Kerosene casts a warm, yellow bubble of light around the three of us. The nights are growing longer, as they always do when the air grows colder. Bo and I know about the seasons, just like we know how to balance the equations. Da explained it all to us long ago, on a night like this. He drove a screwdriver through an apple, which he said was like the Earth. Some things, he said, are difficult to see because of where you are. One thing that is difficult to see is that the Earth is unimaginably big and the sun is much bigger than that. This apple, he said, is like the Earth, and the lamp there is like the sun. Every day the Earth spins around like an apple on a screwdriver; every year it walks in a big circle around the sun. Sometimes the apple is farther away from the lamp, and that is when it is winter. There is some wobbling, too, that the apple does as it spins, and that makes the days shorter and longer. And then Da peeled the apple with his knife and fed each of us slices off the point of the blade.

We were silly little kids then, Bo and me, and after we ate the apple, we turned around yelling, “Day! Night! Day! Night!” until we got dizzy and wobbled. Da said that was enough of that. “Be quiet or I’ll knock you quiet.”

When we were quiet, we could hear the coyotes talking outside in the cold.

I remember that night, because this one feels the same way.

We sit at the table eating smoked salmon and dried cherries.

Da has covered the table with paper, a clean surface, and the pieces of a clock are all spread out there. The light of the kerosene lamp shines and catches on the inward turning of the flat spring, on the tiny fingers of the cogs and gears.

Da says, “While I was working, a voice came to me and talked to me, and what the voice said, it was true. The customers I work for, they are each a piece of the works. That’s not how they see it, though; far as they know or care, they are the whole story. But the voice talked me through it and I can see it. I know they are each like a part of the windup. It is my job to put them together so it ticks, so the alarm goes off.

“I haven’t been doing that. I just sold them what they wanted so they could send messages about abortion or bad laws or whatever their corner of truth is. I never gave two hoots and a damn about any of their ideas. I just took their money and gave them my expertise. It works out pretty good for everybody concerned. Nothing about that has to change. I will still make their messages. The customer will still get the satisfaction of making their point. But I can make sure those messages speak for us, too. From now on, the messages will all be part of the windup. I will make sure Those People know that.”

Da picks up the clock’s spring and turns it over in his hand. He holds it out to me, I reach out, and he drops it on my palm.

“From now on, we will send letters, plain paper letters, after each customer’s message. The letters will go through the regular mail. We will tell Those People things nobody but us knows about how the messages were built. We will make sure they talk to each other. Hell, we’ll give them a list of people they should be talking to. And even with all that, especially with all that, they won’t know who we are, because the customers don’t even know who we are. And the beauty of it? Those People will be afraid. We will be showing them exactly how to be afraid. We will wind them right up.

“Valley will write the letter, because she writes beautifully. She will be the only one who touches the paper or the envelope. She will put a spot of her own blood on the message each time. That will be the signature. They can test that blood and know for damn sure that all the letters come from us. And they still won’t know who we are. Then, once we get Those People all wound up, we will sound the alarm. People will wake up.

“There is one sad thing about this. It means Valley can’t come out with us into the world anymore. The voice said there can’t be any trace of her where they can find it. Not one hair from her head, not one speck of blood. So from now on, Bo will help in the outside, and Valley must stay here, at the den.”

I look at the flat spring in my hand.

The flat spring is part of the windup.

The flat spring holds the tension.

Is the flat spring lonely?

If it is, it doesn’t say.

I am quiet too.