Half a dozen pillows prop Rita’s swollen body on the couch. The woman I married has been replaced by an incubator with powers of speech and thought. A blithering numbskull has replaced her husband. Our sole heat is a woodstove that warms the ceiling and leaves pockets of cold in the corners. Ice has formed on the windows inside the house. The baby has dropped. Its head is positioned correctly, nudging Rita’s pelvic exit. Her belly has tilted forward and she breathes more easily, but the change in her center of gravity affects her balance. She moves like a drunk. I scatter salt from the door to the car. It melts through snow in hundreds of tiny pocks.

After agreeing easily to a girl’s name, Rebecca Marie, we fought over what to call a boy. I want a common name that is still uncommon, an older name, one of strength, such as Oak or Thor. Rita eschews my ideas as ridiculous. Her names are fine, Ben, Jared, Lucas, but I didn’t think of them first. We make lists, writing each name on an index card, granting the other power of veto. It is like choosing a jury; we both add token names to our list for the other to deny. The rest go into separate stacks of yes, no, and maybe. The no pile is the biggest.

My father and brother share the same name, being the fifth and the sixth respectively. If we have a boy, both have urged me to use their name, continuing a line that runs to the Civil War. Rita’s father would prefer us to name a boy after his brother who died in World War II. The name is Jack, which does not jibe with my last name. Before I understood the meaning, I engaged in grade school fistfights with boys who called me that. When I make fun of the name, Rita begins to weep. After all, it is her dead uncle I’m laughing at. I apologize and prowl the house like a caged animal until she sends me to the woods.

Morning shadows are blue in the snow. Winter is a bell, a long peal of silence through the floodplain woods. Every horizontal surface is blanked white and my bad knee aches. The river is frozen along the bank, forming a white border for its flow. The ice on both sides slowly meets in the middle, joining like Rita and me on a name. The center of the river is the first to thaw. It gradually breaks itself until it reaches the shore, leaving silver shelves of ice protruding from the bank.

The woods are black and white, like an old photograph. I know the names of trees but they are only words. The Sac Indians said that kaintuck meant “river of blood.” According to them, Eastern Kentucky was filled with the ghosts of its previous inhabitants, an ancient race slaughtered to the last child. The Sac were astonished that white people would want to homestead the hills. The name itself prevented their own people from living there.

The oldest recorded personal name is En-lil-ti, carved into a Sumerian tablet from 3300 B.C. “Rita” is a Sanskrit word, meaning “brave” or “honest.” My name means “bearer of Christ,” a troublesome burden. When I was a child, Saint Christopher was removed from sainthood and I thought that meant he was bad, that I was impugned by his inadequacy. I decided to change my name but the family objected. Unbound by such fetters, a Hindu will choose a new name to mark significant personal change. Cherokee people may change their names several times to suit their personalities at different stages of life. I want a son’s name to suit him so well he’ll want it for life.

At the river’s edge I begin tracking a deer. The prints are coming my way, which means I’m not following the deer but trailing it in reverse, going where it came from. The snow inside each print is compacted but loose, a fresh trail. I find where the animal ducked a low branch, knocking snow from the bough. I duck under it too. The tree limb brushes my back as it brushed the deer. The tracks end on a slight rise forty yards from the river at a spot that is protected from wind. An oval swatch of earth is imprinted in the snow. The deer slept here last night, melting the snow beneath it. I’ve found where it sleeps, giving me a power as ancient as knowing a wizard’s name.

I crouch at the perimeter and retrieve a few lost hairs. They are stiff bristles an inch long, two of which are tipped in white. I push them into my beard and lie in the bed of the deer. Its heavy musk clings to the dirt, full of mystery and strength. In the fifth century, Parmenides said, “All things are a name where mortals lie down.” The bottoms of trees fill my vision, becoming a solid wall in the distance. I pull into a tighter ball. The ground is cold against my face. I try to imagine sleeping through the darkness here, comfortable with the sounds of night, waking at first light. Tree limbs interlace around me, edged with snow that’s white as milk.

In olden times, women gave the children names, an act connected with lactation. Eating was evidence of life, and life demanded a label. Since the men didn’t nurse, they were excluded from the process of naming. French women still give infants a milk name, a temporary appellation while the child is nursing. This name embodies the soul and is kept secret. Inuit society requires a three-day waiting period before naming a newborn. They want to examine it first, ensure that its presence is acceptable to the community. Until the baby is named, it is not considered human.

I realize that I’m quite cold. My weak knee throbs, my bad ear aches. I haven’t been lying here very long and already I’m uncomfortable. The recognition of such simple failure is worse than my fears of being a lousy father. I uncurl and rise, moving through the timber. Wind off the river scorches my face. I think of Adam, the unremitting pressure of naming every creature. Each word he uttered became a noun.

A beaver-downed tree spreads its branches along the ice where the river touches land. The current carries hundreds of small fish along the surface. Most are dead, but a few still struggle with feeble fins. A dozen float in a pool formed by a beaver dam, and I wonder if they are of the same spawn, born and dying together. I imagine being in the woods with my children, and realize that I’m already thinking in the plural, although we have yet to name the first. The baby Rita carries will need an ally against me. A backup prevents extinction. This need for another name reduces the pressure of choosing one now. Like Adam, I have room for error.

More dead fish are floating by, tiny and silver, the shape of a spearpoint. Life will divide siblings as surely as a dam divides the river. The Hindu goddess Bindumati parted the Ganges, and Isis divided the Phaedras River. Moses came late to the myth. He suffered a speech impediment and relied on his brother’s eloquence until they entered the wilderness and began to disagree. Thinking of Aaron’s magic rod, I use a forked stick to lift a fish from the river. A black spot behind each eye marks it as a gizzard shad, a fragile creature that cannot sustain sudden changes in temperature. Thousands die every year, entire clans wiped out. Our child will never have a big brother or sister, nor wear hand-me-downs. I place the shad on the log for a possum or coon. Nothing dies before its time.

Beneath the snow is a layer of last fall’s leaves, and walking it is like treading upon a mattress. The ground is marked by deer print and droppings. I remove my glove and squeeze a pellet between thumb and forefinger. It’s soft, still warm. I’m close.

When I stop at the edge of a clearing, a deer lifts its head to watch me with the bold curiosity of a raccoon. Direct eye contact is a sign of aggression that will scare most animals, and I turn my head, looking to the side of the deer. We share the gift of acknowledgment. It will outwait me because there is no time in the woods, only life and rot, with weather at the edges. I have never owned a watch. Time is a Rorschach folded into a Möbius strip turned inside out, upside down. Time is the name we give to living. Modern science presents us with kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species—designating every organism on the planet. Once identified, it is ours, as with a nickname known only to a private few. Quantum physics has taken to naming the theoretical, much like concocting a name for an unborn infant. Nothing exists that is not labeled; like killing, it is our assertion over the world.

The deer I’m watching moves to nibble a branch, accustomed to my shape among the trees and brush. Something immobile is not a threat. The deer looks back at me occasionally and I imagine that it recognizes its fur in my beard. My cheek begins to itch but I refuse to scratch it and drive the deer to flight. Many eons ago, the name was identical with the thing itself, a method of comprehension. The word “deer” comes from the Old English “deor,” meaning “beast.” Gradually the word moved from the general to the specific. A beast became the deer. The present denudes the past.

In Sanskrit, naman means both “name” and “soul.” Dogs, cats, and horses receive our patronizing gift of a name because they knuckle under us. My mother talks to her houseplants and gives them names. Language protects us, the foremost tool of the weakest mammal. To name is to know, the first step of identity. One child, one name; the grafting of the soul.

A crow angles into a hickory and perches with its bill parted, a young bird’s habit from the nest, waiting for food. When I turn my head to look at it, the deer flees, tail raised like a flag of surrender. Its abrupt flight startles me. I sense its fear, a feeling that I fill with my own sudden panic. I hurry across the hardened earth, certain that Rita is giving birth.

My panting entrance to the house awakens her on the couch. She’s had no contractions. The baby has dropped, but its head has not yet engaged, still floating in its private amniotic river. I bring Rita juice and sit beside her, waiting like the crow for the sustenance of life. We settle on a name. If it’s a boy, we’ll call it Sam and worry about the particulars later.

Rita stretches her arms for a hug, breasts swollen, hair silken on my face. The smell of fresh-split white oak fills the house. We lie on the couch all day, watching early darkness cloud the air. I press my belly against hers, feel the baby move. The moon hangs round and white as a fresh tree stump. I feed the fire, knowing that our child’s birth will drive a velvet wedge between us. We’re less lovers than partners now, old buddies facing weather, followers of habit. We’ve spread our wings and mated for life. She has taken my name.