Blue Willow by Deborah Smith Page A

suddenly silent, except for the hushed murmur of Lily’s sobs. Aunt Maude and the sisters squatted around her and Sassy. Aunt Maude put a hand under Sassy’s chest and the other over her nose. After a second she said softly, “Sassy’s gone to sleep, honey.”
    Lily drew a breath. “No,” she answered as calmly as she could. “She’s dead . She’s dead, and it isn’t fair. That man took her away, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
    Little Sis pulled a long string of her wooden love beads from under her scoop-necked blouse then put them around Lily’s neck. “You fought back, little war-woman. That’s what you did about it.”
    Big Sis patted Lily’s cheek with a cool, blue-veined hand. “Sometimes that’s all the victory you get—the knowledge that you fought back.”
    Aunt Maude added, “But that’s a great victory.”
    Lily bent her head to Sassy’s and slid her arms around the dog’s soft, quiet body. “Then I’ll always fight back,” she whispered.
    When Mama and Daddy came to get her and found out what had happened, they cried over Sassy. Next to the time when they’d cried over Grandpa MacKenzie’s death, it was the most frightening thing Lily had ever seen. The grown people she loved and trusted more than anyone else were just as helpless as she was. She would have to fight back for them too.
    They put Sassy in the back of the truck and took her home. After Daddy pulled in the yard under the deepening shade of the willows, Lily asked in a small voice, “Can we bury her next to our people? She always liked people better than she liked other dogs.”
    She was breathless with the bravery of her question. The family graveyard was sacred; Elspeth, the first MacKenzie, was buried there, and the baby she’d had with Old Artemas, and Elspeth’s sons, their wives, and too many other MacKenzies to remember. MacKenzies weren’t buried there anymore; it just wasn’t done that way in modern times, Mama had explained once. The last few, including Grandpa and Grandma, were at the Methodist church’s graveyard in town.
    “I think old Sassy was special,” Mama said, giving Daddy one of the sideways, prodding looks she used when she wanted him to agree with her. Daddy thought for a minute, then nodded.
    They put Sassy on a piece of plywood and carried her over the creek. Lily dragged a shovel in each hand. A dusty foot trail wound around the edge of the cornfield there. Beyond the creek, where the field ended, the land rose up into the hills that climbed toward the distant blue peak of Victory Mountain. The MacKenzie graveyard was in a little hollow at the base of a hill, as if the hill were holding it carefully in its lap.
    They opened the gate of the black iron fence andcarried Sassy to a corner. Faded old gravestones seemed to stand guard, some tall and grand, others that looked like no more than melting, oddly shaped rocks.
    Daddy pulled her against his warm, broad chest and spoke to her a long time, telling her how God wanted hurt things to be at rest, and how it took strength to do what was right, not just what was easy. She listened through a haze of heartache, one thought settling in her mind. Do what was right, not just what was easiest .
    When he finished, she got down on the ground and kissed Sassy’s nose. Sobbing, Lily ran to Mama and buried her face in her middle, clinging to her inside the circle of Mama’s petting hands.
    They sat down around her while Lily stroked her un-moving side. Mama said a little prayer and helped Daddy dig a grave. When Sassy’s limp, broken body lay in the bottom of it, Lily stretched out on her stomach and placed leaves over Sassy’s face.
    Silent tears ran down her cheeks as she watched Sassy’s much-loved yellow form disappear under soft shovelfuls of dirt.
    That evening she lay despondently in her bed, thinking about Grandma and Sassy, and how strange and lonely life became as a person grew up. “Look what came in the mail,” Mama said from