In the mail, a heavy package for him: a pair of bolt cutters, the ones he’d had at the Moore farm, seized by the police and now here, months later. They belong to Leni, who never said where she got them; brand-new, beautiful, shiny red handles, black blades at the head; he remembers the heft of them, how they felt in his hands, made to destroy the things meant to keep you out. He looks up Leni’s address in the phone book, the name of a street miles from his house, from Jo’s, from school, he has to look at a map to find it. Astonished when he arrives. The wheels of his bicycle sliding on the wet dirt road: no sidewalk, just this mud creeping up to the door of a house that looks as if it is sinking into the ground, tarpaper on the roof, sun-bleached plastic and car parts littering the yard bounded by a half-collapsed fence. A little girl in a diaper squats at the corner of the house and puts her hand up the spout of a bent drainpipe, singing. Her eyes slit at Xie. Hey, he says. Leni! the girl shouts, thin-voiced. A moment later Leni leaping out across the mud, frantic. What’s wrong? Where’s Jo? Nothing’s wrong, he says. Leni scratching her arm, baggy plaid shirt and blue jeans, pale face, hunted eyes unlined, no ring in her nose, like a child dressed in her brother’s clothes. I just—got these, and I—wanted to bring them to you. Get inside, Leni barks to the girl, but the girl continues singing, paying no attention. He gives Leni the cutters and she takes them, quick, long unbuttoned cuff flapping around her wrist. You can’t just—come here, she says. I’m sorry, I—haven’t seen you guys in a while and I thought—I’d bring them, he stammers. There’s a thing called a phone, she says. I’m sorry, he repeats. They stand there. Where have you been? she asks. Just—home, he says. Leni looks over her shoulder at the house, then back at him. Holding the cutters out. I don’t need these, she says, and he takes them. I have to go. She walks back to the house, taking the girl by the arm, careful not to slam the screen door hanging from one hinge as they go inside. Dark sheets in all the windows. He thinks of the sounds the mink made in their cages, that restless rustle of fur. There is no sound at all from inside Leni’s house. A fat drop of rain hits the back of his hand. What do you do with all the living things in trouble. Build a church. Build a bomb. He pulls his hood up, turns his bike in the mud. When he looks over his shoulder the little girl is peeking through a hole in the screen. He waves. She waves back.