Carnegie and Frick sold Champlain’s rolled steel for a penny a foot. In the middle of this grubby miracle, somewhere around the beginning of the twentieth century, the grandfather of the dead man in the snow was a boy. Dale Wylie stood in the brickworks baseball diamond and watched his brother, Max, sprint around the corner and across the crushed red field. Dale had no time for rising excitement; his brother was there so quickly. Max panted his urgent message: “I found a dead dog.” A line drive cracked by, to the howled outrage of Dale’s teammates. Like Dale cared about the other boys when there was a dead dog waiting. His brother led him by the hand through the quiet streets of small but respectable houses, down to the intersection of the ravine and the train tracks. Under a mantle of pine branches lay a dead husky, its eyes already consumed to squandered holes by the tenderness of maggots. “You want to bring the boys down to see?” Dale asked. “Nah. They’ll just poke it.
