Free Prairie Ostrich by Tamai Kobayashi Page B

golden fields of Savannah. Mutual of Omaha tells us so. The king of the beasts, they tell us, but if there are kings, then there are queens and knights and sacrificial pawns and pride that goes before the Fall.
    As Egg hears Kathy stamp up the stairs, she grabs her blue Ninny Blankie from the top of the bed and scuttles underneath again. Her door gives a creak as it opens. Egg can see her sister’s scuffed up sneakers — and then Kathy’s head after she drops to her knees and looks under the bed.
    â€œCome on, Egg,” Kathy says, “let’s get out of here.”
    â€¦
    Kathy drives the truck down the trail as Egg bounces on the seat beside her. With the windows rolled down, Egg feels the wind through her hair, the roar in her ears. On this gravel strip, the rocks spray upwards, flung from the roll of the tires, ringing a metallic melody of pings and rattles. To the west, the foothills rise over the late autumn evening, as the sky rolls with clouds, a fistful of sunlight punching through. Distance is a smear on the horizon.
    The dusk floats down, flattening the fields for as far as the eye can see.
    They are going to the coulee.
    Egg feels the descent before she sees it, the truck speeding faster. The silver glint of sage sparkles on the slope with a burst of yellow cactus flowers amidst the crop of prickles. It always surprises Egg, this rift in the plain, the sudden drop. As they descend, the horizon rises and the sun flashes in the grooves of the ridge — then a darkness as the coulee swallows them. Kathy clicks on her headlights.
    â€œWoooo,” Egg howls, as the bump at the bottom of the trail jolts her out of her seat and she sails off the vinyl, floating for a moment in the cab of the truck. Every speck on the windshield, every scratch on the dash seems vital, important. The dangling green Little Tree on the rear-view mirror, the glint of Kathy’s key chain with her peace sign pendant. Egg can see the smallest detail. There is the faint scent of day-old skunk wafting from the roadside, mixing with the synthetic pine. Her skin tingles. She feels the lift, the air surrounds her — she is free.
    Egg is defying gravity.
    â€œâ€” ooo!” She lands hard on the edge of the weathered vinyl, a small bounce as the spring jabs against her tailbone.
    She winces but the flight is worth it.
    Kathy cranks up the radio against the din of gravel. The uneven trail rocks them from side to side. Cat Stevens on the dial, with the strum of his guitar. Kathy and Egg begin to sing “Oh Very Young,” away from the house, the barn, the town. They skid across what was once a riverbed to the bottom of the coulee. Egg wonders why the song is so sad when they are so very young. It is a sweet kind of sadness that melts on your tongue and lingers.
    At the foot of the coulee Kathy parks the truck beneath the spread of mottled cottonwoods. Kathy slams the door behind her with a satisfying thud. Egg scrambles towards the firepit, her foot catching on a raised root.
    â€œHelp me get some kindling,” Kathy hollers. As an afterthought she adds, “But don’t go too far.”
    Beneath the cottonwoods, Egg gathers twigs and, cautiously in the crook of her arm, brittle thistles. She pulls at a sprig of sage. Her feet rustle through the carpet of diamond-shaped leaves. At the tallest tree, she places her hand on the thick, fissured bark. She winds through the trunks, to the stand of white spruce. She picks up the slender cones, her feet crunching through the leaves to the mouldy damp below.
    Kathy stacks a loose pyramid of deadfall branches in the firepit and scatters Egg’s tinder inside. She shifts the logs, pushing them further from the pit. Egg watches as Kathy lights the kindling — the flash as the match head strikes the side of the Redbird box — and blows the embers into a smoky spiral. In the fire, the nettles crackle, the snap-spark as the burrs curl against the heat,