Maybe Helen was right about all the shit she said to people, maybe she wasn’t, but I couldn’t see how her jabbering changed anything. It didn’t change anything to stand there and talk. It didn’t change anything to talk about who They were. It definitely didn’t change anything to talk about this land, about why we were on it, who’d been on it before, and why they weren’t on it. It didn’t help to think about being kicked off of it or kicking other people off of it, or to figure ourselves as heroes. But Helen would have said not talking about it wouldn’t change anything, either. We stood around the stove with our neighbors and tried in vain to feel like we had something in common. When we got along at all, it was when we moved a woodstove together. It was when we pictured ourselves standing together against outside threats, instead of threatening one another. We preferred to imagine ourselves on the right side of things, including history. We preferred to stand side by side, thinking despising thoughts about people who were long dead and the mistakes that they’d made, instead of thinking despising thoughts about one another and about the mistakes we were right now making each moment. Then one of Frank’s daughters pointed down behind the woodstove and said, “Snake!”

The black rat snake slid from beneath the stove until it showed itself five feet long, and Frank’s daughters, all six of them, set up a delighted shrieking. The snake froze in place. It grew rigid and crimped up all along its length. It gave off a sulfur-and-onions smell, the fairy godmother crashing the party.

“You’re scaring it,” I told the shrieking daughters. “Black snakes kink up like that as an anxiety reflex. They only smell like that when they’re afraid.” But they continued shrieking.

“Be still!” Frank commanded. And they were still.

“We’re just playing,” the oldest daughter said. “It’s just an old black snake, we ain’t scared of them.”

“I am,” the youngest daughter said. “I am and I bet he is,” and she pointed at Perley. But Perley opened his mouth wide and made a happy screech, imitating the girls’ noise. I held him under his armpits, crouched down so he could get a better view. “Meet your new friend Snake,” I said, as he goggled and drooled. “This snake lives here, too.”

“Da!” Perley said. “Da!”

“Say snake,” Frank’s oldest daughter said. “Snake, Perley, snake.”

“Na!” Perley said.

“That’s enough,” Lily said, grabbing for Perley, but I swung him up to my shoulder.

“What do you do about a black snake in your house?” Lily asked the room.

“You feel lucky,” Frank said.

“I got them at my place, too,” Mike said. “They’re not venomous. And they’ll eat mice and copperheads.”