At the barn wall, she crouches, keeps low. She’s heard a howl on the hill. An animal cry, she must think, its gut ripped open, but no, turns out it’s only Dan dreaming. She crawls. The Kid can smell her thinking, taste her confusion. She will crawl to the northwest corner. She turns once, feeling him behind her, inches away, but he’s gone in a blink behind the stack of pallets. The morning is a blue fog. She stifles a cough. He stifles one too. She wipes her nose and he does the same. He sees the top of her head from the west window now; also looks at her crotch from the cat’s favorite hole. Her head is round like a melon from every angle. Her crotch reeks. She can feel the air moving but she can’t explain it. Anyone looking then would see him, but only the birds do, and they fly past at the business of birds. They, he knows, in their rudimentary stage of evolution, have no opinions. The barn wood catches the shoulder of the woman’s flannel shirt. Tragedy is a matter of opinion and tone. His mind is rich and full. His mind, he now knows, can make anything.

Her shirttail is riding up; the skin on her back is showing. She is bruised about the kidneys. She crawls around a rusty gutter. Her spine is horizontal to the earth. A brick from above could break her back. He lets the brick alone. He has mercy on her, poor thing. On the west wall, her jeans’ ass is in full view. She crushes an anthill with her giantess knee. The pit is behind her now. The pit is the past. He tells her this with his mind. She gives no indication of understanding. Instead, she passes a stick of old siding hanging off the barn. A sixteen-penny nail has sprung away from the barn on one end. She pries it free. She shoves the stick under her arm and crawls on through thick vegetation, drags under branches and thorns, sucks her finger. From the corner she can spy on the whole yard. A chicken struts up and struts on.