Everybody dies, don't they?

Everybody come back, isn't that so?

You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?

How do the dead come back, mother?

What's the secret?

Dragoon by Duang Hayes.

Is it time, Granny?

No, child, it ain't time.

You stop your worrying now.

You just lay there with your eyes closed.

She said this with her back to the boy. her gaze fixed out of the window of the cabin.

The smoke from the fireplace had grown thick in the room, the result of a stone chimney in dire need of brushing out.

She was in no condition to do such work.

Each night a little more soot, creosote, built up inside the chimney, and a little more smoke permeated the cabin.

It's hard to breathe, Granny. You want to freeze, boy? Because I can make it so you can breathe clear, but you're sure enough going to freeze to death. You can't have it

both ways. As soon as she said it, she felt small enough to crawl into her own shoe. He didn't

deserve that kind of cruelty being sick and all. Her nerves were simply worn bare. I'm sorry, child, you know Granny don't mean it.

His response was a shallow cough.

Is it time, Granny?

She wasn't the only grandmother raising a child since the war broke out.

Not by far.

Northwest Arkansas was always like a different country, the highlands. Union loyalties ran deep in these parts, always did. And since Pea Ridge in the spring, this part of the state and most of the Missouri could breathe easier. Rebs held tight in the flatlands from little rock on down to the cotton fields of the

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