The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz Page A

had planted young poplars between mature trees, and bent and wove them into crossbars that he held in place with vines of honeysuckle. Because honeysuckle never dies, the vines flourished, winding themselves farther around the living fence posts and crossbars, year after year, building an impenetrable hedge that came into leaf and blossomed from May to October.
    Near the creek, my father and brother had cut down a section of the Swede’s fence and piled it neatly on our side of the property. In its place, my father had put up ten feet of barbed wire and post fence, but he’d stepped it one foot into what the Swede claimed as his property. He had left the roll of barbed wire at the point where the two fences met, so he and Dan could pick up where they left off another night. The going would be slow because my father and brother used a crosscut saw, in the dark, and the Swede’s fence had become a tangled forest over the years. Whenever he took down my father’s barbed wire fence, he’d plant fast-growing poplars, back where he figured the fence should be. But the trees drooped sadly and never had the chance to set their roots. My father and brother simply pulled them up by hand. I picked up a bit of the Swede’s fence, a thin poplar branch so grown past the honeysuckle’s confines that it looped into itself like a curl of my hair.
    I moved the cows through the sheep pasture and into the barnyard, locked the gate, and went into the barn. I gave up trying to do thechores alone, and instead went looking for cats. The barn cats were wild. They screeched and clawed at me if I was unlucky enough to catch one. But the very young kittens, the ones with eyes not yet opened, hadn’t seen enough to run scared. The mother cats hid their kittens in the dark, miniature alleyways between stacks of hay in the barn loft. I hid them from my father and the old white tom and his appetites. He’d eat his own offspring if he found them early enough, bloody enough, or else he’d lick them clean and carry them away to some nest like a mother cat. He was unnatural, turning like that.
    The morning of Sarah Kemp’s funeral I came across the old white tom in the corner of an empty calf stall clutching two kittens under his back legs. He humped against the head of the kittens, as if mating a female. I threw a pebble at the tom and missed. He looked at me, tucked the kittens tighter against his body and humped again. I threw another rock, then a stick. The tom finally ran off and the kittens scattered.
    I climbed the ladder to the hayloft. When I found a nest of kittens tucked in a hole in the hay, I pulled one from the nest and sat with it in my lap, a kitten so tiny and soft, its bones so close to the surface, its heartbeat so quick, it was a wonder it didn’t die of heartbreak. I clenched my teeth in the love of it, its utter dependency.
    My father called my name and entered the barn, walking down the alleyway, looking from side to side. I became very still. He called my name again, then listened and looked up for a long time at the place where I hid. I swallowed and held my breath and thought of how I might escape if he began climbing the ladder. That ladder was the only way down. Finally my mother called him and he left the barn. When the screen door to the house slammed shut, I breathed out and fell back into the loose hay.
    My mother came into the barn carrying the milk buckets, and I climbed down and opened the gate to let the first four cows into the barn.
    “You shouldn’t be wearing your good dress for milking,” she said.
    “I’ll be careful.”
    “More kittens?”
    “There’s a calico,” I said. “Don’t tell Dad.”
    We pulled the empty stumping powder boxes up to the cows andmilked with sleep still on us and the faces of our dreams still around us. We were milking Jerseys, and Jersey cows are the most jittery, the easiest to scare, but also the most gentle when treated right. With chocolate brown eyes and sweet long