Catch two snakes. Behead. Skin. Clean. Brine for at least two hours. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. Slide the snakes in. Parboil for ten minutes. Drain and cool. Say your prayers and thank our heavenly father. Once you’ve eaten both snakes bite for bite, the power that was theirs now belongs to you. You can tell snakes what you want them to do, and they will do it.

And a note:

This ritual was handed to me from my mother Sissy Barlow and her sister May, and they say it came from their grandmother.

I heard my own grandma’s voice in it.

I heard the Best Practices Binder in it, too.

15

HELEN

While Aldi lay in the hospital, Rudy and I stretched billboard canvas over the hole in his roof. We battened it down. We bucked up the oak. We chipped the long limbs. We raked. We swept the sloped lawn. When we brought Aldi home, Rudy lifted him into the truck, careful of his injured hip. He stopped at the pharmacy to pick up Aldi’s prescriptions. He detoured through the drive-through to get Aldi some fast food. But never once did he speak to Aldi, and never once did Aldi speak to him. Never once until I had settled Aldi onto his cot, furnished him with sassafras root, a jar of nettle tea, and a six-pack of Natural Ice. Then Aldi said, “Tell Lily I’ve done all I can, and I’m sorry I couldn’t do much. I only hope I didn’t make things worse.”

“It was good to have someone in our corner,” I said.

But Rudy said, “What the hell did you mean by it, Aldi? Hiding out in here that day? You hid your sedan, for fuck’s sake. Old man, I know you got a death wish, but don’t make me do it for you. You want to make a killer of me? You want to kill me too?”

Aldi turned his face to the wall.

“We’ll be back soon to see how you’re getting along,” I said.

Rudy was stewing, but that didn’t mean he didn’t come along with me to bring Aldi food most days, venison hot dish, sardine-and-dandelion fritters, butternut squash stuffed with acorn meal and dried chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms that I soaked in broth. We left it at his door. He wasn’t showing his face. We knew he was on hiatus. We knew, during these times, that Aldi became a husk. We knew he wanted to heal alone, to make it through what was left of winter in his own way.