trust find her at home when he arrived; but a message (for she hadn’t had time to telegraph)...

Read the selection and choose the best answer to each question. Then fill in the answer on your answer document.

Trustby Susan Kinsolving

Trust that there is a tiger, muscular1Tasmanian, and sly, which has never been

seen and never will be seen by any humaneye. Trust that thirty thousand sword-

5 fish will never near a ship, that farfrom cameras or cars elephant herds livelong elephant lives. Believe that beesby the billions find unidentified flowerson unmapped marshes and mountains. Safe

10 in caves of contentment, bears sleep.Through vast canyons, horses run while slowlysnakes stretch beyond their skins in the sun.I must trust all this to be true, thoughthe few birds at my feeder watch the window

15 with small flutters of fear, so like my own.

“Trust” from The White Eyelash, copyright © 2003 by Susan Kinsolving. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

1 The Tasmanian tiger was the largest carnivorous marsupial of modern times. The last known member of the species died in captivity in 1936. In the 1960s, naturalists searching northwesternTasmania found footprints and scat that may have belonged to a Tasmanian tiger, but no conclusive evidence has been found of the animal’s continued existence in the wild.

6

Read the next two selections and answer the questions that follow.

Tehuelcheby Gustavo Bondoni

1 “What’s wrong with her?”

2 “We don’t know.”

3 Dr. Alejandro Benetti shook his head in frustration. Every time an economic opportunity convinced him to leave the capital, it was the same story. Small-town nurses were always extremely willing and helpful, but their training left a lot to be desired. The further one got from Buenos Aires, the worse it became, and when one reached small resort towns in Patagonia, it was necessary to keep a close eye on the staff, for the patients’ sake.

4 “Is she showing any symptoms?”

5 “No, the people at the home brought her in because they say she wasn’t looking well. I looked her over, and she seems to be healthy—but very, very old.” Carlos Ramírez was one of the better nurses the doctor had encountered, but perhaps it was just his turn to show the gaps in his preparation.

6 “Did you ask her what was wrong?”

7 “Of course, but . . . She doesn’t speak any Spanish.”

8 “A foreigner?” It wouldn’t have surprised Alejandro at all. During the winter months, Esquel filled up with Brazilians and Europeans, though why an old lady would come to ski or practice extreme sports was beyond him.

9 “No. She was born ten kilometers away. She’s Tehuelche.”

10 “Tehuelche?”

11 He shrugged. “The natives that used to live here. They’re all gone now.”

12 “Let me see her.”

13 The old woman was just as advertised. Her dark face was lined with chasms and crevasses which deepened as she smiled. There seemed to be nothing outwardly amiss, yet the director of the nursing home had been adamant that there was something wrong with her.

14 Alejandro’s examination brought no obvious problems to light, and his questions, asked out of habit, received incomprehensible replies or sad

smiles. Out in the corridor again, he cornered Carlos and the director of the nursing home. “Is there anyone who speaks Tehuelche?”

15 The director, a fiftyish woman with platinum hair, replied. “No. We’ve never needed it before, since she was speaking Spanish perfectly until yesterday. We don’t even know if what she’s speaking is actually even Tehuelche or just gibberish.”

16 Well, at least now Alejandro knew what had been disturbing the director so badly. When one of your patients suddenly forgets how to communicate with you, you look for an expert opinion.

17 “Well, does she have any family? Someone who might know how to talk to her?”

18 “She has one adult granddaughter who lives in Buenos Aires. We’ve gotten in touch with her and she’s flying in tomorrow.” The director hesitated. “We’d prefer it if she stayed in the clinic tonight.”

19 Alejandro sighed. The nursing home was covering its bases—if the old woman died, they’d have nothing to do with it. Worse, there was no point in arguing, because the director probably knew someone on the city council who had a cousin on the hospital’s board . . .

20 He just hoped the granddaughter could be of some use.

***

21 Designer clothes? Blue eyes? “You don’t look much like your grandmother.”

22 Jimena smiled. “A Welsh grandfather and an Italian mother will do that to you.”

23 “Have they told you the situation?”

24 She nodded. “I don’t think I can help much, but I want to be there for her.”

25 “Do you speak Tehuelche?”

26 Jimena laughed, a tinkling, pleasant sound that cut through her concern and brightened her features. “You don’t know much about the Tehuelche people, do you?”

27 “Well, I know what kills them, and how to keep that from happening. Everyone is pretty much the same on the inside, you know.”

28 Her face spoke her disbelief, and she went on. “Tehuelche is a dying language. A few years ago, there were four native speakers, all very old. I

haven’t seen any new statistics lately, but it might be safe to assume that my grandmother is the last one alive. She’s ninety-three, you know.”

29 “I didn’t know. The home said she was in her late eighties.”

30 “Can I see her?”

31 “She’s right there,” Alejandro said, pointing towards the door to the only private room in the clinic. They hadn’t wanted to put her in a ward, and there were hardly any other patients in residence. “She didn’t touch her breakfast this morning.” And she looks a lot worse than she did yesterday, he didn’t say.

32 The woman nodded silently, the veil of concern down again. Impulsively, Alejandro followed her into the room and stood silently just inside the door as the woman spoke softly to the wrinkled woman on the bed. Jimena’s words were in Spanish, but the replies were impossible to understand.

33 No recognition shone in the grandmother’s eyes, and the smile was the same as the one she’d given the doctor. There was little time left to her, and nothing outwardly wrong that he could detect. Perhaps the bloodwork would show something, but it would be two days before that came back from Bariloche.

34 Then it hit him. The scratchy sounds the woman was making might represent the last time the Tehuelche language was spoken on the face of the Earth. How long had it lasted? A thousand years? Two thousand?

35 He wanted to take Jimena by the shoulders, shake her and tell her to appreciate the importance of the moment, to drink in every sound, to keep the woman talking as long as she could. But that would be inhuman: Jimena was losing her grandmother.

36 But what the world was losing was priceless. He was inured to death and illness, but had never been present at anything of this magnitude.

37 So Dr. Alejandro Benetti stood just inside the door in a tiny clinic, a thousand miles from Buenos Aires, and listened harder than he’d ever listened to anything in his life.

“Tehuelche” by Gustavo Bondoni, first published in EveryDayFiction.com, June 10, 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Gustavo Bondoni. Used by permission of author.

History Lessonby Natasha Trethewey

I am four in this photograph, standing on a wide strip of Mississippi beach, my hands on the flowered hips

of a bright bikini. My toes dig in, 5 curl around wet sand. The sun cuts the rippling Gulf in flashes with each

tidal rush. Minnows dart at my feet glinting like switchblades. I am alone except for my grandmother, other side

10 of the camera, telling me how to pose. It is 1970, two years after they opened the rest of this beach to us,

forty years since the photograph where she stood on a narrow plot 15 of sand marked colored, smiling,

her hands on the flowered hips of a cotton meal-sack dress.

Used by permission of the author.


TX-EOC-E2R__Release-Form_April-2013__r4__052813.indd 17 5/28/2013 2:56:59 PM


from The Custom of the Countryby Edith Wharton

1 1 In the great high-ceilinged library of a private hôtel overlooking one of the new quarters of Paris, Paul Marvell stood listlessly gazing out into the twilight.

2 The trees were budding symmetrically along the avenue below; and Paul, looking down, saw, between windows and tree-tops, a pair of tall iron gates with gilt ornaments, the marble curb of a semi-circular drive, and bands of spring flowers set in turf. He was now a big boy of nearly nine, who went to a fashionable private school, and he had come home that day for the Easter holidays. He had not been back since Christmas, and it was the first time he had seen the new hôtel which his step-father had bought, and in which Mr. and Mrs. Moffatt had hastily established themselves, a few weeks earlier, on their return from a flying trip to America. They were always coming and going; during the two years since their marriage they had been perpetually dashing over to New York and back, or rushing down to Rome or up to the Engadine: Paul never knew where they were except when a telegram announced that they were going somewhere else. He did not even know that there was any method of communication between mothers and sons less laconic than that of the electric wire; and once, when a boy at school asked him if his mother often wrote, he had answered in all sincerity: “Oh yes—I got a telegram last week.”

3 He had been almost sure—as sure as he ever was of anything—that he should find her at home when he arrived; but a message (for she hadn’t had time to telegraph) apprised him that she and Mr. Moffatt had run down to Deauville to look at a house they thought of hiring for the summer; they were taking an early train back, and would be at home for dinner—were in fact having a lot of people to dine.

4 It was just what he ought to have expected, and had been used to ever since he could remember; and generally he didn’t mind much, especially since his mother had become Mrs. Moffatt, and the father he had been most used to, and liked best, had abruptly disappeared from his life. But the new hôtel was big and strange, and his own room, in which there was not a toy or a book, or one of his dear battered relics (none of the new servants—they were always new—could find his things, or think where they had been put), seemed the loneliest spot in the whole house. He had gone up there after his solitary luncheon, served in the immense marble dining room by a footman on the same scale, and had tried to occupy himself with pasting postcards into his album; but the newness and sumptuousness of the room

1A hôtel is a city mansion of a person of rank or wealth.


embarrassed him—the white fur rugs and brocade chairs seemed maliciously on the watch for smears and ink-spots—and after a while he pushed the album aside and began to roam through the house.

5 He went to all the rooms in turn: his mother’s first, the wonderful lacy bedroom, all pale silks and velvets, artful mirrors and veiled lamps, and the boudoir as big as a drawing-room, with pictures he would have liked to know about, and tables and cabinets holding things he was afraid to touch. Mr. Moffatt’s rooms came next. They were soberer and darker, but as big and splendid; and in the bedroom, on the brown wall, hung a single picture—the portrait of a boy in grey velvet—that interested Paul most of all. The boy’s hand rested on the head of a big dog, and he looked infinitely noble and charming, and yet (in spite of the dog) so sad and lonely that he too might have come home that very day to a strange house in which none of his old things could be found.

6 From these rooms Paul wandered downstairs again. The library attracted him most: there were rows and rows of books, bound in dim browns and golds, and old faded reds as rich as velvet: they all looked as if they might have had stories in them as splendid as their bindings. But the bookcases were closed with gilt trellising, and when Paul reached up to open one, a servant told him that Mr. Moffatt’s secretary kept them locked because the books were too valuable to be taken down. This seemed to make the library as strange as the rest of the house, and he passed on to the ballroom at the back. Through its closed doors he heard a sound of hammering, and when he tried the door-handle a servant passing with a tray-full of glasses told him that “they” hadn’t finished, and wouldn’t let anybody in.

7 The mysterious pronoun somehow increased Paul’s sense of isolation, and he went on to the drawing rooms, steering his way prudently between the gold armchairs and shining tables, and wondering whether the wigged and corseleted heroes on the walls represented Mr. Moffatt’s ancestors, and why, if they did, he looked so little like them. The dining room beyond was more amusing, because busy servants were already laying the long table. It was too early for the florist, and the center of the table was empty, but down the sides were gold baskets heaped with pulpy summer fruits—figs, strawberries and big blushing nectarines. Between them stood crystal decanters with red and yellow wine, and little dishes full of sweets; and against the walls were sideboards with great pieces of gold and silver, ewers and urns and branching candelabra, which sprinkled the green marble walls with starlike reflections.


8 After a while he grew tired of watching the coming and going of white-sleeved footmen, and of listening to the butler’s vociferated orders, and strayed back into the library. The habit of solitude had given him a passion for the printed page, and if he could have found a book anywhere—any kind of a book—he would have forgotten the long hours and the empty house. But the tables in the library held only massive unused inkstands and immense immaculate blotters: not a single volume had slipped its golden prison.

Public domain. From The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. Copyright © 1913 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.



Wind and RainbyWarrenKlassen

1 The wind pushed Kana so hard that she could barely walk. It took all the strength her thin bony arms had to keep her umbrella above her head. On windy days like today it felt more like she was living on top of a Japanese Alp rather than in a valley between them.

2 Her umbrella slipped out of her hand for the third time and she jumped back to grab it. Over the top of the umbrella she saw a giant shape trudging up the sidewalk with huge, slow steps. She froze. She knew that he was a foreigner. Definitely a foreigner. And not the one that taught at her elementary school. This must be the new high school English teacher. There was no other reason for a foreigner to be in a town this small. Foreigners teach English. That’s why they come here.

3 Kana tried to walk quickly, but the wind kept her movements slow. She could feel her very bones vibrate like wind chimes after each blast.

4 Out of the corner of her eye she could see the giant approaching. He was completely soaked and his wet shaggy beard made her think that he looked like her schnauzer after a bath. Kana wondered why he didn’t have an umbrella, but he was a foreigner and it was expected that foreigners be a bit weird. It’s not like her umbrella was helping her anyway, since the wind made the rain come as much from the front as from above.

5 His huge legs brought him beside her and he slowed his plodding steps. She could feel him eyeing her. Blue eyes looking at you feel different. Not always bad, but just so strange. This gaze of his felt calculating. He was going to say something. Kana knew he would say something. Foreigners like to hear their English and he wasn’t going to get the sound of it from anywhere but his own mouth.

6 He did speak and his voice sounded like arrhythmic gravel falling from a shovel onto cement.

7 Kana could tell that he had asked her a question. He did that rising intonation thing that her Japanese teacher of English had explained to her. She had aced the test where she had listened to a CD of English sentences and had to mark down which ones were questions and which weren’t. But that didn’t help her much here. The question could be for anything. She would have to fall back to her primary defenses. “No. No English,” she squeaked out at him. It was a magical phrase that almost always made foreigners go away.

8 He quickened his pace for a moment, just enough to walk in front of her, then slowed back down to match her speed. As soon as he was in front of her she felt that strange calm that comes with getting out of the wind. It was much easier to walk now.

9 He was only just ahead of her, and she could smell him. He smelled like freshly microwaved frozen pizza. Maybe what her friend had told her about foreigners eating pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner was true after all. Still, it was a pleasant and familiar smell. Everyone likes pizza.

10 Kana had heard a little about this new English teacher before. The grocery clerk had told her mother that even though he was an adult, he still bought lots of milk to drink. He bought four of the one liter cartons every week when he went to the store. There must be very little room in his fridge for anything else.

11 She stiffened and nearly stepped into a gigantic puddle. He was doing something kind for her, and all she could think of were the rumors about him. She needed to be able to show her appreciation somehow.

12 With her free hand she reached into her backpack and it made a rustling sound as her hand fell against an old McDonald’s cheeseburger

1wrapper. There was also an empty bento and a math textbook in there. Nothing else. Nothing small she could give him to show her appreciation.

13 Her face blushed as she became worried about appearing impolite to the foreigner. Would he think that all Japanese children are so ungrateful? That shame would be too great. She would have to do something.

14 She closed her useless umbrella and threw it in her backpack. Then, Kana took out the cheeseburger wrapper and began folding it.

15 She finished just as they arrived at her house. She poked the foreigner to let him know that she would be leaving his company. He turned back to look at her and she offered him the paper crane that she had folded from the wrapper. As he took it from her, she stammered out a “thank-you,” turned bright red and ran into her home.

16 The wind was strong and the rain was heavy, but the foreigner held up one of his massive hands to protect the small gift safely tucked onto the palm of the other. She had recycled his culture, refined it with her own and then given it to him.

17 It was just so Japanese.

“Wind and Rain” by Warren Klassen, Every Day Fiction, Dec. 1, 2011. Reprinted by permission of the author.

1 A bento is a Japanese box with multiple compartments for holding food.

TXGR10 ELA-M 6/11/07 1:19 PM Page 4

DIRECTIONS

Read the two selections and the viewing and representing piece. Then answer the questions that follow.

from

Lyddieby Katherine Paterson

Lyddie is a novel about a young girl who assumes responsibility for her family. This chapter describes one situation in which Lyddie demonstrates her courage.

1 The bear had been their undoing, though at the time they had all laughed. No, Mama had never laughed, but Lyddie and Charles and the babies had laughed until their bellies ached. Lyddie still thought of them as the babies. She probably always would. Agnes had been four and Rachel six that November of 1843—the year of the bear.

My notes about what I am reading

2 It had been Charles’s fault, if fault there was. He had fetched in wood from the shed and left the door ajar. But the door had not shut tight for some time, so perhaps he’d shut it as best he could. Who knows?

3 At any rate, Lyddie looked up from the pot of oatmeal she was stirring over the fire, and there in the doorway was a massive black head, the nose up and smelling, the tiny eyes bright with hungry anticipation.

4 “Don’t nobody yell,” she said softly. “Just back up slow and quiet to the ladder and climb up to the loft. Charlie, you get Agnes, and Mama, you take Rachel.” She heard her mother whimper. “Shhh,” she continued, her voice absolutely even. “It’s all right long as nobody gets upset. Just take it nice and gentle, ey? I’m watching him all the way, and I’ll yank the ladder up after me.”

5 They obeyed her, even Mama, though Lyddie could hear her sucking in her breath. Behind Lyddie’s back, the ladder creaked, as two by two, first Charles and

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6

Agnes, then Mama and Rachel, climbed up into the loft. Lyddie glared straight into the bear’s eyes, daring him to step forward into the cabin. Then when the ladder was silent and she could hear the slight rustling above her as the family settled themselves on the straw mattresses, she backed up to the ladder and, never taking her eyes off the bear, inched her way up to the loft. At the top she almost fell backward onto the platform. Charles dragged her onto the mattress beside her mother.

The racket released the bear from the charm Lyddie seemed to have placed on him. He banged the door aside and rushed in toward the ladder, but Charles snatched it. The bottom rungs swung out, hitting the beast in the nose. The blow startled him momentarily, giving Lyddie a chance to help Charles


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haul the ladder up onto the platform and out of reach. The old bear roared in frustration and waved at the empty air with his huge paws, then reared up on his hind legs. He was so tall that his nose nearly touched the edge of the loft. The little girls cried out. Their mother screamed, “Oh Lord, deliver us!”

7 “Hush,” Lyddie commanded. “You’ll just make him madder.” The cries were swallowed up in anxious gasps of breath. Charles’s arms went around the little ones, and Lyddie put a firm grip on her mother’s shoulder. It was trembling, so Lyddie relaxed her fingers and began to stroke. “It’s all right,” she murmured. “He can’t reach us.”

8 But could he climb the supports? It didn’t seem likely. Could he, in his frustration, take a mighty leap and . . . No, she tried to breathe deeply and evenly and keep her eyes fixed on those of the beast. He fell to all fours and, tossing his head, broke off from her gaze as though embarrassed. He began to explore the cabin. He was hungry, obviously, and looking for the source of the smell that had drawn him in. He knocked over the churning jug and licked tentatively at the blade, but Lyddie had cleaned it too well after churning that morning and the critter soon gave up trying to find nourishment in the wood.

9 Before he found the great pot of oatmeal in the kettle over the fire, he had turned over the table and the benches and upended the spinning wheel. Lyddie held her breath, praying that he wouldn’t break anything. Charles and she would try to mend, but he was only ten and she thirteen. They hadn’t their father’s skill or experience. Don’t break nothing, she begged silently. They couldn’t afford to replace any of the household goods.

10 Next the beast knocked over a jar of apple butter, but the skin lid was tied on tightly, and, flail away at


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it as he might with his awkward paw, he could not dislodge it. He smacked it across the floor where it hit the overturned bench, but, thank the Lord, the heavy pottery did not shatter.

11 At last he came to the oatmeal, bubbling—by the smell of it, scorching—over the fire. He thrust his head deep into the kettle and howled with pain as his nose met the boiling porridge. He threw back his head, but in doing so jerked the kettle off the hook, and when he turned, he was wearing it over his head like a black pumpkin. The bear was too stunned, it seemed, simply to lower his neck and let the kettle fall off. He danced about the room in pain on four, then two legs, the kettle covering his head, the boiling oatmeal raining down his thick neck and coat.

12 He knocked about, searching for the way out, but when he found the open door, managed to push it shut. Battering the door with his kettle-covered head, he tore it off its leather hinges and loped out into the dark. For a long time they could hear him crashing through the bush until, at last, the November night gathered about them once more with its accustomed quiet.

13 Then they began to laugh. Rachel first, throwing back her dark curls and showing the spaces where her pretty little teeth had been only last summer. Then Agnes joined in with her shrill four-year-old shout, and next Charles’s not yet manly giggle.

14 “Whew,” Lyddie said. “Lucky I’m so ugly. A pretty girl couldn’t a scared that old rascal!”

15 “You ain’t ugly!” Rachel cried. But they laughed louder than ever, Lyddie the loudest of all, until the tears of laughter and relief ran down her thin cheeks, and her belly cramped and doubled over. When had she laughed so much? She could not remember.

Excerpt from Lyddie by Katherine Paterson, copyright © 1991 by Katherine Paterson. Used by permission of Lodestar Books, an affiliate of Dutton Children’s Books, an imprint of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc. All rights reserved.


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The Girl Who Canby Ama Ata Aidoo

My notes about what I amreading

1 They say I was born in Hasodzi; and it is a very bigvillage in the central region of our country, Ghana. Theyalso say that when all of Africa is not choking under adrought, Hasodzi lies in a very fertile lowland in a districtknown for its good soil. Maybe that is why any time I don’tfinish eating my food, Nana says, “You Adjoa, you don’tknow what life is about . . . you don’t know what problemsthere are in this life . . .”

2 As far as I could see, there was only one problem. And ithad nothing to do with what I knew Nana considered as“problems,” or what Maami thinks of as “the problem.”Maami is my mother. Nana is my mother’s mother. Andthey say I am seven years old. And my problem is that atthis seven years of age, there are things I can think in myhead, but which, maybe, I do not have the proper languageto speak them out with. And that, I think, is a very seriousproblem because it is always difficult to decide whether tokeep quiet and not say any of the things that come into myhead, or say them and get laughed at. Not that it is easy toget any grown-up to listen to you, even when you decide totake the risk and say something serious to them.

3 Take Nana. First, I have to struggle to catch herattention. Then I tell her something I had taken a longtime to figure out. And then you know what alwayshappens? She would at once stop whatever she is doingand, mouth open, stare at me for a very long time. Then,bending and turning her head slightly, so that one earcomes down towards me, she’ll say in that voice: “Adjoa,you say what?” After I have repeated whatever I had said,she would either, still in that voice, ask me “never, never,but NEVER to repeat THAT,” or she would immediatelyburst out laughing. She would laugh and laugh and laugh,until tears run down her cheeks and she would stopwhatever she is doing and wipe away the tears with thehanging edges of her cloth. And she would continuelaughing until she is completely tired. But then, as soon asanother person comes by, just to make sure she doesn’tforget whatever it was I had said, she would repeat it toher. And then, of course, there would be two old peoplelaughing and screaming with tears running down theirfaces. Sometimes this show continues until there are three,four, or even more of such laughing and screaming tear-faced grown-ups. And all that performance for whatever I’d

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TAKS Gr10 ELA MU Rel 7/28/06 11:50 AM Page 4

said? I find something quite confusing in all this. That is,no one ever explains to me why sometimes I shouldn’trepeat some things I say; while at other times, some otherthings I say would not only be all right, but would beconsidered so funny they would be repeated so many timesfor so many people’s enjoyment. You see how neither way ofhearing me out can encourage me to express my thoughtstoo often?

4 Like all this business to do with my legs. I have alwayswanted to tell them not to worry. I mean Nana and mymother. It did not have to be an issue for my two favoritepeople to fight over. I didn’t want to be told not to repeat itor for it to be considered so funny that anyone would laughat me until they cried. After all, they were my legs . . .When I think back on it now, those two, Nana and mymother, must have been discussing my legs from the day Iwas born. What I am sure of is that when I came out of theland of sweet, soft silence into the world of noise, the firsttopic I met was my legs.

5 That discussion was repeated very regularly.

6 Nana: “Ah, ah, you know, Kaya, I thank my God thatyour very first child is female. But Kaya, I am not sureabout her legs. Hm . . . hm . . . hm . . .”

7 And Nana would shake her head.

8 Maami: “Mother, why are you always complainingabout Adjoa’s legs? If you ask me . . .”

9 Nana: “They are too thin. And I am not asking you!”

10 Nana has many voices. There is a special one she usesto shut everyone up.

11 “Some people have no legs at all,” my mother would tryagain, with all her small courage.

12 “But Adjoa has legs,” Nana would insist; “except thatthey are too thin. And also too long for a woman. Kaya,listen. Once in a while, but only once in a very long while,somebody decides—nature, a child’s spirit mother, anaccident happens, and somebody gets born without arms,or legs, or both sets of limbs. And then let me touch wood; itis a sad business. And you know, such things are not fortalking about everyday. But if any female child decides tocome into this world with legs, then they might as well belegs.”

13 “What kind of legs?” And always at that point, I knewfrom her voice that my mother was weeping inside. Nananever heard such inside weeping. Not that it would havestopped Nana even if she had heard it. Which alwayssurprised me. Because, about almost everything else apart


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from my legs, Nana is such a good grown-up. In any case,what do I know about good grown-ups and bad grown-ups?How could Nana be a good grown-up when she carried onso about my legs? All I want to say is that I really likedNana except for that.

14 Nana: “As I keep saying, if any woman decides to comeinto this world with her two legs, then she should selectlegs that have meat on them: with good calves. Because youare sure such legs would support solid hips. And a womanmust have solid hips to be able to have children.”

15 “Oh, Mother.” That’s how my mother would answer.Very, very quietly. And the discussion would end or theywould move on to something else.

16 Sometimes, Nana would pull in something about myfather:

17 How, “Looking at such a man, we have to be humbleand admit that after all, God’s children are many . . .”

18 How, “After one’s only daughter had insisted onmarrying a man like that, you still have to thank your Godthat the biggest problem you got later was having agranddaughter with spindly legs that are too long for awoman, and too thin to be of any use.”

19 The way she always added that bit about my fatherunder her breath, she probably thought I didn’t hear it. ButI always heard it. Plus, that is what always shut mymother up for good, so that even if I had not actually heardthe words, once my mother looked like even her littlecourage was finished, I could always guess what Nana hadadded to the argument.

20 “Legs that have meat on them with good calves tosupport solid hips . . . to be able to have children.”

21 So I wished that one day I would see, for myself, thelegs of any woman who had had children. But in ourvillage, that is not easy. The older women wear long wrap-arounds all the time. Perhaps if they let me go bathe in theriver in the evening, I could have checked. But I never hadthe chance. It took a lot of begging just to get my motherand Nana to let me go splash around in the shallow end ofthe river with my friends, who were other little girls likeme. For proper baths, we used the small bathhouse behindour hut. Therefore, the only naked female legs I have everseen are those of other little girls like me, or older girls inthe school. And those of my mother and Nana: two pairs oflegs which must surely belong to the approved kind;because Nana gave birth to my mother and my mothergave birth to me. In my eyes, all my friends have got legs


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that look like legs, but whether the legs have got meat onthem . . . that I don’t know.

22 According to the older boys and girls, the distancebetween our little village and the small town is about fivekilometers. I don’t know what five kilometers mean. Theyalways complain about how long it is to walk to school andback. But to me, we live in our village, and walking thosekilometers didn’t matter. School is nice.

23 School is another thing Nana and my mother discussedoften and appeared to have different ideas about. Nanathought it would be a waste of time. I never understoodwhat she meant. My mother seemed to know—anddisagreed. She kept telling Nana that she—that is, mymother—felt she was locked into some kind of darknessbecause she didn’t go to school. So that if I, her daughter,could learn to write and read my own name and a littlebesides—perhaps be able to calculate some things onpaper—that would be good. I could always marry later andmaybe . . .

24 Nana would just laugh. “Ah, maybe with legs like hers,she might as well go to school.”

25 Running with our classmates on our small field andwinning first place each time never seemed to me to beanything about which to tell anyone at home. This time itwas different. I don’t know how the teachers decided to letme run for the junior section of our school in the districtgames. But they did.

26 When I went home to tell my mother and Nana, theyhad not believed it at first. So Nana had taken it uponherself to go and “ask into it properly.” She came home totell my mother that it was really true. I was one of myschool’s runners.

27 “Is that so?” exclaimed my mother. I know her. Hermouth moved as though she was going to tell Nana, that,after all, there was a secret about me she couldn’t beexpected to share with anyone. But then Nana herselflooked so pleased, out of surprise, my mother shut hermouth up. In any case, since they heard the news, I haveoften caught Nana staring at my legs with a strange lookon her face, but still pretending like she was not looking.All this week, she has been washing my school uniformherself. That is a big surprise. And she didn’t stop at that,she even went to Mr. Mensah’s house and borrowed hischarcoal pressing iron. Each time she came back home withit and ironed and ironed and ironed the uniform, until, if Ihad been the uniform, I would have said aloud that I hadhad enough.


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28 Wearing my school uniform this week has been verynice. At the parade, on the first afternoon, its sheen caughtthe rays of the sun and shone brighter than anybody else’suniform. I’m sure Nana saw it too, and must have liked it.Yes, she has been coming into town with us every afternoonof this district sports week. Each afternoon, she has pulledone set of fresh old clothes from the big brass bowl to wear.And those old clothes are always so stiffly starched, you canhear the cloth creak. But she walks way behind usschoolchildren. As though she was on her own way to someplace else.

29 Yes, I have won every race I ran for my school, and Ihave won the cup for the best all-round junior athlete. Yes,Nana said that she didn’t care if such things are not done.She would do it. You know what she did? She carried thegleaming cup on her back. Like they do with babies. Andthis time, not taking the trouble to walk by herself.

30 When we arrived in our village, she entered ourcompound to show the cup to my mother before going togive it back to the headmaster.

31 Oh, grown-ups are so strange. Nana is right nowcarrying me on her knee, and crying softly. Muttering,muttering that: “saa, thin legs can also be useful . . .” that“even though some legs don’t have much meat on them . . .they can run. Thin legs can run . . . then who knows? . . .”

32 I don’t know too much about such things. But that’s howI was feeling and thinking all along. That surely, oneshould be able to do other things with legs as well as havethem because they can support hips that make babies.Except that I was afraid of saying that sort of thing aloud.Because someone would have told me never, never, butNEVER to repeat such words. Or else, they would havelaughed so much at what I’d said, they would have cried.

33 It’s much better this way. To have acted it out to showthem, although I could not have planned it.

34 As for my mother, she has been speechless as usual. From The Girl Who Can and Other Stories by Ama Ata Aidoo. Reprinted by permission of HarcourtEducation.


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Sunny Days and Sunny Nightsby M. E. Kerr


1 “Females prefer chunky peanut butter over smooth,forty-three percent to thirty-nine percent,” Alan announcesat dinner, “while men show an equal liking for both.”

2 My father likes this conversation. I think even mymother does, since she is telling Alan enthusiastically thatshe likes smooth. Moments before she confided that shepreferred red wine, after Alan said that women are morelikely than men to order wine in a restaurant, and amajority prefer white.

3 Alan is filled with this sort of information.

4 He wants to become an advertising man. He is enrolledin journalism school for that purpose. He’s my height, whenI’m wearing heels, has brown hair and brown eyes, livesnot far away in Salisbury, North Carolina. We go outmostly to hit movies, and he explains their appealafterward, over coffee at a campus hangout. He prideshimself on knowing what sells, and why, and whatmotivates people. Sometimes when we kiss, I imagine heknows exactly what percentage of females close their eyes,and if more males keep theirs open.

5 I long for Sunny.

6 Whenever Sunny came to dinner, my father winced athis surfers’ talk and asked him pointedly if he had a “real”name. Harold, Sunny would tell him, and my father wouldsay, that’s not such a bad name, you can make Harry out ofthat, and once he came right out and told Sunny that aman shouldn’t have a boy’s name.

7 When Sunny finally joined the Navy my father said,well, they’ll make a man out of him.

8 He’s a man, I said, believe me. Look at him and tell mehe’s not a man. Because Sunny towers over my father, hasa Rambo build, and a walk, smile, and way about him thatoozes confidence. Hair the color of the sun, deep blue eyes.Always tanned, always. Even my mother murmured, oh,he’s a man, Sunny is.

9 But my father shook his head and said, I don’t meanthat. I mean the boy has a boy’s ambition, you only have tolisten to all that talk about the big waves, the surf, thebeach—either he’s a boy or a fish, but he’s not someonewith his eye on the future. He’s not someone thinking abouta profession!

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10 One of the hard things about going to college in yourhometown is that your family meets your dates right away.If I had the good luck to live in a dorm, my father couldn’tcross-examine all of them while I finish dressing and getmyself downstairs. Even when I’m ready ahead of time, hemanages to squeeze out as much information about themas he can, once he’s shaken hands with one, and whilewe’re standing there looking for our exit line.

11 He likes Alan right away.

12 After dinner is over, while Alan and I go for a walk,Alan says, “I really like your family. Did they like me, doyou think?”

13 “I know they did.”

14 But my mother never once threw her head back andlaughed, the way she used to when Sunny was at the table,never said, oh you! to Alan, like someone trying hard not tolove his teasing—no one ever teased her but Sunny.

15 He’d tell her she looked like Princess Di (maybe . . . alittle) and he’d often exclaim, you’ve made my day, darlin’!when he’d taste her special fried chicken. My father callsher Kate or Mama, and he can’t eat anything fried becauseof the cholesterol, but they’ve been rocking together on ourfront porch through twenty years of marriage, and he doeshave a profession: He’s a judge.

16 Oh, is he a judge!

17 Sunny, he said once when Sunny alluded to a futurewith me, every Friday noon Marybeth’s mother comes downto my office and we go out to lunch. It’s a ritual with us: Iget to show her off to my colleagues, and we stroll over tothe hotel, enjoy an old-fashioned, have the special-of-the-day, and set aside that time for us. . . . I hope someday mydaughter will be going down to her own husband’s place ofbusiness to do the exact same thing.

18 Later Sunny said, He wasn’t kidding, was he?

19 Him? I said. Kid? I said.

20 It was a week to the day that Sunny asked me to marryhim. We were just graduated from high school. I wasalready planning my courses at the university when Sunnygot wind of a job in Santa Monica, running a shop calledSun & Surf. Sunny’d moved from California when his folksbroke up. His mom brought him back to Greenville, whereshe waited table in his grandfather’s diner. . . . I never

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knew what Sunny’s father did for a living, but my father,who spent a lot of time trying to worm it out of Sunny, saidit sounded as though he was a “common laborer.” Can’t hebe just a laborer? I said. Does he have to be a common one?

21 Marybeth, said my father, I’m just looking out for you. Ilike the boy. He’s a nice boy. But we’re talking here aboutthe whole picture. . . . Does Sunny ever mention college?

22 I want to go to college, I told Sunny.

23 You can go out on the coast somewhere.

24 How? Daddy won’t pay for it if we get married.

25 We’ll figure out something.

26 It’s too vague, Sunny, and too soon.

27 What’s vague about it?

28 Don’t you want to go to college, Sunny? Don’t you wanta profession?

29 Sunny said he couldn’t believe I felt the way my fatherdid, in the letter he left with my mother for me. He said theNavy was his best bet, and at least he’d be on water. Hedidn’t say anything about waiting for him, orwriting—nothing about the future. I’d said some otherthings that last night together, after he’d made fun of myfather’s talk about my parents’ Friday-noon ritual. Theydon’t even touch, he’d said: I’ve never once seen themtouch, or heard them use affectionate names, or laughtogether. So she shows up at his office once a week—bigdeal! . . . Honey, we’ve got a love that’d like to bust throughthe roof! You don’t want to just settle for something likethey did! They settled!

30 They love each other, I argued back, it just doesn’t show.. . . Sunny said that was like plastic over wood, and loveshould splinter, crack, and burn!

31 You know how it is when someone criticizes your family,even when you might have thought and said the samethings. You strike out when you hear it from anothermouth, say things you don’t mean, or you do, and wouldn’thave said under any other circumstances.

32 I said, at least my father could always take care of mymother! At least he’d made something of himself, and shecould be proud of him! That’s good enough for me, I said. Iknew from the hurt look in Sunny’s eyes he was hearingthat he wasn’t.

33 “Seventy-four percent of American adults are interestedin professional football,” Alan says as we walk along underthe stars. “Eighty-seven percent of men and sixty-threepercent of women.”


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34 I can hear Sunny’s voice saying blah blah blah blahblah blah blah!

35 “Alan,” I say, “what kind of office does an advertisingman have?”

36 “Mine’s going to be in New York City, and there’ll be athick rug on the floor, and a view of the whole Manhattanskyline from the windows. Do you like New York,Marybeth?”

37 “Anyplace but here!” I answer. “I’d like to get out of theSouth! I’d like to live near an ocean.” I was picturing Sunnycoming in on a big wave out in California. “I’d like toalways be tanned.”

38 Alan shakes his head. “That’s out of style now. Theozone layer and all. White skin is in. No one wants a tananymore.”

39 When we get to the curb, Alan puts his hand under myarm and remarks, “You smell good. What perfume is that?”

40 “I don’t remember what I put on.” I was thinking ofnights with Sunny we’d walk down this street with ourarms wrapped around each other, and Sunny’d say, let’sname our kids. Say we have four, two girls and two boys.You get to name a boy and a girl.

41 Alan lets go of my arm when we get across the street.

42 “I like the fact you’re majoring in economics,” he says.“You could go into investment banking. New York is whereyou want to go too.”

43 “Sure, New York,” I say. “That’s for me.”

44 Next weekend I have a date with John. Premed.Chunky. Beautiful smile. On the porch he tells my father,“I’ll take good care of her. Don’t worry.”

45 “What are you going to specialize in?” My father getsone last question in as we are heading down the steps.

46 “Pediatrics, sir,” and John grins and grabs my hand aswe walk to his white Pontiac.

47 My mother is sitting in the wicker rocker on the porch,waving at us as we take off.

48 “Nice people,” John says.

49 We drive to the SAE1 house with the top down, the moonjust rising. “Your family reminds me of mine,” he says.“Your mom so warm and welcoming, and your dad all


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1 SAE (Sigma Alpha Epsilon)—a popular fraternity on campus


concerned about me. . . . My father’s that way about my kidsister when boys come to take her out. I don’t have a lot oftime to date, so I like dating someone whose family I canmeet. You can tell a lot about a girl by her folks.”

50 “They never touch,” I tell him. “I mean, not openly.”

51 “Like mine. You watch mine and you wonder how twokids got born.”

52 We look at each other and laugh.

53 I like him. His wit, his good manners, his dancing, evenhis “shop talk” about his premed courses. He is a goodlistener, too, questioning me about what I’m studying, myideas; he is the perfect date.

54 “Did you have a good time, sweetheart?” my motherasks.

55 “So-so.” I tell the truth.

56 “In that case I hate to tell you what’s on the hall table.”

57 It’s an overnight letter from Western Union. Short andsweet.

58 ARRIVING TOMORROW NIGHT. HAVEPROFESSION AND HIGH HOPES. LOVE, HAROLD.

59 “He’s coming back, isn’t he?” Mom says.

60 I show it to her.

61 “You like him, Mom, so why did you hate to tell meabout this?”

62 “I like him a lot, but I don’t think your father’s evergoing to resign himself to Sunny, even if he does callhimself Harold.”

63 “He has a profession, he says!” I am dancing around theroom, hugging the letter. “He has high hopes!”

64 “I think he’s the same old Sunny, honey, and I think it’sjust going to be more heartbreak. Oh, I do like him. Truly Ido. But you started seeing Alan and John. You took a stepaway from Sunny.”

65 “Just give him a chance, Mom.”

66 “Give who a chance?” my father’s voice.

67 He is coming into the living room in his robe andpajamas.

68 “Harold!” I exclaim. “Just give Harold a chance!”

69 “We used to chant ‘Give peace a chance,’ when I was incollege,” my father says, “and I’d say Sunny having a


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chance is like peace having a chance. Peace being what itis, and Sunny being what he is, no chance will do much tochange things. Won’t last. . . . Now, John is a young man Ireally warm to. Did you have a good time with John?”

70 “He was the perfect date,” I answer.

71 “You said it was a so-so time,” says my mother.

72 “Maybe I’m not into perfection.”

73 When I meet the little plane that flies from Charlotte toGreenville, I can see Sunny getting off first, lugging hisduffel bag, dressed in his Navy uniform, hurrying throughthe rain, tan as anything, tall, and grinning even before hecan spot me in the small crowd.

74 He has a box of candy—“Not for you, my love,” he says,“it’s for your mama.” Then he kisses me, hugs me, hangs onhard and whispers, “Let’s name our kids. Say we’ve got six,all boys, first one’s Harold junior. We could call him Harry.”

75 There is no way I can get him to talk about hisprofession on the way home in my father’s Buick. He sayshe is going to tell me at the same time he tells my folks,that all we are going to talk about on the way there is howsoon I can transfer to the university near the base. He hasthree more years in the Navy and an application forreduced tuition for Navy wives, providing I still love himthe way he loves me, do I? . . . Yes? Okay!

76 He says, “Park the car somewhere fast before we gostraight home, because we’ve got to get the fire burninglower, or we’ll scorch your loved ones.” Here’s a place.

77 My father growls, “One hour getting back here from theairport, was the traffic that bad on a weeknight? Wethought you’d had an accident. . . .” And my mother purrs,“Guess what’s cooking?”

78 “Fried chicken!” Harold cries, sounding like the sameold Sunny. “Darlin’, you have made my day! Love you andwant some huggin’ from my one and only!”

79 “Oh, you!” my mother says.

80 It does not take my father long to start in; he starts inat the same time he picks up his fork.

81 “What’s this about a profession, Sunny? Harold?”

82 “Yes, sir, I am a professional man now.”



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83 “You’re becoming a professional sailor, is that it?”

84 “No, sir. I’m leaving the Navy eventually, but thanks tothe Navy, I now have a profession that suits me.”

85 “Which is?”

86 “I’m an underwater welder.”

87 “Let’s eat before we get into all this,” says my mother,fast.

88 “You’re a what?”

89 “An underwater welder.”

90 My father begins to sputter about Alan, who is goinginto advertising, and John, the aspiring baby doctor, thoseare professions, but what kind of . . . what kind of . . .

91 And my mother is passing the gravy, passing thecranberry relish, the biscuits, keeping her hands flyingbetween the table and Sunny.

92 “Where will you, where will . . .” my father again, and ifhe ever finishes the sentence, I don’t know. For I am seeingSunny see me. I am seeing him be true to me and tohimself. Perhaps my father wants to ask where will you dothis, where will your office be, for my father is one to thinkin terms of a man’s workplace.

93 But I am drifting in my thoughts to future Fridays,traditional and loving, donning a wet suit for a rendezvousin the deep blue sea. Keeping my date with that warm fishI married.“Sunny Days and Sunny Nights” by M. E. Kerr, copyright © 1989 by M. E. Kerr, fromCONNECTIONS: SHORT STORIES by Donald R. Gallo, Editor. Used by permission of DellPublishing, a division of Random House, Inc.

10EE0204N


1 The dog sat on the grass near the house, his tongue out.There was a red collar around his neck. A long cable woundfrom his red collar to a hook on the house. It was strong.The boy knew it was strong. Everyone knew it was strong.They had seen the dog lunge and jerk at the end of thethick cord barking at the cars, the cats, the people, forcingagainst the cable and hook with its black chest. It hurt theboy to see the dog strain so frantically, so uselessly. Hehoped that the cable would break so that the dog could befree. The boy felt the dog’s frustration as if it were his own.He knew it was like the frustration he felt when his fatherheld him tight in his arms and wouldn’t let go. Even thoughit was a game, and his father laughed, he hated it. It wasno game to him. At those times, the boy felt hate that hewas incapable of expressing to anyone, but he knew the dogknew how he felt. It was not right for the dog to be tied justas it was not right for his father to hug him tight and laughat him as he struggled to free himself. The pain was tooreal to the boy; he had to do something.

2 The boy walked to the dog and gently rubbed his blackpointed ears. The dog responded by licking the boy’s handand butting him with his smooth black head. The boy slidhis small hand under the dog’s collar. The fur was hot andrumpled. He knew it would be easy to unfasten the clipfrom the hook on the collar, but other things were not soeasy. The question of where the dog would go ran throughthe boy’s head. Would he just run so fast that no one couldcatch him, not even his father, who could do anything? Andthe question that the boy wondered the most, would thedog ever come back?

3 The boy loved the dog. The dog was the only one whoshared his hate and anger. The dog was his closest friend.

4 The boy removed his fingers from the collar and insteadwrapped his small arms around the dog’s neck. The dogendured this new form of attention for a minute, thenstruggled free, although he still sat next to the boy.

5 The boy sat down on the grass. A new thought enteredhis mind. His father would be angry when he discoveredthat the dog was gone. The dog had cost a lot of money and

Set Freeby Helen Peppe


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they had had him for only six months. They had needed awatch dog, a Doberman, his father had insisted. No otherdog scared people enough.

6 The boy had found this to be true. The kids next doorhad not taken his bike or played on his tire swing since thedog had come. Cats had certainly been scarce too. Hisfather hated the mess that cats made and they all hatedthe yowling of the cats fighting under their windows atnight. The boy didn’t like cats. They were not like dogs, andno one could convince him that they were as fun to playwith or that they did not make as much mess. He couldsmell the difference when he went to his friends’ houses inthe city. He moved toward the dog again, this timegratefully, and patted the dog’s head. Maybe if he let thedog loose, the cats would come back. The boy instantlyrealized that it was a selfish thought. Enduring the catswould be a small price for the dog’s freedom. He made amove to set the dog free, but just at that moment hismother came out of the house with the dog’s supper. Theboy wished that he had thought of this himself. It wouldhave been terrible to let the dog loose without his supper.

7 His mother patted him on the head and told him thathis own dinner would be ready soon. The boy nodded butstayed where he was. It would have been awful if the doghad had to eat out of garbage cans to get his supper like thedogs he saw on his way to school. The boy hated that. Hewished that he could feed all the dogs in the neighborhoodso that they wouldn’t have to eat someone’s old potato peelsand beef gristle. But the boy knew that he did not haveenough money. At eight, he barely had enough to weight hispiggy bank down. On windy days he always had to removehis bank from the sill or he would find it on the floor, theblack eyes of the pig staring up at the ceiling lamenting itsinadequacy.

8 The dog sure was hungry. The boy knew his mother didnot feed the dog enough. An eighty-five pound dog neededmore than one bowl of food a day. It wasn’t right. But hismother had gotten mad at him for bringing the dog his ownmashed potatoes. The boy had always hated potatoes eventhough his mother always insisted that they didn’t tastelike potatoes when they were mashed. He still had straylumps of potato in his jacket pocket. He was beginning tothink that he would never be able to forget about trying tofeed the dog his potatoes. And anyway, the dog hadn’t liked


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them either. That was how his mother had found out.Mashed potatoes don’t disappear very quickly from blackpavement. The boy smiled. He was glad that the dog didn’tlike potatoes either, even mashed. The boy bet that the dogalso wouldn’t like liver. For that reason, he hadn’t tried tosneak it to him. It was not right to feed liver to people whodid not like it. The slimy liver residue lasted indefinitely onthe dinner plate destroying the taste of the best elbowmacaroni.

9 He wished his mother felt the way he and the dog did.But no one seemed to care how he or the dog felt. Anyonecould see that the dog needed to run, but his father onlywalked him once a day. The boy knew that wasn’t enough.The dog had so much energy. And the boy’s mother wouldn’tgo near the dog unless it was to feed him or clean up hismesses. She said that the dog was dangerous. She hadwanted to get a poodle. She thought that Dobermans weretoo much like Pit Bulls. But his father had insisted on aDoberman. No other dog could do it, he said. As far as theboy knew, his father had been right.

10 The dog started toward his dog house, then turned andstudied the boy. It was obvious that the dog was puzzled bythe extra attention. The boy thought instead that the dogwas looking to him for more food. The boy turned an angrylook toward the house. His mother should know better. Shewas the one always talking about paying twenty-fivedollars a month to adopt a foster child. But his fatheralways made a disgusted face and said there were betterthings they could do with twenty-five dollars. But the boyknew though, that his mother sent money secretly. Hewished that he could do things secretly too, but his parentsalways found out.

11 He wondered what his father would do when he sawthat the dog was gone. Maybe he wouldn’t do much. Hisfather had called the dog the boy’s when there had been amess in the driveway last week. Maybe the boy had theright to do with the dog what he wanted. This thoughtmade the boy move again toward the dog’s collar.

12 The dog’s short black hair tickled the boy’s fingers. Theboy looked anxiously toward the house. He hoped hismother was busy, maybe on the telephone. She was on thetelephone a lot. The hook felt cold on the boy’s fingers inrelation to the dog’s fur. He slid his fingers around themetal clasp. For a minute, he hesitated. He hoped that the


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dog would not get lost. This misgiving was quicklysuppressed with the thought of the dog’s approachinghappiness, and, before he could change his mind, he undidthe metal clasp. With his hand still on the dog’s collar, hekissed the dog, and hugged him tightly. A tear squeezed outbetween the boy’s lids. He hoped that the dog would comeback. He was his only real friend.

13 He released the dog’s collar from his sweaty hands andstood back feeling miserable at the near separation. Thedog yawned and stretched, glad to be free from the boy’srestrictive arms. He looked at the boy; then he licked hiswhiskered mouth for the last vestiges of his supper. Theboy waved his hand slowly and whispered a bye. The dogstretched again and yawned with a high pitched sound.Then he moved toward the side of his dog house, lifted hisleg, and urinated against the rough boards. He gave theboy another look as if to ask, “Are you through? Is thereanything else?” then moved to the front of his dog houseand kicked up his hind legs scratching up the grass.

14 Then the dog went inside, turned around, and laid downresting his pointed nose on his strong paws. The boy staredat him in confusion then walked to the dog house. The dograised his eyes not bothering to lift his head. “You’re loose,”the boy whispered. “Don’t you realize that?” The dog closedhis heavy lids with a grunt. There was a gurgle from thedepths of his black rounded stomach.

“Set Free” © 1991 by Helen Peppe. An original story published by The Charles Press, Publishers.Reprinted with permission of the author.


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Summer of the Raccoonsby Fred Bauer


1 If I’d had my way, the story would have ended that daywhere it began—on the sixth hole at Stony Brook.

2 “What was that bawling?” my wife, Shirley, asked,interrupting me in mid-swing. Without another word shemarched into a mucky undergrowth and re-emergedcarrying something alive.

3 “Rrrit, rrit, rrit,” it screamed.

4 “It’s an orphaned raccoon,” she said, gently stroking amud-matted ball of gray fur.

5 “Its mother is probably ten yards away, has rabies andis about to attack,” I scolded.

6 “No, it’s alone and starving—that’s why the little thingis out of its nest. Here, take it,” she ordered. “I think there’sanother baby over there.”

7 In a minute she returned with a squallingbookend—just as mud-encrusted and emaciated as thefirst. She wrapped the two complaining ingrates in hersweater. I knew that look. We were going to have two moremouths to feed.

8 “Just remember,” I declared, “they’re your bundles tolook after.” But of all the family proclamations I have madeover the years, none was wider of the mark.

9 When, like Shirley and me, you have four children, youdon’t think much about empty nests. You don’t think thenoisy, exuberant procession of kids and their friends willever end. But the bedrooms will someday empty, the hotbath water will miraculously return, and the sounds thatmake a family will echo only in the scrapbook of your mind.

10 Shirley and I had gone through the parting ritual withLaraine and Steve and Christopher. Now there was onlyDaniel, who was chafing to trade his room at home for apad at Penn State. So I was looking forward to my share ofa little peace and quiet—not raccoons.

11 “What do you feed baby raccoons?” I asked the gameprotector over the phone the next morning. We had cleanedthem up, made them a bed in a box of rags, added a ticking

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clock in the hope it would calm them, found old babybottles in the basement, fed them warm milk and got themto sleep, all without floorwalking the first night.

12 However, they revived and began their machine-gunchant shortly after Shirley had run out the door, headingfor classes. In anticipation of a soon-to-be empty nest, shehad gone back to college to get a master’s degree so shecould teach.

13 Meanwhile, I had my own work to do—variouspublishing projects that I handle from home. As the onlychild remaining with us, Daniel was my potential raccoon-relief man. Or so I hoped.

14 “Whose bright idea was this?” he asked with the tarttongue of a teenager.

15 “Your mother thought you needed something more toearn your allowance,” I cracked. “Will you heat some milkfor them?”

16 “Sorry, I’m late for school,” he called over his shoulder.He and I were at that awkward testing stage, somewherebetween my flagging authority and his rush forindependence.

17 The major problem with trying to feed the raccoons wasone of flow. Milk was flowing out of the bottle too fast andthrough the kits the same way.

18 “Thinner milk and less corn syrup,” the wildlife mansuggested, adding that he would send along a brochure forraising them. “The object,” he coached, “is to take care ofthem until they can go back to the woods and take care ofthemselves.”

19 “I’ll do anything I can to make that happen,” I assuredhim. “They’re about eight ounces each”—I had weighedthem on my postage scale. “They’ll be old enough to be ontheir own in a couple more weeks, right?”

20 “Not quite,” he said. “Come fall, if all goes well, they’llbe ready.”

21 I’ll strangle them before then, I said under my breath. Iprepared a new formula and tried it on one. The kitcoughed and sputtered like a clogged carburetor. The holein the nipple was too big.

22 Maybe I could feed them better with a doll’s bottle, Iconcluded, and set out to find one. At a toy store, I found

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some miniature bottles, one of which was attached to aspecially plumbed doll named Betsy Wetsy. “My Betsys arewetsy enough,” I told the clerk—declining doll and diapers,but taking the bottle.

23 Back home, I tried feeding the raccoons again. Miracleof miracles, they sucked contentedly and fell asleep. (Onlytwelve more weeks to September, I counted down.)

24 During the next month and a half I functionedfaithfully as day-care nanny for Bonnie and Clyde, namedfor their bandit-like masks. The kits apparently consideredme their mother. When I held them at feeding time, theystill spoke in the same scratchy voice, but now it was acontented hum. The only time they may have perceived meto be an impostor came when they climbed on myshoulders, parted my hair and pawed in vain for a nipple.

25 Before long the kits graduated to cereal and bananas.When they became more active, our back-yard birdbathbecame an instant attraction. Bonnie, the extrovert of thetwo, ladled the water worshipfully with her paws like apriest conducting a baptism. Clyde followed suit, butcautiously, as if the water might be combustible. NextBonnie discovered the joy of food and water together, andthereafter every morsel had to be dipped before beingeaten.

26 By July the kits weighed about three pounds. I built ascreened-in cage and moved them outdoors. When they hadadjusted well to their new quarters, Daniel suggested wefree them to explore the woods and forage for food.

27 “I don’t want them to get lost or hurt out there,” I said,sounding more like a mother hen than a surrogate fatherraccoon.

28 “They should get used to being on their own,” Danielinsisted. We left their door ajar so they could wanderduring the day. At night, we called them home by bangingtogether their food bowls. They came out of the woods at agallop.

29 Still, I was afraid we might be rushing their initiationto the wild. One windy afternoon while Daniel and I wereplaying catch in the back yard, I spotted Bonnie, twentyfeet off the ground, precariously tightrope-walking thebouncing branches of a mulberry tree. She had eaten herfill of berries and was trying to get down, or so I thought.

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30 “Be careful, babe,” I called, running to the tree. “Quick,Dan, get a ladder!”

31 “Let her go,” he said calmly. “She’s on an adventure.Don’t spoil her fun.” And he was on the money. When Ireturned later, she was snoozing serenely in the mulberry’scradling arms.

32 However, the raccoons did get into trouble one nightwhen they let themselves out of their cage with thosedexterous forepaws. Shirley and I were awakened at 2 A.M.by a horrendous scream.

33 “What was that?” I asked, bolting upright.

34 “The raccoons?” she wondered.

35 “They’re in trouble!” Tossing off the covers, I grabbed aflashlight and ran outside in my skivvies.

36 As I came around the south side of the house, I heardsomething rattle the eaves and jump into the maple tree.Next, I got jumped. First by Bonnie, landing on myshoulder, then by her brother, shinnying up my leg.Circling my neck, they jabbered their excitement: “Rrrrit,rrrit, rrrit!”

37 “It’s okay, I’ve got ya, you’re safe,” I said, cuddling themin my arms. Apparently a wild raccoon, defending itsterritory, had attacked Clyde. He had a bloody shoulderthat didn’t appear serious; Bonnie was fine.

38 July gave way to August, and August to September.Soon the days were getting shorter, and the raccoons weresix-pound butterballs. I was fascinated by their creativityand intelligence. One evening after I banged their foodbowls together, there was no reply. When I reportedanxiously at the breakfast table that they hadn’t come inthe night before, Daniel laughed at my concern.

39 “Now we’ll see if you’re as good a teacher as a motherraccoon.”

40 “I already know the answer,” I said. “By the way, whattime did you get in last night?”

41 “About midnight,” he answered.

42 “Your eyes say later.”

43 “I’m not a baby anymore,” he shot back.

44 Outside, I beckoned the raccoons again, and this timethey reported: effervescent Bonnie in a flat-out sprint,Clyde in a tagalong amble.

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45 Near the end of September they were missing a week,and I suggested to Shirley that they were probably gone forgood.

46 “You know it’s a mistake trying to hold on to anythingthat no longer needs you,” she counseled.

47 “Who’s holding on?” I protested. But when I continuedscanning the woods, hoping to catch sight of them, I knewshe was right. Reluctantly, I dismantled their pen, storedtheir bowls and put them out of my mind. Or tried to. Butthey had got more of a hold on my heart than I everthought possible. What I had considered a nuisance had, infact, been a gift; what I had labeled a burden, a blessing.Why is it, I asked myself, that with so many people andthings, we only appreciate them fully after they’re gone?

48 One Saturday near the end of October, Shirley, Danieland I were in the back yard raking leaves when I spotted aringed tail beyond the gate that opens to the woods. “Look,Shirley,” I whispered. And though I had no idea if it wasone of ours, I called, “Bonnie . . . Clyde.”

49 The magnificently marked animal rose on its hind legsand looked us over inquisitively. For a frozen moment, wefaced off, statue-like. Then I called again, and the animalmoved in our direction. It was Bonnie, and we went to meether. Kneeling, I held out my hand, which she licked while Irubbed her neck. She purred her most satisfied rrrit, rrrit,rrrit.

50 “Go get a banana for her,” I suggested to Daniel.

51 “No, it’s time she made it on her own,” he replied firmly.“She’s a big girl now. Don’t do anything for her that she cando for herself.”

52 I looked at Shirley and winked. Tall, broad-shoulderedDaniel wasn’t talking raccoons. He was talking parents.The object is to take care of them until they can take care ofthemselves, a haunting voice echoed. It was time to let go.

53 After rubbing Bonnie’s neck one last time, I steppedback. She sensed my release and bounded off joyfully in thedirection from which she had come.

54 “Have a good life,” I called after her. Then she dippedbehind a tree and was gone.

“Summer of the Raccoons” by Fred Bauer. Reprinted by permission of the author from the August1992 Reader’s Digest. © 1992 Fred Bauer.

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The Quality of Mercyby H. Barrett Pennell, Jr.


1 The sky began to brighten in the north on that early-March day, as the roiled, greasy-gray clouds of the all-nightstorm began their retreat to the south and west.

2 We sloshed our way along the bank of the creek, “ourcreek” to us, a pair of ten-year-old males. We had decidedon a tour of inspection of our holdings to see what damagethe storm had wrought. And the creek was still there, stillwandering its earnest, four-foot-wide way through themeadow, which was spongy underfoot with the gray-green,dead-alive promise of what would soon be grass. The rockshad not been harmed, we noted with satisfaction, and thepool beside the willow was still a pool, despite what musthave been a temptation to go and join the sea. But thegrass along the edges, and along the upper bank—thetough, fibrous evergreen grass that seemed to defyeverything in its turn—was lying flat in its place, all tipspointed regimentally after the departing waters. So wewere somewhat angry with the water, as a bully whodestroys a myth.

3 But the overall loss was slight. Our creek was still aliveand our plaything, and there were no other little boys totake it, and claim it, and mother it, and dam it with clods oftough, worm-filled sod and its own rocks. And there wasnone to pelt its muskrats and scare its minnows and trapits crawdads and capture its tadpoles. So weinspected—hermetically sealed in parkas andovershoes—sloshing through the drowned grass and rat-furred moss with the utter confidence of proprietorship.

4 We worked our way slowly, examining every inch, theway one does for hurt to valued property, while the excitedair buffeted us with the first live messages of comingspring.

5 George found two marbles just below the gravelly spotbeyond the willow pool, one chipped a little and the otherpolished by the sand and water to a better-than-new luster.I found a small earthenware jar with a clear, glazed finishand a kiln burn on the bottom side. I told George the jarwas a remnant of the days when Indians used to campalong the banks of the creek. (I almost believed this to betrue, and I wanted to.) George wondered who had lost themarbles. And great was our excitement and wonder thatthe creek was still as it had been, yet giving us newtreasures, saved for years for some such special day as this.

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TAKS Gr 10 ELA Makeup Rel '04 4/19/04 2:15 PM Page 4

6 And in the spot where the stream curved, and ate itsway into the bank, where the red slash of clay toweredupward for six feet above the trotting water and looked likered Swiss cheese—there were the muskrats, hiding in theirdaytime holes. With joyous whoops we attacked theirsanctuary, hurling small rocks and stones toward the holes,around which the missiles of our last attack stuck in themud like stone pickets. The savage satisfaction of theattack and the power, welling in our blood like a rarenarcotic, to do destruction to these small creatures alwayssank a little in our hearts when a stone would dart into thedepths of one of the holes. Then there was no satisfyingsmack of rock on mud, but only an echo, which could havebeen the sound of murder, and bright-gem eyes in the darknarrowing in pain and going out without the sight ofanother dawn. So, saddened by the ultimate outcome, webroke off the attack until the next time, not knowing if wewere murderers or not, but hoping not, with all the desireserious doubt can bring.

7 Then we were explorers along our new-old creek—LaSalle, De Soto, Lewis and Clark, voyageurs with muskrathides stalking the banks of the Mississippi and other, lesserstreams, seeking cautious trade with Indians.

8 Until George discovered the fish, swimming weakly inthe stream.

9 We squatted on our heels in the creek-bed gravel,watching the fish struggle in our mighty, six-inch-deepMississippi as it tried to make its way upstream. Itfloundered on the shoals of flattened boulders, its backappearing above the water in its struggle. It was a carp,about ten inches long, and far too large for our stream.Evidently it had been washed down in the torrential nightfrom a safe pool somewhere far away, perhaps beyondwhere the stream goes under the railroad tracks anddisappears into the earth. Now it was trying to get home,upstream, from where it had come so easily the nightbefore.

10 The tail that beat feebly upon the shallow water wassplit and ragged; scales were missing from its batteredside, and somewhere in the middle of the fish there was awound, where pinkish flesh hung tattered out beyond theskin. It rested now, in sheer exhaustion, every slightmovement crying out that it was one more movement toomany beyond the range of life’s endurance.

11 We watched without a word as the tired fish learned ofour presence and tried instinctively to dart away, but onlywrenched its way into the shallows, where it fell on its sideand was carried back by the stream into the pool by whichwe knelt.


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12 Great was our concern for the trapped fish fightinghard for present life, mindless of a further soul, with theinstinctive courage that man admires in himself, but tendsto call bestial in the beast, and we searched about formeans of rescue.

13 George found the bottom of a milk bottle, but that wastoo small; I discovered a small coffee can near the willowpool, but the bottom had rusted out. So we used mywaterproof parka hood instead, bulging it full of muddywater, carefully scooping out the failing fish, and droppingit into the sodden hood. We began our march of mercy downthe length of the creek and across the road, headed for thebig pool in the bird sanctuary, where the water was 5 feetdeep and 20 across. And as we walked, fast but gingerly,holding the water-filled hood like a suspended binnacle andstaggering somewhat with the weight, some of the waterslopped out and dampened our clothes; it began to leakslowly through the waterproof hood, leaving a damp trailalong the paving as we hurried along the road toward thedeep hole. And every spilled drop was blood, and every stepnearer, life.

14 At last we came to the sanctuary and slipped past thechain-link fence where the fence had to stop for the bridgeof the creek, and we slid down the worn trail to the bank ofthe pool. The fish was almost dead, and its back was abovewater again in the hood.

15 I lowered the hood into the shallow water at the edge ofthe pool, and as the edge of the hood fell away, the fishdrifted out into the water, its fins moving feebly, but fast,lying on its side on the surface. We stood mutely in the mudand watched the fish fight for life again.

16 Its tail moved convulsively, and it moved forwardseveral inches, turning almost upright with the motion.Several more times it did this, nearly turning upright everytime until, at length, it was successful. Then, with itsmouth taking great gulps of air from the surface and itsgills moving in convulsions, the fish slowly swam aroundthe pool, merely moving, for there was still no strength orpurpose in it. And still we didn’t speak, as the fish seemedto grow new strength before our eyes. It gulped and itthrashed its gills for five full minutes, as if cleansing outthe putrefaction of near-death with the new oxygen-fullwater.

17 George flipped a small stone into the water, a few feetfrom where the fish rested. With a small swirl, the fishdisappeared, and the eddies made by the stone and the fishrocked one another into submission in the small woodedpool.


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18 As we stared after our success, glowing inwardly in ourSamaritanism, George knew why I had snapped at himwhen he had asked, back when we first put the fish in thehood, if I were going to feed the fish to my cat.

19 At home, the soggy parka hood was hung up to dry bymy mother, who thanked me with her voice for the gift ofthe earthenware jar and wondered in her mind just what itwas that made boys do senseless things like throwing thetops of their parkas into the stream.Used with permission of the Saturday Evening Post Society © 1960.

10EE0202N


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TAKS Grade 10 ELA Reading 2008 Released ItemsLiterary Selection


1 The sun was almost touching the horizon, turning theriver to a ribbon of shining gold, when Scott Larner drovedown the long lane to the farm. He stopped the car at thebarbed wire gate which barred his way, and looked at thenewly painted “No Trespassing” sign which hung on thegate. His father would never have wanted such a sign. ButJoe Larner had been dead for a month, and probably BertWilson, the estate lawyer, did not want strangers in theyard or house.

2 Or perhaps it was the bank which had put up the sign.The farm had been paid for years ago, but with farmingconditions the way they were, maybe Joe had borrowed tobuy machinery. Perhaps the bank, too, was trying to locatehim, Joe’s son and only heir.

3 Bert Wilson’s letter had reached him on the fifteenth ofSeptember after weeks of being redirected. “Your fatherpassed away August 24th,” he wrote. “The farm has beenleft to you. Please get in touch with me immediately.”

4 Though Joe had never forgiven Scott for leaving thefarm at eighteen, though he’d never answered theoccasional letters Scott sent over the years, or shown in anyway that he’d like Scott to come back, in the end, he hadwilled the farm to him. Obviously, though, he had not evenkept Scott’s address, but had left it up to Wilson to locateScott.

5 When it had arrived, Scott read the letter slowly, thenagain, and his eyes, surprisingly, misted at the news,though it had been months since he even thought of hisfather, or Manitoba, or the farm. At first, he decided toreply that the farm should be sold and the money cabled tohim. But he delayed for a week, and then, when he meantto write to the lawyer, he found he couldn’t do it. The farmcalled him. He wanted to see it one more time before hesigned the papers. He asked for two weeks’ leave ofabsence. “Enough time to go home for a short visit and tieup all the loose ends,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

6 Home—strangely, he had almost forgotten that word inrelation to this land, these hills and fields, and the rivermeandering through them in long loops. Home had been foryears a bunkhouse at the Sparwood Mine, three provincesaway. Now, since his recent promotion at the mine, home

Final Visitby Donna Gamache

Gr10EngRdg 10/24/08 8:33 AM Page 2


was one side of a duplex, cleaned each week by a stoutgraying woman who kept the place spotless.

7 Scott climbed stiffly from the car and opened the gate.There were no cattle in the yard—they must all be on thehills, he thought. But he dutifully closed the gate anyway.“Joe would have approved of that,” he spoke aloud tohimself.

8 Joe—funny, he’d never thought of him as Dad or Father,always Joe. Joe said this; Joe wanted that done; Joewouldn’t let him go.

9 During Scott’s teenage years, Joe had seemed like atyrant. Now Scott realized that Joe had just tried to do thebest he could for his only child, motherless since Scott’smother died when the boy was eight.

10 He stood for a few minutes looking around the barnyardand down towards the winding river. The river had beenhis favorite place, as a boy. He remembered hot summerdays spent swimming in the deep hole, and cool eveningswhen the fish would bite at the rapids fartherdownstream—small jackfish, just the size for a meal or two.The river still beckoned; he would walk there tomorrow,trace his steps along the sandbars and occasional steepbank bounded by thick willows and tall poplars and mapletrees. But now the sun was down, and he turned instead tothe house.

11 Both doors of the house were locked. Scott hadn’texpected that; the house was never locked in all the yearshe lived there. He doubted if Joe even had a key.

12 He didn’t want to drive back to town in hopes of findingthe lawyer, or bank manager, or whoever might let him in.But maybe it wouldn’t be necessary. If Joe hadn’t changedthe basement windows in the last ten years, then there wasan easy way inside that Scott could use.

13 The windows were just the same. He removed the stormwindow from the one on the northeast corner, and easilypushed the window in. He’d used that route many timesduring the last year he spent with Joe, slipping out at nightto walk alone on the hills, and coming back late without hisfather’s knowledge.

14 Scott was heavier now, though, and it wasn’t quite soeasy to squeeze through and drop to the basement floor. Hewas breathing deeply by the time he succeeded. Thebasement hadn’t been altered in ten years, he realized ashe caught his breath, except for the accumulation of tenmore years of dust and cast off possessions.




15 The rest of the house was the same, too. It might havebeen yesterday that Scott left. The table and chairs, theliving room furniture, even the wallpaper, were allunchanged. Scott almost expected Joe to come striding outof the back room with orders to go feed the cattle. When,reluctantly, he climbed the stairs to the bedrooms, he foundhis room unaltered from when he’d left it ten years ago.Only the empty closet was evidence of his absence.Suddenly exhausted, he lay on the bed and was almostimmediately asleep.

16 He awoke at seven, refreshed and hungry. Joe’scupboards contained the usual box of corn flakes and, toScott’s surprise, a box of milk powder; and the freezer inthe basement held several loaves of bread. He ate heartily.

17 The sun was bright, but there was a cool east breezewhen Scott left the house. Bert Wilson and his legal formscould wait. Scott would look over the farm first, see whatthings looked like after ten years away. If he was going tosell everything, he’d have to get an idea of what there was.

18 The barn and feedlots were empty. Scott could see theHereford cattle, Joe’s special pride, grazing on the hills.The field to the east had been combined,1 he noticed,though the straw was not yet baled. Neighbors, hesupposed, would have come in to take off Joe’s crops. He’dforgotten that neighbors did things like that.

19 The tractor shed held a newer tractor than Scottremembered, not the old W-6 he used to drive, and thehaying equipment was new, too. But the combine hadn’tchanged; it was still the old pull-type that Scottremembered using his last autumn on the farm, that lastfall when the constant bickering with Joe over the waythings should be done, and over his personal affairs, hadfinally led him to leave the farm.

20 He turned now toward the river and headeddownstream. The river, too, seemed the same. It was low atthis time of year, of course, and he was able to walk alongthe very edge. In some places one could almost cross onstones, but at other spots deeper, darker pools glistened.Did they still hold fish?

21 He sat down on a large rock by the very edge, shelteredfrom the breeze by the overhanging bank. Overhead, asmall vee of geese winged southward, and on a nearbysandbar, a sandpiper strode on stilted legs. Nothing seemed


1 Harvested using a combine (a piece of farming equipment that gathers and threshesgrain as it moves across a field).



to have changed—nothing except him. He was no longereighteen, rebellious and resentful of Joe’s orders. He wassure of himself now, a man with authority at the mine. Butthe mine seemed a long way away now. Would he bedifferent back here on the farm?

22 Scott stood and headed downstream towards the lowerrapids. Just above the rapids, he remembered, the waterwas slow and deep in a wide meander. It had been Scott’sfavorite fishing spot. And behind and above the river was athick grove of poplars and maples, edged by willows. It wasone of the best spots he knew for nest hunting, andsometimes rabbits and raccoons had frequented the spot.His feet hurried towards it.

23 Then, abruptly, he stopped. At the corner, where thelong, deep curve began, something was missing. Severaltall poplars had stood there. And now they didn’t. Had Joebeen way down here cutting wood?

24 He walked closer, then stopped in surprise. It was notJoe who had removed the trees. The stumps of the poplarswere pointed, and tooth marked.

25 “Beavers!” Scott exclaimed. “When did they come here?”Looking farther ahead, he could detect missing poplar treesall along the whole curve.

26 But there had been no beavers on this river for as longas Scott could remember, none at all throughout all theyears he’d grown up there. He remembered Joe spoke ofbeavers in the past, but for years there were noneanywhere, except farther to the north in the RidingMountain Park. But now they were on this river.

27 He continued on, picking his way over downed poplars,noticing the well worn trails the beavers had made. Clearly,they had been here for at least a couple of years. Some ofthe stumps were yellow, newly cut, but others had alreadydarkened, and the chips were covered by old leaves.

28 The river seemed deeper than he remembered, andagainst the far bank a half-submerged pile of branches wasprobably a feed bed. Scott could see no beaver house, butperhaps they had tunneled into the river bank. He was notsurprised, when he rounded the final corner, to find, justabove the rapids, a large beaver dam holding back a goodthree feet of water.

29 He sat down on the bank above the dam to watch.Probably he’d have to come back in the evening to see thebeavers, but he’d wait for awhile. It was hard to




believe—beavers back on the river where they hadn’t beenfor years. And managing all right, too, by the look of things.He hoped whoever bought the farm liked beavers, anddidn’t decide to trap them out. Had they returned all upand down the river? He’d like to do some more exploring, ifhe only had the time.

30 Then he shook his head. He could have the time, if hewanted. And he could see to it that the beavers wereprotected. He could stay here. The farm was his now, his tosell or his to keep, if he wanted. Someone else could havethese beavers on their farm, these pools to fish, these fieldsto harvest; or it could be himself.

31 He shrugged his shoulders. Did it make sense for him toreturn to the farm? To give up the place of authority andthe salary he commanded at the Sparwood Mine? He knewthat it didn’t. And he’d been away ten years, had no doubtforgotten some of the things he’d need to know. Could hehandle the farm machinery? Look after Joe’s cattle properlyat calving time? Did he have the knowledge and skills he’dneed to run this place?

32 Not all of them. But he could get help and advice, whenhe needed it. And he did have some money, saved over theyears at the mine. He’d need money. Some of Joe’smachinery should be replaced; the barn was in need ofrepair. The money would help.

33 It wouldn’t be easy, Scott knew that. The hours wouldbe much longer, the money much less. Could he adjust to alife which didn’t contain a paycheck every two weeks?

34 Scott sat on the bank, deep in thought. When he camefor this visit, he’d had no intention of returningpermanently. Or had he? Was that why he’d asked for theleave of absence? Was that why he couldn’t answer thelawyer without one last visit? Deep down, without knowingit, had he wanted to return here?

35 Would Joe be happy to have him back on the farm?Maybe he’d known that if he left Scott the farm, he couldn’tresist returning. Perhaps, somewhere, Joe was having thelast laugh.

36 Abruptly, Scott stood up and, almost beneath his feet, asharp crack broke the silence as a beaver tail slapped hardon the water. Scott jumped, then grinned at himself.

37 “You’re back,” he said to the beaver. “And you’re doingfine, it looks like. If you can return, then why not me?”Written by Donna Gamache, MacGregor, MB, Canada.



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1 When he came to our house one day and knocked on thedoor and immediately sold me a copy of The SaturdayEvening Post, it was the beginning of our friendship andalso the beginning of our business relationship.

2 His name is John. I call him Johnny and he is eleven. Itis the age when he should be crazy about baseball orfootball or fishing. But he isn’t. Instead he came again toour door and made a business proposition.

3 “I think you have many old magazines here,” he said.

4 “Yes,” I said, “I have magazines of all kinds in thebasement.”

5 “Will you let me see them?” he said.

6 “Sure,” I said.

7 I took him down to the basement where the stacks ofmagazines stood in the corner. Immediately this little boywent over to the piles and lifted a number of magazinesand examined the dates of each number and the names.

8 “Do you want to keep these?” he said.

9 “No. You can have them,” I said.

10 “No. I don’t want them for nothing,” he said. “Howmuch do you want for them?”

11 “You can have them for nothing,” I said.

12 “No, I want to buy them,” he said. “How much do youwant for them?”

13 This was a boy of eleven, all seriousness and purpose.

14 “What are you going to do with the old magazines?”

15 “I am going to sell them to people,” he said.

16 We arranged the financial matters satisfactorily. Weagreed he was to pay three cents for each copy he tookhome. On the first day he took home an Esquire, a couple ofold Saturday Evening Posts, a Scribner ’s, an AtlanticMonthly, and a Collier’s. He said he would be back soon tobuy more magazines.

17 When he came back several days later, I learned hisname was John so I began calling him Johnny.

18 “How did you make out, Johnny?” I said.

Business at Elevenby Toshio Mori

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19 “I sold them all,” he said. “I made seventy centsaltogether.”

20 “Good for you,” I said. “How do you manage to getseventy cents for old magazines?”

21 Johnny said as he made the rounds selling TheSaturday Evening Post, he also asked the folks if therewere any back numbers they particularly wanted.Sometimes, he said, people will pay unbelievable prices forcopies they had missed and wanted very much to see someparticular articles or pictures, or their favorite writers’stories.

22 “You are a smart boy,” I said.

23 “Papa says, if I want to be a salesman, be a goodsalesman,” Johnny said. “I’m going to be a good salesman.”

24 “That’s the way to talk,” I said. “And what does yourfather do?”

25 “Dad doesn’t do anything. He stays at home,” Johnnysaid.

26 “Is he sick or something?” I said.

27 “No, he isn’t sick,” he said. “He’s all right. There’snothing wrong with him.”

28 “How long have you been selling The Saturday EveningPost?” I asked.

29 “Five years,” he said. “I began at six.”

30 “Your father is lucky to have a smart boy like you for ason,” I said.

31 That day he took home a dozen or so of the oldmagazines. He said he had five standing orders, an Esquireissue of June 1937, Atlantic Monthly February 1938number, a copy of December 11, 1937 issue of The NewYorker, Story Magazine of February 1934, and a Collier’s ofApril 2, 1938. The others, he said, he was taking a chanceat.

32 “I can sell them,” Johnny said.

33 Several days later I saw Johnny again at the door.

34 “Hello, Johnny,” I said. “Did you sell them already?”

35 “Not all,” he said. “I have two left. But I want somemore.”

36 “All right,” I said. “You must have good business.”

37 “Yes,” he said, “I am doing pretty good these days. Ibroke my own record selling The Saturday Evening Postthis week.”


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38 “How much is that?” I said.

39 “I sold 167 copies this week,” he said. “Most boys feellucky if they sell seventy-five or one hundred copies. Butnot for me.”

40 “How many are there in your family, Johnny?” I said.

41 “Six counting myself,” he said. “There is my father,three smaller brothers, and two small sisters.”

42 “Where’s your mother?” I said.

43 “Mother died a year ago,” Johnny said.

44 He stayed in the basement a good one hour sorting outthe magazines he wished. I stood by and talked to him ashe lifted each copy and inspected it thoroughly. When Iasked him if he had made a good sale with the oldmagazines recently, he said yes. He sold the Scribner’sFiftieth Anniversary Issue for sixty cents. Then he said hemade several good sales with Esquire and a Vanity Fairthis week.

45 “You have a smart head, Johnny,” I said. “You havefound a new way to make money.”

46 Johnny smiled and said nothing. Then he gathered upthe fourteen copies he picked out and said he must be goingnow.

47 “Johnny,” I said, “hereafter you pay two cents a copy.That will be enough.”

48 Johnny looked at me.

49 “No,” he said. “Three cents is all right. You must make aprofit, too.”

50 An eleven-year-old boy—I watched him go out with hisshort business-like stride.

51 Next day he was back early in the morning. “Back sosoon?” I said.

52 “Yesterday’s were all orders,” he said. “I want somemore today.”

53 “You certainly have a good trade,” I said.

54 “The people know me pretty good. And I know thempretty good,” he said. And about ten minutes later hepicked out seven copies and said that was all he was takingtoday.

55 “I am taking Dad shopping,” he said. “I am going to buya new hat and shoes for him today.”

56 “He must be tickled,” I said.


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57 “You bet he is,” Johnny said. “He told me to be sure andcome home early.”

58 So he said he was taking these seven copies to thecustomers who ordered them and then run home to getDad.

59 Two days later Johnny wanted some more magazines.He said a Mr. Whitman who lived up a block wanted all themagazines with Theodore Dreiser’s stories inside. Then hewent on talking about other customers of his. Miss White,the schoolteacher, read Hemingway, and he said she wouldbuy back copies with Hemingway stories anytime hebrought them in. Some liked Sinclair Lewis, othersSaroyan, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Mann, Faith Baldwin,Fannie Hurst, Thomas Wolfe. So it went. It was amazinghow an eleven-year-old boy could remember the customers’preferences and not get mixed up.

60 One day I asked him what he wanted to do when hegrew up. He said he wanted a book shop all his own. Hesaid he would handle old books and old magazines as wellas the new ones and own the biggest bookstore around theBay Region.

61 “That is a good ambition,” I said. “You can do it. Justkeep up the good work and hold your customers.”

62 On the same day, in the afternoon, he came around tothe house holding several packages.

63 “This is for you,” he said, handing over a package.“What is this?” I said.

64 Johnny laughed. “Open up and see for yourself,” hesaid.

65 I opened it. It was a book rest, a simple affair buthandy.

66 “I am giving these to all my customers,” Johnny said.

67 “This is too expensive to give away, Johnny,” I said. “Youwill lose all your profits.”

68 “I picked them up cheap,” he said. “I’m giving theseaway so the customers will remember me.”

69 “That is right, too,” I said. “You have good sense.”

70 After that he came in about half a dozen times, eachtime taking with him ten or twelve copies of variousmagazines. He said he was doing swell. Also, he said hewas now selling Liberty along with the Saturday EveningPosts.

71 Then for two straight weeks I did not see him once. Icould not understand this. He had never missed coming to


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the house in two or three days. Something must be wrong, Ithought. He must be sick, I thought.

72 One day I saw Johnny at the door. “Hello, Johnny,” Isaid. “Where were you? Were you sick?”

73 “No. I wasn’t sick,” Johnny said.

74 “What’s the matter? What happened?” I said.

75 “I’m moving away,” Johnny said. “My father is movingto Los Angeles.”

76 “Sit down, Johnny,” I said. “Tell me all about it.”

77 He sat down. He told me what had happened in twoweeks. He said his dad went and got married to a womanhe, Johnny, did not know. And now, his dad and this womansay they are moving to Los Angeles. And about all therewas for him to do was to go along with them.

78 “I don’t know what to say, Johnny,” I said.

79 Johnny said nothing. We sat quietly and watched timemove.

80 “Too bad you will lose your good trade,” I finally said.

81 “Yes, I know,” he said. “But I can sell magazines in LosAngeles.”

82 “Yes, that is true,” I said.

83 Then he said he must be going. I wished him good luck.We shook hands. “I will come and see you again,” he said.

84 “And when I visit Los Angeles some day,” I said, “I willsee you in the largest bookstore in the city.”

85 Johnny smiled. As he walked away, up the street andout of sight, I saw the last of him walking like a goodbusinessman, walking briskly, energetically, purposefully.Reproduced by permission of the Caxton Printers Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho.


In his novel Hatchet, Gary Paulsen relates the adventures of Brian, a teenager who is the only survivor of asmall plane crash. Until his rescue Brian has to use his wits and stay alive in the Canadian wilderness. Inthis excerpt from the novel Brian’s Return, Brian willingly returns to the wild.

Brian’s Returnby Gary Paulsen


1 Brian awakened just after dawn, when the sun began towarm the tent. The sky was cloudless. He flipped the canoe,and when he went to lower his packs he saw the bear tracks.

2 One bear, medium size. It had come in the night soquietly that Brian hadn’t heard it—though he had slept sosoundly his first night back in the woods, the bear couldhave been tipping garbage cans.

3 It had done no damage. The tracks went by the fire,then moved to where he’d buried the fish leftovers. The bearhad dug them up and eaten them. It had moved to the tent,apparently looked in on him, then gone to the packs. Briancould see that it had tried to stand and reach them. Therewere claw marks on the tree but the bear had never figuredout the rope holding the packs and had gone off withoutdoing anything destructive.

4 “Company,” Brian said. “And I didn’t even wake up.”

5 He slid the canoe into the water at the edge of the lakeand loaded all his gear, tying everything in. He took time togather some bits of wood and leaves to use as a smudge in acoffee can to fend off mosquitoes, then jumped in. It was stillearly but already warm, and he quickly stripped down toshorts.

6 He kept the map in its clear plastic bag jammedbeneath a rope in front of him. He knelt to paddle instead ofsitting on the small seat because it felt more stable. He wasnot as confident in the canoe as he wished to be. He’d takenit to a small lake near home to practice and rented canoes inother places, but he was very conscious of the fact that hehad much to learn. By staying low and on his knees he hadmuch more control.

7 He had only a mile to go in the present lake and then hewould enter the river. He had the compass in one of thepacks but didn’t truly need it. The lakes were well drawn onthe map and he could see where the river flowed out.

8 All that day he felt as if he were in a painting, abeautiful private diorama. He worked through a shelterednarrow lagoon and then out into the open to cross a small

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lake, then back under the canopy through the still water.

9 He had never had a day pass so quickly nor sobeautifully and he nearly forgot that he had to find a campand get some food before dark. He wasn’t sick of boiled fishand rice yet, so in the late afternoon he took time to moveback along the lily pads and drop the hook over. He caught alarge sunfish immediately and took three more small ones,dropping them all over the side using a short piece of nylonrope as a stringer, running the nylon through their gills andout their mouths.

10 He took his time looking for a campsite and picked oneon a flat area five or six feet above the surface of the lake. Itwas a clearing about 20 yards across. There were many suchclearings, probably all made by beaver cutting down thesmall trees years before, allowing the grass to take over.

11 Brian pulled the canoe well up onto the grass and for noreal reason tied a piece of line from the boat’s bow to a tree.

12 Later he would wonder at this bit of foresight. He hadnot done it the night before, and since this site was higherhe wouldn’t have thought he’d need to secure the canoe here.

13 The storm hit in the middle of the night.

14 It was not that there was so much wind—certainly notas much as he’d been through before with the tornado whenhe was first marooned in the wilderness—and not that therewas so much rain, although there was a good amount of it.

15 It was a combination of the two.

16 He had cooked dinner and eaten, boiled water for thenext day’s canteen, pulled his packs up in a tree, set up thetent and arranged his sleeping bag and weapons. Then he’dsat by the fire and written to his friend Caleb about the dayin one of his journals, using tiny writing so he wouldn’twaste the pages. He would have to give the letters to Calebwhen he saw him again—there was no mailbox out here.

17 When he was done he put the book back in a plastic bagand crawled inside the tent to go to bed.

18 He was awakened by a new sound, a loud sound. Notthunder—it never did thunder or lightning—and not thetrain-like roar of a tornado. This just started low, the hissingof rain driven against the tent. He snuggled back in his bag.He was in a good shelter, waterproof—let it rain.

19 Except that it kept coming and kept coming. It wentfrom a moderate rain to a downpour and finally to anoutright deluge. And with the rain came wind. Not violent,but enough to break off branches and push the rain stillharder. Soon Brian found his bag wet as the rain came in

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under the tent. He lifted the flap to look out but it was fartoo dark to see anything.

20 And it rained harder. And harder. The wind pushedstronger and still stronger and at last the tent seemed tosigh. It collapsed around him and he started rolling acrossthe grass toward the edge of the clearing.

21 Everything was upside down, crazy. He couldn’t find theentrance and about the time he thought he had it, the tentdropped off the five-foot embankment and he rolled down tothe lakeshore.

22 He landed in a heap and felt an intense, hot pain in hisleft leg at the upper thigh and reached down to feel an arrowshaft protruding from his leg.

23 Great, he thought. I’ve shot myself in the leg. He hadn’t,of course, but had rolled onto an arrow that had fallen out ofthe quiver just as the tent rolled off the embankment.

24 He couldn’t get his bearings, but he knew where histhigh was and grabbed the arrow and jerked the shaft out ofhis leg. There was an immediate surge of pain and he feltlike passing out. He didn’t, but then he heard a strangewhump-thump and something crashed down on his head.This time he did pass out.

25 He came to a few seconds later with a sore head, a soreleg and absolutely no idea in the world what was happeningto him. He was still wrapped in the tent and his bag was inhis face and his bow and arrows lay all around him and heseemed to be in water, almost swimming.

26 All right, he thought, take one thing at a time. Just onething.

27 I poked my leg with an arrow.

28 There. Good. I pulled the arrow out. My leg still works.It must not have been a broadhead because it didn’t go invery deep. Good.

29 My tent collapsed. There. Another thing. I’m in a tent,and it collapsed. I just have to find the front zipper and getout and climb up the bank. Easy now, easy.

30 Something hit me on the head. What? Something bigthat thunked. The canoe. The wind picked up the canoe, andit hit me.

31 There. I’ve poked my leg, rolled down a bank and beenhit in the head with the canoe.

32 All simple things. All fixable things.

33 He fumbled around and at last found the zipper at thefront of the tent, opened it and slithered out into the mud on


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the lakeshore.

34 The rain was still coming down in sheets, the wind stillhissing and slashing him with the water, but he had hisbearings and it was not impossible to deal with things.

35 He dragged the tent back up the embankment onto thegrass, limping as the pain in his leg hit him.

36 It was too dark to see much, but he could make out theshape of the canoe lying upside down. It had moved a good10 feet from where he had left it, and had he not tied it downloosely with the line it would have blown away across thelake.

37 He had forgotten the most important thing about livingin the wilderness, the one thing he’d thought he would neverforget—expect the unexpected. What you didn’t think wouldget you, would get you. Plan on the worst and be happywhen it didn’t come.

38 But he had done one thing right: He had tied the canoeto a tree. He dragged the tent to the canoe, crawledunderneath and lay on the tent the rest of the night,listening to the rain, wincing with the pain in his leg andfeeling stupid.

39 It was a long night. The next day was a repair day bothfor the equipment and for himself.

40 Dawn was wet and dreary and it took him a full hour tofind dry wood and leaves and get a decent fire going—all thetime castigating himself. Had he forgotten everything? Hehadn’t made a secure camp, hadn’t brought in wood so he’dhave dry fire starter in the morning.

41 He limped through the woods around the campsite untilhe found a dead birch log with the bark still intact. Birchbark was nearly waterproof—it was what American Indiansused for canoes—and beneath the bark he broke off slivers ofdry wood. He took a double armful of bark and slivers backto the campsite and after three attempts—he should haveneeded only one match, he told himself—he at last got asputtering flame going.

42 Once the bark caught it went like paper dipped inkerosene. When the flames were going well he put onsmaller pieces of the wet firewood. The flames dried thewood and started it burning, and in another half hour hehad a good blaze going.

43 He took a moment then to examine his leg. There was aclean puncture wound not more than half an inch deep. Hetook some disinfectant from the first-aid kit and dabbed it onthe hole, put a Band-Aid on it and then went back to work.

44 The wind had dropped and the rain had eased to a few


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sprinkles now and then. He saw clear holes in the clouds. Hespread the gear to dry. His sleeping bag was soaked, and thetent was a sloppy mess.

45 He had to stay put, so he set the tent back up, this timepegging it down and using the small shovel to dig a drainageditch around the sides with a runoff ditch leading down tothe lake.

46 The wind had tangled the packs in the tree limbs, butthey were still intact. With effort, Brian lowered them to theground.

47 Again he dried arrows and the quiver and checked hisbow. Then he launched the canoe and took about 15 minutesto catch six good-size bluegills.

48 He cleaned the fish, put them on to boil with a teaspoonof salt, put rice in the other pan and then suddenly foundthat all the work was done.

49 The sun was out—he could actually see steam comingup from his sleeping bag as it dried—and he lay back on theground by the fire and went over what had happened. Hisleg throbbed in time with his thoughts as he learned yetagain: Never assume anything, expect the unexpected, beready for everything all the time.

50 And finally, no matter what he thought would happen,nature would do what it wanted to do. He had to be part ofit, part of what it was really like, not what he or some otherperson thought it should be like.From BRIAN’S RETURN by Gary Paulsen, copyright ©1999 by Gary Paulsen. Used bypermission of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

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TAKS Grade 10 ELA 2010 Released ItemsLiterary Selection

A Platter of Steaming Dumplingsby Mabelle Hsueh


1 Professor Liu stood in the doorway of his apartmentbuilding and watched the rain coming down hard on thesidewalk. He rubbed his hands together—a gestureacquired from years of teaching electrical engineering,when he’d spent hours at the blackboard, getting his handscovered with powdery white chalk. This habit had not beenobvious to anyone, himself included, until his retirementfrom the university a year ago.

2 When the rain subsided a little, he stepped out ontoThompson Street. He kept close to the buildings andcautiously made his way to Shanghai Garden around thecorner.

3 Jingma, the middle-aged woman who owned the littlerestaurant, was waiting on a young man wearing darkglasses. She wrote down his order and almost missedcatching the menu he tossed back at her.

4 Professor Liu entered the restaurant just as Jingmawas about to go into the kitchen. “Hello, Jingma,” he said.

5 The woman turned around. “Long time no see, ProfessorLiu,” she cried. “How you? Where you been for many days?”

6 “Nowhere,” Professor Liu answered, embarrassed at theconcern in her voice. “I was in my apartment.”

7 “Where your umbrella? You wet and cold. I bring youhot tea.”

8 It always amazed him that Jingma, hardly five feet tall,had such a deep, loud voice. It resonated with cheer andgoodwill. He walked over to his table nearest to thekitchen, took off his coat and dropped it on a chair. He sawthat the booths along the wall were empty, but the fourtables in the middle of the room were occupied. The air waspungent with the smell of ginger.

9 As soon as he sat down, Jingma was beside him withteapot and cup in one hand and chopsticks, bowl and platein the other. “My cook sick today so I run around, herethere, like that big wheel in circus,” she said. “My sistertook me to see when I first come to America. What thatcalled?”



10 “The Ferris wheel?”

11 “Nah, that machine go slow.” She shook her head. “Gowrong direction. Never mind, what you want for lunch?”

12 “Perhaps beef and broccoli?”

13 “Okay, okay, but I got something special. You wait.” Sheturned to go, then added over her shoulder. “How your bookcoming along, Professor, about Chinese . . .” she hesitated,“. . . buildings.”

14 “Chinese architecture,” he said. “It’s coming along justfine.”

15 “Good, good.” Jingma nodded and disappeared into thekitchen.

16 He poured the tea and took a sip, acutely disappointedthat she had no time to chat leisurely with him. He wantedto tell her his book was not coming along just fine,especially since he had not written a word for days.

17 With the approaching of the lunar new year he hadgrown restless, unable to concentrate. He spent his wakinghours in aimless reading and pacing around and aroundthe apartment as if he wanted to measure the width andlength of every room. The nights were disrupted by dreamsof China, of the house with the shapely roofs built by hisgrandfather for all his descendants. He seldomremembered the details of these dreams when he awoke,but they always left him with a sense of loss and the desireto weep.

18 He drank more tea and the delicate flavor of jasminepricked his nose and tongue. He recalled how his motherenjoyed adding a few fresh jasmine flowers to her teawhenever the plants in the garden were in bloom. Suddenlyhe noticed the young man with the dark glasses, who hadbeen sitting at the table near the door, coming toward him.

19 “Professor Liu,” the young man greeted him. “You don’tremember me, but I took one of your classes several yearsago.”

20 Professor Liu peered at the young man: T-shirt andjeans, medium height, thin with an oversized head. Atopheavy column in the Ancestral Hall, he thought tohimself. Out loud he said, “I’m afraid my memory is as badas my eyesight.” He rubbed his hands. “What is your name,young man?”



21 “Tim Wilson. The word is merry-go-round.” The youngman picked up the professor’s coat and carefully draped iton another chair before he sat down.

22 “I beg your pardon?” Professor Liu said.

23 “That woman was describing how busy she was. Like amerry-go-round.”

24 “Oh, right. Jingma works so hard.”

25 As though summoned, the woman came into the roombearing a trayful of food. She paused for a second,surprised to see the young man sitting with the professor.She put the broccoli and beef in front of the professor; theseafood noodles in front of the young man; and, with agreat flourish, a platter of steaming dumplings between thetwo of them.

26 “Early this morning I make two hundred jiao-zi,”Jingma said, waving two fingers in the air. “I thought if noone come to eat, I freeze them. But you have come and youcan eat them fresh. That’s best way. Now I am happy.” Shesmiled broadly.

27 Professor Liu lowered his head and inhaled. “O!Jingma, I am happy too. Why, I haven’t had jiao-zi for along, long time.”

28 “Taste one, taste one when hot.” Jingma reached forProfessor Liu’s chopsticks, picked up a dumpling and put iton his plate.

29 Then she leaned toward the young man and peered intohis dark glasses. “You are friend of our professor, huh? Youlike jiao-zi? Chinese New Year coming and jiao-zi New Yearfood, you know.” She waved her hand over the dishes as ifblessing them. “Eat, eat, you two. All food taste twice betterwhen eat with friends.” She pulled at her apron, tucked thetray under her arm and went over to the cash registerwhere a customer waited.

30 Professor Liu bent forward and put the dumpling in themiddle of his tongue. As the juice squirted out of the softdough and filled his mouth, he closed his eyes and sighedwith pleasure. “When I was a boy,” he began, “mygrandmother always made jiao-zi, along with other foods,on the twenty-third day of the last month of the Chineseyear. They were offerings for the Kitchen God.”



31 Using a spoon instead of chopsticks, the young man puta dumpling in his mouth and tasted it. “Delicious,” he said.

32 “Every Chinese kitchen has a kitchen god, do you knowthat? And a very important celestial being he is because onthe 23rd of December he makes his yearly journey toheaven to report on the conduct of all the members of hisearthly family.” Professor Liu paused to catch his breath.

33 “Ummmm . . .” the young man mumbled and picked upanother dumpling. “So everybody shapes up,” he saidfinally, “like kids for Santa.” He cradled his spoon underanother dumpling.

34 “Yes, yes,” the professor agreed, delighted. “I’ve neverthought of it in just that way.” He put down his chopsticksand placed both arms on the table. “In fact, mygrandmother habitually smeared honey on the picture, onthe Kitchen God’s mouth, so he would say nothing butsweet things about our family.” He chuckled and ran hishand, like a washcloth, over his face. “Why, that was what Idreamed of a few nights ago, the honey on the picture!”

35 “The Kitchen God isn’t a statue?” the young man askedand lifted another dumpling from the platter.

36 “Just a red and gold picture. Each year mygrandmother would buy one from the market—you know, aman with a red face, wearing a red robe, sitting on a chairwith legs apart—and paste it on the wall behind the stove.There was also a little altar on the wall, I remember, with atiny incense burner and joss sticks in it.”

37 He stopped, poured himself more tea after checking theyoung man’s full teacup. “Last night I dreamed of mymother coming into my room to dress me up for New Year.Somebody had laid out all my new clothes—a black cap, redvest, and yes, a pair of red cotton-padded shoes—on thedresser.” He laughed aloud. “All my dreams are comingback to me now.”

38 “Nice dreams.” The young man spooned the lastdumpling onto his plate.

39 Professor Liu was aware that the young man was notlistening to him. But he could not stop talking for it seemedan avalanche rumbled inside his head. Bits and chunks ofmemory, shaken loose, came tumbling down and out of hismouth. He described the rustle of silk gowns and dressesworn by relatives; the aroma of sandalwood incense wafting



up to the high ceiling and hanging on there for days; theelaborate ceremony of kowtowing and offering food anddrink to the ancestors; and the explosion of the earsplittingfirecrackers just before everybody sat down for the NewYear feast. “Such happy times,” he said. “So much easier totalk than to write, isn’t it?”

40 The young man did not answer. He was eating theseafood noodles now, his eyes darting here and there likeminnows in a stream. At last he said, “Professor Liu, youshould have taught Chinese Civilization instead of ChineseArchitecture.”

41 “Oh my dear young fellow.” The professor lookedstartled and rubbed his palms. “I became interested inChinese architecture only after my retirement. Are yousure . . . ”

42 The young man choked and began to cough. ProfessorLiu was about to offer him some tea when the young mansuddenly got to his feet, walked out the front door, anddisappeared into the rain. The action was accomplished soquickly and quietly that none of the other diners noticed.Stunned, Professor Liu remained in his seat with one handstill grasping the teapot.

43 Jingma gave a big yell, “Hey wait, wait,” and ran afterthe young man, flapping her apron in the air like a brokenwing.

44 As he got up from the table, Professor Liu knocked overhis cup of tea in his hurry to get to the front of the room.He posted himself next to the cash register. Many of theother customers had stopped eating and were craning tosee out the window. Professor Liu began to rub his handsas if he could never get the chalk off.

45 Soon Jingma returned, gasping for breath, her hairmatted to her head and her face wet with rain andperspiration. “You see? He did not pay!”

46 “I am so sorry,” Professor Liu said. He unclasped hishands and put them behind his back.

47 “Oh, why he do this? But you know him?”

48 Professor Liu shook his head.

49 “Then I call police.”

50 “No, don’t do that.” He reached out and touchedJingma’s arm. “I’ll pay for him.”



51 “Why? Why you pay?” Jingma glared. “He is thief.”

52 “No, he’s my guest. He gave me a pleasant time.”

53 Professor Liu went back to his table, picked up his coatand reached into the pocket. Then the other pocket. Hismoney was gone.

54 “What is matter, Professor?”

55 “Jingma, put it on my account, please.” He paused as acouple entered the restaurant. “Remember, don’t stay onthat merry-go-round too long.”

56 Jingma smiled, uncertain what the last remark meant,and hurried away.

57 Professor Liu righted the teacup he had knocked over.For the first time he noticed the row of small red lanternsabove the cash register and the bigger lanterns in the twodoorways. They were bright red, the color of hope and joy.No doubt Jingma had hung them up for the comingChinese New Year.

58 He dropped a few paper napkins in the puddle of spilledtea and wiped the table clean before he reached for his coatand pulled it on.

59 Now he was eager to leave. He wanted to get home, tolook at his manuscript, to read the last page he had writtenseemingly so long ago, about the flying eaves. Howfascinating those eaves were: shaped like swallows’ tails,they cantilevered outward and upward like arms lifted inprayer.

© Mabelle Hsueh. Used by permission of the author.

TAKS Grade 10 ELA 2010 Released ItemsExpository Selection

How My Name Saved My Lifeby Masha Leon

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“It’s Masha, not Marsha,” I have to tellpeople who insist I should Americanize thespelling of my name. How can I explainthat to change the spelling would be totamper with a part of the past?

Masha is the Russian for Mary—but Iwas named after my paternal grandfather,Moyshe. In prewar Warsaw it would havebeen more prudent to be called Maria,Marisia, Marusia. Masha was a giveawaythat I was not Polish and might be Jewish.

When the Nazis occupied Poland inSeptember 1939, my parents agreed thatthey would meet at their hometown,Byten, then under Soviet occupation as aresult of the Stalin-Hitler pact. My fatherleft Warsaw in the first week of the war, asdid many intellectuals and journalists,assuming they would return a few weekslater. My mother and I left Warsaw in thewinter of 1939–40 and headed for theGerman-Russian border. En route wewere taken direct to Gestapoheadquarters by our Polish peasantdriver and lined up to be shot, butbecause my mother and I had even-numbered tags (6 and 8) and they shotthe odd-numbered refugees, we survived.

My mother had warned me never tocry in front of a German and never to callher Mamma. (I was blond and blue-eyed,and she had black hair and dark-browneyes, so calling her Mamma mightcondemn me as a Jewish child. Shepassed herself off as my Italian nanny,since she spoke Polish with a Russianaccent.) However, should we be stoppedby the Russians, then cry a river, forRussians were reputed to have good

hearts. My being able to blend withpeasant children, my mother’s willingnessto live in a barn, to milk cows, to digpotatoes, was a passport to a night’slodging or a glass of milk. Our currencywas salt, needles, thread, matches, allprized by dirt-poor peasants.

After a number of life-threateningencounters we finally reached the border,where the Germans willingly, smilingly letus through, along with hundreds,thousands of refugees. But once wecrossed, Russians on horseback withpeaked hats and bandoliers told us to goback to the Germans. “We don’t want anypans [misters] here—we are all tovarischi[comrades].” And so for three days weshuttled between Russians with poisedbayonets and Germans who laughed andtaunted, “Go back to your Bolshevik

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Polish-Russian Border During World War II

TAKS Grade 10 ELA 2010 Released ItemsExpository Selection

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friends.” Eventually people began to diefrom cold and hunger, and trucks wouldappear to cart off the bodies.

I left Warsaw with a case of the mumps(the fever kept me warm) and amalnutrition rash in my mouth. Mymother decided on the third day that wewould leave the other refugees and walkparallel with the tree line in hopes ofbreaking through to the Russian side. Noluck. Miraculously, a Polish peasantwoman who had fields on the Russian sideand a house on the German side came bywith a hay wagon and offered to help us.She fed us, hid us in her cellar for severaldays until we recovered, and had her songet us past the Germans. Then we were onour own in the middle of no-man’s land.

We had just entered the forest on theRussian side when a lone Russian soldierappeared with bayonet fixed and orderedus back. As my mother put down herbundles and I removed my knapsack, Iheard her say in perfect Russian, “I’drather a Russian shot me than a German.”On cue, I began to cry, to weep, to howl.But the soldier was adamant. “Go back orI shoot you,” he repeated. My mothershowed him her papers, indicating thatshe had been born under Russian rule. Hethrew them in the mud. Obviously nothingwas working. I kept on wailing.

“Don’t cry, Mashinka,” she said. TheRussian suddenly turned to look at me:“Since when do Poles give their childrenRussian names?” My mother gave me azetz in the ribs—“Sing! Sing!”—and I sangthe only Russian song I knew, “Podsamovarem, ja i moya Masha” (“Beneaththe samovar I and Masha . . .”) I keptrepeating the same phrase, over and over.

“Enough!” shouted the Russian. “WhyMasha?” he asked again. Go tell a soldierthat I was named after Moses-Moyshe. Mymother wove a fable about having beeninspired by Chekhov’s Three Sisters,Masha in Brothers Karamazov, Tolstoy. . . .The soldier was a peasant kid who hadprobably only dimly heard of any of theseliterary giants and waved at us just tostop!

He looked at me and shook his head,put his hand in his inner pocket, andpulled out a family photograph, pointing toa little girl about eight, the same age Iwas, with the identical long braids andbows. “My sister Masha,” he told mymother. “How can I shoot your daughter?It would be like shooting my sister.” He ledus to headquarters, and when the localcommander and troops heard myname—Masha, Mashinka—out came theblack bread, butter, tea, apples. They tookus by truck to the train station, where thesoldiers, again hearing my Russian name,serenaded us and fed us.

Marcia, Marsha—it’s not the same. Ioften wonder, of all themiracles—surviving the bombing, leavingWarsaw on the right route on the rightday, going left or right on a road, finding apeasant willing to hide us, not being shot,the Gestapo believing that the dark-hairedwoman was indeed my nanny, an elderlyGerman at one of our stops telling us howto avoid being caught by a German patrol,etc., etc., etc.—if that encounter was notthe most pivotal in our survival.

Masha it is, and Masha it shall remain.

Copyright © 1993, Jewish Association for Services for the Aged.

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African Timeby Zoë Kenyon


1 At midday the only sign of life was a white couple onthe side of an empty road. They tried to shield themselvesfrom the sun beneath the spindly branches of a tree.Finally, in the distance, a blue truck shimmered in and outof the heat. It slowed, then stopped. Its sides were battered,the windows long gone, a wiper stuck out at right angles tothe bonnet, pointing up to the endless sky. The woman inthe passenger seat was obscured by the driver, who leantout to get a better view. The tips of his black hair shonecopper in the sun.

2 “Where are you heading?” he said.

3 “The nearest hospital,” said the girl on the side of theroad. Her body betrayed her panic. She wiped from hereyes and mouth the dust that the tires had stirred up. Shepointed at the extra pale boy on the ground. “He’s not well.I think it’s malaria.”

4 The black man leant further out of the window andshook his head. “I am sorry,” he said. The voice rumbled,almost comforted. “The problem is there is no hospital nearhere. The local one is two-hundred kilometers away.”

5 “Can you take us? I’ll pay.” Distress wobbled in theedges of her green eyes. She began to fumble with the topof her bag.

6 The man spread his palm and shook his head again. “Iam sorry. I am busy with something. Maybe when I finish,if you are still here,” he said, the corners of his mouthturned down. The woman in the passenger seat saidnothing. She did not move.

7 The driver drew himself back into the truck andcreaked it into gear. It shuddered on. In the mirror, hissteady brown eyes watched the white couple’s reflectionshrink back into the heat and dust.

8 His companion touched his knee. “We should help them,shamwari,” she said. “That murungu looked bad. It couldbe malaria.”

9 He looked at her. Her smooth skin was beginning tocrinkle with age. “What about the Mukomberes?” he said.

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10 “They can wait.” When she spoke, he could see the gapbetween her front teeth.

11 He spun the truck around, sent up more clouds of dustfrom the track. The white couple were still there, under themopani tree. The girl chewed at the sides of her nails,ground circles in the earth with the toe of her boot. The boyshivered on the sand, even though it must have burnt hisbare legs. The black man opened his door.

12 “We will take you,” he said. “Two-hundred kilometers isnot so far.”

13 He unfolded himself from the truck. He was tall, hisshoulders strong, square. He helped the girl lift hercompanion and their bags on to the back seat. Murungusalways carried too much. His passenger twisted round toget a better view; with the movement came the smell ofPerfection soap. She pressed a small, kind hand against theboy’s forehead, beneath the damp, blond hair. He lay withhis head on the bags, his blue eyes cloudy. Beads of sweathovered on his skin.

14 The woman in the front seat looked at the girl, thenback at the driver. “This is my husband, ChiefMbangombe,” she said. She missed the smile that flickeredacross Chief Mbangombe’s serene face. “I am Mrs. FortuneMbangombe. I used to be a nurse. Your friend has malaria.”The white girl nodded. “I have lots of medicine at home. Wewill take you there and make your friend better. It isnearer than the hospital.” Mrs. Mbangombe turned back tolook through the cracked windscreen at the straight, emptytrack. She smoothed her skirt along her thighs. Its colorshad faded from being seared dry in the sun too often. ChiefMbangombe glanced over at his wife and smiled again.

15 “I’m Alice. This is Jo,” the white girl said. She pushedthe hair out of her face, a tangle of auburn where it caughtthe light. “What’s going to happen to him?” There was atremor in her voice. Her fingers dug into the boy’s shoulder.

16 The chief answered. “If it is malaria, your friend willfirst sweat hot and cold,” he said. “Then the fever will riseand he will start speaking in his dreams. If he does not getmedicine, the fever will go to his brain. Then he may die.”He concentrated hard on the road. “Murungus are not sostrong in a battle against malaria. We Africans can fightbetter. But still we sometimes die.” The sun was so brightthat he had to squint.

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17 The dry wind whipped through the truck. Sometimesthe girl in the back sniffed. Chief Mbangombe and his wifesat ramrod straight as they rattled and shook overpotholes. The boy started to mutter. “He’s getting worse,”said the girl, the words high with fear.

18 Neither of the Africans moved. “He has time,” said Mrs. Mbangombe. She rearranged the scarf on her head,patted it down.

19 A brightly painted bottle store loomed suddenly out ofthe haze, red and blue against the quivering yellow andbrown of the bush. There were a few other cars parkedoutside, one without a windscreen, one without tires, all ofthem dented and rusty. The chief swung his truck off theroad. “We need drink and food,” he said. “There is still along way to go.”

20 “I’d better wait here, in case he gets worse,” said thegirl. It was clear she did not want them to stop.

21 The chief shrugged. “As you wish,” he said. “We will beback just now.”

22 Mrs. Mbangombe glided beside her husband. Everyonerecognized the black couple. “Masicati, maswera sei?” theysaid. They greeted the chief first, shaking his hand.“Masicati, maswera sei?” They clapped their respect to hiswife. The storekeeper came out with a free Zambezi beerfor him and a bottle of Coke for her. Two boys played anenergetic game of table football on the rickety woodenverandah. Underneath, a mangy dog panted; anotherworried at the sores in its patchy fur.

23 People came and went, materializing out of the bushonly to be sucked back into it. It made their throats dry,their eyes sore. They carried bursting bags, stacks offirewood, tatty suitcases on their heads. Babies clung totheir mothers’ backs, tacked on by a carefully tied shawl, alength of material. Bare feet slapped into the sand. Eachtime a person passed another they nodded, lips movingslowly in greeting. Whoever passed the bottle store brokefrom his errand and came up to the chief and his wife andshook hands and clapped. Their laughter rolled away fromthe store, attracted more passers-by. Occasionally the chiefmotioned with his bottle towards the truck. His friendsmuttered and hummed and nodded. The murungu hadrefused a drink, so she would have to wait. The ownerbrought some gristly bits of cows’ stomach that he haddried himself at the back of his store. They chewed inamicable silence.

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24 At the truck, five children peered at the white girl andher friend. They shuffled closer. Held hands for safety. Thesmallest stood on tiptoe to try and see over the windowlessdoor. The white girl sighed and tossed her head; thechildren giggled and scuttled back. The dust swirled overtheir toes. The girl didn’t notice when they crept up again.She had eyes for only the chief and his wife.

25 At last the couple drained their bottles. They handedthem back and the keeper clinked them into the recyclingcrate.

26 “Taquienda. Tatenda,” said the chief and his wife.“Tatenda,” said the others. The word was satisfied, thesecond syllable elongated sleepily. They all shook handsagain.

27 The murungu was worse. He chattered betweenclenched teeth. The girl was wild-eyed. There was a clean,white mark along the back of her hand where she’d pulledit across her nose.

28 Chief Mbangombe studied the boy. He looked at hiswife. “I think maybe we should go straight to the hospital,”he said.

29 His wife nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said.

30 “How far is it? How long has he got?”

31 “Your husband will be fine,” said Chief Mbangombe.“We will be at the hospital in maybe one hour. They will fixhim there.” He concentrated on the road again.

32 Mrs. Mbangombe adjusted the radio, then stretchedinto the back to feel the boy’s forehead again. “He will befine,” she said. No one spoke for the rest of the journey. Thechief hummed to the radio and tapped his long fingers onthe duct-taped steering wheel.

33 The hospital was a group of six whitewashedbungalows. The heat trembled above their corrugated tinroofs. Below, queues of people snaked out of every door.Some stood, some sat, some lay. Mrs. Mbangombe and thegirl helped half-carry the boy to the main building. Thechief led the way. The crowds parted in front of him. Everynow and then, someone would break from the throng toshake his hand or clap in front of him, head bowed, kneesbent. The two women followed in his wake. The boy’s feetdragged between them. A white doctor appeared at the doorof the main building.

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34 “Ah, Chief Mbangombe! Masicati. Maswera sei?Mrs. Mbangombe! Masicati. Maswera sei?” he said.

35 “Maswera, teswera?” husband and wife replied. Thewhite girl bit her lip, tried to catch the doctor’s eyes. Heignored her, focused instead on the black couple. “We havebrought a sick murungu,” they said. “Malaria.”

36 “Ah,” said the doctor. He turned to the white girl.

37 “Can you do anything? He’ll be OK, won’t he?” she said.

38 “Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “He’ll be fine.” He turnedback to the chief and his wife. “I will talk to you later.Tatenda,” he said.

39 “Tatenda.”

40 The doctor took the weight of the white boy on hisshoulder, and headed into the hospital. The girl followed.She forgot the chief and his wife.

41 Chief Mbangombe went to the building next door. Hewalked between the corridor of beds, reserved for thesickest people. There was usually one death in the day andone at night. The chief ’s steps were slow and deliberate, hishead held high. Every man that could, sat up. “ChiefMbangombe! Masicati, maswera sei?” and arms wereextended if they still had enough energy to do so. The chiefwent to every one. He clasped their hands in his and benthis head to whisper a few words. Women, too, crawled fromunder the beds, where they slept beneath their sickhusbands and children. He greeted each in turn.

42 When he had finished that building, he carried on to thenext. He ignored the stench from the overflowing cesspits.He shook hands with the people who sat in the stinkingmess the same way he had with those inside. His wife didthe same in the women’s wards.

43 When they had finished, they found the white boytucked up in crisp white sheets. The girl, exhausted, sleptunder the bed.

44 Mrs. Mbangombe touched her husband’s arm.“Taquienda. We must go,” she said.

45 “Eh. Taquienda. I am hungry. We will eat. Later we willbring the murungus food. They will not be fed here,” saidChief Mbangombe.

46 Together they walked back out to their beaten-up truck.© Zoë Kenyon, “African Time.”

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Guardian Angelby Adoralida (Dora) Padilla

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In the fall of 1998, my friend Eleanor, aseasoned traveler, wanted to visit Turkeybut couldn’t find anyone to join her. I hadalways wanted to travel, and figured I hadto start somewhere, so I signed on for afive-week trip.

We arrived in Istanbul. This was suchan ancient city: Constantinople,Byzantium, the center of the RomanEmpire; we were truly in awe and veryhumbled. The Hagia Sophia, the BlueMosque, the Grand Bazaar—we saw it all.

We decided to venture out fromIstanbul heading toward Izmir by ferry.Then, we would take a train to Selcukwhere wewould be onlyminutes awayfrom theancient ruinsof Ephesus.Arriving atthe ferryoffice ratherearly, wewere the firstones there,other than ascruffyhomeless-looking Turkasleep on a bench. We sat as far away fromhim as we could. His shoes were severalsizes too big, and the soles were floppingoff. His socks had been worn through atthe heel, and turned so now the hole wasat the front ankle. His pants were baggy

and dirty, his jacket had holes, and he wasin serious need of a shower and a shave.

People started to filter into the ferrybuilding, getting in line to buy theirtickets. Although most of the people weencountered spoke English, the ticketseller did not. It was difficult to conveythat we wanted both ferry tickets andtrain tickets. To my surprise, thehomeless-looking man appeared at myside, and in near perfect English told usthat we were in the wrong line. He guidedus to the proper line, ordered our tickets,made sure I counted my currency and thatI received the proper change. He told mehis name was Sinan.

Sinanhelped uswith ourvery heavybags ontothe ferry,and upseveralflights ofstairs to the topobservationdeck. Theseats werefull. He

asked a family at a nice booth to please letus sit there, and they obliged. We invitedhim to sit with us, and offered to buy himbreakfast for all his help. He only accepteda cup of coffee.

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Sinan explained he was in Istanbul fora job interview with a cruise line. He hadworked at major hotels in Saudi Arabiaand London. From his torn jacket, heproduced his prized possession—a Polaroidpicture of himself with Sean Connery,taken in London. He accompanied us outonto the deck and told us all about thesites along the Bosporus. We spent hourson the ferry enjoying his company, andtook Polaroid pictures of ourselves withhim. He placed our picture together withthe picture of Sean Connery.

When we arrived at our stop, Sinandidn’t even hesitate before grabbing ourbags and carrying them down the stairs.After walking us to the train station, hequickly paid a porter to watch our bags,and we walked several blocks to a pizzeriafor lunch. We insisted on buying lunch, buthe ate very little. He carried our bags ontothe train, and again asked people to moveso we had perfect seats. We didn’t realizethe ferry trip would be about three hoursand the train trip another eight hours.While Eleanor napped, Sinan and I talkedabout every subject under the sun: politics,the role of women in Turkish society,religion, family, law, UFO’s (he wasconvinced, as he said many Turks were,that America had contact with aliens andthat is why we had advanced technology).He was bright, funny, insightful, naive.

We had not finished our lunch, and hehad the foresight to have our leftoverswrapped up. We ate cold pizza and thepeople he had kicked out of our seatsshared apples and bread with us. We toldhim where we were headed, and he askedwhere we planned to stay once we arrived

in Selcuk. He advised that we should getoff several stops before the end of the line,to be closer to the bus station where wehad to connect to our final destination.

By the time we arrived in Izmir, it wasabout eleven P.M. Sinan helped us off thetrain, picked up our bags, one on eachshoulder, and started off down a busyexpressway. It was all Eleanor and I coulddo to keep up with him, in the dark. Wefeared we had made a terrible mistake,entrusting this stranger with ourbelongings, and that he was now runningoff with all we had. I saw him turn off wayahead, and Eleanor and I were out ofbreath trying to catch up. When we turnedthe same corner, we saw Sinan standing infront of a magnificent Mercedes bus, withour luggage in front of him, and his armsspread out wide to stop the bus which waspulling out of the station.

The driver got out and yelled at him,and he answered back in Turkish. Thedriver opened the storage area, and threwour bags in. We arrived breathless andSinan ushered us onto the bus, telling uswe could buy the tickets on board. He gaveus a hurried hug good-bye, and he wasdrenched in sweat from running with ourluggage. The moment we were on the bus,it pulled out of the station. Sinan ranalongside the bus, waving excitedly. It wasthen I noticed tears running down my face.I had missed the chance to tell my newfriend how much we appreciated hiskindness and company. We waved backand he was gone.

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Eleanor and I sat and looked at eachother and at the same time said: “He was aguardian angel!” Had it not been forSinan, we would not have purchased theproper tickets, we would have laboredterribly with our bags, we would havemissed out on good seating, and whoknows what we would have done aboutfood. We would have missed the delightfulguided tour of the Bosporus on the ferry.We would have gotten off at the wrongstation, had to hire a taxi, and would havemissed the last bus to Selcuk that night,leaving us stranded without reservationsnear midnight in a strange city.

When we arrived in Selcuk, it wasnearly midnight. The little town wasasleep. There was no one in sight. We werethe only passengers getting off at thattown. There was a man leaning by a car.He eyed us carefully. We were instantlyworried. The man approached and asked:“Are you the American women comingfrom Istanbul?” We were shocked. “Howdid you know?” we asked. He answered:“Because a man named Sinan called thehotel and told us you would be arriving onthis bus. He said you’d be hungry and

asked that we keep the kitchen open foryou.” We couldn’t believe it. Even thoughhe was no longer traveling with us, Sinan,our guardian angel, was still looking outfor us.

The man took our luggage and droveus the few blocks to our hotel. The kitchenwas open and waiting to serve us dinner.

That night, as I drifted off to sleep, Ifelt ashamed for having initially judgedSinan by his appearance. I was also sadthat such a wonderful man had so fewopportunities—his greatest desire was tosomeday come to the United States andwork at a 7-11 store. Most importantly, Iwas thankful to have opened my eyes todiscover kindness when and where it wasleast expected.

It was stunning how much a totalstranger was willing to do for us, withoutexpecting anything in return. Throughoutour adventure in Turkey, we saw this samekindness repeated time and time again.We never knew his last name, but we willalways remember him as “Sinan, theguardian angel.”Adoralida Padilla, “Open My Eyes, Open My Soul: Celebrating OurCommon Humanity.” McGraw-Hill Books, 2004.

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Page 41

The FoxbyFaithShearin

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It was an ordinary morning: November, thin light,and we paused over our pancakes to watchsomething red move outside. Our house is on

an untamed patch of land and, across the lagoon, 5 another house surrounded by trees. On the banks

of their shore, facing us: a fox. We thought

he might be a dog at first for he trotted and sniffedlike a dog but when he turned to uswe knew he was nobody’s pet. His face was arranged

10 like a child’s face—playful, dainty—and his eyeswere liquid and wild. He stood for awhile, looking out,as if he could see us in our pajamas, then found

a patch of sand beneath a tree and turned himselfinto a circle of fur: his head tucked into his tail.

15 It was awful to watch him sleep: exposed,

tiny, his eyes closed. How can any animalbe safe enough to rest? But while I washedour dishes he woke again, yawned, and ran

away to the places only foxes know. My God20 I was tired of being a person. Even now his tail

gestures to me across the disapproving lagoon.

“The Fox” by Faith Shearin, from MOVING THE PIANO, Stephen F. Austin Press, 2011. Used by permission.

trust find her at home when he arrived; but a message (for she hadn’t had time to telegraph)...

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