“Well, for one thing, they had a sit-in at Bob Coffin’s house. Your history teacher. They sat around his house just outside the property line all last weekend, taking turns, reading scripture and holding up signs that say things like, ‘Dead atheist: All dressed up with no place to go.’ ”

  Last weekend . . . I’d been with Max on Saturday, out all day Sunday. She’d called me three times Sunday afternoon; was she trying to get me to join the sit-in?

  Heidi says, “I expect it won’t be long before they turn their attention to the house where Sylvia Modine is renting an apartment. And she’s been such a help to you, Etta! She’s talked an awful lot of folks into putting signs in their yards.” She turns to me. “And I hope you’ll be willing to help Etta replace some of those roadside signs someone’s been stealing.”

  “Stealing?” This was news to me. And, really, I should have noticed this; I mean, not only did one of them disappear from my own yard, but also there probably isn’t one sign with Etta’s name on it that I didn’t have something to do with, as long as it’s not in someone’s yard. And Sylvia’s been helping? “How have I missed all this?”

  Heidi shakes her head. “I couldn’t tell you that, but I can tell you that you won’t be missing it much longer.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  She looks at me a second, like she’s trying to figure out what she can say. “I don’t have any specifics for you. But I can tell you that you’re going to find yourself in a place where you’ll be pulled from both sides, and you’ll have to figure out how to go up to get out of the tension.”

  “How . . . how do you know that?”

  Etta starts to say something, but Heidi touches her wrist and says to me, “I see two poles, deep in the ground, with you in between. Around your waist is a long, tough elastic that’s wrapped around one pole, and from the other direction there’s one from the other pole around you. The closer you get to one pole, the tighter the pull gets back to the other one. Both poles are wrong for you. And you’ll have to go up—escape from them—to find the right place for you.”

  Everyone has stopped eating. As soon as I can break my eyes from Heidi’s intense gaze, I look at Etta. Has she told Heidi about the duck blind? Does Heidi know that I don’t want to be pulled anyplace, by anyone?

  When I look at Heidi again, she’s frowning. “Ethan, you have a brother?” Well, this she could have heard from Etta, or from anyone. I nod and lift one shoulder. “Is he going through some trouble right now?”

  Etta says, “Ethan, I said nothing about Kyle to Heidi.”

  “I’m sorry.” Heidi shakes her head. “I have no right to question you. It’s just that suddenly there was this kind of dark feeling.”

  I ask, “Is it gone?”

  Heidi closes her eyes, waits briefly, and says, “No.”

  “Excuse me a sec.” I get up and go into that front room with all the weird stuff where I have some privacy, I fish out my iPhone, and I call home. Mom answers. I can hear the TV in the background. I say, “Hey. Just thought I’d call to see how things are.”

  “No change as far as I know,” she tells me. “Why? Do you know something I don’t?”

  I don’t know what to say to that, and she says, “Hang on. I’m going upstairs.” She keeps the phone with her, and I can hear her feet landing on the stairs and her breathing; she’s in a hurry. Then there’s silence, and a weird sound. It’s Kyle’s voice, sort of. Then I hear Mom again. “Kyle, what are you doing?” It sounds like she sets the phone down.

  “Mom?” I nearly shout. “What’s going on?” But she doesn’t answer.

  I can hear her voice and Kyle’s, but I can’t quite tell what they’re saying. Then I hear her say, “And don’t do that again! How do you expect the thing to heal?” Silence. And then, “Are you hearing me, Kyle?”

  “I hear you.”

  It sounds like she picks the phone up. “Now get up off the floor. Maybe you should just go to bed now.” There are sounds I can’t quite make out, and I yell into the phone. Mom says to me, “Yes, Ethan, I hear you.” There are footsteps, probably as she heads for the stairs. “It’s just your brother, on the floor in there, chanting some nonsense. Bible verses.”

  “What about his hand?”

  “He was holding his right arm up in the air. Don’t know how long he was like that, but it wasn’t easy for him to let it down again. Hang on; I’m just going to make sure he got up.” I wait, and then, “Yeah, he’s okay. He’s lying on his bed now.”

  “Mom, do you need me to come home?”

  “And what would you do, I’d like to know? Sit there and watch him? Don’t be silly. Enjoy your evening. You can tell me all about it when you get home.”

  “K.”

  “Ethan? Thanks for calling.”

  I stand there a minute, staring around the room at colors and shapes and clutter, seeing nothing except Kyle’s back where he sits on the floor of his room, his bandaged right hand held high in the air.

  When I get back to the table, Etta and Heidi are talking about a town hall meeting that I didn’t even know about, with both Etta and Carl Phinney. “Whose idea was that?” I ask.

  Etta answers. “Mrs. Glasier’s, it seems. I didn’t want to accept, but I’m afraid that if I don’t people will interpret it as giving up on the election. Even though it’s not true, it would have the same effect. So I’ll have to do it.”

  Mrs. Glasier. The one who’d told Mom, We’ll see about this. “When?”

  “Wednesday.”

  I nod; my usual thing would be not to go, but I feel pulled, just like Heidi has said. I look at her. “Is my brother going to be okay?” I feel my throat tighten, and I’m angry with myself for feeling weak, for asking the question. I feel like a helpless little kid, and I hate it.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell the future, Ethan. Not exactly. And I can’t even get impressions by looking for them. They come when they’re ready. When I’m ready. Etta told me a little about his situation while you were in the other room. Is he all right at the moment?”

  I’m thinking about just saying, Yeah, he’s fine, but somehow I think she’d know I was lying. “He was sitting on the floor in his room with his hand stuck in the air. Mom made him lie down. Wait . . . how did you know I called home?”

  Heidi and Etta exchange an odd look, and then Heidi says, “It seemed likely.”

  I decide that wasn’t too big a leap and chalk it up to putting two and two together. Plus, they could probably hear me shouting Mom! from the other room.

  Dessert is great; it’s dark chocolate pudding in these tiny little dishes, with whipped cream. Etta tells me Heidi isn’t vegan, so I guess the cream is okay. When Heidi puts the little pot down in front of me I’m thinking, Wow, that’s not much. But it’s rich, so when Heidi offers me thirds I have to say no, thanks.

  Heidi smiles at me for nothing that I can figure and goes into another room. Etta gets up to clear, and I start to help, but she says, “Stay put, Ethan. Heidi has something for you.” She’s still in the other end of the kitchen at the sink when Heidi comes back. She has a toy stuffed animal with her, a bat. It has an oblong gray body, slightly plush, and long black wings made out of felt or something. Tiny black felt ears are sewn onto the head, and the eyes are thick knots of black threads. In the middle of its back there’s a black loop, like you could hang the thing from the ceiling. Heidi sets it down on the table, facing me.

  I stare at it. “What’s this?”

  “Your bat. It’s for you. We could meditate to see if a different animal comes to you—usually the power animal comes to you, not the other way around—but I feel strongly that Bat would be very good for you right now. As a power animal the bat represents adaptability, helping you take stock of your surroundings and figuring out the best direction to go in. With its power, you’ll be able to identify barriers and dangers that might not be immediately obvious, the way the bat uses echolocation to avoid hitting what it wants to miss and finding what it needs to eat. And it knows how to go up.” She stops and looks at me.

  I don’t know what to do with this, so I just say, “Thanks.”

  She laughs. “I can tell this is the first time you’ve heard of power animals. Am I right?” I nod, and she says, “Shamans, or people like me who make connections between the physical and spiritual worlds, see everything as having life, power, and wisdom. Power animals represent sources of help and strength, using their own characteristics to support and protect us. You might have more than one power animal at a time, but I think that right now, Bat is for you, Ethan. This is a pivotal time for you. I sense that you’re about to go through some kind of transformation, and you’ll need to use senses you might never have used before to figure out the best way through it. The beauty of a power animal is that it helps you get through difficulties and come out the other side even more truly yourself than when you went in.”

  Etta comes back to the table, wiping her hands on a towel. I ask her, “What’s your power animal?”

  “I’ve had a few animals help me in my life, but the most consistent has been the dingo. The Australian wild dog.”

  “What does it do for you?”

  “The dingo is bold but also suspicious, or wary. It’s independent, and it uses instinct to find the best path and make the right decisions without giving up its intelligence. And it has the power to adapt well to changing situations. Remember I told you that I have dingo tracks on my shoulder?”

  “Oh, right! Your tattoo.” She nods, and I look at Heidi. “Do you have a power animal?”

  “Oh, Lord, yes! I’ve been so lucky, and many animals have traveled with me. But like Etta, I have a predominant one. The fox. It’s helped me learn to be less blunt, more subtle in the way I approach things and people, in the way I speak.” She laughs. “I’m afraid I need more lessons there, though! The fox knows how to use the shoulder times, dawn and dusk, to assess things from a position of camouflage, figure out which way the wind is blowing and who else is on the move, and make creative decisions that help shape what happens.”

  And because Max spends so much time in the front of my mind, I ask, “What about the junco? Can that be a power animal?”

  “It can, indeed. Why do you ask?”

  “A friend of mine says juncos are following him.”

  Heidi blinks at me. “Really? My. Well, the junco has powers, but if it’s forcing its way into your friend’s life it may be trying to warn him. With the junco, I think the warning would be to take stock of the way he’s expressing himself. Warning him that perhaps he’s talking just to hear himself speak, or that he’s using words—chatter—to disguise his true nature. Perhaps even from himself.”

  I pick up my bat and examine his ears. Each one is sewn in a little curl, very neatly done. Focusing my eyes on the shape, my mind is trying to focus and trying not to focus on what the junco might be telling Max. What is there about his true nature that he’d want to hide? Being gay, or something other than that? And are words Max’s duck blind?

  Etta says, “I’ve got to get this young man home. Ethan, would you call Two into the front room and put his leash on him?”

  “Won’t he follow us out to the car?”

  “There are coyotes in the area, and I don’t want to take any chances that he’d go after them.”

  I grab my bat and slap my thigh, looking at Two where he’s curled up in a corner on a large, flat pillow that looks like it’s there just for him. He gets up and follows me to the front room, and I put his leash on him. He looks up at me like he’s smiling, eyes half shut, mouth open and tongue hanging out. I rub the fur on his head and behind his ears, and he grins even more. I chuckle; some holy terror he turned out to be.

  In a couple of minutes Etta and Heidi come into the room. Heidi gives me a long hug.

  “Thanks for the bat, and for dinner,” I say when she lets me go.

  She smiles at me. “The bat has another power I think you’re going to need. He’ll help you face your fears. And because he isn’t fooled by what things looks like, he’ll be able to help you determine the real nature of something that looks huge and fierce but that might not be as bad as it seems.”

  Etta takes the leash, and as we head back to the car I watch for coyotes. Don’t see any.

  On the drive home, I ask Etta about the town hall. She says, “I’m not looking forward to it. I mean, it makes sense on the surface of things. But this issue is even more divisive than I thought. I’m a little afraid of what I’ll face from the audience.”

  “What are you afraid of, exactly?”

  “I think I’m afraid because I don’t know how bad it could get, so I don’t know how to prepare myself. I’ve been getting the most horrid letters. People I’ve known for years, people who’ve been cordial or even helpful to me, are writing the most awful things. And there have been phone calls.”

  For a second, as I picture her standing in her kitchen on the phone and looking distressed on that day the coyotes appeared, I almost forget I’m driving and that I have to pay attention to the road. “Like, who? What are they saying?”

  “I’m not sure I should tell you who, Ethan. That wouldn’t be fair to you. But some of what they’re saying . . . Most of them are just stupid, as far as I’m concerned. Plagues from God, hellfire, that sort of thing. One person called me Satan, which I took as a compliment. Without Satan, man wouldn’t know good from evil, because he’d never have eaten from that famous tree. But a few of them have sounded a little violent. One was actually a death threat, though of course I don’t take it seriously. It’s disturbing, all the same.”

  Again: How have I been missing all this? “Wow,” is all I can say.

  “Don’t let it worry you, Ethan. And no one has mentioned you at all, by the way.”

  I’m about to ask why they might, but then I realize it’s because of the signs I’ve helped with, and maybe some people know she’s been helping me rack up driving hours.

  We’re going back the long way, just like we came, and I’ve just rounded a bend on the narrow road when the headlights catch on something that looks almost bright against the blackness of the country night. I brake, and suddenly Two’s head is practically on my shoulder—not because of my stopping short, but because of what he sees. Maybe a hundred feet in front of us there are about seven coyotes, spread out enough so they’re taking up the whole road. They don’t move. And they’re staring at the car like they’re considering tearing it apart for fun.

  “Go forward slowly, Ethan,” Etta says. “Don’t turn the wheel, just go straight. They’ll move out of the way.” Her voice is calm, but Two answers her with a long, deep growl. I can sense how tense his body is without seeing it.

  It’s not like they can hurt us, inside the car, I tell myself. I ease forward, and they give way grudgingly, like they want to let us know they aren’t afraid of us. Two, still growling, moves around the backseat to look out first one window and then another, like he’s making sure they stay outside and he’s prepared to make them.

  As we get through the pack I check them out in the rearview mirror. They’ve turned so they can watch us. They haven’t moved otherwise. I pick up speed, glad to leave them behind.

  “Wow. Now I see why you wanted to make sure you had Two on his leash.”

  “They’re amazing animals, but I can’t say I like it when they act in such a brazen way.”

  “You didn’t shoot the one fighting with Two.”

  “No. I would have, if I’d had to, but I really don’t want to kill them.”

  “Are they a power animal, too?”

  “A potent one. They represent a kind of balance, too, though not quite like the yin-yang. They are deadly serious, and they’re also tricksters. They remind us of the karmic nature of the universe: what you do to others will become yours.”

  “What goes around, comes around?”

  “Something like that.”

  Suddenly it surprises me how seriously I’ve taken Heidi’s power animal theory. “Do you buy that stuff?”

  “Yes and no. What I see is that the power we ascribe to these animals is directly in line with how we perceive them. But if we focus on the characteristics we see in them, it can benefit us just by virtue of us reminding ourselves what will help us.”

  “So why are juncos following Max?”

  “So it’s Max, is it? I thought it might be. That question I can’t begin to answer.”

  I’m thinking she might ask me why I think they’re chasing him, based on what Heidi has said about them, and while I want to talk about Max I don’t want to focus on that question.

  She doesn’t go there. “Did you enjoy meeting Heidi?”

  “Sure. I love that front room. And she sure is a good cook.” Etta laughs. “I was sure you were going to take a third chocolate pot de crème.”

  It’s nearly eleven by the time I get home. Etta drops me off and tells me to say hi. Mom is half dozing in front of the TV, an ashtray full of cig butts and an empty pretzel bag on the table beside her. “Did you have good time?”

  I grin and hold up the bat. “Meet my power animal.” I toss him toward her and then, oddly, regret it. Like I’ve treated him too lightly, Coyote’s warning in my mind: What I do to others will be done to me. And if Heidi is even half right about the bat’s powers, I need them all. “I’m thinking his name is Edgar.”

  Mom looks at him a second and tosses him back. I try to hide the fact that I stroke his head in apology. Mom says, “What’s that for? Did Etta give you that?”

  “Her friend Heidi did.” I sit in a chair and tell her a little about power animals, but I know I don’t have her attention until I mention the coyote pack.

  “Honestly! Those things are getting entirely too bold. I’m not one for slaughtering wildlife just because it’s inconvenient, but those creatures worry me. I heard about someone walking his dog in the woods who was followed for nearly half a mile by a pack of them. He had to head toward a major road to get away from them. He was terrified. So was the dog.”

  I’m glad I never told her about Two protecting me from them. She has enough to worry about. “How’s Kyle?”