Flux

When the milk cow hadn’t spared a drop even for the calving, when its udder shriveled like a rotting pawpaw, Ora carried sweet Lily, white as an onion bulb, for five days to that company doctor in his tie (all the miners paying $2 for medical, whether sick or well, this being taken off the salary, the rest of the money going back to the company), and that doctor, in his tie, gave Ora the pills to crush up and put in sweet Lily’s water, in sweet Lily’s throat, so with sweet Lily on her hip, Ora walked five days home, hauled the bucket from the creek to her house three times a day, sweet Lily’s head hanging back limp as a shot opossum, each day getting sicker than the day before, so when the doctor in his tie rode by on his horse Eli said, “Doctor, look at my child” and the doctor went to licking his thumb and wetting his scuffed boot and saying, “She’s alright,” and sweet Lily, each day shrinking down more behind her eyelids until on that Sunday, sweet Lily’s funeral uncoiled from the church bells like a saw briar vine.