Horsekeeping by Roxanne Bok

a spit, the dinner dishes done, and be well on his way to Foxwoods casino.
    So I avoided staying by myself in Salisbury, and the few times I braved it, breathless panic courtesy of my overly keen attention to what was not in every shadowed corner I investigated spared me little sleep. It wasn’t until my forty-fifth year that I stopped being afraid alone at night. It took two kids and a husband to convince me that any “alone time” was too precious to waste a second of it worrying about some backwoods Joad trying to kill me. Kids helped me get over a lot of things in life, if not exactly grow up, and I replaced my irrational fear for my own safety with more rational ones regarding my kids. Now when I am alone in the country, I lie in bed worrying about Jane or Elliot in a taxi accident or an apartment fire, the homicidal lunatic on my own tail be damned.
    Well, back to the strange noise. It was the wail of a lone child in the woods.
    â€œScott, wake up,” I whispered, propped on my elbows with ears tuned.
    â€œWhat? What’s the matter?”
    â€œDid you hear that?”
    â€œHear what?”
    â€œA scream or a screech.”
    â€œI don’t hear anything. Just go back to sleep,” he yawned. “It’s probably just some animal.”
    â€œSHHH,” I cupped my ear. “Listen.”
    We turned our heads toward the open window. The cry echoed again, clear and eerie.
    â€œThat. It sounds like a baby,” I said, certain.
    â€œWhy would a baby be out in the woods?”
    â€œI don’t know. Lost, maybe?”

    We heard it again, loud and clear. It had to be human.
    â€œLet’s go find it.” I was wide awake, heart pounding toward a rescue mission.
    â€œYou’ve got to be kidding.” Scott locked my eyes to check my mental health.
    â€œWell, I’m going,” I said, petulant.
    I fumbled on my robe, slipped into Scott’s Docksiders and plodded out into the dewy night. Billions of crickets and frogs chirped and bellowed. The night is loud around here. What do they mean “dead of night”? Everything is not just living, but partying. A misnomer equivalent to “sleep like a baby”: if you’ve had one, rocking and singing to it for hours before stealthing back to your own forgotten bed, you know the truth. “Sleep like a teenager”—try waking one up in time for school—would be the more appropriate saying.
    I didn’t think to pack a flashlight, but no matter, I was pumped. I strained my ears toward the desperate call. Come on , I urged, Where are you ? I jumped off the deck into the brush. Snakes ? I high stepped to perch on a rock. It was very dark. That’s why I needed Scott—power in numbers. I’m big on ideas, but cowardly in follow-through.
    I strained with listening.
    Nothing.
    The sound ended as mysteriously as it began. Foolish once again, I swatted at the mosquitoes planting bites on my ankles and temples that would plague me for days. I crept back into bed, inching so as not to wake my husband who, with a little luck, would forget all of this by morning. My expectation of tending to some ethereal changeling or injured, grateful animal lay fallow. Some years later a radio program informed me that certain nocturnal animals sound just like babies crying, and many people just like me have gone a’hunting for to save them.
    One autumn night several years later, Scott and I joined a group of Nature Conservancy-led hikers to call for owls. Only a few hardy souls signed up, but this smacked of adventure—dark and wild, yet with a
protector who knew the territory. I had read Owl Moon to my son, a lovely children’s book about a boy and his father summoning owls, and I have always wanted to communicate with any animal on its own terms. Frank led us across protected land to a fen, swampy with dead, leafless trees. Their bleached trunks silhouetted starkly, even against the moonless