AT THE house he got two sheets of newspaper from the bin and wrapped the bird and laid it back into the knapsack. He pulled the zipper, patted the lump through the canvas. He tried to think of a name but couldn’t; something, maybe, about how fast birds fly, how blue their wings, how red their throats. The rooms were empty and still. Most days his father’s job held him past dark. The two of them lived in a small wood frame near the baseball field and close to the brown and yellow painted water tower shaped a thimble. There was a red brick fireplace at the fore room, and a short couch and a chair, and a small kitchen with an electric stove, linoleum and tack board cabinets, a window above the sink. The drive was a tire worn dirt circle out front. The neighbor planted three rows of firs in the east side lot to sell at Christmas.

Before the firs, the lot was scrub and dwarf pine, trunks blacked soot, and charcoal. Terry put his hands against them, stained his fingers ash; sometimes then he drew swipes around his eyes and at his forehead. He looked himself in the mirror, made faces, angry and monstrous as he could figure, and sometimes too he made a low growl like he thought a wolf did. The art teacher liked the homework drawings he made with hunks from the trees turned charcoal; house, dog, horse. He thought of his father standing at the kitchen window near first light and looking out, fingers gripped hard over the sink lip, face night black, then lit yellow from a small car burned cinder in the tree lot. The ones inside were from the high school, older than Terry by seven years, two boys, the paper said later, dead already, by shotgun, before the car melted, because they messed too long with some dealers from another county and got sticky hands.

Beside the big window in the last house his father rented he saw a dead redbird turned upside down, feet stuck long and old yellow. There wasn’t furniture yet. His father pushed the door and led him to the living room, the knee high windowsill, four pane glass taller than his father. They stood there looking out to the yard. Next to his foot some light came through hard and heated the carpet and at first he thought to go and lie down in it but then he saw the bird there and the dust come up around it in the light beam. He pointed it, his father bent down and gathered it up, held it in one hand, but lightly, careful, like he held thin paper. He got the shovel from the washroom, and he told Terry maybe it was bad luck, a dead bird in the house, but he was not sure. Terry asked him how it got there, how it died, and he said he didn’t know. Probably it came through the chimney or a cracked door, made for the window, thinking it not a window, but the sky, broke its neck sudden and in such a way to drop it mid thought, there on the green velvet carpet. Outside, Terry smoothed the dirt over the bird once his father dug the hole and placed it there, and let the shovel drop handle long in the yard. His father said maybe they should say a prayer or something.

You know any? he said.

Just one for food, Terry said.

The ring finger on John Michael’s left hand was jammed straight to the top knuckle. He curled the other ones down and winced. They sat on his front stoop and watched some cars pass on the street.

That hurt? Terry said.

I’m just making a face. I hit him wrong is all. Cheekbones break hands is what. I was going for his nose.

You dropped him.

John Michael turned a red plastic butane lighter upside down and tilted it to heat the metal. He had three fresh burns at his forearm, down near the wrist.

Turn it all the way that lighter blows up, John Michael said.

He knew this caution from his brother, fifteen years elder, a seller of vacuums that used water to get at the dirt.

The fumes don’t have anywhere to go.

He tilted the flame close.

Pow.

He let it down and put the lighter on the step.

I’m telling you it’s gone hurt, John Michael said.

I can stand it, Terry said.

He wasn’t sure if he could or not, but he wanted to see. Terry put the lighter on his forearm and held it.

I wonder if Basil had a dog, John Michael said.

Terry kept the lighter pressed down, mashed his teeth and pinched his eyes hard at the burn. His open hand shook.

He probably had a fucking cat, John Michael said. Probably bunches of them.

Terry opened his mouth wide and yelled, felt an animal, threw the lighter down against the steps.

Pissing all over things and rubbing their asses on your car. If one ever does, dammit, put an orange on the hood. It doesn’t matter where. A cat’s scared of an orange. Waiting until nobody’s around to see, fucking knocking over vases and shit. A one eared tabby named John Stone hit this Hawaiian statue thing my mom has on the mantel, broke it on the goddamn floor. And I got blamed. Me? That fucking cat. I hope he goes off in the woods and can’t fend himself. He’ll see then. I ever tell you when I saw him sleeping under that bridge?

John Stone the cat?

Basil.

Nah.

The railroad bridge? It’s high. A hundred feet if it’s anything.

You never told me.

I should have.