Willow sat on her grandmother's porch swing, peeling long strips of flaking paint off the slats as she watched a cow strain in labor out in the front pasture. Once in a while, the cow would lift up from the bull thistles and milkweeds and moan in pain, her pitiful groans barely audible. Willow heard her cries, and it annoyed her. She smirked; her scrowl twisting her smooth face into ugliness and disdain as one calf lay, still covered in the film of the womb, while it's twin stayed in the birth canal, as if afraid to emerge out into the blaring Georgia sun.

Willow knew she should go alert her grandfather, but she sat, stoic; simply observing, not caring. She raised a small limb and batted at one of the red bulbs in the string of lights that drooped down from the porch eave. It made a sound like when her grandmother cracked open an egg. That was funny to Willow. She smiled for the first time all day, wondering if she could get by with popping all the Christmas lights. Instead, she went back to observing the struggling cow and chewing listlessly on the end of her hair.
And when the barn cat came round to beg for leftovers or a bowl of milk, Willow pushed him aside. He was no more important than a fly on the screen door.

~~~~~~

The sun was almost gone, the dishes washed and put to the cabinets where the dust wouldn't get to them and steal their shine. But instead of going out and watching the sun go down, Willow's grandmother stood at the sink, silent, her shoulders sagging down on each side of her thin body, giving her the appearance of a scarecrow without a brace. Usually she had two or three conversations going at once, as if there were a gaggle of geese in the room and she had to be heard above their gabble. She spoke to her granddaughter, trying to get through to her. "Willow, honey, if you knew about the cow a'havin' troubles, why'nt ya come tell Papaw? He might've been able ta save all three of 'em." She sighed. It was no use. They had tried now, going on three years, but Willow was no better off here, than she'd been with her momma--and soon when the girl got older, she'd have to be put away. This thought went unspoken, but hung in the air of the old house, a ghost, floating, waiting ... wanting to be heard.

Willow sat in front of the television, pretending. Pretending she was riding the great white horse, instead of Roy Rogers, pretending she could do anything she wanted, go anywhere she pleased. Her sense of reality was slowly slipping away and she didn't care. It was fun being away from the farm, and her stifling grandparents. She stared hard into the screen, trying to will herself into, and through it. Away.


"Thas'it. I cain't take no mo, Maw. The girl knew. All's she had ta do was com'in git me. All's she had ta do was holler at me. I'd been checkin' Lilly. I could'a saved all tree of'em. Her'n both them calves. Goddamnit. Goddamnit ta hell'n back too." Willow cringed. This time her grandfather was really angry. He wasn't beating around no bushes and when he strode into the living room, tracking mud and manure all over the floors, she ducked, rolled and tried to escape up the stairs to the safety, or so she thought of her bedroom. "Com'ere, Willow!" He snatched her scruff and hauled her in one swoop, up off the floor, almost ripping the collar clean off the threadbare shirt that covered her pink back.

"Ahh! Don't, Papaw! I din't mean to! I din't mean to! Ahhh, nooo!" Willow shrieked as her grandfather whipped off his belt and her legs burned with the pain of the lashing. She ran, stumbling upstairs and slammed her door screaming epitaphs and her cuss words would have paled even a veteran sailor. She lay across the bed, hot tears stinging worse than the stripes from her grandfather's belt. And in the back of her mind, as sleep tried to ease her pain, she wondered if Jesus really cared about any dumb old Christmas tree.

~~~~~~

The frost nipped at the sickly green grass. And a coyote dragged entrails from the carcass of the cow ... her calves already taken, the mother now drew the night hunters. The coyote raised a lip and a gutterul snarl stopped cold another canid. Both froze, their growls deep, the threats toward each other real. A pack stood in the fringe, just visible in the shadows, waiting to see what would happen. They were huge. Part dog, part coyote; they were what the locals called coydogs. And they were starving. The dry summer had left little prey, and now, in the chill of the December night, the cow was a feast well worth fighting for.



A few packages lay beneath the scraggly tree that Willow and her grandmother had erected neatly and with great care just days ago ... the gifts were not expensive. There would be no surprise bicycle for Willow, no dolls or fancy games. And she didn't care. None of the Jesus stuff mattered to her anyway. He was never around when she needed him. She just wanted to be left alone. Period. She finally woke from the fitful sleep, the anger gone, but replaced by cool calculating thoughts that drew her downstairs to the kitchen drawers.

~~~~~~

The grandparents had long stopped sleeping in the same bed. Even the same room. They slept at opposite ends of the old house, quite comfortable in being separated. And like an assassin, Willow slit each of their throats as they snored and then gurgled, never knowing what killed them. The blood didn't bother Willow. She'd helped her grandfather butcher hogs several times. Now, it was just a matter of cleaning up the mess. She wasn't strong enough to lug the bodies away and she rinsed off in the fancy bath that had been 'theirs', humming "Turkey In The Straw" as the blood ran down the drain.

Outside, the pack of coydogs snarled and growled; no longer really hungry, they mauled and tossed the dead coyote around the remains of the mother Holstein, as if in ecstasy. The coyote, tiny in comparison, resembled more a bag of bones stuffed in fake fur, than once a wily predator.

The alpha female, who was half German Shepherd, froze as the pack played tug of war. She snuffled with her nose toward the farm house, but the blinking lights on the porch gave the animal pause. They never got too close to the humans, their buildings or trapping either. But tonight, there was a new smell. Rich, and pungent, it lured them onward, through the briars and thistles to the edge of the field, where the old barbwire lay just high enough to sway the cows, but not tall enough to stop the long legged coydogs. One by one, they hopped across the rusty wire and slunk toward the house. Had anyone been looking, twelve sets of eye-shine could have been seen as the pack stalked the front of the old place.

Willow finally noticed the furtive movements. And she took the small packages, some beginning to leak out the life giving fluid, from beneath the tree, and cautiously pinching them precariously, one at a time between small fingers, she went to the door, tossing the packages as far out toward the coydogs as she could.

December's sky opened then, as the temperature plummeted, and sleet began to mist across the fields as the stars blinked off slowly, one by one. And the sweet face of Jesus, His tears mixing with the rain; appeared in the clouds over the farm as the little girl fed the wild dogs their Christmas feast, one leg, one arm ... one bloody piece at a time.