In the south pasture the child sits on her favorite rock, the gray one with garnet crystals sparkling red in sunlight. She has always imagined the crystals to be red diamonds and has determined that someday she will get a hammer and chisel and bust those diamonds out of the rock and sell them for millions of dollars, but not today. Today she luxuriates in self-pity brought on by her father's rapping her on the head and telling her to get out of his hair, and she hopes that the magic from the crystals will course up her spine and soothe the ache in her throat. It is a day in late June, the last day of spring, and the sun burns through the child's thin cotton blouse, warming her back as she sits hunched over with her elbows on her knees and her chin resting in her hands.

The child's rock juts out from a pile of stones on the bank of a creek lined with trees, and the sparking trickle of water sings while the wind makes the trees groan. Swaying wildflowers wave to catch the child's attention. She knows the names of some of these flowers — Queen Anne's lace and wild roses and black-eyed Susans — because she has picked them for her mother and her mother has introduced them to her. Late last summer she broke off a stalk of milkweed and, with white sticky sap oozing onto her hands, took it to her mother. Her mother explained that not so long ago, during World War II, she and her sister collected the pods so that the silk could be made into parachutes; the child then took the plant outside to tear open the pods and watch the parachute stuff carried away by the wind.

But today the milkweed stems bear no pods, only clusters of violet flowers, and they hold no interest for the child. She turns away from them, raises her face toward the sun, closes her eyes against white glare. The sun shines through her eyelids and for a short while she is enthralled by watching changing hues of red, awed by knowing that she is looking at her own blood. But a shadow flashes cool blue and she opens her eyes to watch for the hawk she knows is there; when she sees him, she wishes he could drop down, clutch her collar in his talons, and float her far away to never again. Her eyes burning now, she drops her gaze and finds the landscape whitewashed, indistinct. She stands and walks toward the creek, to a tree, to clear her vision in its cool shade, and then, near a mound in the pasture twenty yards south, she sees movement.

Shading her eyes with her hand, she sees what she believes to be two puppies chasing one another through the yellow grass. One tackles the other from behind and bites his ears, and the second pup rolls over to wrestle the one on top. The pups are brownish-red with black paws and white stomachs, and the child wants to touch them and hold them. Even better, she'll catch them and take them home with her. They will be her pets, owned solely by her, and her brothers will be sorry that they wouldn't let her play with them today because she's a girl, which is why she was bothering her father in the first place.

The cubs are still frozen at the top of the mound, staring in her direction. To catch them, she will need help. She looks to the north, where she can see the white farmhouse small with distance.

Staying behind trees along the riverbank, the child manages to creep a few yards closer to the pups, close enough to see their bushy tails and to realize that they are fox cubs, not puppies. This is better still — everybody has a dog but she will be the only one to have foxes.

She leaves the cover of the trees and hunches over, trying to make herself small, tiptoeing across open pasture closer to the cubs. Suddenly the girl freezes. The cubs have seen her and, after staring for a couple of heartbeats, have run to the top of the tiny hill to peer over it with round, shiny black eyes. The child and the cubs, all stock-still, exchange curious stares.

The girl backs away slowly, still hunched over, toward the trees. Her heart pounds in her chest, and she wonders if the cubs' hearts are pounding too. She reaches the shelter of a tree trunk, edges around to the side away from the cubs, and presses her back against the rough bark to hide her body. She waits. Before her the stream tumbles over smooth pebbles, still fed by spring rains, not yet dried up as it will be in August.

Above her in the branches a bird scolds. The girl peers around the tree trunk to see if the commotion keeps the foxes alert. It does. The cubs are still frozen at the top of the mound, staring in her direction. To catch them, she will need help. She looks to the north, where she can see the white farmhouse small with distance.

She moves slowly toward the creek and down its bank, her feet sliding on soft mud. Carefully she follows the creek bed, picking up clumps of mud and soaking her shoes when her feet slip off the bank and into the water. When she is sure she has gone far enough to be out of the cubs' sight, she scrambles up the bank to high, dry ground and then breaks into a run. The wind tears at her face, pulling her eyes back and tugging at her ponytail, and she can't hear anything through the roar of the wind but her own breath and the plodding thud of her muddy feet hitting the powder-soft dirt of the cowpath.

When she reaches the farmhouse, she tiptoes across the porch, past her old dog Buster snoozing in the shade, and opens and closes the screen door carefully, not letting it bang shut behind her. Her mother has gone into town and her brothers are outside somewhere, playing make-believe in a world of their own creation; the house breathes quietly and every creaking floorboard echoes in the child's ears.

In the living room on the couch, her father lies on his side, his knees bent, his head resting on his right bicep, his right forearm sticking straight up into the air, his hand curling down toward his face. He is snoring softly. His boots stand side by side on the floor, at ease but not off duty. The mantle clock on top of the upright piano loudly marks the passage of seconds with a thudding tock-tock-tock, and the child, not wanting her head smacked again, pulls herself carefully into the rocking chair to silently wait for her father to wake up. She tries to sit very still, knowing that the wood of the rocker will creak if she moves, but, as her dad has often noted, sitting still is not her high suit. She shifts her weight on the seat and the chair lets out a loud groan.

Her father also groans and rolls onto his back. He opens his eyes and looks at the child, rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, and asks hoarsely, "What you up to?"

"I'm just waitin' for you to wake up so I can tell you somethin'," she replies.

"What."

"You sure you're ready to wake up? 'Cuz I can wait if you ain't."

"That's okay," her father says. "I need to get started on chores anyway."

The child watches her father rise to a sitting position and determines that his nap has improved his mood, and so, in an excited stream of chatter, she tells him about the fox cubs in the south pasture and how she wants to capture them to be her pets.

Her father sits staring silently at her, and in his eyes is a surprising tenderness. After a few moments, he speaks, softly.

"Katie, you know we been losing chickens."

The child sits back in the rocking chair and shrinks down in the seat, suddenly wishing she had just kept quiet.

"But these fox are just babies. It couldn't be them that's killing the chickens."

	"You better go on back to the house now," her father says softly. The girl shakes her head no."

"They'll kill chickens when they grow up."

"I won't let them. I'll take real good care of them and pet them and they'll grow up real nice and gentle and wouldn't hurt a fly."

Her father sighs as he pulls on his boots and again when he gets up from the couch. The child struggles out of the rocking chair and stands also. She follows him as he walks through the kitchen to the entryway.

"You got mud on the floor," her father says as he takes his rifle from the closet.

"I'm sorry," she says, and she moves quickly to the closet to get the broom. Her father stops her.

"You can clean it up later," he says, again with that confusing tenderness. "I need you to show me where the fox are."

The child wants to tell him no, but she can't.

Outside, on the porch, the dog looks up at her father and then jumps up, his tail wagging. Her father reaches down to scratch the dog behind one ear. "Stay here, Buster," her father says. "There's a good dog."

As father and daughter walk side by side toward the south pasture, she tries to win the cubs a reprieve through promises: she'll never allow them to become killers. Her father continues to speak gently to her, but he is firm: killing is in their blood. The wind is at her back and she can hear his words clearly.

When the girl and her father reach the rock pile, they crouch behind it and watch the foxes who are again out of their den, wrestling in the field of grass.

"You better go on back to the house now," her father says softly. The girl shakes her head no. Her father looks intently at her for a few seconds. "Stay here, then," he says before he creeps away from her, following the tree line until he reaches a point directly east of the foxes. The girl watches her father drop to one knee and raise the rifle to his shoulder. The cubs, sensing danger, stop their free-for-all and sit, their ears sticking up, their black eyes turned toward her. The child jams her fingers in her ears and hears a dim and hollow pop. One of the cubs falls back and rolls. Another pop. The second cub, on the run, drops, tries to crawl. The third shot stops him.

The father stands and he and his daughter move toward the cubs, reaching them at the same time. The father kneels by the first fox he shot, and the child examines the body over his shoulder. She thinks she sees the pup moving and she hopes that it is still alive, but after a few seconds she sees that only its fur is moving, blown by the wind. She squats beside her father and looks at the cub's face. She now can see that its eyes are brown, not black; they are open and staring at something she can't see. Sticking out between the fox's tiny white teeth is the tip of its pink tongue. The animal looks as if it is frozen, but when the child reaches out to pet it, the fur feels warm and soft. Her throat is aching now just as it was earlier, before she saw the cubs playing on the yellow grass in the sunshine.

Her father is very still, kneeling beside the cub's body, and his head is lowered. She can't see his face but she hears his voice say, "Katie, you know it had to be done," and he wipes his eyes with his fingers before turning to look at her.

"I know," she says.

The child and her father walk to the body of the second cub to make sure it's not still alive and suffering. It is dead. It lies as still as its brother, and the father and daughter stand over its body, giving it silent respect.

The man then turns and says he can't wait for the mother fox to come back; it's time to milk the cows. He and his daughter walk together toward the house, the man walking through thick grass, the child on the cowpath. They are silent as they walk. The wind rumbles in her ears. She thinks about the mother fox and wonders if, like killing chickens, sorrow for her children is also in her blood. Tomorrow, the child vows silently, she will come back to the south pasture with a spade and dig a grave for the cubs so that wildflowers and prairie grass will cover them over. She looks up at her father and wants to ask if he will help, but she can't; her words drift away on the wind.

She studied creative writing with Dr. Brian Bedard at the University of South Dakota, where she earned a Master of Arts degree in English. Her short stories have appeared in several publications, including South Dakota Review, Prairie Winds, Inside the Black Hills, and most recently, Fishing for Chickens, an anthology of short stories published by Persea Books.

In addition to her published works, Wicks is currently marketing another short story, Narcissus and Echo, and has a novel in search of a publisher and a screenplay in search of an agent.

Wicks can be reached at wicksvicky@hotmail.com