“I guess you’ve seen this,” she said, pulling the newspaper from her pack. She sidled close enough to hand it to me. I looked it over, and passed it to Helen.

“Compressor station inoperable near Zanesville,” Helen read aloud. “No injuries, but machines disabled, thousands in damages. Arson suspected. Pipeline construction delayed. Damn,” she said. “People could have been killed.”

“You read the thing,” Karen said. “Whoever it was waited until after hours. The site was deserted. Not a single human was injured.”

“Too bad that kind of thing doesn’t create lasting change,” Helen said.

“On the other hand, what does?” Karen said. She sat down next to me.

“Is that up where you were working?” I asked, some kind of feeling in my stomach.

“Not even close,” Karen said. “I was way farther north. But I can say this. I can’t condemn or condone what that person did, but I can understand what may have driven them to such an act.” She took a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, shook one out, and lit it. I didn’t say anything, just watched her lean forward and pick up a stick of firewood, not walnut like she preferred. White oak. Watched her turn it over in her hand. I took her sheepsfoot knife from my pocket, handed it over.

“I found it in Perley’s camper,” I said. She set her blade to wood. Smoke met smoke. Shavings sparked into the fire.

“Karen,” I said. “Welcome home. You’re just in time for the ritual.”

When we put the snakes in the pot to boil, they came back to life, or that’s how it looked. Headless, they rose. They twined out of the steam, lunged from the pot and down through the fire, out over the stones toward us. Their skinned bodies blanched white, they twisted, hissing mouthless in their dance of death.

Helen said that their spinal cords were sending dead letters, but I’ll say that the spectacle helped me with the part of the ritual where I was meant to find the words to pray. Heavenly father or not, I was all in.

When the snakes were once and for all still, we rinsed them of earth and ashes. We ate them with knife and fork.

All except Helen.

“Why aren’t you eating?” I asked.

“When you figured out you were pregnant with Perley,” she said, “what tipped you off? Just your garden-variety missed period or were there other signs?”

“Helen,” I said.

“It’s too early to know,” she said. “But I know.”

Karen laughed. “I’ve missed a lot,” she said.

“Aren’t you going to ask?” Helen said.

“Ask what?” I said.

“If I’m going through with it.”

“Are you going through with it?” I asked.