Free Shiloh and Other Stories by Bobbie Ann Mason

wings, while gasping and contorting its body, and she decided to put it outside. As she opened the door, the dog rushed out eagerly ahead of her, and the bird died in her hand. Its head went limp.
    Sandra never dusts. Only now, with her mother and grandmother coming to visit, does she notice that cobwebs are strung across corners of the ceiling in the living room. Later, with a perverse delight, she sees a fly go by, actually trailing a wisp of cat hair and dust. Her grandmother always told her to dust under her bed, so the dust bunnies would not multiply and take over, as she would say, like wandering Jew among the flowers.
    Grandmother Stamper is her father’s mother. Mama is bringing her all the way from Paducah to see where Sandra is living now. They aren’t going to tell Grandmother about the separation. Mama insisted about that. Mama has never told Grandmother about her own hysterectomy. She will not even smoke in front of Grandmother Stamper. For twenty-five years, Mama has sneaked smokes whenever her mother-in-law is around.
    Stamper is not Grandmother’s most familiar name. After Sandra’s grandfather, Bob Turnbow, died, Grandmother moved to Paducah, and later she married Joe Stamper, who owned a shoe-store there. Now she lives in a small apartment on a city street, and—as she likes to say, laughing—has more shoes than she has places to go. Sandra’s grandfather had a slow, wasting illness—Parkinson’s disease. For five years, Grandmother waited on him, feeding him with a spoon, changing the bed, and trying her best to look after their dying farm. Sandra remembers a thin, twisted man, his face shaking, saying, “She’s a good woman. She lights up the fires in the sky.”
    —
    “I declare, Sandy Lee, you have moved plumb out into the wilderness,” says Grandmother.
    In her white pants suit, Sandra’s grandmother looks like a waitress. The dog pokes at her crotch as she picks her way down the stone path to the porch. Sandra has not mowed in threeweeks. The mower is broken, and there are little bushes of ragweed all over the yard.
    “See how beautiful it is,” says Mama. “It’s just as pretty as a picture.” She waves at a hillside of wild apple trees and weeds, with a patch of woods at the top. A long-haired calico cat sits under an overgrown lilac bush, also admiring the view.
    “You need you some goats on that hill,” says Grandmother.
    Sandra tells them about the raccoon she saw as she came home one night. At first, she thought it was a porcupine. It was very large, with slow, methodical movements. She followed it as far as she could with her headlights. It climbed a bank with grasping little hands. It occurs to Sandra that porcupines have quills like those thin pencils
Time
magazine sends with its subscription offers.
    “Did you ever find out what went with your little white cat?” Mama asks as they go inside.
    “No. I think maybe he got shot,” Sandra says. “There’s been somebody shooting people’s cats around here ever since spring.” The screen door bangs behind her.
    The oven is not dependable, and supper is delayed. Grandmother is restless, walking around the kitchen, pretending not to see the dirty linoleum, the rusty, splotched sink, the peeling wallpaper. She puzzles over the bunches of dill and parsley hanging in the window. Mama has explained about the night shift and overtime, but when Sandra sees Grandmother examining the row of outdoor shoes on the porch and, later, the hunting rifle on the wall, she realizes that Grandmother is looking for Jerry. Jerry took his hunting boots with him, and Sandra has a feeling he may come back for the rifle soon.
    It’s the cats’ suppertime, and they sing a chorus at Sandra’s feet. She talks to them and gives them chicken broth and Cat Chow. She goes outside to shoo in the ducks for the night, but tonight they will not leave the pond. She will have to return later. If the ducks are not shut in their pen, the fox may kill them,