Matty lay wrapped in the blankets, watching him. Silence. In a dream, Jack had been running through a field dressed in snow with the moon looking down. Smell of cold dirt in his nose. Something lost he had to find. Waking, it all crumbled in the gray daylight, the colors decaying fast.

He ruffled Matty’s hair. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Everything’s okay.”

Matty nodded. His eyes shining in the ashen light. Something nameless and binding.

Jack could feel the shovel in his hands. He got up and lit a fire while Matty put on clothes. The air felt brittle as bone. Grim daylight slanted through the window and crawled over the mattress. Matty looked at the empty rocker and didn’t say a word about the missing rainbow blanket.

Snow fell in hard chunks and piled up on the windowsill. Jack sprinkled cinnamon over oatmeal and ladled it into bowls and brought the bowls to the kitchen table. Matty sat holding a blue paper in his hands.

“What’s that?” Jack asked.

“Nothing.”

“It looks like something to me.”

Matty wouldn’t look at him. “We got a field trip today.”

“Sounds like fun. Where to?”

“I don’t want to go.”

Jack studied him. He wore one of Jack’s old woolen shirts. Two of the buttons were missing. A threadbare plaid. He’d combed his hair with water, but it wouldn’t lie flat. “Why?”

“This paper says you can stay at school if you don’t want to go.”

“Why don’t you want to go?”

“I just don’t.”

“Why?”

Matty sat there holding the paper. He looked almost in tears. Jack took the paper and read it. The field trip was to the Museum of Idaho to see dinosaurs, and it cost two dollars. Gas for the bus. A vise closed around Jack’s chest.

“Is the two dollars why you don’t want to go?”

“I don’t care if I don’t. That’s all.”

Jack walked to the cupboard and got the Tupperware bowl. He pulled off the lid and counted two dollars and handed them to Matty. “Look at me. We aren’t going to die if I give you two dollars.”

Matty looked at him. Those eyes gripped him. “Okay.”

“Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“We’re all right.”

Matty looked at Jack’s hands and looked away. There is no description of stupid, Jack thought, that you don’t fit. He said again, “We’re all right.”

“Okay.”