Awake in the cramped canvas tent she shivered through a stubborn night wavering towards dawn.

His gun with its ivory handle bequeathed by his Belgian father and father’s father, silent and still in its leather case. Last night with a nervous jerk her elbow spilled his second bottle of Bordeaux.

Sorry! With visage red as claret, he pressed the blunt barrel to her throat. In the dark, his breath crowded her - she twisted in the blankets to avoid the foul draft.

What if she hadn’t winced, if she just smiled and swilled with him?

But she was frightened he would regrasp that ivory handle, or he would shove her through the molding flap that was their door.

She feared she must pack her satchel and exit: text books, shampoo for rare straw-colored hair, the faux tortoise shell comb he had bought for her.

Faint, then closer, she heard the frenzied barking of stray dogs in that Pennsylvania countryside.

She knew dogs don’t leave on their own four feet, they are dumped on the road: tongues hanging out, eyes wide and wild with searching, loping alongside semis bearing down.

She knew dogs stash their tails between their shaky legs and gaze up as a man they fear pours scant chow into a crock. Wave their frail tails.

She knew out there, spaniels and their mongrel brethren licked with delicate tongues sharp-edged cans empty of beans. She heard firecrackers pepper.

Men who romanced guns?

She envisioned berries of blood popping on a furry neck, feebling a shoulder, dying slow as a toad. The barking ceased. She shuddered.

The sun gleamed around the edges of gunmetal clouds. She still lay quiet.

He had roused himself, purple-lidded, lips a skinny line. Brewed their coffee bitter as she liked it. He thrust down five wrinkled bills towards her school tuition, hurried out for his daily meeting. She heard him pump the coughing car, screech onto a stretch of road rank with bumps and craters.

When he returned she watched him replay his confession to the group.

Their eyes riveted on him. He stammered then said it out: he had swallowed the wine like a wounded bull its own blood, no way to stem it. He had scared her with a gun, he had fallen from ger grace again.

How could he repair? She glanced at the ivory handle napping in its case. She listed for the confusion of barking dogs. But there was no echo.