A nine-year-old boy named Dale eats mud in a ditch with a spoon despite his mother's warning. He hides the spoon in his boot. Back home, his mother is unwell and later found dead by the boy, who tries to wake her and feels confused and culpable for the outcome. He withholds the mud incident from his father, worrying the father might blame him. The boy delays reporting the death for two days while an ailing grandfather drifts in and out of awareness, and the boy continues basic household tasks.
A boy in Rowena, Missouri, ate mud one day. In a ditch, he ate it with a spoon. His mother had warned him, but the boy didn't listen-he kept eating all morning, then scooted back up to sit where the ground was dry and licked the spoon. This was late May. He tucked the spoon down into his boot. Back home, his mother had a headache.
The boy's name was Dale. He was 9, almost 10. He didn't mention the mud to his father, who hadn't been home at the time-he was a truck driver. Dale had a feeling that his father already knew, or anyway that his father had a sense somehow that Dale was to blame. For two days, the boy had left her there on the rug, until his father returned. Maybe he was wrong, he'd kept thinking, maybe she's napping, maybe she was just very, very tired.
Dale's grandfather had been there too, his father's father, in his bedroom, or else in the bathroom, or stalled leaning on the wall somewhere in between, but the grandfather hardly opened his eyes anymore-all he could see at this point was darkness, he'd said, like the sky at night with little specks in it, in the center a circle of white almost like the moon, but more and more the circle was smeared.
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