The Wonder of All Things by Jason Mott Page A

conditions that caused the smile. He recounted jokes, told stories of sunny afternoons and days at the beach. And Ava sat with him, listened, and pretended she could remember the moments her father described for her.
    The smiling woman in the photographs was one version of her mother. It was the easiest to see, the easiest to believe. But that was not who Ava remembered. The only memory of her mother that lingered, intact and undiminished, in Ava’s mind was the sight of her swinging from the rafters of the barn.
    But now, on the porch with Wash, with the broken insect in her hand, she could remember something more: she and her parents together at the Fall Festival, happy.
    And then her eyes were open and she was on the porch again and there was something rising up inside her throat. She turned her head away from the porch and heaved until she vomited and, even in the dim light of the night, they could both see the blood mingled with the bile.
    “Oh, God,” Wash said. He stood and turned to go into the house, his eyes wide.
    “No!” Ava managed. “I’m okay. Don’t tell. Please.”
    “What?”
    Ava spat the last of the bile from her mouth. Her head ached and her bones felt hollow once again.
    “I don’t want to go back to the hospital, Wash,” Ava said. She sat up, huffing, and looked Wash in the eyes. “Just keep this between us. I’ll be fine.” She smiled a fast, apologetic smile. “You’ve never seen a person vomit before? It’s no reason to call the ambulance.”
    Wash sat again. He pulled his knees to his chest and folded his arms across them. “Okay,” he said, and there was guilt in his words.
    “I’ll be fine,” Ava said. “Really.”
    It was only later that the children remembered the cricket. When the vomiting began, Ava had opened her hand and the cricket had escaped. Neither of them, amid the darkness and the worry, saw the small black marble leaping away quietly into the night. Neither of them heard its song, vibrant and full of life.

Where there should have been crickets and the singing of owls in the deep darkness of the woods, there was only the sound of door hinges rattling. The sound of a low, snuffling growl. The sharp intake of air as a large dark snout sniffed at the bottom of the door.
    Her father—tall and wide, with skin as dark as blindness—was there with the shotgun, easing up to the front window above the couch, craning his neck to get a better angle on the animal.
    “You can’t kill it,” Ava’s mother said. She appeared suddenly behind the child, like the ghost she would eventually become. She placed her arms around her daughter—the two of them standing in the center of the living room like small trees, both of them thin as rails, their nightgowns displaying all of their bony angles. Ava’s mother squatted beside her and placed one hand on her head and said, in a voice that seemed like a command rather than a reassurance, “He won’t kill it. I promise.”
    “I suppose I’ve got to reason with it, Heather?” Macon said. “Dear Mr. Bear,” he said in a stern voice. “Please cease and desist your activities on these premises and return to your home. Have a beer.”
    “You can’t kill it, Macon,” Heather replied, holding back a smile.
    “I’m open to other ideas,” he said. “But I don’t think they make an Idiot’s Guide to Speaking Bear, so I believe my options are limited.”
    “You can’t kill it,” Ava parroted. Very suddenly her concern over the life of the bear was greater than her fear of it. After all, she was only five years old. “You can’t kill it, Daddy,” she said.
    Still Macon was at the window—shotgun in hand—twisting his neck and squinting his eyes, peering out and seeing little more than darkness. But the pounding on the door and the bellowing confirmed that nothing had changed. There was still a bear trying to get into their home.
    “It just wants food,” Heather said.
    “It’s just hungry,” Ava said, supporting