The next afternoon Madeline popped the Buick’s hood and wiggled the battery cable, a trick Arbutus had suggested, saying she’d never owned a car under twenty years old in her life and knew all the tricks. The engine turned over and Madeline felt a rush of satisfaction. She shut the engine off again and headed across the empty lots to see Mary.

Mary was lounging beside her display, her feet propped on a crate, carrying on a conversation with a man Madeline had waited on at lunch. He was an investment banker from Manhattan who’d come north for the trout...

I cut Patti’s hair for her first school picture, lopsided. Our mother had just died. Forty-nine years later we sit on the hill blowing a flute a stick a sax When a mother dies, the young children adapt, their personalities taking various forms based on particular gaps. Five thousand orphaned children scavenge the streets in Baghdad alone. On Patti’s porch in Marquette, we watch women in white shorts play tennis while Lake Superior winds clank the chimes. Without a house or food to survive. Through the little cluster of forest we walk down hill to the most magnificent blue. The...

At first we were sure the war would be over in the spring and we had only to get through one more winter. But soon the frightening news spread over the island that the British troops had marched into our capital city of Washington. There they entered the White House and finished the dinner President Madison and his wife, Dolly, had been forced to leave behind as they fled the city. The British then proceeded to burn down much of Washington. “After such news surely there can be no more meetings between you and Lieutenant Cunningham,” I said to Angelique....

I have moved to the edge of the world for two years. If I am not careful, I will fall. After my first department meeting, my new colleagues encourage me to join them on a scenic cruise to meet more locals. ThePeninsula Starwill travel through the Portage Canal, up to Copper Harbor and then out onto Lake Superior. I am handed a glossy brochure with bright pictures of blue skies and calm lake waters. “You’ll be able to enjoy the foliage,” they tell me, shining with enthusiasm for the Upper Peninsula. “Do you know how to swim?” they...

The bathwater was already cold. Jim flipped the soap with his toe, trying to decide whether to get out or refill the tub, when Beth walked in and told him he had to hitchhike up to L’Anse with her on Friday. It was winter carnival up there, she explained, and this would be her third title. She had been crowned L’Anse’s Mad Dog Queen two years in a row. The contest was simple—nothing to do with beauty or talent. The winner was the first woman to down a quart of Mad Dog 20/20 wine. There were two prizes: a...

Everyone’s heard by now that Barbara Wyatt swallowed a half can of Drano. My husband says, in this town, news like that doesn’t need any help getting around—people just want to talk about it. Nancy Whitney was in the supermarket on Third Street this morning and she told me she heard Barbara did it in front of a full-length mirror. They found her on the bathroom hamper where she had ripped off her sweater and torn her blouse trying to release the burning pain in her stomach. By the time they got her to the hospital, her lips, which...

Connie said she was going out to the store to buy formula and diapers. While she’s gone, load up the truck with the surround-sound home-entertainment system and your excellent collection of power tools, put the baby girl in the car seat, and drive away from this home you built with your own hands. Expect that after you leave, Connie will break all the windows in this living room, including the big picture window, as well as the big mirror over the fireplace, which you’ve already replaced twice. The furnace will run and run.

Wait until Connie comes back from the...

The wind wants nothing. This thing made by hot meeting cold and the earth spinning around, this moving air, is full of power and without desire. It is disappearing every moment and replacing itself. It seems to come from every direction and from nowhere. I want to stop it long enough to write it down.

This wind has made the winter bitter. It is a winter that only briefly lets you out of the house. The house, almost abandoned in the summer for the porch and the garden and the beach, is now the beginning and the end, a haven...

“There’s no use talking,” said Jean, one day, as the girls sat at their dining-room table eating very smoky toast and drinking the weakest of cocoa, “we’ll have to get some provisions of our own before long if we’re going to invite Mr. Black to dinner as we promised. The cupboard’s perfectly empty and Bridget says I can’t take another scrap of bread or one more potato out of the house this week.”

“Aunty Jane says there’ll be trouble,” said Marjory, “if I don’t keep out of her ice box, so I guess I can’t bring any more milk. When...

Ahead are frozen fields and a car parked at the roadside, its trunk gaping and rust puncturing a wired door. The driver shuffles over crusty snow toward a deer hit by some earlier car or truck. He slips on steaming entrails and breaks the snow as he bends to lift and examine the hind legs.

Beside a gravel road, his three children wait for a school bus. They never play parcheesi or fold origami, and when the blowing snow speaks, they don’t hear it above their voices choked with wood smoke. In the house behind them, their mother, wearing long...

My husband is a hunter.

I am a knife.

Last deer season, he took me on a hunt with him. At four in the morning, he shook me awake. He made love to me. He always makes love to me before the hunt. There is a quality to his efforts that is different, more intense. There is a rawness to how he touches me, as if he is preparing himself for what he is about to do. He takes me. He uses me. He marks me. I allow him. I revel in it. When my husband took me hunting with...

In all of his imaginings Luke Klein had not imagined himself in jail. As in most things in his Detroit suburb, his cell, scrubbed clean, was upscale. There were even a few thumbed copies ofVanity Fair. Some preppy with time on his hands and no little talent had painted a pink-and-green crocodile on one of the cell walls. After a drunken teenager had been returned, penitent and tearful to his parents, Luke was the jail’s only resident. His wife, Miranda, was with her father, who was posting bail and who was furious with Luke. Luke’s foolishness would reflect on...

In an early age of the world, when there were fewer inhabitants than there are now, there lived an Indian, in a remote place, who had a wife and two children. They seldom saw any one out of the circle of their own lodge. Animals were abundant in so secluded a situation, and the man found no difficulty in supplying his family with food.

In this way they lived in peace and happiness, which might have continued if the hunter had not found cause to suspect his wife. She secretly cherished an attachment for a young man whom she accidentally...

The snow came early that first year, and so heavy that when Albert Rasmussen invited the whole town over, we had to park around the corner from his unplowed street. We staggered through the drifts, across the lawns, down the neat stretches of sidewalk where a few of Al’s neighbors owned snowblowers. Mr. Kajaamaki and the Lutven boys were still out huffing and puffing with shovels. We waved as we passed, and they nodded.

Al stood that November in his family room, arms outstretched, knee-deep in a nest of mattresses and bedding: flannels and florals mixed with Bobby Rasmussen’s NASCAR...

The poet in a coma, the Virgin Mary dresses her in a white robe. She whispers in her ear.

The poet is to found a chapel in honor of the Virgin, at the highest point in the attic of her Victorian home. Fully Gothic, its cathedral ceiling assures the upward gaze of eyes.

That evening, Christ descends, joins His Mother at the poet’s bedside, blood glistening from His wounds. The poet drinks from the gash in His side. Christ slides a band onto her finger. When dawn filters through summer lace, Blessed Mother and Son ascend, seraphim chanting, the scent...

The pattern flows. Leaves and flowers blend, a river spinning over the cotton. It is my daughter’s blouse. Green ripples under my fingers. Pink and blue blossom under the iron’s steam. Tiny buds. The cement floor presses its back against the soles of my feet. The pipes gather pearls of moisture. I am a tree. I rise from the earth. I shade the ironing board. My hand passes back and forth, a branch in the wind. One sleeve, then the other.

Summer, but this basement remembers winter and holds loam to its heart. The water in these pipes wants to...

July winds blew against my face. The sun felt brilliant. Lisa and I hung our dresses on hooks from the ceiling of her open porch to catch the morning breeze. Lisa’s white satin jingle dress was a bit dusty after a day of dancing, but it was still striking. Her hands brushed away the dust. Hundreds of silver cones swayed and sparkled from the sunlight. Her black velvet yoke also hung with her dress. Baby blue and yellow beads: an Ojibwa floral design.

My traditional dress is made with a deep blue velvet fabric. Numerous brilliant waterbirds are sewn all...