Free Crunching Gravel by Robert Louis Peters

setters sat, clucking softly as they turned eggs with their beaks. Turning guaranteed that the embryos would not adhere to the inside of the shells. Every two days we would close the henhouse door to the other birds and scatter grain. The setters emerged, exuded huge, noisome deposits of dung, ate and drank, and returned to their nests.
    Of the forty-five eggs set to hatch, forty produced chicks. If a chick had trouble breaking through its shell, we assisted by enlarging the beak hole. By the end of spring, we hoped to have nearly two hundred chicks, which we would fatten, killing them in the fall, keeping only the sturdiest pullets for our new laying flock. My mother canned quarts of chicken for winter eating.
    The chicks spent their first days on newspaper spread near the kitchen stove in an area blockaded by chunks of wood. An overturned cardboard box, with entry holes, supplied a hiding place. They ate cornmeal and oats. We each had favorites, which we gave names. Eventually, we divided them between the mothers. Brood hens avoided the main flock, preferring shade and concealment under low shrubs. No creatures are more brutal than hens. Helpless chicks are always in danger of being pecked to death. A hen bitten severely by deer flies is an easy victim of the flock. They peck at her head relentlessly until she dies. Runts are also the victims of this selective killing. We saved some hens by removing them in time and treating them with ointment. Curiously, Crip did not participate in these slaughters, leaving the dreary business to the hens.
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Graduation
    Five eighth-graders drove with Miss Crocker to the commencement exercises at Eagle River High School: Makinnen, Eileen Ewald, Bill Jolly, my cousin Grace, and I. Representing our school, I would present a three-minute speech. Miss Crocker worked on the text, a set of platitudes about the future, education, and the world as ours to win. I rehearsed it, assisted by Miss Crocker, a dozen times.
    We had to wear suits. Mine was a new ugly brown plaid wool one that Dad had wangled from Welfare. The pants were incredibly baggy, rough, and cuffed.
    The final week of school was a mixture of ebullience and sadness. Each afternoon we played games. Only the graduating students raised and lowered the flag. We also rang the hand bell. We agreed to divide the tadpoles, about thirty of them, we had nurtured in jars in the sandbox. All had legs and now resembled toads rather than frogs. I would keep mine until the tails were gone and then free them in a ditch. On the last day, we turned in our books and had lemonade and cookies. This was Miss Crocker’s final year of teaching; she was marrying the town jeweler.
    The commencement exercises were boring. Chairs had been set up on the stage. When the superintendent called the name of a school, the teacher and students took seats. After the student representative spoke, diplomas were awarded, complete with handshakes and congratulations.
    When my turn came, I arose, conscious of my ugly suit. I recited the first lines. Then someone laughed. Burning inside that wretched suit, I forgot my lines. With Miss Crocker’s prompting, I was able to stumble on. I had let her down. Neither my mother nor my father attended—Dad couldn’t leave work, and my mother felt she had no appropriate clothes. Her best dress was a gingham Welfare dress. This she was too proud to wear.
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Fido
    As a name for a dog “Fido” is neither clever nor original. It is a corruption of Fideles, or “Faithful”—a generic name evoking dog qualities.
    Our Fido was short-haired and large, with orange and black markings. From the time he was a pup, he lived outdoors. Unless the weather turned impossibly cold, he remained in his doghouse, a structure built of old planking with a tar-paper roof and an entry hole just big enough for the dog to crawl through. We made the house small so that in bad weather his body heat would be contained to keep