Distinctly Montana Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.distinctlymontana.com/i/48532
those words somewhere. He loved the sound of them, the movement they made in his mind. Beside the window he saw his daughter's crib, the child asleep within, and drawing near he stood over her. Hardly breathing, he stared. He saw the line of her jaw, the small closed lids of her eyes. She is so perfect, he thought, so fresh and new. The moonlight is an angel in whose wings she breathes and sleeps. She was no longer than his fore- arm, and when he reached down her head fit in the palm of his hand. He smoothed her hair, then drew his hand back and folded his arms over the railing. Here he beheld her, and in the lovely way of her form he found the echo of himself. He went to the foot of the bed and folded his pants and shirt and placed them in a small pile on the floor. In bed, he touched his wife's arm and whispered as she slept, I'm grate- ful for you, You are a good woman, I know a good woman, and as the last words left his lips he drifted, sleeping. IN THE NIGHT he woke and heard the child's breath- ing again, like a lost rhythm calling him. He got up and approached her crib and from his place near the window, arms folded on the railing, he looked out. In the early light the line of the earth seemed a great distance away and barely visible, and there in the dim new world he saw everything: her tender form sleeping, his own faint reflec- tion in the window, and out far the land, the stars, and water in between, the darkness and the dawn. Shann Ray's debut collection of stories, American Masculine (Gray- wolf, July 2011), won the prestigious Bakeless Prize. The winner of many prizes, Shann grew up in Montana and spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. Some of you may know Shann from his col- lege days when he played basketball for Montana State. He now lives with his wife and three daughters in Spokane where he teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University. This story first appeared in the South Dakota Review. For more info, see www.shannray.com. 40 DISTINCTLY MONTANA • WINTER 2011 VANESSA KAY