RELEASE

"Oh, my!" the old lady groans, holding her back. " I feel like I've been drug through hell and beat with a soot bag." She is weary after the events of the last three days.  She pauses at the porch steps, turns, and looks out over her back yard. She pulls her thin, worn coat tighter around her as the blustery winter wind whips around the edge of the porch.  Some white rose petals blow across the yard, strangely out of place in the dead grass and dirt.

She hears a screeching sound, like an angry voice, and looks toward the old apple tree by the chicken lot.  It's crooked branches move restlessly in the wind. One limb is broken and reaches down toward the ground like a cane, as though the tree needs help to stand upright. It's trunk is bent like a humped back, gray and covered with moss.  The screeching of the two branches rubbing together continues as if complaining about the cold, the sunless sky and the loss if it's leaves and apples.  The old woman shudders and steps upon the porch, her clumsy, old woman shoes thudding heavily on the wooden boards.

The chickens hear the sound and come rushing from the hen house to the fence, squawking for food.  She pauses for a moment.

"It's too early to feed them," she thinks and then she says to herself, "I can do as I please." She goes to the shed nearby and dips up a meager pan of cracked corn.  Then with a defiant little smile, she dips deep down into the bag and brings up a brimming pan full and leaves a trail of yellow all the way to the lot.