“I know you have the gun.”

I stopped walking.

“It’s obvious. You’re always touching it.”

“I don’t have any ammo for it. And the gun—” I paused “—it’s been buried. It was in the ground. I don’t even know if it works.”

“Then why did you bring it?”

I looked at the tracks. They led up a hill. My breath jogged out before me like a wedding veil. “To scare men,” I said.

I started walking again.

I remembered when Lobo had bought his new gun, the one to replace the old, battered handgun I carried in my pocket, which apparently I was always touching: it was back when Mama was sick. One of those nights when the light in the farmhouse bedroom stayed on all night, curtains fluttering and ragged as her breath, or maybe on one of those days that she didn’t know were days, he went to the gun show. He came back with a black plastic case. I watched him take it from the truck, carry it into the house.

There would be no burying it this time.

She was trying to quit, I remembered that much: the vomiting, shaking, the smell. Stains on the floor. She couldn’t quit. Lobo carried more than a gun into the house. He had bought drugs for her. What kind, I didn’t even know.

Something crouched in front of me on the hill. A creature, white and furred. It almost blended with the snow, except the white of the thing was dirtier than the snow.

My impulse was to run, not to reach in my pocket for the gun, but to take flight. Selfishly, weakly. My heart knocked in my chest. Dance put his arm in front of me.

Then the white thing lifted its head. I saw that it had been bent down. It was a person. Misshapen by layers—just a person, trying to stay warm. He wore a white coat with a hood he had zipped all the way up, like a ski mask over his face. Bunches of newspaper, balled into fists, insulated the coat and made him appear lumpy and swollen. Cut into the hood, on either side of the zipper, were white mesh screens. Eyeholes. It looked like a monster but it was only a young man.

There was a moment where we saw him, and he saw us. Then he turned and fled.

“Wait,” I said.

“Who the fuck was that?” Dance said.

We abandoned the tracks, running up the hill instead after the hooded person. The snow and our boots weighed us down. The person in the hood moved lighter, quicker. Except for his coat, he was not dressed warmly enough. Snow caked his pant legs. He wore ordinary tennis shoes, which must have been wet, but allowed him to run.