It was her mother’s handwriting. When her mother called and I answered the phone, she didn’t acknowledge me, didn’t ask me how I was, what I had been up to, or even what we had been up to. The note was addressed only to Katie and that annoyed me, made me want to throw it out, along with the tape. I didn’t, though. I cooled down.

I decided to wait for Katie to watch the tape, so I put on coffee, then decided I wouldn’t wait and sat in the family room, on one of our heavy rugs, and put in the tape. It began with a view of her house in Iowa, and I couldn’t believe someone would send such a thing. We had just moved, after all. After watching a minute, though, the tape felt gentle to me, desperate even. The camera zoomed close to a fuzzy window, then zoomed out again, bringing almost the entire house in clear, the white siding dirty in spots, the blue shutters around the windows faded grey. A wind was going and the tall tree on the right side of the house rustled. The tree trunk bent in the middle, away from the house, as if trying to get out of the shade, and I had never noticed this before. The camera danced from the tree to the house. Wind made a hollow gushing sound in the camera, but other than that, there was no voice, no commentary. I wondered about that for a second, but then knew there didn’t need to be a voice. Katie already knew all the details. The camera readjusted, followed the path of the front walk up to the front door, then panned up to the roof. Slow. The hand of the camera tried to remain steady but jerked up to the top windows, but still, the camera moved around the house like a blind man’s hands would, feeling it out, loving it. A quick cut to a shot of the empty road leading to the house, a soybean field to the left, a white and blue sky, clouds motionless, and again, no other sound but the wind. I got a sense of the quietness of things. Then the dog jumped into the shot and Mrs. Cline’s voice said to sit, sit. The dog whined and barked, its nose in the camera. The next shot began in the upstairs bedroom, the one I liked to sit in, and the camera zoomed in close to the window. I could see the shadows of leaves in the window. Inside the house, it was even quieter, and as the camera panned around the room, I could hear Mrs. Cline’s feet shuffling and her breathing. The camera stayed in the room, zooming in on the bedspread, along the corner of the blue wall, to the oak dresser, then panned out, finding the whole room. In a corner of the room, above the bed on the dull white ceiling was a water stain. The tape went on like this, recording each room, ending with a shot of the backyard. Katie fell asleep to it that night, and each night afterward for a week or so.

Six bears? Katie said.

Six, Ronnie said, pouring himself another cup of some spiked cider. Two with a bow, he said. But I used all that goddamn meat. And I’ve used the hides. This one here, the big guy, I kept. The other ones, I gave away. That animal gave its life.

We sat in the Telford’s house around a coffee table, behind Katie a fire in the fire place. Out one of the windows, Blacktail Mountain was visible in the darkening sky. When I looked out the window the first time, I thought it was night, but I was really looking at the dark of the mountain, and when I went close up to the window, a grey afternoon sky outlined Blacktail. It was a strange feeling, that mountain looming so close to the house. On the walls of the Telford’s place were all the typical things. A couple deerheads, antlers, and we sat on a bearskin rug, one of Ronnie’s, the big guy he kept calling it. A wood gun case with a glass door sat in the corner of the room, in place of a china closet. The house made our geology cabin, with the little stove and the laptops on plastic desks, look ridiculous.

He’s never even picked up a gun, Katie said, looking at me. He wouldn’t cut meat at my parents’ butcher shop.

Ronnie smiled, his teeth showing, that little black hole at the top of his front tooth. He and Katie were doing all the talking. Tammy got up either to get more cider or to bring out more cheese and crackers. The cheese, some block of white stuff, was very good.

I prefer not dealing with dead animals all day, I said.

You’re not a vegetarian, Ronnie said. We’ve got some good elk I wanted you to taste.

I shook my head. No, I said. I like meat.

Ronnie laughed hard. Well, I like meat, too, he said, and continued laughing. I like meat, he said. That’s funny. He slapped me on the back and got serious looking. It’s the blood, he said. I know. It’s got a smell to it, even all cleaned up. I don’t enjoy that part of it.

I felt like saying I had a degree in geology, two really, but I didn’t. I didn’t like being in the Telford’s house. It was a forty-five minute drive from our house and meeting at their place was becoming a regular thing. I’d already missed a couple euchre nights with Daryl and Tad.

The first thing I killed was a squirrel, Ronnie said. I was maybe ten or twelve or so. I killed it with just a twenty-two, picked it out of a tree. I was a good shot even then. Well, I was going to leave that little piece of shit. I was ten or whatever. No respect for this animal. No idea I’d just took its life.

My dad had me kill a deer with him when I was about ten, Katie said, sounding like a little girl. We butchered it together. He taught me how to hide the thing, drain it, do it all.

Ronnie leaned on the coffee table with both elbows. That’s the way to do it, he said. I can tell something about your old man right there. My own dad wasn’t quite like that. He wasn’t as hands on and there as yours, he said.

The women were listening hard. Ronnie’s face flickered in the firelight.

After I shot that squirrel, well I’m off to shoot something else, he said. But my father finds that squirrel, and he can see the gunshot in it. He finds me around the house, aiming at god knows what. I remember that. He found me lining up some other animal. To this day, I don’t remember what, but there I am, lining up this other animal after I killed this little squirrel. And he yanks the gun out of my hands, empties the bullets, and tells me I can’t shoot another goddamn thing until I finish that squirrel. So I go to throw the thing away, thinking I’ll toss the fucker in the trash. No. No deal. He makes me skin the thing, gut it, build a fire, cook the thing, and eat it. I didn’t shoot another thing for a year.

Katie kept her eyes on Ronnie, waiting. Ronnie grabbed my right shoulder hard, smiling across the table into the fire, his eyes set in shadow.

Another tape from Iowa arrived. Katie watched it then put it upstairs in the junk room with the first tape, the deer antlers, the hatchet, the baby furniture. She went to Telford’s a couple times a week or more and we scheduled New Year’s with them, after they got back from a trip to visit Ronnie’s daughters. I found myself alone in the house after work most days. I often went upstairs and got the tapes. I’d sit with the lights off, watching our old campus pass by on video, trying to see us into the little shops, walking along the roads, before we had any worries, when it was just the two of us, when we lived slow. The tape cut from our campus to the little town, into the Cline’s butcher shop where a man I’ve never seen before waved at the camera, and then the camera dove back out onto the street, and I tried to put us back there, together, when we liked to be together so much, but in my head all I could see was Katie. The memory of her walking on the Iowa street; the moon in the sky lighted her face grey. I wanted to be back there, in Iowa. I remembered walking back from the butcher shop, how she came to meet me and walked me home. She stopped to look in a window at clothes. There were two of her, one on the sidewalk, one in the window.

Let’s play euchre tonight with Tad and Daryl, I said. We haven’t seen them much lately.

You see them everyday, Katie said.

This is true, I said. But that’s in a work environment.

A work environment? she said. All you guys do is jerk off all day.

I think you’re confused, I said. That’s what you do all day.

She took a spoonful of yogurt. Have you tried the key lime pie kind? she said. It’s delicious.

Then she flung a spoonful of yogurt at me. It hit my shirt. She laughed. I’m sorry, she said. I am. She wiped the yogurt off my shirt and said, I’m going to the Telford’s tonight, she said. You can come if you want. You know, I want you to come.

I washed my hands in the sink and she put a hand on the back of my neck. Why? I said.

Because I want to be with you, she said.

At the Telford’s, I said.

I already told them I’d be there.

Why do you like it there? I said. It’s cheesy and silly and all Ronnie does is tell old war stories.

Jesus, she said. It’s better than here. It makes me feel like I’m at home.

How’s that possible? I said. There are dead animals staring at you from every angle of the place.

It’s possible. And those animals were killed for food, she said. You better get used to it, too. He asked me to help out on the ranch and I think I’m going to do it.

Do whatever you want, I said, and walked outside to get away from her.

Neither of us went anywhere that night, and I slept upstairs in the loft, surrounded by boxes.

Sometime before Christmas, I heard Katie get up early. We’d been sleeping in separate rooms. I had taken the loft upstairs, the converted living room. We didn’t have a sofa up there, but I put all the boxes into a crawl space and made a bed on the ground with blankets, the crib and baby furniture in the corner of the room.

I woke up to the sound of the front door opening and closing, and I went to the small triangular window. I saw our Jeep SUV in the driveway, and Katie and Ronnie were piling suitcases into the back of it and into the backseats. It was early, snow had recovered the other snow, making everything white again. A grey light made shadows down in the pines. Everything was quiet. My little room was quiet, and I could just hear the noises Katie and Ronnie made putting the suitcases in the car; their feet had already cleared a path in the snow from the front door to the back of the Jeep, and I listened to the gravel sound. They said little. I put my ear up to the window and felt the cold. They made trip after trip, first the suitcases, then boxes of things, stereo stuff, movies, and I listened to all the junk quietly rattling when they brought it out. I closed my eyes and listened to it. Then I opened my eyes and watched. Katie must have not been able to see in my window. Sometimes she looked up to the loft to see if my light had come on. She’d stop what she was doing and stand, looking up to my window. It was strange to see her face looking that way, watching for me. After some time, I went downstairs, went out the back door and stood by the car. She came from the front door and saw me right away.

I’m not moving out, she said.

I didn’t say you were, I said.

I’m just taking some of our stuff to the Telfords’. They want me to watch their place while they’re on vacation. I’m taking care of the goats and horses and everything. It’s just for a little while, she said.

You’re taking a lot of stuff for a little while, I said. Are you sure you need it all?

Probably not, but I just want to be sure. It’s my stuff anyway.

So let’s be sure then, I said. I went inside and Ronnie was huddled over some drawer in the kitchen. He looked at me. I started in the family room. I grabbed all the copies of National Geographic that were hers and put them in a box. I pulled some decorative tea set down from the bookshelf, a tea set I’d bought, and put that in. I filled the box up with CDs, mine, hers, it didn’t matter. I went upstairs and grabbed the hatchet she’d found, the moose antlers and put those in the box. Then I brought the box out to the car. My hands were freezing, holding the thing, and I dropped it in the back of the Jeep. Clouds broke in the sky and I saw a little blue behind the grey covering.

That’s not all mine, she said. I don’t want any antlers.

I got them for you, I said.

You didn’t get them for me.

Ronnie clapped his hands together and said, Anything else?

Yeah, I said. There’s a lot more. Fuck. There’s fucking plenty more.

Let’s go, Ronnie, Katie said. This is all I need.

Ronnie looked at me. Then he went and got in his truck. Katie got the box I had just put in the Jeep and set it in the snow.

Take this back in, she said.

I didn’t pay her any attention and went back inside the house. I could see my breath in the air. There’s a lot more of your shit, I yelled out to Katie. I stood in the family room, no longer angry, just tired and embarrassed. I heard the Jeep start up and then Ronnie’s diesel truck. I waited until I heard the truck going and then went outside again. Ronnie’s truck was already down the driveway, signaling to turn onto the road. I was glad he was gone. The tires of the Jeep crunched snow and Katie tapped the brakes, rolled down her window.

It’s only for a few weeks, she said. I’ll invite you for dinner some nights. Ronnie told me I can cook whatever deer meat I want.

I didn’t say anything for a minute. Exhaust from the Jeep curled around my legs.

Take care of the goat, she said, and started to roll up her window.

I’ll surprise you, I said fast, putting my hand on the window.

She didn’t say anything to this. Her window buzzed and rolled down again and I took my hand away.

I’ll get Daryl to drive me and I’ll just surprise you, I said.

She smiled at me and then rolled up her window, waved, and drove off.

I picked up the box off the ground and brought it inside. I sat on the rug in front of the television. Snow clung to the bottom of the box and melted into the carpet. I thought about Katie living in the Telfords’ house, cooking herself dinner, feeding the horses on the ranch, taking care of the few chickens they had. I thought about her alone, moving through their rooms, maybe looking in their drawers, trying on some of Tammy’s clothes, wearing overalls to do ranch work, stepping into Ronnie’s boots for a quick walk to get the mail. I went upstairs and got the videos her mother had sent. I decided that I might drive them over and bring the goat, too; I’d help out with the ranch and feed the animals and we’d ride horses and I’d get my work done that way. But it would be her way, too. Then I realized I didn’t have a car. I sat on the floor again, the videos in my lap, and pictured the drive over with Daryl, how I’d wait to do it for a few days, maybe a week, but then go around dusk. I would wander the property like a stranger, pretending to be lost and in need of shelter, would creep close to the house and peek in the windows, and see her through a window as though I’d never seen her before; I’d watch her doing whatever she might be doing, watching TV, calling her parents, sleeping, and then I’d just walk right in.