I was in the war for three weeks, not counting

the time in the hospital, and everything is different

now. Muriel and Grace ask if I want to join them in a

card game. Sure, I say, I’ll shuffle. Oh … um, let’s play

partners. Here, Muriel—you can shuffle. I keep looking

down at my sleeve and thinking of things I won’t ever

be able to do again: tie a fishing fly, hammer in a nail.

Why me? I ask Pa. He looks at me long and hard.

Son, that question leads nowhere. These old

crows around here still know you. The

past is past. You’re home now.

This Changes Everything / Muriel

This Changes Everything

Muriel

At least you have your brother home,

Emma says, which means I can’t talk

to her about my horror. I keep picturing

the moment Ollie’s arm was torn from him …

What did it look like? How close did he

come to dying? He says he can’t remember,

but maybe he remembers in some awful,

wordless way. He’s sleeping all the time—

Mama says he’s healing, and we should

let him be. Beyond that, she doesn’t say

a word about the way this changes

everything for all of us. What does Mama do

with rage she thinks she shouldn’t feel?

If God knows what he’s doing, and

the president is worthy of our trust,

where does Mama look for reasons

to explain why she is cutting Ollie’s food

the way she used to do when he

was two years old?

Take This Bread / Emma

Take This Bread

Emma

Everything that used to be easy is hard.

We’ve always run so freely across the creek and back.

Now when I say, Let’s go over to welcome Ollie home, Mother

answers, I’m sorry, Emma, I can’t, just yet. You go. Take this bread.

I would give my own right arm, she says, to have Fra—I’ll go when …

Well, I don’t know when, exactly. Mother simply can’t, so I go alone, and

find: Ollie asleep, Muriel scolding her hens as she throws them their grain,

Grace clutching her doll in her playhouse, and Mrs. Jorgensen cleaning a rain

gutter, scrubbing at it with such ferocity she slices the palm of her left hand

on the sharp edge, shakes off the blood, but doesn’t stop to wash it. Then

she goes right back to work, oblivious. I offer the bread: Mother said

to give you this. She’d have come, but she had to … do some other

things. Mrs. Jorgensen stares at me. Shouldn’t you wash that

cut? I ask. Oh … yes. Her blood drips across the yard.

Phantom Pain / Ollie

Phantom Pain

Ollie

Pain in a missing limb is common,

Pa tells me. They call it phantom pain. An itch I

can’t scratch. I try to imagine some way a mosquito could