In the summer, Dad hays the field in a neat square, but now there’s a big rock in the corner of it. What if the field is too wet to drive on when the grass is ready to cut and the tractor gets stuck?

Since it fell, my thoughts are ninety percent about the big rock. Everything else is squeezed into the remaining ten percent. It feels like the rock—and me—are waiting for something to happen, but I don’t know what that something is.

Chapter 6

The first meteorite fall for which written records exist is the Ensisheim meteorite, which fell on the village of Ensisheim (now in the Alsace region of France) in 1492. A large fireball was observed and, after a large explosion…caused much fright and excitement amongst the local people.

—Caroline Smith, Sara Russell, and Gretchen Benedix, Meteorites

AT BREAKFAST the next morning, my father flips ployes, the buckwheat pancakes we all love, on the hot cast-iron griddle. Birdie sits in her high chair with Lilygirl.

“Eat, Lilygirl.” Birdie holds the duck under one arm and offers her a piece of a ploye.

Uncle Braggy comes to the door and sticks his head in.

“The wind blew the smell of coffee and ployes into my bedroom window and woke me right up,” Braggy tells us, coming in and settling himself down at the table next to me. My father puts out an extra plate and fork for him. Braggy has black hair like my father and Uncle Lincoln and me, but his is curly instead of straight, and when he stands next to his tall brothers, the top of his head only comes up to their shoulders.

“I think the wind blows down the hill, not up, Braggy,” I say.

“The wind out there’s blowing every which way this morning, Henry. If it gets any stronger, I might have to tie myself down! But I didn’t just come for breakfast. I want to show you what’s in the paper today.”

“Is there a new winner of the Boston Post Cane?” I ask him. The oldest person in town gets a real ebony-and-gold cane. Braggy wants to be the oldest person in town one day and be presented with the cane at a special ceremony and get his picture in the paper.

“No, it’s still Isadora True. One hundred and one. But look at this!”

Braggy holds up the newspaper and I read the word in big letters:

FIREBALL

“There was a bright streak of light seen over this part of northern Maine night before last. A space rock broke up in the air,” Braggy announces.