Louise knew something was wrong. She felt heavy on the spot where she stood. She stamped her tongue against her front teeth and tried to think of Roger Mullan, his long yellow teeth. His own mother said he could eat apples through a picket fence. She strained to hold the image.

Baptiste tugged at the swell in his crotch as he talked to her. She focused all of her attention on moving away from him. He struck a match on the zipper of his pants to a yellow flame and lit a pipe of kinnikinnick leaves. Now that she had his full attention again he did not look like the Baptiste who had held Hemaucus’s hand. She could tell he had been drinking. He’d been drinking for days. His breath was bitter. She glanced at his face but would not meet his gaze. It occurred to her, like a push, that Baptiste could be both handsome and ugly to her. His voice was slow water moving deep in the channel, pulling her. She knew he wasn’t touching her but the rasp of his swollen tongue grazed her left breast. She turned to him and he was grinning. He blew smoke through his lips like a kiss and her eyes watered. She believed he knew what she was thinking. Around the brown hub of his eyes the whites rimmed yellow as if they’d been boiled. She felt an urge to move closer to him, a strange urge she didn’t understand, the same urge she had to look close into the small mouths of dead animals. She would cross the highway again for a closer look at a bone-broken deer. And she knew she would move closer to Baptiste.

“Louise,” he whispered. Her name was thick in his mouth. She could feel a wet heat rising from his collar. She surprised herself when she leaned forward to touch the tip of her tongue to the fat lobe of his ear. He tasted sour with old body salt. He pressed his cheek to hers, leaving a damp imprint. Louise pulled back. She would not kiss him. He smelled different up close. Sweet, warm earth and the faint, odd smell of burning lime that covered everything unclean. He crooked his head toward her as if he could hear her heart beating. He opened his mouth to reveal his tongue red as a salamander.

The back of her head felt tight as if every pore had shut down. Louise tried not to look behind her. She breathed in slowly and listened. The wind was still. She imagined her head was as smooth as the translucent round moon rising high above their heads.