The raccoon is always with me. I took the orphaned cub young from where she chittered wildly her back arched on the swaying limb. She who scratches with her hands was easily made tame. Her pixilated spirit undisguised behind a foxlike face she would nuzzle at the rubber nipple then finding it, nurse fiercely — clutching the bottle with long claws on curiously delicate human paws. When rocked, she would curl a quiet conundrum ball-like in the curve of my arm hiding her face in the crease of a sleeve; then suddenly awake, her whiskers bristling she would scale a shoulder, plucking at the flannel collar hanging downwards to explore a pocket twirling the shirt's bottoms with a contented purr. I would tickle her fine-furred underside, and she would wrestle bearclawed: snarling, sidling sideways in mock battle curled lips over bared teeth. Loyal only to me — until a friendly bite drew blood. I carried her wildness, caged, down to the wooded riverbank, the sound of her half-grown churls cutting like sharp sighs through the rough prairie grass. Opening the wired door, with cooled anger I coaxed her out on the damp sand. She lay sprawling on the water's edge: black eyes bulging, feigning death. I stroked her coarse back, trailing a hand cross-purpose to the straight-ringed tail. She stiffened, suddenly alert an ancient anima raising up on her haunches. I backstepped through the fields retreating to the darkened house. I return again — and again — to the river's living bank but only see tiny footprints cutting crosspaths in the sand. Once I followed the tracks where the narrowed loess trail made close passage through rocks, trees and stumps. The mischievous bearer of the hot nocturnal soul had long since retreated, waiting out of sight. Tonight I go again to take the raccoon back to the wilderness. *AROUGHCAN: [pronounced ah-rew-cahn] Indian dialect, for raccoon. Reprinted with permission from Closing the Gate Copyright © 1993 by Beverly Merrick Nightshade Press

THE ICE CREEK POPSICLE KNOWS by Beverly Merrick

He never heard of the noble red man. But his high-cheeked Cherokee bones catch the glare of the ice as the soles of his hip boots slip and slide on the cold stones of Ice Creek. With a thick, stiffened hold on the aching metal he chips away at the ice and releases the muskrat from the underwater trap. Now, his hands have forgotten the morning pain. As he rocks before the cast-iron stove sinuous with satisfaction he thaws out the day turning his red, swollen palms in the warmth of the fire. The pelts are already stretched taut on their frames inside-out, hanging wet and high over the boxes of Christmas bulbs in the trapper's shed given over to family. He leans to loosen his boot strings, and with a sigh older than breath he thinks ahead to the supper of side-back bacon, brown beans and bread in a skillet. Later, with stocking feet, he will suck on a popsicle, nodding off in the chair waiting for the sleep before the morning thaw to check out the ginseng patches even his sons have failed to find. He now trusts his hands to work a little more on the yellowed tooth the jagged edge of his tongue stinging with the taste of Prince Albert in a can. Tobacco has stained his forefinger since the age of twelve. Dentists have been extracted from the out-of-doors, high and dry. They are too far removed from Christmas. The stain of his teeth may have tinged orange. But the daily walks in the hills have muscled out an Indian cunning and muscled in a hunter's eye. The doctors cannot believe his metal. But neither do they believe in the healing power of ginseng. They ask why he waited so long to act after the pain had hung on like frostbite. He replies: The only metal he trusts is his own and his gunmetal squint locked down on the trunk of a birch where a hint of a movement locks eye with eye before he talks himself into the shot. He has learned to handle the recoil. He fancies himself Sergeant York: slow to anger, sloth to kill. But his ears no longer can hear the sound of the water wearing away at the stone. Nor can they detect the stealth of the cancer. Nor is the growth on his stomach slow to anger, sloth to kill. He steels himself and hangs in the waiting. He knows the gun barrel nip of Mountain Dew cannot even wound this feral animal of pain. To Popsicle Childers Reprinted with permission from Closing the Gate Copyright © 1993 by Beverly Merrick Nightshade Press

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