May B. (11 page)

      There are tracks

      on the edge of the moonlit garden.

      A wolf has been here.

      I am not alone.

      Avery Pritchard told me

      that when his pa’s away

      at night,

      sometimes a pack of wolves surrounds their soddy.

      The wolves sense a difference about the place.

      They howl,

      they scratch,

      but mostly,

      they sit and wait.

      Can they smell that someone’s missing?

      Do they sense the fear inside?

      Mrs. Pritchard tells the children stories,

      presses her forehead against the windowpane,

      and says, “Get on, you!”

      Last spring,

      in the early dawn,

      Mrs. Pritchard took the shotgun

      and waited by the door.

      When she heard the wolf pack stirring,

      she aimed and fired.

      The pack rolled off like summer storm clouds.

      One skinny female lay dead.

      
Avery’s ma dragged that wolf to the door

      and left it,

      a hairy mound,

      at the entrance to their soddy.

      All day she stepped over it

      when she went to milk

      or fetch water.

      She wouldn’t let anyone else outside.

      When Mr. Pritchard arrived,

      she didn’t say a word,

      just handed him the shovel

      and shut the door.

      Avery’s pa buried the wolf out back.

      Now,

      when he has business in town,

      he makes sure to hurry home

      come nightfall.

      Mr. Oblinger

      took the rifle.

      When Miss Sanders came

      to teach our school,

      she was the first to understand

      I could get the words

      from the book

      to my mind

      more easily if I listened to lessons.

      She didn’t force me to read

      in front of everyone.

      Once she brought me

      a book about a boy named Tom Sawyer

      because she thought I’d find Tom like Hiram.

      She read it during recess

      just for me.

      But when Miss Sanders married,

      she left our school

      and Teacher came.

      The garden has given up

      its last yield.

      Some withered string beans,

      a dozen potatoes,

      five ears of corn,

      one small head of cabbage,

      crawling with bugs.

      Days and nights run together.

      Sometimes I forget how

      I got to this place

      or why I am still here.

      Maybe it is October?

      There was frost

      this morning,

      but it melted quickly.

      There’s no time left for waiting.

      There is nothing holding me here.

      I can’t abide this place any longer.

      I pack my pillowcase:

      one extra dress wrapped around my worthless reader,

      one stocking filled with corn bread,

      one with biscuits.

      On top of this,

      two ears of corn

      and a cup.

      I button Ma’s fine boots.

      I wish I had insisted on keeping Hiram’s old ones,

      but I know Ma gave me hers

      for herself as much as me,

      a message to Mrs. Oblinger,

      fresh from the city,

      showing that women out here still have some grace.

      My feet will hurt, I reckon,

      before I make it far.

      The broom’s my only weapon.

      I think on Ma,

      the way she swatted Hiram when he snatched the bacon.

      
I grasp the handle,

      throw my pillowcase over one shoulder,

      and step out onto the prairie.

      How did Pa get here?

      I see nothing to point the way.

      I walk alongside the Oblingers’ little creek,

      hoping it will lead to the river,

      to a neighbor,

      to the outskirts of town.

      The grass has dried to silver-green;

      it slaps my legs as I push forward.

      Sweat trickles between my shoulder blades.

      Impossible to think there was frost just this morning.

      I have only the stream

      and endless grasses to guide me.