Sanders stepped into the brush and pried the U-nail out of the tree, grinning at all the claw marks along the steel shank. He put the nail in his pocket, making sure to button it. He’d lost too many knickknacks over the years bouncing around on the trails, and there was no doubt he’d be the one to run over the Goddamned nail since he was the trail user in this little corner of the world. After a while he’d learned to lock stuff down. Everything out here was in order and he was master of this order. But one issue stuck in his gut: the absence of animals this season. Every time he checked his traps, the cold reality slapped his face like his wife did when she’d found out about Melinda. That wasn’t such an abnormal thing as the furry punks learned to avoid traps—especially if they smelled like Pabst Blue Ribbon. Cut down on your drinking! Janie would always tell him in her condescending voice. Your liver gonna give out on you, eh? An’ God ain’t making no more livers for Bob Sanders, trust me on that one!

Gah, he thought. His balls shriveled just thinking about her.

Sanders wrapped up the steel trap and tucked it inside the toolbox. Then he drove the four-wheeler down his secret, convoluted path through chokecherry, alder, and birch. Sanders thought of Melinda’s curves and playful demeanor. He remembered what she’d told him when they first screwed, how she picked up copies of Bob Seger’s Beautiful Loser and Neil Young’s Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, and said with a smirk, Neil and Bob . . . get it, Bob? Kneel and Bob. . . . She’d tossed the albums aside and knelt before him, almost tipping over from drunkenness. The memory should’ve freed his balls out of their frightened state, but his balls remained tucked away, almost painful. And something else was bothering him. Sanders braked, killed the engine, and listened. He’d been in these woods a long, long time. He’d never had this kind of feeling before, not even after Jim Alberston’s freaky UFO stories out at the cottage, or listening to the Art Bell radio program alone at night (something he eventually learned not to do). Out here in the bush, away from society he’d grown accustomed to heightened, unpolluted senses. He knew how to find animals—could even smell ‘em sometimes. Sanders knew to watch his back for bears or a charging bull moose. Hell, he sensed the damn things before they made their move.