watched the board. It listed and seethed and he could smell the smoldering. He drank his grappa and drifted, tried to call upon the sliding, gravity, warmth under the blankets of Pacific curl. Warmth? He woke to a fierce and compound radiance lapping and lunging toward him, the forest all around gripped in flame. The Ember stood in a char, glowing and sputtering fire in the blue night. Smoke billowed across the plain and the fire consumed him and all that had grown or died in its path. He burned.

collage at once without and within. She watched the coyote lope that terminus of plain, halting occasionally to test the air, to investigate the earth, and she knew that the coyote too must imagine itself on the earth for it to be. Would it fail to do so, the coyote would lose its world and be lost to the world, as if in the Earth’s spinning it would become detached and conveyed tangentially into the void. But she knew it would not fail to do so, for anything that breathes cannot help but appraise the air.

the pool of blood and then at him, who with his other hand atop his heart shocked her with his fragility. It was the shock of seeing oneself in another—and how that makes the whole world uncertain. His chin rolled a half-circle and his jaw lolled unconsciously and she regained enterprise and stepped to him and began the work of unwrapping the caked and crackling muslin smelling of iron. The hole in him was small and she couldn’t believe that he’d leave her through it. She looked at the metal she pulled from him. It had furrowed but hadn’t come apart. The metal bounced on the tile and she took care to clear the hole of any other trespass of clothing and earth and she was a long time at stopping the new hastening of blood. Once she had him stitched and wrapped he took water and medicine and the next day he woke to her rubbing salve into his scabbed lips. She spoke to him but his voice was imperceptible and he took more water. “You lost an eyebrow,” she said. “Reckon it couldn’t be helped,” his reply mostly a dry wind. “Feel alright to breathe against that table?” He nodded. “I spat on your arm there,” she said. He looked down at his body for the first time since waking. “Didn’t notice.” She wiped at his forearm. “Doesn’t change the fact.” He looked from his arm and her hand there to her. “I aint going nowhere,” he said. She shook her head. She nodded. She whispered to him and sat the evening with him and the night, and the days thereafter.

him so he pulled himself back in with an imagined but painfully felt rope at the center of his chest. He started and choked on the regained reality but breathed it easier after a time and clung to his destination even as the waves of fantasy flooded it and sent it sliding off the map of his mind. He pushed the water back and shook his head to be free of it because he knew it wasn’t real and focused on that place of medicine. Grisea would be there and hold him high above the sea so as to make it inert. She would be air still enough to lay upon.

of his confidence. But the full measure of the young man went unseen behind his slight frame and the boatswain chose for his deckhand a broad-shouldered, long-armed man the rest of the fishermen of the seawall knew to be unlucky. The young fisherman was confounded that the boatswain of such a renowned vessel could not see into a man and know him as a fisherman can see into the sea and know it. The old fisherman took in the story but did not pity the youth for he knew the young fisherman’s instincts were unmatched on the seawall and that what he lacked in stature he more than made up for in will. Silence once again arrested the world and it was a long time before the old fisherman told the youth that it matters not what the boatswain can or can’t see in a man. He asked the young fisherman if it mattered to him, fishing from the seawall, if that boat catches one or one hundred fish today. The youth shook his head. The old fisherman said it is the same—that what is in a man only matters to that man and that the sea does not need to be seen and known to be full.

of crushed dry leaves and dirt pasted to the inner edge of boot tread with something white and dripping. He ran a finger through the gunk and brought it close to his face and smelled it. It registered just as the blue canopy imploded and swallowed him in roiling crackling blue and the soak of cold ground. The new weight beyond the nylon pressed and bound him and he fought for leverage and his hand sought an edge to pull himself from the rolling mess. He got a foot under the mass pressed against the tarp and, with his back to the ground, kicked out. The weight lifted from the tarp and the boy clawed at the tarp until he was free of it. His brother lay a few feet away propped on his elbows and carrying a grin. “Good spot. Shame you ran through dad’s spilled fence paint. Wasn’t much for sport.” The boy didn’t answer but pushed the tarp aside and removed his shoes and crossed his legs in front of him. “Going Indian on me, huh?” His brother wondered looking around. “Best get myself disappeared then.” And he stood and took off running just as the boy closed his eyes and began, “One Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi…”

and tore it into strips that he wrapped around his abrased palms and the cracked and bleeding soles of his feet. He stood and looked to his ascent and sat again and rested a bit longer. He climbed on and eventually stood on the penultimate ledge. The last length of wall was featureless, a stone mirror, and too high to bound. His heart sank leaden through his gut. The limb of a tree hung over the precipice. He knew this tree as Manzanita and knew it would be difficult to gain purchase on its skin-slick bark. He knew there to be no way to test it with a false weight. There would be only his weight. His mind darkened with fatigue and despair and he looked at the branch and imagined approaching the tree from the other direction, walking up to it and resting against the tree, leaning into the tree and feeling all that flat earth beneath him while looking out over all that expanse of sea and wondering how it would be to be trapped in it. He shook free of the dream and looked down at the blue and frothing sea and wondered if his making it this far mattered if he were only to meet his end down there where the day had begun. He reached above and took hold of the thin limb and couldn’t help but think it may be the last thing he would hold and he let the acid thought drip down through him where it ate at what was left of his strength. He breathed deep into reserved will and expanded it and thought so be it already and matched his grip on the branch with the other hand and leaned back, suspended over what had passed and what may come.

beads the forehead. Cooter’s yonder spitshining his boots. Dresses fancy like a politician but he’s nationless as the rest of us. Always flipping through the French dressing papers and talking of “hot cooter” or some such nonsense. But anyway, it stuck, as nonsense is prone to. One on his horse anxious to hit the town is Blue. Can’t recall what inspired that name but I’m sure he’d tell ya. Aint nothing blue about him. Talk yer ear off two times. Idea of heaven is close quarters with more people than squarefeet, bottomless liquor, bottomfull company, gunfire and piana. Hates these hills and all their quiet. Confounds why he’d outlaw. Slight kid yonder with the guitar is Willie. Only threw in with the bunch 10 months ago but was a brother the first day. Voice of a damn angel for his stillness outside of song. Weaves peculiar stories when he sings, like how his father was an elk and his mother was an elk and his children will be elk if only the moon marry the sun. Gentle boy and like Blue I can’t reckon why he’d take to thieven. But I can neither. There’s just too much damn life in it. Lawbiden fills the room in a man’s heart with so much guilt and compromise, and this bunch sees fit to fill theirs otherwise.