Buffalo Flats

by Martine Leavitt

terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God, but

any man who protested love for a woman was a liar next to the woman who bore his child, unless he stood to die for it.

Somehow, without saying a word, without even meaning to, he was always making her want to be better than she was. Well. She wouldn’t look at him.

Animals could bear the cold, Mother said, but people could outsmart it.

It was one of those days that made you take the weather’s tantrums in benign acceptance in the hope of another day like this.

It hadn’t occurred to Rebecca before that Mother could be sad. It came to her now as a revelation, though not of the spiritual kind. It was as if her eyes were opened—

Rebecca wondered briefly if it would be okay to Love the World Minus One. But that would be like living in a world where one candy apple was always an onion, and you could never be too sure about anything.

Why would she love such a place, this place that tried its best to kill you every day, and very nearly did kill Coby?

Winter in February all but froze the sun out of the sky.

If she had a lick of sense, she would know that Coby was just as Mother said, the best boy God ever made out of dust.

member of her church might die of despair, but they would do it on a full stomach.

Few words were spoken between the respective fathers, but something softened. That was what happened when you lived your religion, Rebecca supposed, and she also supposed she’d never forget it.

hail. Sometimes, she guessed, he who loved Sunsets wanted his rivers to flood up like a Revenge and the glaciers to pour endlessly down the sides of his mountains like a Testimony.

“Being right’s nothing so long as you’re okay.”

Every person was a surprise, she was learning. Every soul never had its copy. Each one a world to itself, a world of that soul’s making, and when that soul was gone, a whole world ended. It didn’t matter if they started out old or ugly or cranky; by the end of it they were sweet and soft beyond bearing. She held the dying, each one a world, and she loved the

life of that solitary world, that single bit of holy flame that birthed

itself back ...

Rebecca had decided, while she spoon-fed broth and emptied chamber pots and applied poultices, that people were miracles. They woke up each day swimming in their sorrows and fears and got up and braved the day and cared for their little ones and had a thought for others. They planted the land and babied their crops so they could live. They hurt and they yearned and they hoped, and nobody could stop them. God never came, and they prayed. He took their babies away, and they worshipped. They suffered, and they served. They were beautiful as an idea, and they were beautiful in the particular. And Rebecca could never unknow it.

MY FAVORITE PARAGRAPH in this book

she meant to stand and say, I carried this, I carried it, and I testify

that I carried it? Was she meant to one day look at God and say, I am your child, I am royal, I have this to say, that I am royal. What you gave me I have loved. God didn’t want her to be timid and shrinking. He wanted her to stand, to know her worth, her infinite destiny. Sitting and sunsets were one thing, but you knew him, really knew him, in the sorrow and in the serving. She understood that now.

You knew him, really knew Him, in the sorry and in the serving!