“I’m not shifting! I just want to talk to her!”
“Your mother’s right. It’s time for you to listen to her story.”
My mother opened her mouth to begin to read, but there was a rapt knock at the door. I jerked upright and turned my head, but my father’s arms were around me and kept me from going anywhere. A dampness spread along my chest. I looked down. “Daddy, I spilled some milk on my shirt.”
“Hush, baby. Listen to your mother.”
“A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson,” my mother re
