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eggs?”
    “No.”
    There had only been a few that I could see, a few laid right by the gate so I could reach in quick and grab them.
    “Well, look around good for them. That feed isn’t free, you know.”
    “I know.”
    I couldn’t even get near the pen. I stood four or five feet away, with the CJ Wilson chicken hissing from the dollhouse. I tossed the feed in a sudden jerk, aiming for the trough. The hens fought and gobbled for the bits of corn. While they were scrabbling I scooped up any eggs that I could see. Only one or two each time were close enough for me to grab through the bars. Where any others might be, I didn’t know.
    Laura Ingalls Wilder would not have feared my chickens.
    Laura Ingalls Wilder was a snow lover. Laura was a true pioneer girl. Laura is the reason I call Tamar Ma to her face, because Ma is what pioneer girls called their mothers. I used to love Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was a child. When I started reading about Indians, I had to revise my initial impression of Laura. It was hard to do that. I loved Laura so much. At first I tried to defend her: it was way back then, they didn’t know. Then I had to admit it: the pioneers were awful to the Indians.
    “The pioneers were awful to the Indians,” I said to the old man after we had become
compadres
.
    “Yes,” the old man said.
    We were sitting at his kitchen table that had cigarette burn marks in it from the previous owner. The old man had foundthe kitchen table set out for the trash on scavenging night. I made some more toast. I spread it extremely thickly with margarine. I was embarrassed to have the old man see how much margarine I put on toast. I only did it when I was visiting him. He didn’t seem to notice.
    Tamar would never allow me to put so much margarine on toast. She has an eagle eye for that sort of thing.
    “The problem is that I still love her,” I said. “I love Laura.”
    “And what’s the problem?”
    “She was mean. She was awful to the Indians.”
    “An entire nation was awful to the Indians,” he said. “They invaded their land, they pushed them onto reservations, they tried to kill them off.”
    “Yes. That’s right. That’s my point exactly.”
    “But still, you love her.”
    “Yes. That’s my other point,” I said. “My other exact point.”
    “It’s the same point,” he said.
    I wrote that down. It had the ring of wisdom, although I didn’t understand it. That used to happen to me when I was with the old man, not understanding something but knowing it was important. Being on the verge. That’s how it felt. I used to write down the things he said. I kept track.
    Are young chickens capable of hatred? Is it possible for an eleven-year-old girl to be killed by a flock of young chickens?
    I would like to know.
    I feel in my gut that the old man would have known what to do about my chickens. I should have told the old man about the chickens. There were things the old man knew that you would not have suspected he knew and chickens may well have been one of those things. After he was gone I researchedchickens in the school library. Researching is one of my talents. There was nothing about a tendency toward violence in poultry. Feed, growth patterns, eggs, fryers versus roasters, and so on.
    Violence? Nothing.
    When CJ Wilson flipped my skirt up the first day of school he turned to the other boys and laughed. Some were embarrassed, some looked surprised. Some laughed along with CJ.
    That’s what happens when you’re eleven. You say good-bye to the kids in your class in June, when school lets out. Maybe you’ll see them a couple of times over the summer, maybe not. But in September, the day after Labor Day, you know you’ll see them again. School will resume. Life will go on. You’ll slide your tray through the cafeteria line: tiny fluted paper cups of applesauce, sloppy joe on hamburger buns. You know that nothing will have changed.
    You’re wrong.
    You get on the bus the day after Labor Day and