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vacation per se. It’s three weeks of furlough. Unpaid leave. We all have to take it. Even I have to take it.”
    “Even you, huh?”
    “All of us. We’re a team. We have to band together. Take one for the team, you know. Knuckle down and fight hard. Things aren’t like they were when we were kids. Tough times.”
    “They used to have carnivals in the pa(in hadasrking lot.”
    “Carnivals? I don’t understand.”
    “Circus, I guess. Right here. In the front parking lot. Back in the ’70s and ’80s. The Shriners or Jaycees put it on for the kids, give us something to do. Good times back then.”
    “I think I heard something about that.”
    “It was before you moved here, I imagine.”
    “Yes. But I don’t see what that has to do with—”
    “They had rides and a tiger and an elephant. I rode the Ferris wheel with my dad. They stopped it when we were on top. Let people off. It rocked and rocked. Freaked me out. He said it would be okay. He said we’d be fine. I climbed under his arm, and he wrapped me tight, and he said we’d be fine. He said when we got down we’d go find Mom and MeChell and we’d get some ice cream, then we’d tell them how everyone else on the Ferris wheel was screaming. Then a few years later I helped bury a dead elephant.”
    “Um, okay.”
    Clint stood up. “When are we supposed to take this time off?”
    “In the next six months. Monica has a spreadsheet in the office up front.”
    “I’d like to start mine now.” Clint took off his apron, rolled it up, set it in the chair behind him.
    “You’ll need to check with Monica. I’m not sure—”
    Clint turned, walked out the door, through the storage room, the back door.
    He stopped behind the building, lit a cigarette, tossed the filter, watched it spin in a rain puddle. Then he walked to the edge of the brush, stepping on saplings, feeling them snap to stubs until he got to the slight rise in the earth. He kneeled, dug a hole. Reached into his back pocket, pulled out the paper from the courthouse and set it in the hole, then covered it with damp dirt. He lay down in a small clearing, looked up at the vacant sky, and closed his eyes.
    He’s covered in a cold darkness. A sheet, slipping back against his head, his ears. Between his eyes, pressing against him, a cold metal pole. Voices around him. Stern. Yelling. He can’t understand what they are saying, but knows it is important. He pushes the pole, small steps, his legs in slacking chains, scraping grit beneath him. The pole leans forward as the darkness lifts, light from under the sheet of nightfall. Forward steps, shuffling. Small. The pole heavier as it moves upright, sunlight and coolness, air slicing in. He can see the men standin the orange-pi

THE THING WITH FEATHERS
    The boy sat in a folding chair at the kitchen table, a boomerang pattern in a pale sea of Formica, loading playing cards into a black plastic shuffler. Half a stack on a ledge on one side. Half on the other. Split the cards on either side of the cube, nine or ten inches each way. He looked through the kitchen window for a few seconds, then flicked the switch, the fwoosh and clicking until all the cards had been placed in a new order. He’d look at the fresh stacks, a new set of possibilities. Eight of spades on top. Jack of hearts on the bottom. Then thumb through the deck until he found the aces. Then split the cards back into two stacks, feed them through each side of the machine again. Two of clubs on the bottom. Four of spades on the top. Then he split the cards another time. His father had been gone for three days.
    Averdale Tatum fumbled through the junk drawer to find her nephew a fresh set of Evereadys. She pulled one out, held it up, looking at the image of the electrocuted cat jumping through the number nine, and handed it to the boy.
    “These are Cs,” he said. “Need Ds.”
    She took the battery back, set it on the counter. Dug through a misfolded road map, a string of red ribbon, a tape