Catherine M. Brady Catherine Brady is a first-generation Irish-American brought up in Illinois. She received her B.S. in education from Northwestern University in 1977, and M.A. in creative writing from Hollins College in 1978, and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts in 1981. At Hollins College she won the Andrew Purdy Prize for Fiction, and at the University of Massachusetts she won the Harvey Swados Prize for "In the Woodsmoke Light." In The Woodsmoke Light IHAD TO move into town when Augie died of the heart attack. Couldn't keep that house up on the hill all by myself and with Dade and Bobby grown and gone their separate ways. Wasn't so far out of town though it felt like another country. I could look out my kitchen window and see nothing but the green of the mountain above us where it was too steep anymore for a man to build a house. Waking in the morning, I'd hear nothing but the birds whistling in the trees at dawn. That's their time, they're full of themselves when that light strikes them awake. Down here now, it's trucks I hear in the early morning, coming through town before day traffic's on the road, and though I hear a bird or two, it's not the same as that crowd on the hill japing and tk-king and trilling at each other. The air here doesn't feel so wide open, I get no impulse to step out my back door like I did up there and just suck in the green and mildew smell of growing things. Some spice I can't quite put my finger on—cloves, stinging your nostrils when you inhaled it. And in Spring, wisteria heavy in the air. Always wondered at that. Overindulgence like that isn't common in nature. Here the windows cake with soot after a rain, it dries like a spider web on the glass, spangles the light so's I can hardly see out. Got a view of the Roanoke Farmer's Market from the front window. On market days I can't stop myself going down to have a look. At the apple stand, they call me Fern, I said my name was Verneal and they call me Fern. "Here's Fern again," the men say, "You here every week and you don't buy nothing, Fern." I take up the turnips and squash in my hand, press them against the heel of my palm to see if they're sound. "You'll bruise it, Fern," they say. They shame me. They hoot across to one another when I don't answer. "She playing hard to get today, Bobby?" Those men, their faces are gray, their nails are black with dirt and ash. But I am careful. I am clean and I bobby pin my hair up neat and I am not so very much older than them. Still they single me out. I wonder if it isn't the burden I've to carry for Dade. Now he's gone, I'm to be set apart as he was. Dade was a different kind of child. One of those to make you wonder if he was a child of your own. When he was newborn he was sickly, and I had to come home without him. Always teased him they took our baby and gave us another in its place that time at the hospital. When I did get him home, I had to coddle him. Had to watch him, he was always putting things in his mouth, flowers, pine cones, stones, wanting to eat their prettiness. I'd spy on him when he went off to play by himself. Just off the path up the hill he cleared a little spot at the foot of a tree. Under that tree 138 · The Missouri Review Catherine M. Brady he set out a circle of stones, and dug a fire pit the way Augie taught him, and fed a fire with green twigs, juniper and honey locust and dogwood. The juniper burned slow, gave off a smoke that...