there is an abandoned house at the edge of my grandparents’ property line, behind a fence, barbed and electric. wheatgrass blends into the overgrowth, red fescue, thistle, knotweed. my grandfather tells me it’s haunted by a man whose wife fell down the stairs, and at night, if you listen close, you can hear him hammering the nails his wife tripped over. my grandmother says no man ever lived there. ghosts aren’t real.

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their Jack Russell rolls in freshly cut grass, kicking up clumps of clippings. I climb the fence, and a jolt surges through my stomach, red lines etch a crosshatch into my palms, barbs the shape of snake tongues. I run inside. the dog chases me. he barks when my mother carries me to the couch, lifts my shirt, kisses my stomach, and massages mustard into the burns.

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​we wade in Peabody Creek. she splashes water on my welts, the singe of a cold stream. we drift from the shallow, our soles unable to reach the stones lining the creek. our ears fill with water clouded by sand, by algae green as the eye of a mare. she offers her hand, slick and gripless.

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a mare feeds on apple slices, browning in the morning brine. colts and foals, the color of burned charcoal, graze on the other end of the pen. a colt lies in dirt and pine needles. she says it can’t stay like that for long or else it’ll die. she leaves for work in all black, her palm wet from mare lip.

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I wake at 2 a.m. to the sound of a woman screaming in the pines behind the house.

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I find a brass harmonica in the garage, my breath humid against metal. I play on the porch swing only when sky-shade matches sun rays through sweet tea. a chorus of crickets joins me.

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my grandfather nudges me awake, his calloused hands on my hip. you need to help me mow. I ride on his lap, the vibration of the John Deere bounces my thigh, chatters my teeth. I don’t look back at him. I know he is smiling. his belly prods my back when he laughs. when we finish, he calls me a good boy.

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what my mother calls the dog when plucking rat poison from his paws. a golden eagle circles the sky and swoops. my grandmother grabs her dog by the neck, a stick still in his mouth.

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on the shore of Ediz Hook, my mother lights a cigarette. her mother says stop smoking those cancer sticks. a ferry horn sounds in the distance, beyond the bend of a strait. my mother, knee-deep in the water, wants to swim to the Victoria cliffside and let the waves pin her back against white crag. a gull washes on gravel, hollow, no blood, its stomach split open like cracked birch. the tide builds a sandcastle of its body.

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my mother home from work smells of sweat and gasoline. every night, she runs a dime across a scratcher. she doesn’t win.

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her boyfriend, Daniel, drives up from San Jose. he brings me a homemade slingshot. on the back porch, he lines soda cans on the railing. when I knock one down, she claps, a metallic peal echoes for a moment, how a buckshot in the forest silences crickets.

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my grandfather says a fox screaming sounds like a woman dying.

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on the grass, ​Daniel helps my grandfather build a target out of old particle board. I join them, barefoot, the bottom of my feet itch, a stray nail pierces my heel. I fall on my back. Daniel kneels and places my foot on his knee. he slides the hammer claw along the base of the nail and rips it out, the cold sting of wind. he thumbs the wound with spit. 

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I tell my grandmother a woman in a blue dress walked into the living room. she excuses herself and stands in the kitchen corner, her face in her palms.

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Daniel and my grandfather watch a war documentary on the Panasonic. Daniel puts his black boots, brown with mud, on the glass coffee table. my grandfather, in his recliner, lurches out of sleep and yells take those damn boots off my table before you break it.

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Daniel leaves.

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my mother stands behind his car, brake lights illuminate her face. I will run you over, watch me. she shouts do it. the crunch of gravel under the tire like the shattering of bone.

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​she weeps to a commercial of Shirley Temple dancing on a stoop, her green dress jumps with each stomp. in the blue-white pulse, my mother rocks on the mattress edge, her spine thuds against the windowsill. she holds herself as if hugging the ghost of her grandmother.

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she feeds the horses. from the bedroom window, I watch, my foot too sore to walk on. my grandfather rises from his chair, the TV hums low, the door creaks open. his breath on my neck, his left hand grips my shoulder, his right slides down my spine. the oak sapling we planted yesterday stripped bare by the wind.

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when I start to dig, he tells me: this is how you mercy kill an animal.

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there is dirt beneath my fingernails.