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bright
          yourself!”
          What does it matter if she can’t hear me?
          If it was long ago
          she called me stupid?
          “Hope you enjoyed your ride
          on that lovely prairie day!”
          I lift my dusty skirts,
          sashay like someone fancy,
          curtsy to the cabbage,
          think on the missus and her eastern ways:
          good riddance.

71

          I have almost eaten
          to the bottom of the apple barrel.

72

          When the world is black,
          I’m most alone,
          the silence thick around me.
          I pray for wind,
          for rain,
          for the meadowlark
          to break
          the constant pound of quiet.
          What is that?
          What is at the door?

73

          A rasping sound,
          a muffled breath,
          a whine
          outside.
          Then, nothing.
          My pulse surges through my fingertips
          as I crack open the door.
          Scratches line the heavy wood,
          yellow threads cut deeply in the boards.
          There are tracks
          on the edge of the moonlit garden.
          A wolf has been here.
          I am not alone.

74

          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.

75

          Mr. Oblinger
          took the rifle.

76

          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.

77

          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