friends feeling the Sunday air changed about them, the reason less than an hour off. All that, beyond reach, where he stood shoulder-deep in the shallow hole of a broken lake, climbing the brittle rim only to have it cave-in, dunking him as often as he tried into water colder than he ever imagined water to be, knowing he would faint dead away in it, to sink where he had floated warm in the sun of past summers, alive as any man had ever been. And then, as though in dream, he saw his wife closer than before, a rope in hand, the lake splintering beneath her, risking all she had to risk, her eyes meeting his in prayer, the rope whirring toward him, a neighbor lugging a ladder, gambling his weight and age on the groaning surface, the long pull to shore, the doe left behind for those with boats to axe their way and save her, only to find her needing more than they could give, hauling her past the crowd, to the inner edge of her woods to die -- to take a single slug below the ear, her blood run out too far to claim, the freeze too deep to thaw. He stands, greasing himself for the hardest swim of his life, the jar on a log, its cap fallen upside down in the sand, flicking splinters of sun on the house, all but hidden in the dunes, where his wife, his son, his daughter lie