Leo Dangel

Home from town the two of them sit looking over what they have bought spread out on the kitchen table like gifts to themselves. She holds a card of buttons against the new dress material and asks if they match. The hay is dry enough to rake, but he watches her empty the grocery bag. He reads the label on a grape jelly glass and tries on the new straw hat again.

In the early afternoon my mother was doing the dishes. I climbed onto the kitchen table, I suppose to play, and fell asleep there. I was drowsy and awake, though, as she lifted me up, carried me on her arms into the living room, and placed me on the davenport, but I pretended to be asleep the whole time, enjoying the luxury— I was too big for such a privilege and just old enough to form my only memory of her carrying me. She’s still moving me to a softer place.

I look in the turned sod for an iron bolt that fell from the plow frame and find instead an arrowhead with delicate, chipped edges, still sharp, not much larger than a woman’s long fingernail. Pleased, I put the arrowhead into my overalls pocket, knowing that the man who shot the arrow and lost his work must have looked for it much longer than I will look for that bolt.