MY BOOK — "FINE." 2ND PRINTING

— 11 —

The bus put me out on the highway two miles short because the driver did not want to take the turn. I did not argue with him. I had spent four years not arguing with people about smaller things than a turn.

I walked it. It was April and the ditch was full of water and there was a dead pheasant in it, and I remember thinking that in ______________ the birds had been the first thing to go quiet, and here was one that had gone quiet for no reason at all, just a truck probably. Just a regular truck. Nobody had to be told about this bird. Nobody had to sign anything.

The mailbox still said STONE. That surprised me more than it should have.

She was on the porch with a dish towel and she saw me at the end of the drive and she did not move for a very long time. Long enough that I stopped walking too. Two people standing ninety feet apart in Nebraska, neither one of us willing to be the one who was wrong about it.

Then she said my name like a question.

I want to tell you that I ran. I did not run. I have run at ______________ and I have run at ______________ and I have run carrying a man who was heavier than me, and I could not run ninety feet of my own mother's driveway. My legs would not do it. That is the honest version and it is the one I am going to keep putting in the book no matter how many times Roberta circles it.