"The home of my birth," said Everett to the lake. "My very cradle. All blown to bits in the name of hydroelectrics. You call that progress?" The lake lapped grayly back at him. It still swam with silt and debris.

"Well, I can't disagree, really. We all gotta make sacrifices. Why, that's just the truth, in' it. The goddamn truth." Everett ran his hands over his hair and, without warning, roared as he kicked a healthy clod of mud off into the water. He did it again, and when he couldn't find another suitable chunk, he kicked a piece of tree-limb. He half-crossed his eyes in pain, and once he'd hopped in a circle, cussing, for another few seconds he sighed and acknowledged–re-acknowledged–that no human eye (let alone hand) would ever find that ring again.

"Lord have mercy," he said darkly. As phrases go, it didn't really pack the punch he'd been reaching for, but he was starting to exhaust himself. He'd been there since noon.

He would have to buy another one. He felt the wind go out of him. That was all he could do; he'd have to prove in cash how much he wanted her, if he couldn't prove it muckraking.

"I couldn't even afford the last one!" he exclaimed incredulously. "And it was back in god-damned-twenty-mother-scratchin'-six!"

Everett was wiry, then. He didn't have a hair of gray on his head, and he was a bailiff. Imagine. A bailiff. Well, in the morning he was a bailiff. In the afternoon he went door-to-door selling toilet water and compact mirrors, and at night he either peddled moonshine–he was never a runner, just a sales representative–or tomcatted around Ithaca, as much as one can tomcat in a town of 862 when there is a prohibition on alcohol, gambling, and business on Sundays. Mostly he tomcatted around Penny. She was rarely impressed, per se, but she seemed to enjoy it. Sometimes she was even gracious, and one time she was especially gracious, and nine months later Ulyssa Penelope Victory McGill came into the world squawling.

Fast times, they were, and even with two salaries and a great deal of white whiskey changing hands, it was all Everett could do to get them a starter home and a ride to the courthouse. He bought the rings two days prior to the ceremony off a humorless Cherokee woman in Canton. They practically matched, and Everett had, by and large, thought about other things since.

He studied his own ring. The 6-karat finish had worn off between his fingers years ago, but if he kept them closed, it was still a perfectly adequate, brassy sort of affair.

He held it his mouth a lot in prison. It was only strange if it wasn't secret. He never did it before then, but it suddenly, one morning, became an instinct. It tasted like a coin, and it was safer than he was. He put it in his pocket when he slept, though, in case he managed to swallow it. There was a green patch just above his left nipple to remind him. He assumed it would fade. Like a bruise. Though it had occurred to him that it might be indelible.

But lots of guys get tattoos in prison. Everett couldn't watch–he'd always gotten faint at the thought of needles.

Not many people, as far as he knew, risked choking on their wedding ring, but he supposed they'd keep quiet about it if they did.

He guessed he'd miss his ring, too, if he had swallowed it, or had it pinched off him, or lost it in the flood.

He wouldn't turn his nose up at his own loving, charming, long-suffering husband for that, though. No he wouldn't. If nothing else, there were certain itches he hadn't scratched in a long, long time. A long time…

"Well that's enough of that," he said aloud.

"We can't do this no more."

Delmar raised an eyebrow and turned his face to Pete for a full, long second, on the off-chance he might have something more to say this time. Pete wasn't looking at him, though, and he didn't say anything else. Delmar leaned onto his knees again, and ran his thumb around the bowl of his new pipe. It was a good one. Symmetrical.

"Figure Everett's got any tobaccer on the place?" he asked.

"Hmph," said Pete. With a fair deal of rustling he settled back into the bench, hands on his knees and chin on his chest. Over the course of the last hour, Pete's eyes had been steadily disappearing from view. Pete preferred to see the world through his eyebrows if it wasn't to his liking. Delmar knew this, and he hoped to God it meant that Pete was finally tired of sitting in the park. He'd been determined to let the man have his fun; after 13 years he deserved it. But Delmar had downed three pots of coffee that morning just to see what would happen. What happened was he could feel his heartbeat in his neck and the grass, on an individual level, had gotten more interesting. He had twelve or thirteen pipes now. He was out of corncobs.

"Delmar!" Delmar jumped. It was a fifth-or-sixth-try sort of address. Pete's eyes were open again, and darting between his. Delmar blinked.

"Yeah, Pete?"

"You hear what I said?"

"We cain't do this no more?"

"I said this is vagrancy. You sit around any one place long enough and you're a vagrant, and you can get the law on you fo' vagrancy."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, and we cain't affo'd no law on us now, not right now we been pardoned and turned right around and stoled a–" Pete lowered his voice. "Well, you know well as I what we stoled, it ain't impo'tant, what's impo'tant is you and me is tempting fate something awful and besides, there's ho'se flies out bad and we're liable to contract some sorta disease, if they don't eat us alive first. And we ain't got no money. And we ain't about to find none cooling our heels right here like a couple a' lumps on a log."

"That's true," said Delmar. Pete pulled Delmar up by the arm, and Delmar clamped his pipe–his best yet by far–between his teeth and smiled. "So what're we gonna do?"