Free The Last Letter by Kathleen Shoop

wanted to ever be clean at all. More dirt sprinkled over her scalp and shoulders. She looked up. Fine dirt filled her eyes and mouth. Chunks of earth followed as she squinted away, shaking her head, spitting and choking. She swiped at her eyes, hacking with cough.
    Hands on knees, Jeanie’s coughs cleared her throat of its dirty film.
    Positioned there, breathing heavy, something like a bundle of rope fell onto her back. She shot to standing and turned. Through tearing eyes she saw two snakes wrapped around each other as though trying to untangle themselves, but not able to do so. She hugged herself and backed toward the curtained off section of the room, fighting her dirt-filled eyes from closing. The frantic sound of their rattles was matched by her staccato breath.
    The sight of them tangling themselves around each other, as confused as she was nearly made her pass out.
    All at once they unleashed themselves from each other and coiled, staring at her, heads bobbing. Jeanie had no way of knowing where everyone was and when they’d be back to help her. All she knew was as frightened as she felt, there was no way she’d wait. She wiped her tearing eyes with the backs of her hands.
    She reached below her and lifted the book-trunk lid and pulled out the one on the top, closest to her. She lobbed A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. It landed in front of the pair, causing a swell of dirt that did not hide the snakes’ offense at being confronted. Jeanie could not afford to be bitten. Though death would end her problems, she couldn’t bear leaving her children behind. The snakes were peeved, hissing and rattling, but not scared.
    Next, Jeanie pulled An American Family in Paris from the trunk. She swallowed and chucked it. The burst of dirt from its landing nearly on their faces followed by their angry hisses ignited a series of chills through her body. Third, her own book—a collection of her columns— Living the Gracious Way. It landed in front of the snakes causing them to bob and spit at her.
    Jeanie needed a stick, something to coax them out. Inside the curtained off section was the broom. She grabbed it and held the bristle end first, trying to move them out, but they just wrapped themselves around the broom and headed upward toward her hands. With that, she tossed the broom to the side and dashed out, drowning in chilly fear. Outside under the naked sun, she shivered as the rays warmed her sweaty body.
    “Hey mom, everyone’s on the way!” Tommy’s muffled voice came from above the dugout.
    “Oh, Tommy!” Jeanie said. “Thank sweet heaven, you’re back! You’re safe! I’m just about—” Jeanie ran over the side of the dugout to its top toward her boy.
    “We’re going to have a party. Father says it’ll be just like back home,” Tommy said. He was only ten, but he was particularly incapable of using his manners or noticing when he should be asking a question instead of rattling off his own agenda.
    When she reached the top, Tommy had already fled back into the grasses, hollering at no one and playing a solitary game of cowboys and Indians. Frank must be nearby. He couldn’t have let Tommy just wander over the plains. She was eager to see all her children familiar with the land, too, but this was extreme. Where was he?
    Jeanie moved slowly across the top of the dugout, kicking at the grass with the toe of her boot here, then the heel there, searching for a weakness in the sod where the snakes might have burrowed into what she was forced to think of as her roof. She couldn’t see anything besides the very tip of the stovepipe.
    It was covered with crosshatched metal fixture that allowed the smoke out, but should have kept critters from getting in. Jeanie bent over it, peering into it, wondering if snakes could make themselves the size of pencils to gain access through things like that. Clearly, there were holes somewhere. James came up behind her and put his arm around her shoulders. “What’s the matter,