All of it so still and unmoving, the stars so bright. She sat hugging her knees and watching the specks of stars in the sky above her. She was thirsty but she feared picking her way down the muddy bank and the snakes she could A creek ran over snapped pilings and faintly gleaming rocks below her. Once she stopped to rest on a narrow bridge and sat down on a timber studded with nailheads. She kept her head down as she walked and she listened to the night things thatĬalled in the ditches and out past the stands of cane and in the clumps of trees that rose from the river bottom. Or ride a bicycle up and down theįlat land with the water always shining out there beyond the shore and birds soaring like in the pictures she had seen of places like that. She imagined one solid place where she could stay and maybe she could somehow send for the others then. Where she would have her own groceries and watch television whenever she wanted to. She imagined groves of citrus trees and sunny days picking the fruit and a tiny house She knew it would be warmer in the winter and that one thing drove her in that direction more than anything else. More than once she stopped and looked back up into the ridges that stood behind her, thinking things over, but each time she shook her head and went on.

She could hear cars passing down the asphalt but she was still a long way from that. House lights winked through the treesĪs she walked and swung her purse from her hand.

Alone for the first time in the world and full dark coming quickly. She came down out of the hills that were growing black with night, and in the dusty road her feet found small broken stones that made her wince.

Fay by larry brown