Time of the Preacher

Holland spent Wednesday building a privacy fence for a tiresome academic couple in Barton Hills. Pressure-treated posts, horizontal cedar boards, stained and sealed, it was his third that week. He had another scheduled tomorrow, then a set of deck stairs on Friday, plus bids out on a tree house, a couple of pergolas, and too many fences to count. Now that everyone was marooned at home, they were dumping money into their yards, walling off their neighbors.

Holland was still getting acquainted with being in demand. He was forty-two, living in a gooseneck trailer out by the airport, divorced. He’d started Good Fences right before the world skidded to a stop. Well shit, he’d thought, and figured he’d soon be back working the paint counter at Home Depot. In those early months, when folks were only buying toilet paper and hand sanitizer, he occupied himself by building elaborate coops for the chickens he’d found pecking along the gravel shoulder of the interstate. Now almost a year in and the price of lumber near quadrupled, he turned away more jobs than he took.

While Holland was ripping cedar planks on his table saw in the Barton Hills front yard, a man stood on the opposite sidewalk trying to get his attention. When Holland finally clocked him, the man asked if he built skateboard ramps. “Wouldn’t know where to start,” Holland said with considerable relief. The man seemed skeptical, possibly insulted. He had two poodles on retractable leashes. Liberals, Holland thought.

When he finished the fence, he pinged the academics inside the house. He knotted his bandana around his nose and mouth despite knowing they probably wouldn’t venture outside. Every aspect of the job had been negotiated by text.

And like that, they appeared in the bay window, reminding Holland of meerkats. The husband pointed at the fence and pumped his fist like he’d sunk a difficult golf shot. Beside him, the wife laid her hands on her heart and mouthed, Thank you. Holland waved, then felt ridiculous for having raised his bandana. The husband made a show of brandishing his phone to send the payment. Holland set to loading his table saw into the truck bed and soon felt his own phone vibrating in his pocket. He used a leaf blower to clear sawdust from the manicured lawn.

It was January, warm even for Texas. The day’s light was giving up. When he climbed into the truck, he fished out his phone to check traffic and found his screen stacked with notifications: the academics’ payment, news alerts about case numbers and vaccine trials, a request for a bid on a patio deck, a message asking when he could start work on the tree house. Holland hardly registered any of it because there was also a text from Mandy, his ex-wife.

Snake at preachers. help?

It had been almost three years. He dragged his palms over his hair and his patchy beard, couldn’t recall when he’d last trimmed either. A churn in his bowels. His thoughts firing too fast. He was tired and hungry and read the text again. He dropped the truck into gear.

The scene had the upending air of aftermath. Like someone had fled. Like medics hadn’t had time to close the door after wheeling the preacher out on a gurney.

Mandy had been the preacher’s landlord for a decade; her parents owned rentals all over Austin and employed her to manage them. Before she and Holland went bust, he’d done the handyman work. The preacher’s house was well south of the river, tucked back on a street with ditches instead of sidewalks. A few lots had never been developed, dense with twisted mesquite and waist-high bluestem grass. At night, deer stalked into the neighborhood to tear up gardens and tug clothes off the lines. The preacher had once told Holland about seeing a buck with a woman’s red teddy hanging from its antlers. Holland could still readily summon the pride he’d felt upon refraining from a joke about racks.

Snakes didn’t bother him. He liked catching them and feeling them slip from one hand to the other, as if he were letting out rope. He liked watching them vanish in the brush afterward, liked happening upon the sheaths of their shed skins, featherlight and lace soft. Mandy knew he was partial to them, which was undoubtedly why she’d invented the snake tonight. Driving toward the rental, Holland clocked a certain surprise that this was the first time she’d baited him like this, then beneath that, the deeper surprise that she’d stoop to invoking the preacher. Mandy wasn’t a believer, exactly, but she wasn’t a nonbeliever either, so whatever had occasioned the lie had her in a corner. When she’d contacted him a couple years back, she was just of a mind to start some static. They’d met at the Little Darlin’ and fought about midterm elections, property taxes, their past transgressions. Holland gathered she was arguing with him because the stakes of arguing with her husband were too high. Mr. Tech Boom, Holland thought. Mr. Start-up.

Holland passed a food-truck court illuminated by a sagging canopy of string lights, then a bible church with a digital sign that read: Text Your Prayer Requests!!!! Rush hour traffic. Bleating horns. Cars blocking intersections. A mobile testing site had taken over the parking lot of a dead mall, and Holland got stuck behind the line of cars stretching out onto the street. He tried to fix his hair in the rearview mirror while waiting to change lanes. On the radio, hotheads debated stimulus checks and mask mandates. The sky purpled.

When he arrived, Mandy’s Tesla was in the driveway where the preacher’s hatchback should have been. The front door was open and spilling light onto a doormat: Bless This Mess. The scene had the upending air of aftermath. Like someone had fled. Like medics hadn’t had time to close the door after wheeling the preacher out on a gurney. Holland’s body flushed with the abrupt, radiating heat of panic. He parked behind the Tesla and bounded across the clumpy front yard, trying to remember the shortest route to the closest hospital.

But then Mandy appeared in the doorway, framed in light. Holland halted, embarrassed she’d caught him rushing. At the house less than a minute and he’d already lost ground.

Mandy wore yoga pants, her favorite chambray shirt, a floral mask. She pointed to her face, somberly. He raised his bandana.

“Those don’t do squat,” she said. “You’d be better off wearing a paper bag with eyeholes.”

“I can turn around,” he said. He sensed neighbors watching between window curtains. “I’ve got chickens to feed.”

“Sorry,” she said, regrouping. “I’ve had a day.”

“Where’s the preacher?” he said.

“Exactly,” she said.

Holland followed Mandy through the house. It was all but cleared out, and yet smaller than he remembered, more cramped. The air smelled like the inside of a dust-bloated vacuum bag. In the den, the preacher’s ratty leather recliner sat opposite the wall where a TV had been mounted; now only the stubble of protruding cables remained. A single wire hanger dangled in the coat closet. In the kitchen, cupboards were open, a can of peaches on one shelf, a box of instant rice on another. Mandy’s sleek leather purse hung by its strap from a cabinet knob. The overhead lights were garish, the kind of despairing brightness Holland associated with police stations.

“He’s under the fridge,” Mandy said, and it took Holland a beat to understand. He’d already forgotten the pretense of the snake. And now he remembered how Mandy referred to all animals as males. He wondered if she was still in therapy.

“What color?” he asked.

“Brown,” she said. She opened the back door and posted herself beside it, keeping distance. “Or gray. I didn’t get the best look. I screamed and ran outside.”

“Any black and white stripes on the tail? Any red or yellow?”

She lidded her eyes, a pantomime of recollection, then shook her head. “He’s all the color of mud.”

“That’s the right answer,” he said. He kneeled woodenly; his muscles had seized up on the drive. He used his phone’s flashlight to look at the bottom of the fridge: a plastic grille near flush with the Saltillo tile.

“You smell like outside work,” she said. “You could bottle it and call it Eau de Labeur.”

“You saw it go under here?” he said. “How big?”

“Brides would buy it for their husbands by the boatload,” she said. “You could retire early.”

“I like my job,” he said.

“Good for you,” she said. “Good for fucking you.”

The preacher—midsixties, eyebrows as wild and white as toothbrush bristles, the slightest suggestion of a lisp—had been two weeks late on rent. He didn’t use a cell phone and hadn’t replied to emails. He usually paid early, so Mandy assumed his payment had gotten lost in the mail or, with the world gone to pot, he’d just lost track of the date. She waited another week. She logged into her bank account to confirm she hadn’t forgotten depositing his check. She did entertain the possibility he’d gotten sick but talked herself out of it; Sunday services had been online since March. And weren’t preachers prone to cautiousness? Preternaturally wise? Driving to the rental, she’d rehearsed how to strike a disarming tone—I near forgot my own birthday this year! Who can remember anything right now? Not this lady! She stopped and bought the Bless This Mess doormat as an excuse for dropping by. Even pulling into the empty driveway, she told herself he’d started parking in the garage. She rang the doorbell. Knocked. Checked her phone. Knocked again, harder, with the heel of her fist. When she finally turned the master key, she was already berating herself for not checking on him sooner, already convinced she’d find him stiff on the floor.

“But, no,” she said, pacing the kitchen. “The only things left were that ugly-ass chair and the goddamned snake.”

Holland was laboring to move the refrigerator. It was wedged between the counter and hallway wall. Each side would only scoot an inch at a time.

Mandy hopped up to sit on the kitchen island and started swishing her feet like a girl on a pier. Still, she kept her distance. She said, “So that’s the situation. The world’s on fire, and preachers are skipping out under cover of darkness.”

“If you had to estimate the size of the snake, shoelace or belt or—”

“You don’t find that, like, blasphemous?” she said. “That a man of God would just up and disappear, shafting his landlord? What’s to keep me from logging into his Sunday sermon and outing him in the chat?”

“He’s been in the wind for two weeks, maybe more. I guarantee he took more from the church than from you,” Holland said. A kind of doubt was accruing form and ballast. “Right now I need to know how big of a snake I’m liable to find when we lift this fridge.”

“Average size,” she said.

“Average of what?” he said.

“He wasn’t too big. Or small,” she said. “Maybe on the smaller side. Maybe a youngster. He’s probably not dangerous, but I don’t want him making a guest appearance when I’m showing the house.”

Holland was stretching over the counter to see behind the fridge. If there was a snake, and if Mandy had startled it, the most likely place to slither for shelter would be under the fridge. It wasn’t impossible.

“Younger snakes are more dangerous,” he said. “They can’t control their venom. They shoot more in.”

“Like I said, I didn’t get a good look,” she said.

Back in March, when it became clear the madness was only beginning, he’d expected Mandy to check in. Each day he thought: Tomorrow. Each week he talked himself out of calling. Borders closed. Field hospitals were set up. College students were throwing parties, trying to catch it, and Holland knew Mandy had rentals by the university. Before long he got spooked enough to drive out to the gated community on Bee Cave Road. If the gate wasn’t open, he’d wait to tail a Land Rover in; the drivers never balked. The Good Fences logo on his truck made it easy for them to think he was building a gazebo for a neighbor’s pool. He parked out by the stalled new constructions and watched Mandy’s house through field binoculars he’d ordered to sight planes and birds of prey. He listened to the radio, Willie and Waylon, and hotheads saying convention centers might be converted to morgues. Eventually, he spied her mulching a flowerbed while her husband cleaned their gutters. Occasionally he allowed himself to believe Mandy had done her own furtive wellness checks, but he knew better. He’d just about broken the habit of hoping to hear from her when she texted about the snake.

And now she was standing on the kitchen island, poised to tip the refrigerator back so Holland, sprawled on the tile, could see underneath. Her palms were flat against the freezer. He was actively avoiding looking up her chambray shirt.

From the floor, he said, “If I say, ‘Drop it,’ just let it go. Don’t worry about me, I’ll move.”

“You already said that,” she said. “Just tell me when to tilt it back. I feel like I’m being frisked.”

“Okay,” he said, bracing, ready to spring to his feet if he saw anything he didn’t like.

“Okay, tilt? Or okay you’ll tell me when?”

“Tilt,” he said.

“Now?”

“Now,” he said. “Yes. Go.”

Dust bunnies and dead cockroaches. The bottom panel was solid sheet metal, nowhere for anything to slip in. Holland said, “You can let it down.”

“He’s gone?” she said. She lowered the fridge but stayed on the island. Like they were castaways and she’d sought higher ground in hopes of flagging a helicopter.

“You’re sure it went under here?” he asked. “You’re positive?”

“Hundred percent,” she said.

Holland sidled between the counter and refrigerator, squeezed behind it. The space was so tight that his only option was to squat straight down, as if being lowered into a well, and graze his hand over the backside of the fridge near his boots. He shut his eyes to picture what he was touching: six tiny screws fastening a vented panel, the slits thin and tight. To slip inside, the snake would have to be the circumference of a drinking straw. Assuming Holland could even remove the panel, he’d have no room to scramble if the snake struck. A rush of claustrophobia, a sense that the walls of the well were constricting, pressing in from every direction, that water was rising. His bandana made it hard to breathe.

“And there’s zero chance of it being red and yellow?” he said, leaning back to rest his head against the wall, eyes shut. “I need you to be real certain on that count.”

“I’d recognize a coral snake,” she said. He heard her jump down from the island and pad in the opposite direction. “You think I’m dumb, but I’m not.”

“I’ve never said that.”

“You say it without saying it.” Her voice had gotten louder, clearer, but also farther away. He envisioned her sitting on the threshold of the back door, unmasked, inhaling clean night air. She said, “That was always your method. You’re an insult ventriloquist.”

“I don’t think you’re dumb,” he said, and it was true. He thought she was selfish and impatient and made a habit of grinding his heart into dust, but not dumb. She ran circles around salespeople, convinced judges to dismiss speeding tickets, and on a lark one summer, she learned passable Spanish by watching Mexican soap operas. Since the divorce, he’d measured every woman against her and enjoyed a surge of futile, misbegotten pride when each came up short.

“But then again,” she said, “a preacher left me holding the bag, so maybe I am stu—”

“There’s a vent,” Holland interrupted, feigning discovery. “He might’ve gotten inside.”

“That sneaky little shit,” she said. “I knew it.”

Holland opened his pocketknife and used the tip of the blade to loosen the screws. Tedious, halting work. The blade kept slipping, and it took concentration to find the slot again. He imagined Mandy scrolling through her phone, texting Mr. Start-up or searching for the wayward preacher. Chambray shirt, he thought. Yoga pants. How she believed brides would buy his bottled scent. He wanted to squirrel away every detail that would animate this evening in his recollection. He wanted Mandy to offer up something she missed about the old times. There was only the metallic hum of the refrigerator, the blood marching in his ears.

When he undid the final little screw, he held the panel in place. Sweat in the corners of his eyes, tracking through his whiskers. He reminded himself that Mandy had conjured the snake from thin air, that it was imaginary, a ploy. To what end, though? To call him an insult ventriloquist? With his shoulders lodged between the fridge and the wall, it seemed feasible he’d misjudged the situation, that he’d maybe never trusted her enough, and for that, he’d soon find himself inches from the dull gaze of a pit viper. He wiped his face on his sleeve.

He had to work to get eye level with the vents in the cramped space, finally rolling half onto his back, chin pressed to his chest like he’d fallen down a stairwell. His breath was coming quick and shallow. The image of the snake striking: the pink flash of its diamond-shaped mouth, the rifle-fire snap of its recoil. He could almost feel the slow boil of the venom in his veins. He slid the panel up slowly, incrementally. If he was lucky, he might be able to slam the edge back down like a guillotine. He was overcome with thirst, sandpaper in his throat. He considered refastening the panel and telling Mandy he’d been mistaken, the vents were too tight after all. When the panel was high enough for him to squint inside, what he saw reminded him of a glove compartment in an old Cadillac—black and spacious and empty. He closed his eyes, just then realizing he’d been forcing them open. He was sapped, awash in humiliating relief.

Now who’s dumb. Now who’s left holding the bag.

He thought she was selfish and impatient and made a habit of grinding his heart into dust, but not dumb. Since the divorce, he’d measured every woman against her and enjoyed a surge of futile, misbegotten pride when each came up short.

When Holland squeezed out from behind the fridge, he found himself alone. Now Mandy’s purse lay on the island like a curled-up animal. She’d snuck off to the bathroom, he figured. Or the preacher had returned, or her husband, and she’d intercepted him at the front door. He felt useless, besieged by the seasick awareness of standing alone in someone else’s house. The urge to hide. To bolt. On his phone was a text from the Barton Hills woman saying she’d given his information to a neighbor who wanted a skateboard ramp. Holland deleted the thread. He listened for Mandy’s voice, for a flushing toilet. He tried to think of anywhere else a snake might hide. He pulled down his bandana, then pushed and slid and rocked the fridge back into its place. Eventually he went out the back door, stepping down onto the rough concrete slab that served as a patio.

The backyard was bigger than he recalled, and darker. The preacher had once told him that Mrs. Salazar, the sickle-backed widow in the corner house, had shot the streetlamp out with her husband’s rifle because the light shone directly into her bedroom. Holland had repeated the story many times. He hoped she was still there, armed and ornery. The stars were splotchy and dim, the weak splatters of a near-empty can of spray paint. And yet there was light enough to see the yard had gone mostly to dirt. Either the deer had defeated it, or the preacher had never run the sprinklers Holland had installed.

“I left the door open in case he slithered out,” Mandy said. Holland had to squint to find her under the live oak across the yard. She was in a folding lawn chair. “I’m sorry I abandoned you.”

“Do what?”

“In the kitchen,” she said, too quick, lest her apology evoke past disappearances. “I started feeling panic attack-y. I carry chill pills these days but left my purse inside.”

“I can grab it,” he said. Still in therapy, he thought. “Water too?”

“He took all the cups,” she said. “I’m calmer now. I just keep thinking this is the end of the world. A snake in a house previously occupied by one of God’s servants didn’t exactly help.”

“Maybe the snake was raptured too,” he said.

“Or maybe I’m just mourning not making enough bad decisions when I had the chance.”

Holland couldn’t tell if she was hinting, setting a snare, or saying the first thing in her mind. His eyes were adjusting, and she was coming into focus. Maybe she’d undone a button at the top of her shirt. Years ago, when she’d started static about the midterm elections, they’d wound up at the Deluxe Inn.

“So far,” he said, aiming to sound unfazed and open a door, “my worst decision has been adopting chickens somebody dumped out by the airport. It took me a day to catch them. Brahma, they’re called. Show chickens. Prize winners. They have feathers down to their toes. I guess their owners couldn’t afford to feed them and couldn’t bear to eat them.”

“That’s some depressing shit,” she said.

“The chickens might disagree,” he said.

“You built them a chicken mansion is my bet.”

The stomach-jump of being known. He looked at his work boots in case he couldn’t suppress a smile. He said, “Special chickens deserve special accommodations. They deserve towers connected by a covered bridge. They deserve ramps and balconies.”

“And I bet you still make your spaghetti sandwiches,” she said.

“Everything tastes better between two slices of bread,” he said.

A flotilla of clouds skimmed over the sky from the east, pulled or pushed by secret wind. Then, the sucker punch of memory: a decade prior, another backyard, Mandy sitting in another lawn chair while he cut her hair. He’d never done such a thing and was convinced he’d botch the job, but they were trying to save money for—what? Just then he couldn’t remember wanting anything beyond her. The next morning they drank their coffee outside and watched a wren deliver wispy clippings of Mandy’s hair to its nest.

“Why did I cut your hair? What were we saving for?” he asked.

“Speaking of bad decisions,” she said, but fondly. “I spent twice whatever we saved the next day at the beauty shop. I don’t know what we wanted. I think you were mad about taxes.”

“So you didn’t lure me here for a haircut?” he said. “That’s not the next bad decision.”

“I lured you here to catch a snake. ‘Comes with king cobra’ isn’t a selling point in today’s market.”

“If you’d actually seen a snake, you’d call the exterminator. Or your husband.”

“Exterminators charge for their services, and Wade appreciates snakes less than I do,” she said, then shuddered, as if hit by an arctic blast. “He moved so fast! I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about him coming—”

“Up through the toilet when you’re trying to pee,” he said. “It’ll never happen.”

“And saying that will never be reassuring,” she said.

“Snakes can’t breathe under wat—”

Mandy started swiping tears from her cheeks. Then she just crumpled and was crying in her hands. Holland wanted to rush to her but knew she’d fumble for her mask and retreat across the yard. It wasn’t a reality he’d be able to bear. He surveyed the dirt and rotting fence, then realized the haggard clouds had disappeared without his noticing. The murmur of faraway traffic.

“Fuck, Holland,” she said. “I was already worried before I knew you were just wearing a bandana. Real masks aren’t expensive. I’m sure they make sizes to fit libertarians.”

“I’m getting by,” he said. “I’m doing all right.”

“I’m worried you’ll get it, obviously, but also that you’ll get it and not tell anyone,” she said. “And by anyone, I mean me. You’re all the way out in the sticks. You’re all alone.”

“You’re really underestimating my chickens,” he said. Insects trilled ceaselessly in the dark, a throbbing chorus he now realized he’d been hearing all along.

“You think you’re protecting people, but really you’re just scared,” she said.

“Scared of what?”

“I never figured it out. If I had, maybe we wouldn’t have parted the sheets.”

“Things can be simple,” he said. “Not everything needs figuring out. Not everything is a mystery that needs—”

“What I need is for you to swear you’ll tell me if you get it.”

“Scout’s honor,” he said, quick and easy. When she started crying again, he said, “I’ve got bottled water in the truck. I can fetch your purse and you can take a—”

“It’s like everything was on a solid glacier for our entire lives,” she said as she blotted her eyes with the cuffs of her shirt, “but now it’s breaking apart and we’re on our own little pieces of ice and floating away in different directions. Soon I’ll be gone or everyone else will. I mean, if you can’t count on a preacher to stick it out, who’s left?”

“I am,” he said. “I’m right here.”

“You are,” she said. “And you’re sweet to rush over even if you think I’m lying about the snake.”

“I want you to feel better,” he said.

“Maybe I hallucinated him. Maybe mirages are a symptom they haven’t announced yet. Maybe I did invent him to get you over here and seduce you one last time, but the shitty preacher took the bed. Who knows? Nothing feels true anymore.”

The feeling was constant lately, fortitude being corroded from the inside out, but in her presence, he knew some things were still true. Like, he’d already spent a week in July coughing up blood, his sheets so sweat-sopped that he’d rolled onto the trailer floor but found no relief. Like, he was convinced that’s where someone would eventually discover him, and he’d spent hours imagining Mandy getting the news but couldn’t figure what he hoped her reaction would be. Like, he’d told himself that if he recovered, he’d vie for another chance, that he’d find a way to approach her without suspicion or wariness, that he’d suggest lighting out for Mexico or Canada, just them and the chickens, but now here they were and he was the same old coward.

“I have a drywall saw in my toolbox,” he said.

“English, please.”

“I can cut into that wall behind the fridge and look for the snake,” he said. “No one’ll know once it’s pushed back.”

Mandy leaned forward in the lawn chair, pondering something. A breeze expanded the branches of the live oak, as if the tree were drawing a great breath. A barred owl called from somewhere nearby: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?

“People need home offices right now,” she said.

“English, please.”

“I’ll list it as having space for an office, and someone’ll rent it, snake or no snake.”

“Or I can cut in behind the bottom shelf of the pantry, which might flush him out the way he came in,” Holland said. “If he’s not there, we can take the house down to the studs until we find him.”

“You’re as stubborn as a scar,” she said. “Maybe just help me drag that awful chair to the curb on our way out?”

And like that, the night was over. They listened to the owl for a while, then donned their masks and sulked into the house. For no reason beyond extending their time together, Holland dipped into each room as though doing one last pass for the snake. They tried a couple of different approaches at moving the recliner before pulling out the footrest and stretching the chair to its full length, which made negotiating the doorway disappointingly easy. Mandy carried the front end with her back to Holland. He was tempted to crack a social distancing joke, but instead suggested they hoist the chair into his truck bed in case the garbage collectors wouldn’t take it. “I’ll give it to the chickens,” he said. “Or I’ll leave it in the truck and put my feet up when I go fishing.” Really, he just wanted to offer her a little more help, wanted that memory to ambush her at some point. Mandy thanked him and promised updates on the preacher. Holland promised to call if he got sick. They took a rain check on hugging goodbye and pledged to grab lunch when life returned to normal, the bald and courteous lies their parting required.

Holland reversed from the driveway, then she did, and he followed her to the stop sign. Even after the Tesla glided silently through its turn and her twin taillights faded, he lingered at the corner. He knew the chickens hadn’t eaten since morning, knew he was due early at tomorrow’s job site, knew she wouldn’t text or hook a U-turn, but his boot stayed on the brake. No other cars on the road. The night pressed against the truck’s windshield; the temperature was dropping. He needed to remember anything he’d said to make her smile, anything that might serve as a seed for some future encounter. His thoughts could gain no purchase. His turn signal clicked and clicked. The engine idled. The exhaust purled like smoke from a downed plane.

From behind trees and the darkest corners of the undeveloped lots, the deer watched the blinking red light. All twitching ears, flicking tails, delicate ankles. A buck nibbled delphinium, then, still chewing, raised his top-heavy head to scan the area and check on the red light. A doe scratched her neck with her hind foot. Then she froze. The buck’s jaw locked. A tremor beneath their hooves, a rumbling motion somewhere. They swung their heads in unison toward the blinking light as it advanced slowly into the dark. In the truck bed, the old recliner jostled, swayed. There, deep under the seat’s cushion, the snake—a copperhead, hungry, still gray at five months old—lay coiled and alert. The world was reverberating from every dark direction, a chaos that frightened and confused her, so she curled tighter, made herself smaller. She stared with unblinking eyes into nothingness. She flicked her tongue, trying to decipher the numberless threats in the cold air.