[sense of place]
SLANT OF LIGHT By Janelle Masters
Stepping outside the house in Niobe one winter evening, I looked west to the escarpment hills ten miles away and saw the prairie snow drifting to the south, rolling fast and red. The cold North Dakota sun was setting, making the snow look as if it were on fire, drenching it with color. Through the blowing snow, I saw long-eared animals at least ten feet tall bouncing on their hind legs in great arcs south with the wind. I backed into the house, awe-struck, and rushed into the living room. “Mom,” I said, “you were right. There are kangaroos in the hills.” Dad, Elizabeth, and Cooper (my sister and brother) all laughed as they had laughed at my mother a few minutes before when she’d said she had seen kangaroos outside. But one at a time, my family went out to the porch and gazed west toward the Missouri Escarpment where my grandfather had homesteaded at the turn of the twentieth century. Each of them stood and looked over that frozen, rolling, scarlet expanse, then came back in, shaken. I studied my father’s face when he entered the house. His eyebrows leaping up and down was a sure sign he was tamping down some emotion. “By God, I think they are kangaroos,” he stammered. And I remember ten years later when
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