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around our house lot and Stevie stepped into the clearing. Clothes, face, hands streaked with dirt, he smiled at me. Not at his family, or at finding home again. He smiled at me. Later, when his father's rage had passed, the other children sent tearfully to bed, I took my son onto the porch and rocked him a long time. Stevie was so quiet I thought he'd fallen asleep, but then he began to tell me what he d seen. He found silver minnows in the dark creek, followed the water's flow to distant fields. Crouched in weeds, he saw his father's sweaty labor in midday heat, laughed at curses Steven flung at our old mule. Fat groundhogs crept from hillside crevices, and their babies came out to play, ignoring Stevie as though he belonged in that wild place. I rocked till he slept, a limp, warm weight in my arms. I thought of his small body hidden in high grass, watching strange business. I saw, as he had, mystery in a muddy creek. He brought me what he had seen, and locked to a farm I'd grown to hate, I made him my saving. I found my gate. Stevie was lost for years after that, lost Mockingbird Every day the mockingbird shouts the coordinates of its home: west to the holy down to the birch east to the tool shed and up to the porch then tires of singing and swoops to warn the cat that impends trespassits flight like its voice a quarreling of the air. -Jim Clark and wandering, seeing and doing. He occasionally came home, whiskeybreathed , sometimes with women whose eyes turned always to floors or far corners . Stevie's eyes were as bright with wonder and pleasure as theirs were haunted. His father had no time or patience for the boy. Once Stevie brought a guitar and played it for me, singing a silly song he'd made up. One of the lyrics was "My mama gives me money and my daddy gives me hell." Until Stevie died, I bought a new atlas whenever the current one seemed dated, so he could show where he'd been since I'd seen him last. I never mentioned his whiskey; he never talked about the women. But he told me how the desert bloomed an Eden, and one Arizona summer he saw a rare August flood. He showed me marks a Dakota blizzard put on his feet, the time he recklessly hopped a fast freight train from Pierre to Bismarck. He gave me Amarillo, San Francisco, Denver, Boston, Minnesota, bringing pieces of his restless wandering back to that damned farm. He was my gate and dear God, he was my saving. Mountain Treasures Mountain men, faithful, tithe, stock larders for the needy, sing old hymns in chapels glow, teach patience by example: walk old ridges tirelessly and build rock walls to last a hundred years. -Barbara Van Steenburgh 60 ...

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