Maude March on the Run! by Audrey Couloumbis

sleep,” Maude said.
    “She's just eager to enjoy the extra padding that quilt puts between her old bones and the floor,” I said to cheer Marion.
    Like she was the momma, we all got into our sleep positions and waited for it. Ten minutes later, only Maude was breathing in the way of someone sleeping.
    Another butternut rolled, upstairs.
    “Believe I can live with those,” Marion said. “Although they are some noisier.”
    That was when the bat skimmed overhead again. Marion pulled his blanket over his head, then folded it down like he wouldn't be caught hiding.
    “Give it some time,” I said, feeling confident a bat could find its way out.
    Then another bat flitted across the room, and to state matters honestly, they flew quite a bit lower than before.Marion drew in a breath so loudly Maude flipped over to give him a hard stare.
    She noticed the one bat was now two and said, “Dang and blast! Sallie, get up and shut that window.” She was throwing her blanket off as she spoke.
    I scurried over to shut the window, but wouldn't you know it, another one made it in before I yanked the shutters closed. Marion pulled his head down between his shoulders.
    Maude rooted around in a potato sack for that glove, then stood and watched the bats circle. “Sit down, Sallie,” she said in the tone that said she didn't know what I was up and around for anyway.
    I sat. Those bats went on circling the room for some time.
    Then, like they'd all heard a whistle somewhere outside, they flew one by one to land on the shutters. They hooked their toes over a slat and hung upside down.
    Maude didn't waste any time.
    She pulled on the glove, walked over, and clapped her hand over one of those resting bats. It started in right away on that rusty-hinge screaming they make.
    The other two bats spread their wings but didn't lift off, as Maude opened one shutter and let that first bat free. She closed the shutter gently before she laid her glove over the next bat.
    Maude wasn't in the least bothered, but those critters were, shrieking in scratchy voices until she set them loose. A last slam of the shutters and we were bat-free.
    With a glance at Marion, Maude said, “I hope nobody is afraid of squirrels. They're a whole lot harder to catch.”
    She came back to her pallet, dropped the glove on the floor, and covered herself again.

TWENTY

    M AUDE FELL ASLEEP LIKE SHE WAS A CANDLE DOUSED. Marion was still staring into the firelight. “She's afraid the sheriff of Cedar Rapids threw our letter away,” I said in a low voice.
    “This has been a niggling worry to me all along,” he said. “She hasn't mentioned the money, exactly, but I expect she has her doubts about it getting all the way back to Des Moines.”
    “Now that was the chance we were taking,” Marion said.“Wearing a badge hasn't never been a guarantee of an honorable man. Honesty is more of a personal decision.”
    I said, “What about Uncle Arlen? Independence is his home. Me and Maude lived there for five months and he didn't turn her in.”
    He met this question in silence. Marion didn't come to a speedy judgment of someone or something newly met. Which is not to say his conclusion was usually right, only reasonably well considered.
    “It has me worried,” I said. How could Uncle Arlen go back to the little house he'd built and his business? Besidesthat, I couldn't imagine where me and Maude would end up if we couldn't go back there with him.
    Oh, I could see us landing somewhere and taking jobs, but it could be nothing like the same as we had just left behind. We had come to be part of a home again. Part of a family.
    Marion commenced to deep breathing like he might be gone to sleep. In the stillness of the room, another bat swooped overhead. I watched Marion, but he didn't move a muscle.
    I turned over on my side to watch the fire die. Times like this changed a man, and I figured I was in the midst of such a change. I reckoned it didn't come without wringing the heart