Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth Read Free Book Online Page A

watches over him, so Grandma can have a break.
    But we count them all neighbours, up and down the river that winds through the tangle of branches in the woods we all share. We are connected by these woods and the river. We are connected by land and history.
    Near the river, along the path that leads from our house to Grandma’s house, there stretches a battered old fence. Years ago, we had a horse that needed penning in the spring. He ain’t there anymore, but the straggly wires still string along one side of the path, with the other side hemmed in spring and summer by chokecherry bushes, plum trees and wild strawberries scattered on the ground.
    There was a cold rain last night and the temperature dipped back below freezing this morning. I take myself for a walk down the wire-lined path to check on some of my most special trees and see how they fared. I haven’t walked that way for weeks; after snowfall, I usually stick to the road. But a sneaky wet like that with a sharp freeze can hurt the trees; they can lose a limb to ice or worse even. Near to the biggest plum tree — the one with the sharpest thorns in springtime but juiciest fruit in summer, plums that will just bleed down your arm from the first bite of flesh to the last suck of the pit — near to that tree I find a fawn.
    But it isn’t a white-spotted tan beauty curled up quiet in a nest of swirled grass. My fawn is a bleached white skeleton hooked in-between the fence wires; she is stuck tight, left behind. Rabbit fencing traces that part of the path, and when the momma jumped the fence, the baby must have tried to jump and instead ploughed straight through. Not exactly through, though; more like in, into the fence. I cry. All the way down over the hill, I cry. Seeing those white ribs tangled in the fence with only ribbons of hide and sinew still clinging to the bones, seeing that was too much for me.
    I wonder on whose pain was greater, the momma who left or the baby who stayed behind. Was it hunger or wolves that ended it? And why? I most wonder why. I can barely walk for crying.
    My face streaked with tears, I finally make it to Grandma’s warm kitchen. I tell her I twisted my ankle in a snow-packed gopher hole, but she gets the story out of me soon enough. Out it comes with choking and heavy breathing, and at the end with hiccups. All mixed up in my mind is whether or not they were chased into the fence and how long the momma waited and if the baby kept making noises or shut its eyes or so many things that hurt to even think. Like stillness or quivering, like cold in the snow or wet in the rain? So many things I just can’t know.
    Grandma doesn’t know neither. She pats my back and rubs my leg. I cry into her apron that smells of apples baking and vinegar too. Grandma pulls her soft hands through my hair and sings a soft hymn.
    â€˜Take it to the Lord, my Ruthie. Take it to the Lord in prayer.’
    And I do. I pray and sing a little with her when I can quiet my crying.
    â€˜There are a many great losses in this world,’ Grandma says. ‘Great losses all up and down that fence, all up and down that river. But we do our best. And when we can’t do our best, we leave them to the Lord.’
    Grandma’s making a crazy quilt from worn-out clothes stacked in brown-paper grocery bags. She settles me down next to her in the wooden rockers near the cast-iron fire. A crocheted blanket warms my legs. As I thread needles and pile squares by colour, she sews together patches of summer dresses and unmendable coats. As we work, Grandma’s hands are always moving, pulling fabric and touching my arm; like hummingbirds, they rarely settle against her soft belly.
    There is a noise on the screen porch and we hear the door open and slam shut. My daddy walks straight in through the kitchen without taking off his boots or even knocking the snow clear.
    His eyes are on fire. ‘What did you tell Reuben about