Untitled - CSUN ScholarWorks - California State University, Northridge

50
The fire flies were out early this evening. They flickered in
and around the shrubbery and trees that enclosed Cora Bea
Cox's dogtrot house. The house was a family heirloom from
the 1870's and had never been modernized. It sat isolated
on a broad, level field in Lincoln, Arkansas and was
constructed of dark, squared logs that shut in two separate
one-room buildings that sat side by side and were
connected by a wide, covered hall. Occasionally Cora Bea
drove her 66' Ford pick-up to Fayetteville to purchase apple
seeds, prayer beads, alfalfa molasses, a recipe book titled,
The Mystical Universe, but otherwise, she never left her fiftytwo
acre farm. Only she, a hound, and some cattle lived on
the property.
An angel or a demon must have dumped the skinny
hound on the side of the road because several years ago it
just wandered up to Cora Bea's doorway. She tried to scare
it away by shooing it with a broom, but the dog just sat
there begging for something which Cora Bea did not
understand nor cared to understand. So she let the hound
pursue its intended mission never giving it any sort of
acknowledgment. As each monotonous day on the farm
seeped into the next, this ominous beast nagged behind her,
nipping at her heals.
In the orchard, west of the dogtrot house, the setting
sun infiltrated a tree trunk, forcing a viridescent glow to
shoot out the branches and surround an apple. Cora Bea
picked the apple and placed it in her tote bag. She looked
across the field to the pasture where the cattle were grazing.
The old, wooden fence that was built more than half a
century ago for the purpose of enclosing the cattle had
cracked, rotted, and decomposed in several spots, yet the
cattle remained. Earlier today, the white cow had given
birth to a spirited, little heifer which meant fresh milk for
Cora Bea' s breakfast tomorrow.
This past winter had poured out the most rain in forty