There was no sunlight that day, and flowers with banners naming the giver had no aroma. The Godfather theme music played in Maria's head while a cast of characters, like sepia photos in her mother's ... [+]
The dog ate the turkey. Then killed all the village swans, piled the white corpses at the front door, impossible to hide, a pyre to be paid for with exile. In the orange school bus, every morning and afternoon, no matter the snow or dust, we'd lower the windows and hang out from the waist, yelling across the rutabaga fields and hail our dog chained to a tractor tire. We conspired to pedal under star-cover with chain-cutters and hairpins to pick locks and unleash dreams. We planned escape routes down beaver creeks, flow-following to a great lake mouth, over the falls, to sea salt. We'd be Vikin