The smell of burning leaves permeated the afternoon air. I sat sipping warm cider, smelling the stench of rubber being made as it mingled with the burning of the leaves in the neighborhood. The ash from my cigarette fell onto the wooden floor of the porch when the screendoor slammed.

Betsy stepped onto the porch. She handed me another mug, and I took it from her gratefully as she took my cooling cider from me and lit a cigarette.

“What do you think we should do?” she asked quietly.

I sipped slowly from my mug, knowing that it was hot whiskey before she had handed it to me.

“I guess we rake the leaves back into the stove,” I said.

We had been raking leaves all afternoon. We’d rake them into an old brick stove that the previous owners of the house had built. Once it was full we started the fire and kept raking. We’d sit into the dark with blankets wrapped around us, watching the embers glow orange, until the last of them had burnt to black. We’d unwrap the blankets from around us and go inside. Go to bed.

“No,” Betsy said, “I don’t mean the leaves.” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We could take them to the river.”

“We can’t do that,” she said.

“Why not?” I said, sipping my whiskey. “If we feed them, we’ll have adopted them.”

The crawled over and around my feet on the porch, mewing, lapping milk from the tin Betsy had set out for them.

“You’ve already fed them” I said. “It’s the river or the kitchen.”

It was getting colder. The sun was disappearing quickly behind the dingy buildings.

We had found them that afternoon, crawling around in the leaves inside the old brick stove amongst the trash and branches.

What if we had burned them? Betsy had asked when we heard them crying.

What if we had, I thought.