 Penguin Random House Audio Presents Song Dogs by Cullen McCann Red for you by Dion Graham Just before I came home to Ireland, I saw my first coyotes. They were strong on a fence post near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Interruption of brown fur against a field of melting snow. Their bodies hanging upside down tied to the post with orange twine. Two neat bullet holes had pierced their flanks where brown merged white. They were foot-dry and rotten with stench. Muzzles and paws hung down in the grass, and their mouths were open, as if about to howl. The hanging was a rancher's warning to other coyotes to stay away from the field. If they trotted nearby, a paw raised to the chest and ear cocked to a sound, a tail held in motion, the rancher would bullet them back to where they came from. But coyotes aren't as foolish as us. They don't trespass or the dead have been. They move on and sing elsewhere, Tuesday. The law of the river. I sat on my backpack behind the hedge where the old man couldn't see me, and watched the slowness of the river and him. Not even the river itself knew it was a river anymore, wide and brown with a few plastic bags sitting in the reeds, yet no longer made a noise at its curves. The piece of styrofoam was wrapped around one of the footbridge poles. Some oil boated lazily on the surface, throwing colors in the afternoon sun. Yet still the old man was fishing away. The line rolled out, catching the light, and the fly landed softly. He flicked it around with his wrist for a minute, slumped his head when he finished each cast, reeled in the slack, and rubbed it his forearm. After a while he went and sat in a red and white striped lawn chair under the branches of the old poplar tree. He turned his head in the direction of the hedge, didn't see me. Leaning backwards in the chair he started fiddling with the fly on the end of the line, put the hook and feathers in his mouth, blew on them, trying to fluff out the dressing. His overcoat hung in an anarchy around him, and his trousers rode up past the ankles of his green wellingtons. When he stood up to take the coat off I was shocked to see the liniment of his body, as thin as the reeds I used to make holy crosses with during February winters. The afternoon wore on, and he left the cork handle propped in lazily at his crotch, leaned down and spat on the ground, wiped some dribble off the bottom of his chin. Every now and then he tipped his hat upwards to the swifts that scissored in the sky, and stared at the lion lying in the water amongst the rubbish. A long time ago, back in the seventies, before the meat factory came, he would bring me down in the morning and sample complete. Ready to continue?