Thursday, December 22, 2011

12/22

Silas Marner-- XVII 
We started questions (what secret do we learn at the beginning of the chapter, why does Godfey have to tell Nancy his secret, and what does he decide to do), but cannot finish them until reading the next chapter.

12ers-- Character sketches and basic plot outlines due in your network folders.  We'll start writing tomorrow.

FW: Through 3.1 of the movie.

SS: Quiz tomorrow: Irony, symbolism, coincidence, theme, idiom, and idioms.  Nice pre-Frankenstein skits.

Crew: A few more plays to watch before break!  Then finishing Togo letters so we can finally send them off!

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Questions for Class 12/21

Tone: Read 69-77 and answer the following questions:

What is your impression of LaBoeuf?

What is the main point of contention between Mattie and LaBoeuf?

12/20 (a little late)

12ers: Character Sheets and outlines are due 12/21 at the end of class. 

FW: I know the movie is a little odd... with the speedo and all.  We'll have to decide if it's worth continuing watching this movie version or not (the new one has not arrived yet).

SS:  Be ready to do your skits!  I'm excited to see them.

Crew: Some good acting/actors, and bad acting/actors day.  We'll work more on the Togo letter.

IDIOMS for Freshmen


No Room to Swing a Cat


Small Space

Peeping Tom


Someone who likes to spy

Pig Out


Eat a lot

Mum’s the Word


Keep Quiet

Spitting Image


Looks Similar

Long in the Tooth


Old

Knee Jerk Reaction


Quick Automatic Response

It take two to Tango


Both people are at Fault in an argument

In like Flynn


Easily Successful

Get your Walking Papers


Get Fired from a Job

Beat a Dead Horse


Keep talking about the same thing

All Bark and No Bite


Someone that talks a lot but doesn’t act


Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Crew (from yesterday)

Getting things together for the Togo letter!  Don't forget to bring in/email your pictures.

Silas Again

Describe Eppie and other major characters now that sixtten years have passed. 

What kind of person has Eppie grown to be?  Cite evidence from the novel.

We're going over the vocabulary exercise and finishing the book (or trying to) before break.  There will be a Silas Marner test (I'm not sure what format) when we get back from break.

True Grit

What does the court transcript let us know about Rooster?
-Personality
-Experiences

What is Rooster's living situation like? (Who, where, etc.)

EC: "By God!  A Colt's Dragoon!  What you're no bigger than a ______ _______!"
What gun does Rooster try to trade with Mattie?

Audiobook today... let's get caught up!

Monday, December 19, 2011

Eighth Hour

Welcome Zach!

Reading scene rewrites today...!  We'll start SFOC this week!
Worksheet... we'll see if we can clarify this together.  I took this first section from http://dragreduction.blogspot.com/2005/11/irony-vs-coincidence.html
Several different concepts fall under the umbrella of irony, and this is, perhaps, one source of confusion. The concept I will focus on here is called situational irony1. From now on, whenever I say "irony," I'm referring specifically to situational irony. When I say something is "NOT IRONIC," though, I'm probably talking about irony in general. OK... that said, here we go.

Situational irony is the type of irony you are most likely to come across — or use — in conversation. As used here, situational irony is defined as:

irony

Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.   

It sounds harmless, I know. The big issue, in my experience, is that the concept of situational irony is often confused with that of coincidence.2 As used here, coincidence is defined as:
co
incidence

A sequence of events that, although accidental, seems to have been planned or arranged.

Pay close attention now, because this is where it gets confusing. To call a fact or event ironic is to make a statement about the relationship between the actuality of a fact or event and one's expectations regarding that fact or event. To call a fact or event coincidental, on the other hand, is to make a statement about the relationship between that fact or event and another, independent fact or event.

I know it sounds confusing, but it really isn't. Consider the situation described below as an example of what I'm talking about.


Person A and Person B are driving; they approach an intersection at which there is a traffic light, and collide.

Bystander C reports the accident, and Police Offer D arrives at the scene shortly. D finds that while B is clear and coherent, A is fairly tipsy.

Based on this information, D makes the following statment to C: "Well, it's pretty clear what happened here. Drunk drivers... what a menace."

As it turns out, though, B is as much to blame as A. B was not paying attention, and ran the light when it was red; alcohol-impaired as he was, A could not stop in time to avoid the accident.

C, having witnessed the collision, responds thus to D's statement: "Ironically, officer, B is as much to blame as A. It's really an unfortunate coincidence that B ran the light right in front of a drunk driver."


So... raise your hand if you followed that. Ooooookay, I'll explain. C knows what he's talking about (har har har). Because A was drunk, one would expect the accident to have been entirely his fault. The actuality of the event — the fact that B is also to blame — is incongruous with the expectation, and is thus ironic. What one must keep in mind, however, is that B's crime (running the red light) and A's (driving drunk) were completely independent events that happened to interact in an unexpected way — quite a coincidence.



Work with a partner to evaluate the following situations.  Are they actually ironic, coincidental, just kind of sad/annoying?  You decide.



An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late
And isn't it ironic... don't you think

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought... it figures

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
"Well isn't this nice..."
And isn't it ironic... don't you think

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought... it figures

Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

A traffic jam when you're already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic...don't you think
A little too ironic...and, yeah, I really do think...

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought... it figures

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out

Class

First Hour:
Read Pages 40-67

Second Hour:
I am hoping to finish reading Silas Marner this week (what's left will be assigned over break!).  Make sure your posters are completed BEFORE class tomorrow.

Third Hour:
Action writing.  I posted character development worksheets in your network folder so you can work on them tomorrow.  Make sure you're turning in your best work.

Fifth Hour:
Turn in Act Three Worksheets and we'll watch the first section of the older movie today.

True Grit Quiz

Name:

12/21



Why does Mattie go to see Stonehill?







What is funny about their interaction?







Does she get what she wants? 







Extra Credit:

1.)     What is her lawyer’s name?


2.)    You should always be ________ when sleeping.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Responses to the Parable

I think that the bat was just going to be used and he did the right thing.  He didn't belong to either group and he didn't change either.

You need to figure out who you are to find your place in the world.  You need to belong to a group and have friends to be respected.

The bat pretty much doesn't want to pick sides.  He doesn't want to get involved if it will end badly.  It's just like being racist-- don't put other people down.  It won't end well.

I feel bad for the bad because he isn't a bird or a beast so he can't join either group.  He doesn't have friends because he isn't either one.  Lying gets you nowhere.  If you're not one of two things then you don't have friends.

I think the bat did good and that he should go find his own group of bats to hang with.

I guess that relates to what's happening lately in our school.

It's sort of amusing in some ways, but also depressing.

The bat should've stayed neutral and then neither of the groups would've been mean to him.  If he wouldn't have said anything to either group he could have had more friends.  The bat should just find his own friends and leave the birds and beasts alone.

I think it's saying that if you're not like anyone else you're a lone ranger... you try to fit in but you're always a little different.

I believe that this could be like many real life situations.  I think that if something is going to happen and someone doesn't pick a side they will be abandoned.

It's obviously about being different and not fitting in, but I think the moral of the story is that just because you're different people shouldn't hate you or shun you.  Accept those for who they are-- don't hate them for what they look like.  I feel bad for the bat.

Update on Yesterday

PA: Began vocab posters...
12ers: Story maps for action/suspense.  Finish novel, fill out map, and start planning your own story!
FW: Read 3.1 and 3.2 of The Tempest and begin filling out the packet!  I don't know if our discussion went anywhere or not...
Study Hall: Let's just focus on NOT using racial slurs.  Words don't simply mean whatever you decide they mean... historical context is important.

SS: Theme, Symbolism, and Irony in The Birthmark.  Make sure you know your definitions for the "pop" quiz tomorrow.  Haha Carver.

Crew: Essay responses due at the beginning of class on Monday for GM.  Let's focus less on hiring/becomming assassins... and more on analyzing literature (although it WAS interesting, it was less than productive).



HUNGER GAMES anyone?
Hour 2: What happened to the two missing posters?  So weird that large pieces of tagboard can go missing in this classroom.


The Bat, the Birds, and the Beasts



A GREAT conflict was about to come off between the Birds and the Beasts. When the two armies were collected together the Bat hesitated which to join. The Birds that passed his perch said: “Come with us”; but he said: “I am a Beast.” Later on, some Beasts who were passing underneath him looked up and said: “Come with us”; but he said: “I am a Bird.” Luckily at the last moment peace was made, and no battle took place, so the Bat came to the Birds and wished to join in the rejoicings, but they all turned against him and he had to fly away. He then went to the Beasts, but soon had to beat a retreat, or else they would have torn him to pieces. “Ah,” said the Bat, “I see now,
“HE THAT IS NEITHER ONE THING NOR THE OTHER HAS NO FRIENDS.”


True Grit

T/F Mattie kisses her father's corpse.
T/F Yarnell stays with Mattie to help attend to her father's business.
Mattie wants to hire Rooster/Quinn because he is double-tough/fair.

EC: The _______ flee when none pursueth.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

TRUE GRIT
Start reading!  It's hard to discuss literature that people haven't read.  Plus, it's a great book!

What crime are the three men hanging for?

What are their last words?
1.
2.
3.

Who does Mattie have to sleep with at the boarding house?  Why is this a problem?

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

For those gone from Senior English...

I posted the questions below (they should be longer pieces of writing... about a page double-spaced for the first one and possibly longer for the second one). 

You can use Jim or Laura for the scene rewrite as well.

Be sure to consider the American dream for the first one.

Fifth Hour

FW: Good job with the rewrites today, though some of them were a little lewd.

SS: Continue working to find Textual Evidence for The Birthmark.  I know it's hard... but stick with it.

Crew: Finished the Menagerie today.  Start working on responses to the two questions.  We will be performing the rewrites in class!

How is the glass menagerie a metaphor for each of the four characters in the play?  Use specific examples from the text to back your answer.
TGM is a memory play narrated by and through Tom.  Do you think events in the play would be different if amanda was the narrator?  Rewrite one scene from her POV.

12/14

First Hour: Read the first two chapters of True Grit (11-30).
How does Mattie feel about her father?  Find specific textual example(S) from each chapter.
We will continue to review vocab.  There will be a quiz.  Yay!

Second Hour:
Read Chapter XV of Silas Marner and answer the two questions from yesterday.
We're working on vocab posters....
1.) Pick ten words within the following range
2.) Establish relationships (if any)
3.) Illustrate each and label-- make it pretty
Turboshaft-Turgid (Mav, Josh, Dylan)
Hackney-Hag Ride (Lauren, Ethan, Melissa)
Dinette-Dinosaur (Megan, Cori, Tanya)
Flighty-Flivver (David, Jenna, Billy)

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Second Half

FW: Still working on scene rewrites!  Yes, green.

SS: Finished reading the Object of Value essays-- good job!  We are beginning our science fiction unit... starting with The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  No class tomorrow!  Have a great weekend!

Crew: Menagerie reading and questions!  No class for you tomorrow either!

Good luck boys BBall!

First Half 12/7

PW:  True Grit, Odd Wit... I know some of the vocabulary is difficult, but I think you could have done a better job with the article.  We'll work with some of those words tomorrow and discuss what you did not understand.

PA: Interesting conversations today about hitting people with basketballs, softballs, mini-kickballs... and Silas found a child, and Molly may have frozen to death.  Good job reading.

12ers: Asset test practice about running shoes.  I know not all of you are taking the test, but it's still valuable to be able to write effectively!  Chapter 13 of Code Orange.  I think things are getting interesting, but Kesha seems to think they're dull.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

12/6

PW: I was really impressed with some of your Westerns!  Andrew S, where are you hiding today?  I hope to see you and hear your Western tomorrow.  True Grit will be here Friday!  Yay!

PA: Finish your Silas questions and the last three pages of Chapter 11 for tomorrow.

12ers:Turned in the letter to Ms. Donovan.  She said she'll think about it.  Code Orange tomorrow.

FW: Rewrite of Act 2 Scene 2 into modern time with performances! 

Monday, December 5, 2011

FW Tempest

Missed you today, Mark.

Here's what we did:

1.) Write a short summary of what has happened thus far (Act I).  Work with a partner and use your book to find specifics.
2.) "Act two: In which plots are laid against the king, lovers are tested, and drunkards get a monster drunk."  What do you think will happen to whom based on this statement?  Use specific character names and explain.

http://www.speak-the-speech.com/ is a good place to listen to the play (we're going to start it in class tomorrow).  Check it out if you'd like to get ahead.

Freshmen Peer Editing

PEER EDITOR NAME:

AUTHOR NAME:

TITLE of PAPER:

DATE:

What object is the author describing?


Write down words the author uses to describe using each of the five senses.

1.)    Taste



2.)    Sight



3.)    Smell



4.)    Touch



5.)    Sound



Did the author communicate something sensory that is challenging to describe (take on a difficult sound, taste, sensation)?  Did they do a good job (did you know what they meant)?





Did the author use vivid verbs, adjectives, and adverbs?  Go through the paper and note some boring ones (is, has goes) and suggest different ones.





Did the author clearly communicate why the object is important to them when it might not seem important to other people?



T/F The writer followed the organizational structure provided to them.

·         If you said false, what kind of structure did they use?  What does each paragraph focus on (each should have a definite topic)?



·         Is this structure effective (makes logical sense)?



T/F After reading the paper, I think I would recognize the object if I saw it with a bunch of similar objects.

·         If you said true, how would you know?



·         If you said false, what could the writer do to change this?



T/F The author used vivid sensory language to describe the object (NOT the a SETTING or SITUATION)

·         If you said true, what is your favorite descriptive passage and why?



·         If you said false, what sense do they need to include?



Are you left with any lingering questions?  Are you missing key information?  Write three things you would like to know about their topic that were not included.

1.)


2.)


3.)

12/5 Junior English

What are the roles of the upper/lower social levels?
Compare the two Miss Lameters is appearance and personality.
Does Godfrey have the right to try to win Nancy's approval?  Why/why not?

Questions for Chapter XI: you just have to answer the first two.  Do a good/thorough job!

Western Questions 12/5

  • 1.) So far I have written ____ pages of my story.
  • 2.) I am (a fourth done, half done, three fourths done, almost done) writing my story line.
  • 3.) I need ___ days of class to work before I will have a draft and be ready to do a peer edit.
  • 4.) T/F This is a piece of writing I would be interested in working on later on in the year (possibly take to a writing workshop in La Crosse).
  • 5.) My name is ___________.

6.) Today I feel _______, so please _________, already.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Senior English

1.        Each of the Wingfields escapes from unpleasant reality into a comforting, private world.  In Scene One, Amanda escapes from her present circumstances by remembering and talking about her past youth, her beauty, and her romantic successes.  How does Laura escape from the real world?  What does Tom do to escape from his unhappiness?




2.        What part does Laura play in the angry argument between Tom and Amanda?


In the opening of Scene four, Tom describes the magic show that he saw while he was "at the movies." In the show, the magician was nailed into a coffin and was able to escape this coffin without disturbing a nail. Tom connects this coffin to his own life as he wishes he could get out of his own coffin without disturbing a nail.


This is a very specific metaphor.  What are ten objects that you could use as metaphors for your life? Drawing, using magazines, or finding pictures online, create a collage of pictures that symbolizes your life (feel free to combine images, like Tom might with a coffin and a nail).  Write 3-4 sentences about each object to explain your choices.

Questions for Object of Value Papers

Questions

Did you thoroughly describe ONE OBJECT in your paper?  It has to be something you can actually touch.

Did you thoroughly discuss each of the five senses?  (That means write MORE than one sentence for each… preferably a paragraph)

Did you communicate something sensory that was difficult… but feel like you came out on top/did an adequate job?

Did you use VIVID VERBS, ADJECTIVES, and ADVERBS?  Go through your paper: box verbs, underline adjectives once and adverbs twice.

Did you communicate why this object is important to you when it might not seem valuable to other people?
PW: Yay!  So happy your Westerns are coming along well.  I can't wait to read them.  It's so exciting!

PA: Not a very Marner focused day, but playing the game was fun.  Plus, on Monday you get to meet Nancy Lammeter for real and see what you think about her.

12ers: Code Orange catchup day!  We'll start practicing some things for the Asset test!  You'll get it yet!

FW: QAR sheet in class and reader response posters for the following Tempest Quotes:

“Me (poor man) my library was dukedom large enough.” (I, ii)



 “But as ‘tis, we cannot miss him. He does make our fire, fetch in our wood, and serves in offices that profit us.” (I, ii,)


“You taught me language, and my profit on’t is, I know how to curse.” (I, ii, 363-364)


“Sitting on a bank,

Weeping again the King my father’s wrack,

This music crept by me upon the waters,

Allaying both their fury and my passion

With its sweet air.” (I, ii)


“There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple. If the ill spirit have so fair a house, good things will strive to dwell with’t.”(I, ii)



 “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” (II, ii)


SS: Still working on Object of Value papers.  You must have a draft done by Monday for Peer editing.  Consider the questions I gave you.


Crew: Menagerie reading... things are getting pretty heated (and exciting!).  Love Cheyenne and Austin reading.


Also... YAY forensics.  I am so excited about all 21 of you.  It's going to be a great season.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Hour 2 Silas Marner Chapter Ten

Silas Marner: Chapter 10

1.)     How is Dunstan’s absence regarded?











2.)     Describe the change in the villagers’ perception of Silas. How might you account for this change?











3.)    What event is being anticipate? What are Godfrey’s feelings about this event?

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

SS 11/30

OBJECT of VALUE Paper

WHAT is an OBJECT of VALUE?

An OBJECT is a material thing that can be seen and touched.  VALUE is defined as the importance or preciousness of something.  Therefore an OBJECT of VALUE is a material thing that is important to you. 



The object could be a favorite shirt or sports jersey, jewelry, a toy from when you were younger, a musical instrument, or maybe present from a friend or family member.  You don’t have to use one of these ideas; it’s totally up to you.



SO WHAT is the ASSIGNMENT?

Your job is to write a descriptive paper detailing an object of value and explaining why/how it came to have special meaning.



HOW do I do that?

For the descriptive section, use vivid verbs and powerful adjectives and adverbs as you write. **Vivid means producing powerful feelings or strong, clear images in the mind



1.)     Vivid Verbs include, but are not limited to, these five words



2.)     Powerful Adjectives include, but are not limited to, these five words



3.)     Powerful Adverbs include, but are not limited to, these five words




ALSO Use as many of the senses as you can--sight, sound, smell, touch, taste--as well as deep, rich colors.  

**I know a lot of you were struggling to include taste… if it’s not something that you would actually taste, you can write, “If I were to taste it, it would taste like…” which is kind of an interesting exercise in and of itself



You do not have to follow the following format, but it is a suggestion as to how you might organize your paper.  Each paragraph should provide us with information about the object itself, AND why it’s valuable.  FOR EXAMPLE:

1.)     If it smells like sunscreen, it might remind you of summers spent with your friends. 

2.)     If feels worn out, it might be because you used it every day.

3.)     If it has a stain on it that discolors the leather, it might be because of one time your best friend got sick at an amusement park.

Paragraph One: Introduction—catches our attention, tells us what the object is, possibly where it is, and any other information you think is appropriate.


Paragraph Two: Sight—focuses on how the object looks; its size, level of wear, color, etc.


Paragraph Three: Smell—how does the object smell (or maybe it doesn’t smell at all)?  It might remind you of a place you’ve been like the beach, or your grandma…



Paragraph Four: Taste— it is likely that this is an object you have never tasted (if you have great), but you can still consider what it would taste like if you were to taste it.


Paragraph Five:  Touch— What does it feel like?  What is the texture or temperature?


Paragraph Six: Sound— What does it sound like?  Many inanimate objects don’t make noise independently, but sometimes they do when you sit on them, drop them, or anything else?


Paragraph Seven: Conclude—add any additional information and reiterate why it’s important to you

Sophomore Tempest Questions Act One

Who is Ariel? Why should he be grateful to Prospero, and just do what he's told?



Who was Sycorax? How does Prospero feel about her? Are there any parallels between Sycorax's story and Prospero's?




Who is Caliban? What is his attitude towards Prospero's control of the island?


Pickle Weasel Westerns

Bugle Song

Wallace Stegner

There had been a wind during the night, and all the loneliness of the world had swept up out of the southwest. The boy had heard it wailing through the screens of the sleeping porch where he lay, and he had heard the wash tub bang loose from the outside wall and roll down toward the coulee, and the slam of the screen doors, and his mother's padding feet after she rose to fasten things down. Through one half-open eye he had peered up from his pillow to see the moon skimming windily in a luminous sky; in his mind he had seen the prairie outside with its woolly grass and cactus white under the moon, and the wind, whining across that endless oceanic land, sang in the screens, and sang him back to sleep.
Now, after breakfast, when he set out through the west pasture on the morning round of his gopher traps, there was no more wind, but the air smelled somehow recently swept and dusted, as the house in town sometimes smelled after his mother's whirlwind cleaning. The sun was gently warm on the bony shoulder blades of the boy, and he whistled, and whistling turned to see if the Bearpaws were in sight to the south. There they were, a ghostly tenuous outline of white just breaking over the bulge of the world: the Mountains of the Moon, the place of running streams and timber and cool heights that he had never seen—only dreamed of on days when the baked clay of the farmyard cracked in the heat and the sun brought cedar smells from fence posts long since split and dry and odorless, when he lay dreaming on the bed in the sleeping porch with a Sears Roebuck catalogue open before him, picking out the presents he would buy for his mother and his father and his friends next Christmas, or the Christmas after that. On those days he looked often and long at the snowy mountains to the south, while the dreams rose in him like heat waves, blurring the reality of the unfinished shack that was his summer home.
The Bearpaws were there now, and he watched them a moment, walking, his feet dodging cactus clumps automatically, before he turned his attention again to the traps before him, their locations marked by a zigzag line of stakes. He ran the line at a half-trot, whistling.
At the first stake the chain was stretched tightly into the hole. The pull on its lower end had dug a little channel in the soft earth of the mound. Gently, so as not to break the gopher's leg off, the boy eased the trap out of the burrow, held the chain in his left hand, and loosened the stake with his right. The gopher lunged against the heavy trap, but it did not squeal. They squealed, the boy had noticed, only when at a distance, or when the weasel had them. Otherwise they kept still.
For a moment the boy debated whether to keep this one alive for the weasel or to wait till the last trap so that he wouldn't have to carry the live one around. Deciding to wait, he held the chain out, measured the rodent for a moment, and swung. The knobbed end of the stake crushed the animal's skull, and the eyes popped out of the head, round and blue. A trickle of blood started from nose and ears.
Releasing the gopher, the boy lifted it by the tail and snapped its tail-fur off with a dexterous flip. Then he stowed the trophy carefully in the breast pocket of his overalls. For the last two years he had won the grand prize offered by the province of Saskatchewan to the school child who destroyed the most gophers. On the mantel in town were two silver loving cups, and in a shoe box under his bed in the farmhouse there were already eight hundred and forty tails, the catch of three weeks. His whole life on the farm was devoted to the destruction of the rodents. In the wheat fields he distributed poison, but in the pasture, where stock might get the tainted grain, he trapped, snared, or shot them. Any method he preferred to poisoning: that offered no excitement, and he seldom got the tails because the gophers crawled down their holes to die.
Picking up trap and stake, the boy kicked the dead animal down its burrow and scraped dirt over it with his foot. They stunk up the pasture if they weren't buried, and the bugs got into them. Frequently he had stood to windward of a dead and swollen gopher, watching the body shift and move with the movements of the beetles and crawling things working through it. If such an infested corpse were turned over, the beetles would roar out of it, great orange-colored, hard-shelled, scavenging things that made his blood curdle at the thought of their touching him, and after they were gone and he looked again he would see the little black ones, undisturbed, seething through the rotten flesh. So he always buried his dead, now.
Through the gardens of red and yellow cactus blooms he went whistling, half-trotting, setting the traps anew whenever a gopher shot upright, squeaked, and ducked down its burrow at his approach. All but two of the first seventeen traps held gophers, and he came to the eighteenth confidently, expecting to take this one alive. But this gopher had gone into the trap head first, and the boy put back into his pocket the salt sack he had brought along as a game bag. He would have to snare or trap one down by the dam.
On the way back he stopped with bent head while he counted his day's catch of tails, mentally adding this lot of sixteen to the eight hundred and forty he already had, trying to remember how many he had had at this time last year. As he finished his mathematics his whistle broke out again, and he galloped down through the pasture, running for very abundance of life, until he came to the chicken house just within the plowed fireguard.
Under the eaves of the chicken house, so close that the hens were constantly pecking up to its very door and then almost losing their wits with fright, was the made-over beer case that contained the weasel. Screen had been tacked tightly under the wooden lid, which latched, and in the screen was cut a tiny wire door. In the front, along the bottom, a single board had been removed and replaced with screen.
The boy lifted the hinged top and looked down into the cage.
"Hello," he said. "Hungry?"
The weasel crouched, its long snaky body humped, its head thrust forward and its malevolent eyes staring with lidless savagery into the boy's.
"Tough, ain't you?" said the boy. "Just wait, you bloodthirsty old stinker, you. Wait'll you turn into an ermine. Won't I skin you quick, hah?"
There was no dislike or emotion in his tone. He took the weasel's malignant ferocity with the same indifference he displayed in his gopher killing. Weasels, if you could keep them long enough, were valuable. He would catch a lot, keep them until they turned white, and sell their hides as ermine. Maybe he could breed them and have an ermine farm. He was the best gopher trapper in Saskatchewan. Once he had even caught a badger. Why not weasels? The trap broke their leg, but nothing could really hurt a weasel permanently. This one, though virtually three-legged, was as savage and lively as ever. Every morning he had a live gopher for his breakfast, in spite of the protests of the boy's mother that it was cruel. But nothing, she had decided, was cruel to the boy.
When she argued that the gopher had no chance when thrown into the cage, the boy retorted that he didn't have a chance when the weasel came down the hole after him either. If she said that the real job he should devote himself to was exterminating the weasels, he replied that then the gophers would get so thick they would eat the fields down to stubble. At last she gave up, and the weasel continued to have his warm meals.
For some time the boy stood watching his captive, and then he turned and went into the house, where he opened the oat box in the kitchen and took out a chunk of dried beef. From this he cut a thick slice with the butcher knife, and went munching into the sleeping porch where his mother was making beds.
"Where's that little double naught?" he asked.
"That what?"
"That little wee trap. The one I use for catching live ones for the weasel."
"Hanging out by the laundry bench, I think. Are you going out trapping again now?"
"Lucifer hasn't had his breakfast yet."
"How about your reading?"
"I'n take the book along and read while I wait," the boy said. "I'm just goin' down to the coulee at the edge of the dam."
"I can, not 'Ine,' son."
"I can," the boy said. "I am most delighted to comply with your request."
He grinned at his mother. He could always floor her with a quotation from the Sears Roebuck catalogue.
With the trap swinging from his hand, and under his arm the book—"Narrative and Lyric Poems," edited by Some-body-or-other—which his mother kept him reading during the summer "so that next year he could be at the head of his class again," the boy walked out into the growing heat.
From the northwest the coulee angled down through the pasture, a shallow swale dammed just above the house to catch the spring run-off of snow water. In the moist dirt of the dam grew ten-foot willows planted as slips by the boy's father. They were the only things resembling trees in sixty miles. Below the dam, watered by the slow seepage from above, the coulee bottom was a parterre of flowers, buttercups in broad sheets, wild sweet pea, and "stinkweed." On the slopes were evening primroses, pale pink and white and delicately fragrant, and on the flats above the yellow and red burgeoning of the cactuses.
Just under the slope of the coulee a female gopher and three half-grown puppies basked on their warm mound. The boy chased them squeaking down their hole and set the trap carefully, embedding it partially in the soft earth. Then he retired back up the shoulder of the swale, where he lay full length on his stomach, opened the book, shifted so that the glare of the sun across the pages was blocked by the shadow of his head and shoulders, and began to read.
From time to time he stopped reading to roll on his side and stare out across the coulee, across the barren plains pimpled with gopher mounds and bitten with fire and haired with dusty woolly grass. Apparently as flat as a table, the land sloped imperceptibly to the south, so that nothing interfered with his view of the ghostly line of mountains, now more plainly visible as the heat increased. Between the boy's eyes and that smoky outline sixty miles away the heat waves rose writhing like fine wavy hair. He knew that in an hour Pankhurst's farm would lift above the swelling knoll to the west. Many times he had seen that phenomenon—had seen his friend Jason Pankhurst playing in the yard or watering horses when he knew that the whole farm was out of sight. It was the heat waves that did it, his father said.
The gophers below had been thoroughly scared, and for a long time nothing happened. Idly the boy read through his poetry lesson, dreamfully conscious of the hard ground under him, feeling the gouge of a rock under his stomach without making any effort to remove it. The sun was a hot caress between his shoulder blades, and on the bare flesh where his overalls pulled above his sneakers it bit like a burning glass. Still he was comfortable, supremely relaxed and peaceful, lulled into a half-trance by the heat and the steamy flower smells and the mist of yellow in the buttercup coulee below.
And beyond the coulee was the dim profile of the Bear-paws, the Mountains of the Moon.
The boy's eyes, pulled out of focus by his tranced state, fixed on the page before him. Here was a poem he knew . . . but it wasn't a poem, it was a song. His mother sang it often, working at the sewing machine in winter.
It struck him as odd that a poem should also be a song, and because he found it hard to read without bringing in the tune, he lay quietly in the full glare of the sun, singing the page softly to himself. As he sang the trance grew on him again; he lost himself entirely. The bright hard dividing lines between individual senses blurred, and buttercups, smell of primrose, feel of hard gravel under body and elbows, sight of the ghosts of mountains haunting the southern horizon, were one intensely felt experience focused by the song the book had evoked.
And the song was the loveliest thing he had ever known. He felt the words, tasted them, breathed upon them with all the ardor of his captivated senses,
The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story. . . .
The current of his imagination flowed southward over the strong gentle shoulder of the world to the ghostly outline of the Mountains of the Moon, haunting the heat-distorted horizon.
Oh hark, oh hear, how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going,
Oh, sweet and far, from cliff and scar . . .
In the enchanted forests of his mind the horns of elfland blew, and his breath was held in the slow-falling cadence of their dying. The weight of the sun had been lifted from his back. The empty prairie of his home was castled and pillared with the magnificence of his imagining, and the sound of horns died thinly in the direction of the Mountains of the Moon.
From the coulee below came the sudden metallic clash of the trap, and an explosion of frantic squeals smothered almost immediately in the burrow. The boy leaped up, thrusting the book into the wide pocket of his overalls, and ran down to the mound. The chain, stretched down the hole, jerked convulsively, and when the boy took hold of it he felt the terrified life at the end of it strain to escape. Tugging gently, he forced loose the gopher's digging claws, and hauled the squirming captive from the hole.
On the way up to the chicken house the dangling gopher with a tremendous muscular effort convulsed itself upward from the broken and imprisoned leg, and bit with a sharp rasp of teeth on the iron. Its eyes, the boy noticed impersonally, were shining black, like the head of a hatpin. He thought it odd that when they popped out of the head after a blow they were blue.
At the cage by the chicken house he lifted the cover and peered through the screen. The weasel, scenting the blood of the gopher's leg, backed against the far wall of the box, yellow body tense as a spring, teeth showing in a tiny soundless snarl.
Undoing the wire door with his left hand, the boy held the trap over the hole. Then he bore down with all his strength on the spring, releasing the gopher, which dropped on the straw-littered floor and scurried into the corner opposite its enemy.
The weasel's three good feet gathered under it and it circled, very slowly, around the wall, its lips still lifted to expose that soundless snarl. The abject gopher crowded against the boards, turned once and tried to scramble up the side, fell back on its broken leg, and whirled like lightning to face its executioner again. The weasel moved carefully, circling, its cold eyes never leaving its prey.
Then the gopher screamed, a wild, agonized, despairing squeal that made the watching boy swallow and wet his lips. Another scream, wilder and louder than before, and before the sound had ended the weasel struck. There was a fierce flurry in the straw of the cage before the killer got its hold just back of the gopher's right ear, and its teeth began tearing ravenously at the still-quivering body. In a few minutes, the boy knew, the gopher's carcass would be as limp as an empty skin, with all its blood sucked out and a hole as big as the ends of his two thumbs where the weasel had dined.
Still the boy remained staring through the screen top of the cage, face rapt and body completely lost. And after a few minutes he went into the sleeping porch, stretched out on the bed, opened the Sears Roebuck catalogue, and dived so deeply into its fascinating pictures and legends that his mother had to shake him to make him hear her call to lunch.