Out of Eden

gone to get the law after her and she was just getting away. She was going to get herself gone before he got there. I was so relieved that I wanted to laugh. She looked so funny going down that road, her fur coat flapping in the wind. A few weeks later I learned that Sue Froney had fallen in the garden and broken her leg. God knows that I didn't want anything to happen to her, but I sure felt a lot safer knowing that she would not be able to walk again for awhile. The last I heard from her she was in a rest home for handicapped people, in another state. I know that she will never be well again. I do not blame her for what she did to me and Willie. I only feel pity. She was sick. I still wake up at night feeling that knife at my neck and knowing what it means to face a disturbed person intent on murder. Those poor people. How awful it must be to live in a world apart from the rest of us. Out of Eden Silence stalks my house. A winged thief whisked away the young, leaving unexplained mysteries of migration. Gone are teddy bears and tinker toys stored in dusty boxes in the attic. Gone are glass jars a boy held aloft to view the pulsing light of fireflies. Dinosaur posters are stuffed in drawers with graded homework done in cursive scrawls. Pinocchio, Rumpelstiltskin, Tom Sawyer call through locks on antique trunks. Fairy tales and stories of creation merge in our minds with new and modern myths. One day my youngest son, a scientist home for the holidays, said with conviction, "The Milky Way galaxy is a living cell in the body of a great celestial god," I was impressed but thought it odd that he had learned so big a thing while I have searched a lifetime for a small deep river twisting like a green serpent out of Eden. Luna Moth Come a hundred miles across the Appalachians, it follows some creek of scent no wider than my hand. On an upwind stump miles out Cranesnest, a female clings to barkshards, pulsing her perfume. Tonight, something inside me wants to fly, wants to turn into the wind, my body as light as a star, my wings like the clavicles of ghosts, lifting, lifting. -Stacy Tuthill -Richard Hague 29 ...