Danny Kowalski woke up the way he woke up most days: with the taste of last night in his mouth and the knowledge that today would not be better than yesterday.

The mobile home was cold. The heater had died three weeks ago and Petrov, the park owner, had not replaced it. Danny had stopped asking. Asking implied that Petrov owed him something, and Danny had learned over two years of unemployment that the world did not owe anyone anything.

He made coffee on the propane stove and sat at the table and looked out the window at the back lot. The lot was flat concrete now, which had been a problem once. Petrov wanted the lot clear because the mosquitoes in the old pond had been complained about by the new residents—the ones who had moved in with their manufactured homes and their manicured lawns and their understanding that some people had lived here before property values existed.

Danny remembered filling the pond. He had done it himself, with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, on a Saturday morning when Lisa was visiting her sister and the park was quiet except for the distant sound of a lawnmower. He had pushed the earth over the edge of the pond in slow, deliberate motions, like a man burying something he was not sure was dead.

The snake had been in the pond. He was not sure how he knew this—knew it in the way you know that a room has been entered when you are alone in it. The water had been still the morning he arrived, and something in the stillness felt wrong, like a held breath. He had looked down and seen the snake, dark against the murky bottom, coiled around a piece of driftwood. It had not moved when he approached. It had simply lifted its head and looked at him.

Danny had not known what to do. He was not a man who dealt with snakes. He dealt with unemployment checks and expired coupons and the slow erosion of a marriage that had never been strong enough to survive the rust belt.

He had watched the snake for maybe ten seconds. Then the snake had swum away, disappearing into the dark water like a thought disappearing from a mind that did not want to think it anymore.

The next time Danny saw the snake was in his dream. He had been drinking again—cheap beer from the discount store, the kind that tasted like metal and regret—and the dream came uninvited. The snake was on the concrete surface where the pond used to be, and it was speaking in a voice that was not a voice, the way some sounds are felt rather than heard.

"You protected me once," the voice said. "Now I ask you to keep protecting what is mine. Do not let them take the water."

Danny had woken up laughing. He laughed because what else did you do when a snake in a dream told you to protect a pond that no longer existed? He laughed and the laugh turned into something that was almost a cough and then he was drinking again because the laughing had made him thirsty and the drinking made him forget for a while.

Lisa came home that afternoon with a grocery bag and a face that told Danny she had been crying. She did not say anything for a long time. She set the bag on the counter and leaned against it and looked at the floor.

"I'm pregnant," she said.

Danny felt something move inside him, like a gear shifting in an engine that had not been used in years. "Okay," he said. Which was the right thing and the wrong thing and everything in between.

Lisa nodded. She had expected that response. She had also expected many other responses and she had not known which one she wanted.

They talked about it after dinner. Danny cooked spaghetti because it was cheap and because Lisa liked it, and they ate in silence while the rain tapped against the metal roof. When they finished talking, the talk had gone in circles. They could afford the prenatal visit. They could not afford the visit after that. They could move to Pittsburgh where Lisa's brother lived. They could stay in Yangstown where Danny's mother lived and who would not welcome them. They could get a divorce and Lisa could raise the child alone, which would be easier in some ways and harder in others.

None of the options felt like a solution. They felt like choosing which wall to walk into.

Petrov raised the rent the next month. Danny could not pay it. Petrov gave him a week to vacate.

Danny sat on the bench outside the mobile home and watched the concrete where the pond had been. The concrete had cracked in places, and weeds were growing through the fissures. He had not noticed them before.

A small snake emerged from one of the cracks in the concrete. It was brown with a pale stripe down its back—a corn snake, the kind that lived in barns and ate mice. It moved slowly, unbothered by Danny's presence, and crossed the concrete in a straight line before disappearing through another crack and into the earth below.

Danny watched it go. He did not know if it was the same snake or a different one or a snake at all. It did not matter. The snake was here. The pond was gone. The snake was here anyway.

He went inside and packed a bag. Not because he had decided anything—because doing something, anything, was better than doing nothing, and packing a bag was something.

Lisa watched him pack. She did not ask where they were going. She had stopped asking that question months ago, when the not-knowing became more painful than any answer.

Danny locked the mobile home, handed the key to Petrov at the office, and walked to the car—a Ford that started only when it wanted to and refused to start when they needed it most.

They drove east. Not Pittsburgh. Not anywhere specific. Just east, because the sun came up in the east and Danny wanted to see it, if only once, before the next time he had to choose between the walls.

The snake was still there. That was the only thing Danny knew for certain.

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