Tyrannosaurus

in hand; the bus is always on time; well, usually. She returns to the now darken-
ing window, oblivious to the scant light in the room save for the glow from the
fire in the wood stove. Maybe she went home with Sam and Jim; but, no, she
would have had to pass by there. Besides, that wasn't like her.
By 4:30 Linnea, still standing by the window, clutching her now empty tea
mug, challenges herself to call someone. The school, the school district office,
the post office, a neighbor. But she seems frozen to her spot by the window.
Then finally - finally her phone rings. She places her tea mug on the window
sill and moves calmly toward the ringing.
"Hello."
"Linnea?" asks a familiar and anxious voice that she cannot place immediately,
"This is Sally, over at the school district office. There's been an accident; the bus."
There's a pause on the line as if the caller is waiting for Linnea to go hysterical
or allowing herself time to summon the courage to tell the tale.
But Linnea waits; her mind is blank with terror, her mouth dry and un-
workable.
"Linnea,'Linnea. Alice is all right. Her arm is broken, and there are cuts on her
face, hut she's all right. All the children are alive, some hurt worse than others.
The driver was killed. Just up here on that hill past the general store. A logging
truck. The roads are starting to slick up; no one's real sure what happened, not
yet."
Linnea still has said nothing. She knows the bus driver. She is trying to imagine
him dead. She really hadn't thought Alice would be dead. For that could never
be. Alice is golden, and the one good thing that is truly Linnea's.
"Linnea?" comes the voice over the phone. "Are you all right? I've got to go
and make other calls now. They're going to keep most of the kids at the hospital
in Waterville a while for observation, overnight if necessary."
''Will they let me see her?" Linnea finally speaks.
"Of course, go now."
"What about Bert?"
"What about him? Leave him a note, for Christ's sake, Linnea. I've got to go.
Bye."
Then, as if she is a mechanical woman, and someone has just wound up her
spring, Linnea scratches a note to Bert and sticks it on the tea kettle's spout in
the kitchen. She pulls on her boots, throws on her coat, shoves a blaze-orange
watch cap on her head and, for a moment stands in the living room shifting
from one foot to another.
Suddenly, ;he runs into the bedroom and yanks open a dresser drawer where
she knows Bert keeps wood money hidden in a sock. She stuffs it in her pocket,
makes sure she has her driver's license, and then just in case, just supposing she
might not get home tonight or the next or even the next, she jams several changes
of clothes, both hers and Alice's, into an old beach satchel andcharges out the
front door without locking it behind her.
Making Bread
Clipping wings on the milkroom window
moths madden the light
break my night retreat
out here in a cold baker's hut.
A jungle mantra to mix into meditation.
Why not just flour and warm milk
to make this bread rise?
It is midnight and I keep kneading.
Lisa beth Hammer
Bar Harbor
C. Walker Mattson
Troy
former writer, editor and
photographer in D.C.
Studies at COA
A Domestic Scene
. . .a woman reflects on her long marriage to a husband who is deaf
Moonlight climbs above our headboard
to the wall, filtered through the lace
your mother gave. I lift my hands
in the speech we call our whisper.
The words flutter like black doves
across the fadedpatterns of swans and reeds.
Someone asked me, "How do you talk to him
in the dark?" I wanted to say
your hands are like drunken geese
that learned to dance, and slowly,
slowly got tired and settled
their way to words instead.
But for that we need the moon.
But for that I need to tell the truth
and never do even when I try.
I speak so quickly in the dark.
For your thick hands, with whom
my doves lie down these years upon
your thigh, have swallowed
everything I say. It's all right.
After twenty years, the shape of my heart
with you, what to shop for, and
where to go in August
are nearly the same shape.
It's as if each thought is held a moment
and then placed into the air.
It's all right even when, in the kitchen,
I must put down my cup and walk-
around in front of you and still remember
the lisf of things I need to ask
and swallow those for which I have no signs.
Here in our darkness, my hands
are so free they don't know anything.
They just live. It's strange,
as I roll across your chest
and press your hands apart, to think,
"You talk too much!"
David Adams
So. Eudid, Ohio
is a technical writer