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died.
    Cluck’s neck prickled to hot again. This was where the Palomas had ruined their grandfather. And every year they came back to rub it in.
    “Does Pépère know?” Cluck asked.
    “Since when is it my job to tell him?” Dax shoved him, this time to let him go. “You swear the fish didn’t do that to you?”
    The fish . Dax didn’t like saying the name Paloma any more than Cluck did.
    Cluck pulled on the hem of his shirt to smooth it. “It was some guys from around here.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Another local told them off.” The girl in the red lipstick knew the man at the liquor store enough to give him the finger and get a laugh. And Cluck would have known a pack of Palomas. He would have seen la tromperie in their eyes. His mother called the Paloma girls les sorcières . They must have been, she said, to draw an audience when all they did was swim.
    “What are they doing here this early?” Cluck asked.
    “They know our schedule,” Dax said.
    “We should’ve canceled the stop.”
    The words drew their mother’s shadow toward the trailer. The idea must have summoned her, called her like a spirit.
    She stood with arms crossed, thin elbows resting in her palms. “This family hasn’t canceled a stop since we came to this country.” She’d starched her linen shift dress so well the breeze didn’t move it. Her eyelashes looked sharp as chestnut spines. “Not for rain. Not for the earthquakes. Not even for snow, not that either of you would remember that year.”
    It was what set them apart from the Palomas, who had to cancel their shows every time it rained. The drops disturbed the water too much to let the audience see them.
    “Not another word about canceling shows, understood?” his mother asked.
    Dax’s “ Compris ” and Cluck’s one nod satisfied her. She went back inside, slamming the kitchen door.
    “Don’t go near them,” Dax told Cluck.
    “I never have,” Cluck said under the screen door’s rattle.
    “But you’re thinking about it.”
    Every Corbeau thought about it. Cluck never did anything though. Dax and his cousins were the ones who used to place nets where the Palomas swam. They’d only stopped when Dax and Cluck’s mother ordered them to. “Only cowards set traps for little girls in costumes,” she told them; true men did not go after women. Cluck had tried telling them before that someone would drown, and all he’d done was earn a few more bruises from his brother. Dax only listened to their mother.
    But Dax throwing out the nets hadn’t kept the Palomas from slicking the tree branches with petroleum jelly last year. The Palomas had even been smart enough to pick branches shadowed by leaves, so the performers wouldn’t see the light shining off them. They were lucky Aunt Camille had broken her leg and not her neck.
    Pain throbbed through the roots of Cluck’s hair. “I won’t do anything,” he said, though God knew he wanted to sometimes. Fighting was the only safe way to touch a Paloma. Half this family believed if they ever let a Paloma brush their arm or bump their shoulder, they’d wither and die like wildflowers in July sun. But fighting was safe. The rage made it true and good. The anger and honor of defending this family shielded them like a saint’s prayer. Hitting and kicking were safe. Anything else could bring sickness.
    “You better not.” Dax followed their mother, his slam of the door as fast and loud as hers.
    Cluck set a hand on the trailer door frame and pulled himself up the step.
    Eugenie sat on the trailer’s built-in, her skirt rippling over the threadbare mattress.
    There were only two reasons Eugenie showed up in the costume trailer. Cluck only had to check her hands to know which. Sometimes it was a torn dress, usually one of Mémère ’s chiffons or silks, skirts she had danced in at Eugenie’s age. Eugenie would hold the fabric out to him, and he stitched up the tear.
    This time his cousin’s palms cupped not one of their