This Land

A paved road in rural Oklahoma; on either side, miles of rolling grassland, the grass tall and pale with autumn. My friends, a married couple, coming along the road in their pickup truck, ought to have been insulated from the natural world. A motion in the ditch caught their eyes.…

The following originally appeared in Granta 63: Beasts.  It is re-printed here with full permission from the author.

My first one: I was six years old. The thing clung to a cinderblock wall in my father’s shop. It seemed feeble, rocking its head to dodge the light, tentative as a…