In a small cottage in a deep valley, an old woman lived with her goats and sheep, chickens and dog, a sway-backed horse and one ginger cat.Each morning, she collected eggs while the dog led the sheep ... [+]
Originally published in the Indiana Review
They called her the girl with the big ears, though they didn't call her that to her face. That is, not to her ears. Not exactly. Not intentionally. They were sitting in the cafeteria—one line of buff Formica tables after another—talking about Mark Russell, the Spanish kid, the one you couldn't tell was Spanish, not from his looks or his name. They spoke over the roar of two hundred nervous voices and pairs of stainless steel silverware scraping against plastic trays. The air was full of inflated seriousness, laughter, and insinuations that someone had too much—or not enough—familiarity with se