if I wasn’t sure that made any sense.

I remember that night, too, because I’ll never be able to forget it. Not a day of my life. It’s there, peering over my shoulder, and I can’t push it away. The only difference is, over time, so many other things peer in at you. The weight shifts. The weight leans on you a little less.