John McManus - Fox Tooth Heart

I stepped into the icy water and sat on Ray’s car hood. I knew he wouldn’t change. “I need you alive,” I told him, taking his hand.

He slipped on the algae but I held on, pulling him toward me. “You were about to kill me,” he said.

“I don’t have anyone else.”

“You’ve got Lisa.”

“I don’t want her.”

“You want me?”

“You’re better than nothing.”

He put his hands in his pockets and kicked at some rocks. “That came out wrong,” I said, and he looked at the shore and said, “No, it’s true.”

The phone purred in my pants. Ray took it out and squinted. It was Tyrone’s.

“This guy says he’s glad I’m online again,” he said.

“I wonder what that could mean.”

Ray pressed his fingertips to the holes in mine. “Can you drive?” he said, glancing at his smashed car. The river was roaring around it, rising toward its broken window. He squeezed my hand. High tide must be on the way, and if mountain rivers had tides, then tides were everywhere. Those lithium-and-lye bottles had tides. Flasks had them; so did tree sap, gas tanks, storm drains, even the blood in my heart. I squeezed back. “So long as we find a dry bag of crystal,” I said, because — here’s how sober I was — I could feel high tide in my veins, surging toward the moon, cresting like it must have done every day of my life.

I would like to thank the following organizations for their support in recent years while I’ve worked on this and other projects: Caldera Arts Center, The Camargo Foundation, The Robert M. MacNamara Foundation, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Fundación Valparaíso, The Corporation of Yaddo, The Brown Foundation Fellows Program at the Dora Maar House, The Ucross Foundation, The Millay Colony for the Arts, The Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and The Creative Capital Foundation. I’m also grateful for the help and support of Jason Cook at Fiddleblack, everyone at Sarabande — especially Sarah Gorham, Kirby Gann, and Kristen Radtke — and my agent, Samantha Shea.

Knox Garvin

JOHN MCMANUSis the author of the novel Bitter Milk and the short story collections Born on a Train and Stop Breakin Down . His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, Oxford American , and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Fellowship of Southern Writers’ New Writing Award, and a Creative Capital Literature grant. He lives in Virginia.