Mano took down all the trout she'd painted before and started again, painting trout over and over on postcard stock—trout swimming above the rocky peaks across the Estes Valley, trout spawning in a native waxflower grove in full spring bloom, trout wiggling through the geometric beauty of a spiderweb, trout shooting like comets through a maze of peachleaf willow growth, their spots shining like stars on a dark summer night. She sent these postcards to her congresspeople, to the mayor, to the governor, all with pleas for species protection, for water quality, for oversight and reparations. Most of the officials declined to reply, but Mano kept writing, kept painting, kept offering chances.

The Best Response to Fear

EVERY DAY BEFORE SHE left for work, Amy boiled coffee on the wood-burning stove Bobby Jackson had rigged from a fifty-gallon oil drum and read the newspaper that still appeared, like some kind of magic, in the driveway. It had been months since they'd had the money to pay for the subscription. He couldn't explain it.

“We're in luck, baby,” she'd say, folding the pages neatly, saving the paper to shred and crumple under the stove kindling later. “The recession is over!” Amy said this every day, a joke between them. Bobby would laugh briefly, rattle his fingertips against the plastic taped over the broken windows, lean the military surplus cots they slept on now against the wall like Murphy beds.

“I do feel lucky,” he'd say, and Amy would laugh, set a cup of coffee in front of him as he sat in a foldable chair at their foldable card table. She'd stand next to him, pull his head into her belly, tangle her fingers in the curls of his hair, hair he was letting grow now. One good thing about his new life is that he could get scruffy, go full hairy werewolf if he wanted, and he wouldn't have to take shit from the other guys at work. Gone hippie, they used to say if he went too long between haircuts. You trying to look like a Q-tip or what?