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the sticky cavity where the organs had been I saw a white spider walk across a rib.
    “Those two have their ups and downs,” Mike said. “I realize that. They sure do love you kids, though. That’s what matters.”
    Blood dripped onto the orange plastic tarp spread out under the doe. It pooled and ran.
    “They’re sort of cute together in that camper. And Dad, what a saint. The man just gives and gives.”
    I looked at the ground. Mike was hard to listen to sometimes.
    “Maybe you think hunting pleases me,” he said. “It doesn’t. Each season I think: ‘That’s it. Enough already.’ I look at my deer and all I feel is sadness. Those big brown eyes, those elegant long legs. Let someone else be the bad guy for a change.”
    The spider crawled up the doe’s neck onto its tongue and started down its throat.
    “But then, the next fall, another thought comes over me. I can’t control it. It pops into my skull. The next thing I know I’m out there with my bow again.”
    “What thought?” I said.
    “It’s stupid. It doesn’t make sense.”
    “Tell me,” I said. “I want to understand.”
    Mike touched the doe’s forehead.
    “Another year of meat.”
    Mike let the deer age for a couple of days, then butcheredit himself. He tossed the slabs of flesh into a bucket while I stood by with his knives. I couldn’t watch him. In my shirt pocket was a postcard from Grandma describing her trip and ending with a P.S.: “Don’t let him make you eat anything you don’t want to. That’s how allergies develop, swallowing things you hate.” My chance to heed her advice came right away. When Mike finished hacking and scraping he held a steak out and asked if I’d like to taste it raw. I didn’t. He bit off a chunk and grimaced as he chewed, as if he were forcing down a dose of medicine. To
each his own
, I thought. Everyone in our family had his medicine, and the bug it was meant to drive off was one another.

3
    Knox gelatin drink for stronger, healthier nails held an essay contest that winter on the subject of “My Most Attractive Feature.” Audrey decided to enter—as a joke, she said. First prize was a “Miami dream date” with the actor Don Johnson, “America’s swingingest vice cop.” The package included round-trip airfare, deluxe accommodations, a Palm Beach shopping spree, and dinner and drinks at a South Beach nightclub. Audrey said Mike would go crazy if she won.
    The whole idea spooked me. I wanted her to lose.
    One afternoon while Mike was at work demonstrating a new wide-bodied tennis racket that he’d won the exclusive regional rights to, Audrey sat at the kitchen table with a legal pad and a violet Flair pen. Instead of starting her essay, she doodled circles and swirls and diamond shapes and gazed at Johnson’s picture on the Knox box. He had dimples. His hair was a sweaty, devilish mess. He reminded me of photos I’d seen of Mike during his playing days at Michigan, except that Johnson’s eyes were narrower. The man looked untrustworthy, dangerous. A threat.
    When Audrey’s coffee cooled, she poured a fresh cup, and then let that cup cool. Her doodles grew hard and spiky, angry-looking.
    “Help your stupid mother,” she said. “You’ve always had a knack for things like this.”
    I stood over the sink and poured myself another ruby spoonful of codeine cough syrup. I was home from school with a case of made-up flu, but the hacking cough I’d been faking since waking up had given me a genuine sore throat. The air around me boiled with filmy clouds, an effect of the syrup. My arms felt long and apelike.
    “I’m sick,” I said. “I can’t think.”
    “Oh, be a sport.”
    Audrey was right: I was good at things like this. Once, the
St. Paul Pioneer Press
had published a letter I’d written to the editor arguing that habitual drug offenders ought to be put to work in mental hospitals. Theidea was Mike’s, from a comment I’d heard him make after his store was robbed by an