Christmas Eve and they’d missed the weather, just a few scarves of sandy snow snagged
++++++along the road edge. Now the cold
had settled in, mercury crowding zero on the darkest night of the year. They’d lingered
++++++too long over presents and family talk
in his in-laws’ living room where the same tiresome stories were exchanged year after
++++++year, how an orange, some nuts, and a piece
of hard rock candy made a stocking they were glad to get. The evening was almost done
++++++before he could leave off worrying

about the pipes in their poorly insulated rental house. Leaning hard on midnight when
++++++they rolled up the driveway, the black sky
pierced with stars sharp-cut as the points on new finish nails, another of the holiday
++++++memories strange enough or bitter enough
to stay remembered. He wanted to remember the weight of his sons as they each carried
++++++one up the steps and to bed. There were presents
to arrange under the aluminum tree so their own Christmas would look more prosperous
++++++when the kids ran in in the morning, making

their own memories. Then, tired as he was, still in the new wool topcoat his mother-in-
++++++law had given him so he would know
he didn’t dress well enough for her daughter, he went out to the dog pen at the back
++++++edge of the property to check on his bird dog, fat
with her first litter. He’d never bred a dog before and only knew what he’d been told
++++++about it—the pups could suffocate
if you piled too much hay in the house—but he could see his mistake as soon as he
++++++aimed his flashlight through the doorway, a large litter

he hadn’t expected for another week yet, birthed on the almost bare boards of the
++++++doghouse, failing to nurse. He picked one up
and it was cold as a brick paver pried out of the ground and just as dense. He opened
++++++his new coat and began to tuck them
inside. They drew so much warmth out of him, his ribs ached. As fast as he could he
++++++shuttled them to the kitchen. Some of the pups
would rouse resentfully from their stupor when he rubbed them in his chapped hands.
++++++The room’s raw light hurt his eyes. He warmed milk

on the stove and tried to get it in them with a medicine dropper, but they wouldn’t
++++++take it and were soon still again. Sometime
during the night his wife came in and shut the cabinet doors. “You’ve ruined that coat.”
++++++Blood and hay were pawed into the weave,
a button was missing, the Hart Schaffner & Marx label was still sewn on the sleeve.
++++++The muddy pointer bitch and her frozen litter
were arranged on a mound of their best bath towels in an oil-stained pasteboard box
++++++from the garage. It was possible

he hadn’t done anything right. By the time he gave up, you could wring milky dawn-
++++++light from the curtains above the sink. The kids would soon
be screaming over the electric football game already set up by the tree, too absorbed to
++++++be surprised at the bird dog in the house. He unfolded
a brown paper bag from the IGA and collected the litter. Outside, the cold hadn’t
++++++gone anywhere and the wind lay perfectly still. The lid
of the garbage can had been flattened by a car tire. Nothing was going to get buried
++++++with the ground frozen too hard for a shovel to dent.