Snow White turns the floor to bone. Back and forth.
Snow White
Calls the
Animals Together
for a Meeting
Out in the forest, Snow White finds a kit whose mother probably sizzled up on Ephie’s pan some night that week. He’s half-blind and barely as big as her hand. Little fella mews and yelps when he sees her. Not-screaming, not-crying. He’s afraid but he’s hungry. Any girl in a storm.
The kit is red. Snow White takes him home. He sleeps next to her stove and pisses in the corners. His piss smells hot and sour. He bites her. Snow White bites back. They understand each other.
A while later, Snow White sees a bear in the woods. She’s old and stiff. She has a patch of bald on her rump where she’s worried the fur away. The bear follows Snow White and watches her dress a raccoon. The blood makes the dirt damp and black. Snow White does not shoot the bear, even though she could. The bear is very slow. They never come too close but they like to look at each other. The bear grabs a fish out of the crick and the way she glances at Snow White it’s like the old girl wants to be praised. Snow White leaves trout guts for her and keep the red fox from gobbling them up.
The trees stand green as summer, all in a line.
The red fox gets big. He likes to keep watch with the night-sister and her three guns. But when thunderstorms belly up to the Joyful bar, he comes running to Snow White. He pisses on her bed. She knows that he means to indicate that he considers it his bed. That’s fine.
Snow White stops letting her noise out at night. It fears the bear too much.
Red Deer
and the Bird
from Heaven
Deer Boy is not a tracker. His deer half is the wrong half. His human nose is as dumb as anyone’s. Besides, deer have the drive to run away, not seek out. They get hunted, they do not hunt. If he had his mother’s brains, he might have called up Chicago and got his own dude to stand him to the trail. But he didn’t get her mind within mind in the parental bargain and he’s chasing blind, running on the fuel of his want. He’s playing his father’s tune, but he doesn’t know it.
Deer Boy has often cogitated upon the subject of what he will do if he finds her. There is not much else to think about. He imagines her. He builds her out of his memory. He runs up to her on puts his hands up on the glass between them. Is she his sister? Some days he thinks yes, some days he thinks no. Deer Boy was born in the mirror. She looks nothing like him. But look at their hands, pressing together, ten fingers to ten fingers. They are the same. They are standing with a mirror between them. They are standing with his mother between them.
Can he cut her heart out? He tells himself yes. The answer is no.
Deer Boy wear long trousers and chaps that hide his legs. When he drinks whiskey he can almost talk straight. He plays cards and bets for information. He bets for stories. When the Ace of Hearts turns over his breath stops. It doesn’t even have to be in his hand. Johnny, you remember when that crazy half-breed bitch shot ol’ pieface Hank out back, right? Those were the days. A man felt alive.
She is a half-breed. She is like him. Deer Boy does not know what her other half is but he wonders if being split down the middle pains her like it pains him.
Deer Boy would like to meet his father. He reads about him all the time. The Dakota rush. The Colorado lode. In his mind, Deer Boy’s father is made of jewels. When Deer Boy gets his legs back, his father will open up his diamond arms and gather him into the glitter. He dreams about this. On the other side of his father’s crystal body, Snow White puts up her hands.
Once, Deer Boy tried to ask his mother why she didn’t just leave him in the mirror. Why am I myself and not some other boy? Why can’t you love what you made?
He spoke backwards. She didn’t understand. She said: you are my price. You are my black deal in the wood.
Deer Boy gets so drunk in Haul-Off he has to be rolled out onto the street. It’s raining dog. He stumbles up the road, his hooves sticking in the mud. The whiskey in him stands at attention. Up ahead of him he thinks he sees her, Snow White, wet and cold, her face on fire with light. She’s standing in the road; a body sprawls next to her. A bullet between his eyes.
I need your heart.
She puts her hands up. Ten fingers.
I’m sorry. I need your heart.
Snow White opens her mouth. Milk flows out.
I just want to be loved. Didn’t you ever want her to love you?
Snow White opens her chest like a cabinet. She takes out her heart. It is a ruby. It is dripping blood. It is dripping light. She looks at him with so much love.
Deer Boy wakes up holding his hat tender as a baby.