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between a dented station wagon without tires and the gutted cab of a half-ton truck. She dragged out a dense yellow bale. "I think I could fit three of those in the back, don't you?" I couldn't leave just a single dollar bill. LaDonna gave me a quick, and I thought grateful, glance as she reached down for two more wired bundles. I helped her carry them to the car, and we wedged them in the trunk. "Was that a dollar and a half each?" I tried. "A dollar." I knew I couldn't include any sort of tip and I counted out three dollars. As she took the money up to the trailer I turned the car around. "That elm's going to die with all that mistletoe choking it." Maude's voice blared from the back seat as LaDonna came to the car again. After I drove through the gate this time, LaDonna returned to the car and left the barbed wire on the ground. "You forgot to close it," Maude said. "They've sold off the cows, Momma, and he s dying." She turned toward the back seat, her face blossoming with plum-colored blotches. "He's not dead yet, is he?" "Not yet, but he's . . ." I glanced in the rearview mirror at Maude's flinty profile against the glare of the arid road and hillside. "Then close the gate," she said. Expectation Tomorrow is the red-ripe taste of tomato on my tongue from the moment when that tiny seed drops from my fingers into hills of dark mountain soil. Time has pulverized that soil from earth s oldest heights once jagged as the Rockies' peaks but mounded now like warm breasts softened by winter's wind and rain. I dip water clear and cold from Corn Creek to quicken life within the seed, instantly see leaves unfurl, blossoms yellow as another sun springing into green globes kissed by light into the tart flesh I see myselfslicing onto my plate tomorrow when this expectation will fill my mouth with warm juice, stain my lips, my tongue tomato red. -Bettie Sellers 66 ...

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