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in his mind, the heaviness in Gunnar’s voice, all the stops and starts as he seemed to search for words. They’d sat together in an empty log sleigh. There was a bright moon and the wind stirred the shadows, as the camp’s men snored and coughed. No, his wife doesn’t know about the dead man in the lake. It was clearly the first time that Gunnar had spoke it out loud.
    John lays out one of the rabbits, and with a deft hand puts his knife to its fur. He makes his cut at the rabbit’s hind foot, then draws the blade up the inside of its leg. He’ll stretch the furs, give Gunnar’s wife the meat, and leave the entrails for scavenger birds.
    Horse-stinger. Dragonfly. Oboodashkwaanishiinh. Predatory, of the order Odonata, meaning tooth.
    They are of the most ancient creatures. Once they flew the skies as big as kites.
    I knew them as sudden visitors. They’d alight on a seat plank or gunnel. Stay for a time. Fly off into the blue.
    Their first life is in water. Their second in air. I see them transform on the floor of the lake. Each time shedding and growing a new skin. I follow them across the shallows. Try to join as they climb from the water, on a reed, a plank, a plane of rock.
    But I know now.
    Their path is not mine.
    I watch through the wavering blue above as the dragonflies leave their last casings, crawl slowly out through the backs of their heads. Their black skins remain on the shore. Empty and weightless in the breeze.
    They mate in winged circles, shining and airborne. Arching their bodies to form a wheel. Curving. The male clasps the female behind the head. This wheel. This ancient flying dance.
    There is one who still feels the rhythm of our dance.
    The particulars of my life are now hers to hold.
    I take myself from these shining bright shallows. In search of something, yet I do not know what.
    I move with the rhythm of the dragonflies.
    They are here. Aloft in the water currents. The small. And their ancestors, whose long pulsing wings ripple the shadowy images. A luffing sail. A lost crate of lemons. A silver button tumbling to the lake bed.

2000
     
    Nora turns onto the avenue to find smoke billowing into the sky. There’s a siren coming in from the east, and all of it feels like a scene in a movie. The street is blocked off, and red lights are streaming across the faces of the buildings.
    “Quick hurry Jesus Nora!” Willard was hysterical on the phone.
    Nora abandons her car at the blockade, her legs shaking as she moves down the sidewalk. Fire is leaping from the two upstairs windows, like some cartoon building with flaming eyes. She steadies herself against the wall of the drugstore as a sickening sensation turns her stomach.
    Thick torrents of water arc from the hoses. “Put it out.” Tears spring to her eyes. “Put it out.” She weaves through the shiny red trucks, mist from the hoses, fast-moving men.
    “Nora. Get back. ”
    It’s Willard shouting. He has her by the arm. She twists away.
    “Nora, Jesus.” His arm wraps around her waist. “Stop. Are you crazy?”
    She beats back with her fists and butts back with her head, but he has her now, and he holds her tight.
    “There’s nothing you can do,” he whispers at her ear.
    The flames are leaping through the roof, causing a ruckus among the firemen. Radio voices and static crackle in the air as the red lights stream around and around and black smoke twists up to the sky.
    “Come on, honey.” Willard loosens his grip. “Nobody knows what happened. Shit. Come on now, we’ll go sit with Rose.”
    Nora wriggles free. “Oh my God, where’s Rose?”
    “Don’t worry, okay? See, right there.”
    Nora lets herself be steered across the street to where Rose sits on a low cement wall. She’s wearing tennis shoes and her ratty fur coat, and has Buck’s accordion strapped across her chest. Willard puts her next to Rose, then sits himself, still holding on.
    The ground surrounding her bar is a lake, reflecting flames and jumping with