Sanctuary

Sanctuary The screened kitchen door always closed cousins behind it. She wasn't very old when she learned that silence, worn like an old work cap, locked her alone on her side of the door. No one followed to the stackwall shed where wild cats with yellow eyes and no bodies rolled awfully among the lumber. Her grandad was always there, skinning boards with a saw that once popped his thumb from its bed. His trimmed hand feeding the blade would pass over her braided head like a benediction. -Dana Wildsmith The Nerve If my daddy had been one to drink away his pay and blow my school shoes on the blackjack table not doing much right by his family and marking all over the walls the nights he was pretty well lit, then some man like out of some cowboy story rides up to me as if on a horse, a smart-stepping palomino at that, swings down off the thing, and says what I singlemost fear in this round green world, words sounding a lot like: Don't worry no more babydoll, I'll be one to take care of you-well you can doubledog bet I'd say how good, yessir, I been taking care of myself, and travel fast in a whole nother direction-so when I said to you something that jarred open a same kind of nerve of what you singlemost feared in the round green world, that oh really, my mother left like your mother left and we must've been some funny pair left looking down the same sunless airtight gulley calling her back, and I said this thing which sounded a lot like: Poor dollbaby, I'll never do to you what mine did or what yours did-no wonder you didn't even look backwards turning tail down that sunless airtight gulley or say a word about how right smack on the nerve right I was. -Linda P. Burggraf / UU jjlH·'·"1"' *"UUk ^MIlIiIyI)IJyJi 71 ...