Judy Blunt

Spring of 1954, my mother stood at the threshold of Henry Picotte’s abandoned chicken house, a bouquet of hens dangling in either hand, and eyed the enormous prairie rattler coiled on the dirt floor. Killing the snake would be inconvenient, hampered as she was by a midterm pregnancy and the hysterical chickens swooping left and right around their new hoe, but a weapon would not have been hard to find. Stout diamond willow sticks leaned against every gatepost on the place, anywhere a man might step off a horse. Such readiness suggested an extended family of snakes, more than she wished to dwell on with her hands full of squawking chickens. Stepping back out, she hollered for my father to bring a spade.

It’s true what they say about the rural school experience—the ranch kids who attended one-room country schools saw both the best of education and the worst it could offer. At best, we received one-on-one attention, with every assignment marked and returned to us to be corrected; spelling bees, learning games and elaborate Christmas programs; and of course we had the advantage of all grades in one room—this last lending the effect of having lessons presented subliminally for a year or two before being called upon to master them yourself. At worst, we had chaos. A school taught by only one teacher is bound to reflect the strengths and weaknesses of that teacher, and indeed, if the weaknesses were of the sort that encouraged rebellion and disorder, then students were in for a long year.

I made a good job of the window. I swung until only jagged shards stuck up from the glazing, then pounded at those with the side of my hand to knock them out. Once it was started, I saw it through, every punch a jolt of electricity that charged the next blow and the next. When it was over I stood still for a while, trying to sort one version of reality from another, as though I had turned a corner and come upon a terrible wreck only to recognize myself amid the blood and broken glass.