I know I am condemned to die,

And all the girls for me will cry;

But all their cries won’t set me free,

For I’m condemned to the gallows-tree.

I shut my eyes and I could see Redbird River flowing green and cool, eddying under the ferns, shaking willow roots; and great forests reached from its banks into the sky. And I thought that if I could see as far for my size as an ant, I could look from the ridgetop and see the river washing through holly thickets; I could see as far as a chippy-bird could fly between daylight and dark. I diddled in my mind. Sunlight sifted through the leaves, slowly, wavering. A bumble bee droned to its nest in the porch sill. I lay down under the bush and slept for a spell.

The morning was half gone when I sat up. I waked, remembering. A jug of water must be carried to Uncle Jolly. By now he would be parched for a drink. The jug had been moved from the spring, so I went into the house to ask Grandma where it was. Grandma would know. She knew in what drawer or what crack a thing was kept; or on what nail it hung. But she wasn’t in the kitchen. She was nowhere in the house. I ran to the smokehouse, to the barn, into the garden, calling.

She was gone, and I couldn’t think where. Grandma wasn’t lost, I knew. I had no fright for her. Uncle Jolly’s saying she might drop stone down dead was just to scratch a mark on my memory. But if she walked too far, staying too long, Uncle Jolly wouldn’t let me go to Redbird River. “Keep a watch on Ma,” he had said. “If she starts off, follow.”

Up Lean Neck or down? Over the bench path to Salt Lick and beyond? I looked into the sky, finding not a buzzard saddling blue air. I spat into the frog of my hand, slapping the wet spot with a forefinger. The spit sprang southwest. I set off into the bottom, walking the cowpath along the creek. The path was roofed with brush and vine, and a smell of water was there, a smell of peeled willow, of perch freshly caught. Roots lay on the ground like sunning watersnakes. They had rusty hides, and I stepped carefully. I barely made a track.

I called in the green burrow. Click beetles quieted. A flag blade shook, and was still. A frog grunted under the bank. It was a lonesomy place. And I went on, coming through the wahoo trees into open sunlight. The waters thinned over sandbars, scarcely moving. A snake doctor blew over the surface, searching. I went farther up the creek than I’d ever gone before, past the giant poplars, past the deep hole where Uncle Jolly caught big-mouths. I went pretty near to the second bend.

A thought came into my head and I stopped, listening. Could Grandma have gone to the marking stick?