Read Luna for Free Online Page B

was silent. “Come on,” Selena said, coaxing. “Don’t think about it, just do it.”
    “Where’s Kent?”
    “Gone to Swift Current, he won’t be back before four, and the school bus just left.” Cathy was still crying.
    “Tammy!” Diane’s voice was a muffled shout as if she had put her hand over the receiver. “See what’s the matter with her!” There was something, some new recklessness in Diane’s voice that alarmed Selena.
    “Diane,” she said, “I am your older sister. Our mother’s dead. I’m telling you to put those kids in the truck and get over here. Now do it.” Diane laughed.
    “Oh, Selena,” she said. “I had noticed that our mother is dead.”
    “Diane,” Selena’s determination was turning to a kind of impotent, fearful anger, “I …”
    “Oh, okay,” Diane interrupted. “I’ll be over as soon as I can get Cathy settled down and pack some diapers and a bottle.”
    Selena hung up, then thought, good heavens, there’s no reason why I couldn’t have gone over there.
    Hurriedly she tidied the kitchen, put the dishes into the sink, wiped the table, then took the left-over toast to the back door, where she steppedinto her gardening shoes, opened the door, and tossed the toast into the carragana hedge. Without waiting for the birds she had disturbed to fly back to the toast, she went down the steps, took the hoe from where it leaned against the corner of the house, crossed the grass to the garden, which was directly behind the house, and stopped by the rows of corn.
    She loved her garden. Each year she began to think about it in February, by March she had ordered and received her seeds, in April she was watching the still snow-covered patch impatiently, until finally, in late May, Kent worked it for her and manured it and worked it again, and then she could at last seed it. She spent part of every day in it, sometimes only making work for herself, tying things up, pulling off dead leaves, or just studying the plants, touching a pea blossom here, or kneeling to smell the scent of a squash there.
    It was nine o’clock, and the inevitable wind had risen, rustling the knee-high corn and making the powerline overhead hum. Already the sun was hot, it would be unbearable if the wind died down, fat chance of that, and she noticed how brown her hands and arms were already. She sighed, thinking of the even hotter months to come, of the hard, dry heat of August.
    At first she hoed too hard, chopping at the dry ground, the grasshoppers whirling away with every stroke, but gradually she slowed, found a working rhythm, and began to cut at the ground with lighter strokes and more care, even with a certain precision. She concentrated on what she was doing, watching the ground, occasionally going down on one knee to pull a weed she was afraid to chop at with her hoe for fear of damaging a plant. It needs water, she thought, testing the ground with her hoe, but it was no use watering the wind. The water only blew away or evaporated and it was too scarce to waste. She would water in the evening, if the wind went down. She finished the four rows of corn and moved to the beets, letting the hoe rest in the grass at the edge of the garden, as she worked on her knees among the red-veined, dark green leaves.
    The wind was blowing harder now, but crouched low and sheltered by the corn and the row of lilacs that ran down the side opposite the carraganas, she didn’t notice it. Forgetting her presence, the magpies camenearer, and a robin caught grasshoppers on the lawn. As she thinned the row, her fingers became stained a wine colour from the beet stems. She rested, squatting on her haunches, and squinted up at the sky. The inevitable hawk, only a speck against the pale blue, circled slowly. She thought she could hear its sharp cry carried to her on the wind. Behind it, the faint, white outline of the half-moon hung eerily, a shadow in the sky. There’s a killdeer, she thought, surprised at hearing the