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242 LISTEN HERE HANNAH FOWLER (1956) from Chapter 3 It was black dark when she awakened. She rolled over and edged to the front of the lean-to, looked at the sky. She judged it was near midnight. Certainly the dawn was several hours offyet. She shivered as she crawled out of the warm bed and reached back for the blanket to wrap about her shoulders , yawning. Tice heard her and called out softly in the darkness, "You needn't to git up." She found her gun and made her way over to him. ''I'd ruther to," she said. "Ifyou're aimin' to hunt in the mornin', you'll need a mite ofrest yerself." He grunted and she could see a blur of movement by the trees. He was standing. "If they's e'er trouble," he told her, "hit'll come from acrost the river. I don't look fer it, understand. Hit's jist best to take keer. You got yer gun?" "Yes." "Well, then.... Yer pa ain't stirred. Reckon that rum purely knocked him out." "Hit must of. The sleep'll do him good." "Yes ... well, come daylight, ifI don't stir, call me. Ifhe c'n stand bein' moved, we'd best make camp further away from the river. "Ain't you aimin' on takin' the raft on up the river?" "No, rna'am. That would be the last thing I'd aim on doin'. We'll move an' camp an' wait till yer pa c'n travel. Then we'll strike out through the woods. Well, I'll lay awhile now." Hannah settled herself by the tree. She was fully awake now, felt fresh and rested. There was an open spot in the trees just over the camp and by leaning her head back and resting it against the trunk of the tree she could see the stars, and a little, pale disk ofmoon offin the west. You could tell, she thought, the time of night by the stars and moon, when the night was clear. And you could tell, too, that the winter was over and summer coming on. They moved, the stars did, changing places in the sky with the hours, and changing places as the seasons passed them by. She thought about it, wondered about the stars and moon, wondered why they'd been put there to shine in the night ... why they moved. It wasn't a thing she could study out, though. It was past e'er human body's knowing, she guessed. There were some things that couldn't be studied out. She felt a breath ofwind on her cheek. There, now ... wind was one of JANICE HOLT GILES 243 them. What was it? Where did it come from? What moved it unseen around the world and across the land? It would stir through the night, ruffle the leaves and shake them, bend the limbs-but when the dawn was near, when the dark was just beginning to lift, not light yet but just ready to be, it would quieten as if it listened for the sun. As still as death it would be then, at that time just before the light streaked into the sky, so still that, if you were stirring then, you could hear your own breath coming and going in your throat, and hear your own heart beat. The way ofwind ... it went queer and odd to a human body. And the way of rain, blowing up in the clouds, the clouds splitting and pouring it down. She named over to herself the things she could in no way study out ... wind, the moon and stars, rain, sunlight, clouds, storm, the fall of rivers down the land, the rise and flow of water. There was a power of things, she told herself, no human body could ever know the straight of You could, in time and with study, know the ways ofbirds and animals, and even folks. They had life inside them, they all bled and their hearts beat and they breathed in the air. One way or another they all moved, flew or walked, swam or ran. They all died, too. The sun, now, and the stars, the wind and the rain, the water in the rivers, those things went on forever. How could it be, she wondered, that a thing that lived should come to the end ofits living, and those things that had no life in them should go on...

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