Her sister, Florence, was squatting on top of the lean-to where the wood was kept. Florence put her finger to her lips and motioned for Louise to stop. The back door of her grandmother’s house was wide-open but the day was so bright Louise could not see into the darkness of the kitchen. The windows of the house were glazed with white sun. Louise glanced up at the narrow shade line below the eves, saw the twitching tails of sparrows hiding from heat. She felt a dull-fisted warmth in her throat and she tried to swallow. She stepped carefully through knee-deep sage, lifting her skirt up from small snags of cheatgrass. She saw the last edge of bushgrass, the scuff-smooth cow trail that led around the pond toward home. There was a rhythm of water moving slowly around the creek. She thought of rainbow trout, their dense eyes watching, the scales ringing along their backs as they bit up toward the small white wings beyond water. There was a pause in the reed grass as a deep breeze pulled dust toward a higher place. The red-winged blackbirds were quiet. She looked closer at the bloated cottonwood roots that stretched to the pond edge. A slow current writhed silver and then green in the sleeping shade. She threw a rock toward the pond, saw a sudden lap of water, then more waves, the smooth familiar wiggle parting grass, small hiss. She had come to know the language of the fields, the thin weave at the roots of grass. Snakes.

Louise knew Dirty Swallow was inside the house. Dirty Swallow had come to Old Macheese’s wake, and she had come to visit the day Louise’s mother had died. The dry weeds had crackled with rattlers. Both times Florence had scrambled to a place where the rattlers couldn’t get to her. As she came closer Louise could hear Dirty Swallow’s voice. Dirty Swallow was walking, pacing her grandmother’s kitchen in circles. As Louise stepped on the porch she heard the dry-rice sound of a rattler retreating.