Text Leveling System

Black-Eyed Susan

RDQ:	1700	Max Word/Sent	49	Total Words	3031		Diff Words	884
Lex	850	Ave Word/.Sent	12	Hi Freq occurs	2306	76.1%	Hi freq	377	42.6%
AR	4.6	Long Sentences	16.7	Low Freq occurs	148	4.9%	Low freq	126	14.3%

ONE
The low wind slowed outside our sodhouse door, then rolled over the buffalo grass, bowling down into hollows and up over mounds, blowing the dust before it. I clambered up onto the roof to watch the sun come up, and the wind yanked my pigtails like reins.
"I'm not likely to hup up for the wind," I said to Whitey.
Whitey and Poker were grazing on a little moundy hill nearby, which put them on my level. Whitey nodded as he chewed grass and swiveled one eye at me. He didn't like to hup up for much of anything himself. Even
for a mule, he was stubborn. I plucked a piece of grass of my own, and chewed on it while the sun stretched its arms across the eastern horizon.
Watching the sun rise was a thing I enjoyed doing as often as I could wake up early. The pink and orange and gold went pouring along in both directions, lighting up the land as it went, as though it was making up the golden prairie that very minute, just for enjoyment. One moment all was gray and empty, and the next minute-my lord!  there was the world.
I held my arms wide and turned my palms to the sky. If I squinted so in one direction, it appeared I could touch the horizon on the north and help the sun draw up the land. If I squinted so in the other direction, the same rule applied on the south. I could hold the whole wide plate of the earth between my arms and let the sun come up in the middle.
It always seemed to me that there was a sound that went along with the operation, a deep low tone that the sun made as it rose. But of course there wasn't. One thing the prairie has is silence. I suppose if there was a sound, it must have been the wind. The sun rolled its light out onto the world and the wind said, "Now!"
As I say, bringing the sun up was a thing I enjoyed doing, especially in October, when the land was gold.
"Susie! Get off the roof!" my ma called up the chimney. "It's just raining dirt in here!" The door below me opened and shut, and my pa stepped out into the morning, pulling up his suspenders.
"Come along down, Susie," he said. "We've got a frying pan full of dirt already. Fetch Whitey's bridle, will you, and give it a good oiling this morning."
I shrieked so loud I spooked the mules. They trotted off somewhere out of sight.
"Are you riding to town today? Take me, Pa!" I stood up and ran to the edge of the roof.
"Susie!" Ma called again.
I clapped one hand over my mouth. The thought of going to Medicine Fire was so exciting that I could have done a dance. But when you live in a sodhouse, dancing on the roof means a dusty bed and worse.
"Sorry, Ma!" I looked down at Pa. "I hope it wasn't a centipede dropping down on her." "Come on down here," Pa said, stepping back a bit and holding open his arms. "Don't walk over the roof another step, just take yourself a jump."
The sun was fully up and blazing straight across the prairie into my eyes so I couldn't see my pa's face at all, but I stepped off the edge of the roof anyway. I fell through the dazzle and landed safe in his arms. He caught me and let me slide to the ground. I stood on his feet.
"Pa," I said, reaching up to pull on his beard. "What are you going to town for?" "One thing and another."
"Is Ma going, too?"
Pa winced his eyes a bit. "I don't know that she will. She's feeling low."
"I noticed that."
I looked over my shoulder at the door. A sodhouse is a cross between a brick house and rabbit hole, in that it is built up with walls but the bricks are just big squares of sod cut right from the ground and stacked up high. The result is a pretty tight burrow against the wind, and if you choose to, you can graze your livestock on the roof as long as you build into the side of a moundy hill.
But my ma grew up in Ohio, and she was used to a more regular style of house, and to a less persistent sort of wind. Also, I expect, she was used to fewer bugs in the ceiling. And as they say, a sodbusting farmer prays for rain, but a sodbuster's wife prays for dry:
if it rains two days outside, it'll rain four days in.
The door was shut, even though the sunlight was washing up against it like spring flood. I pictured the wooden houses in town. From the outside, they appeared to be free of dirt and fairly dry. I looked at Pa again. "Are we likely to build our wooden house next year?"
We went around the house to scout the mules. "It's a possibility, though remote," he replied. "I'm intending to put our money into buying another quarter section of land. I intend to visit the Land Office today."
We walked through the grass, and with each step we took, grasshoppers sprang into the air and disappeared on the wind. I took Pa's hand, and we climbed up the little hill behind the house. Whitey and Poker were down behind it, where it was still dim and daybreaky.
From where we stood with the sun at our
backs, all of the Dakotas swept out west ahead of us. The land was flat overall, but rippled and wrinkled and rumpled as a morning blanket. The tops of the dried grasses bent away from us in the cold wind, and our shadows pointed long and straight into the farthest distance.
I'd seen maps of the Dakota Territory with each 160-acre section as neat and rectangular as a page from a Bible. But the prairie didn't lend itself to such order when you looked at it in the sunrise. It didn't have the look of something you could boss around at all.
"We should have kept on going," Pa said in his faraway voice. "We would have hit the mountains, and your ma would have had some trees to look at."
I regarded him, and then our west pointing shadows where they stretched out across the land. There wasn't a tree within twenty miles of us, just some twisty box
elders and cottonwoods along the creek outside of Medicine Fire.
"I don't find trees much to look at," I mentioned. "To my mind, they seem rude, like a person standing in the way of a fine view."
Pa laughed, and the mules switched their ears our way. "That's not everyone's opinion," he said. "And I expect you'll have to get a different notion before long whether you care to or not. The trees are coming after us." I looked back over my shoulder. There was not a thing in sight but our house, and our wagon and lean-to shed, and the wide, wide acres of golden wheat stubble with the black dirt between. If any trees were advancing on us, they were surely sly.
Pa noticed me looking. "'They're slow, honey. But all the time that people push west across the plains, they plant trees where they settle, to remind them of home."
"Like pulling the trees after them." "I suppose so."
We stood in the wind some more, watching our shadows on the shaking prairie grass. The mules chewed, and raised their heads to glance around, and chewed some more. I tried to place a few trees here and there in my mind's eye. I couldn't quite do it. "Are you going to get Ma a tree today?"
Pa scratched his neck. "It's late in the year for planting trees."
I looked over the prairie, where nothing stirred except the wind, and then took a look at Pa.
He must have seen some misgiving in my face. "I don't think your view would suffer from having one or two trees," he said. "They might set it off, and make the prospect that much finer by contrast."
"Well, I guess that could be so, Pa."
He laughed again. "You're a purist, Susie. Now let's get the mules."
Two
When I went into the house to see about breakfast, I found Ma sitting up in the bed in the corner, reading a book she'd read many times over the years, Mansfield Park, which she had informed me is about people in a big house in England, Europe. I set Whitey's bridle on the table, and opened the crock where we kept our cornmeal. Ma didn't say anything.
"I could make some cornbread," I offered. "That's a welcome suggestion." Ma was reading hard and didn't look up. The lamp beside the bed was smoking a little, too, but she didn't take notice of that either.
Although the iron stove was warm, it was not hot enough for baking or making coffee. We burned dried animal droppings, wood being so scarce, and I must say a dry mule ball didn't make much of a fire. I stoked the stove some, trying not to rattle the poker too loud and disturb my ma, and then mixed up some batter and poured it in a pan. When I did that, I noticed a pile of letters on the table ready to go to the post office, all letters Ma had written to her brothers and sisters back in Ohio. I never asked what she wrote to them about, as it didn't seem right to pry. But it gave me a left-out feeling to see how many letters she had written. I glanced at Ma, but she was miles away. It was awfully lonesome inside the house.
I had to clear my throat before I could talk. "Does that book have trees in it?"
Ma marked her place with one finger and looked up, and a smile slowly spread across her face. "Yes, it does. Lots of trees." She
looked at me for a bit in a considering way, and then set the book down and held back the blankets. "Come on in here, Susie."
In a blink, I kicked off my shoes and climbed into the bed beside Ma, where it was warm. She snugged the covers around us both and put my head against her shoulder. "It's a beautiful day," I told her. "The sky is as blue as anything."
"Hmmmm." She stroked my arm. "Is the wind blowing?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Then let's not discuss it, if you please." "Yes, ma'am." I pressed my cheek against her shoulder, wishing I could think of a way to get my ma out of the house. She'd hardly stepped foot outside in weeks, now.
I couldn't bring to mind when it had started, that lonesomeness of hers. Maybe it had been there from the time we settled our homestead, when I was five, and I just hadn't noticed it before. Perhaps it had been
growing like a seed, and was blooming at last with a pale flower and a sad perfume. All I knew was that Ma never laughed anymore, hardly spoke, seldom smiled. From time to time, I wondered if she would ever feel like being my ma again. Rumor was a Bohemian woman had walked away from her family's claim one day last winter and not come back. I didn't worry about my ma wandering off, since she hated to go outside. But I did worry about her going into that book of hers sometime and not coming out again.
"I was lying here remembering something this morning," she said as she snugged me in tighter. "It strikes me that it must be one of my earliest memories."
Her small smile cheered me up a degree. "Are you going to tell me it?"
"Of course." Ma hugged me a bit, and then settled in for storytelling.
"When I was a small child, my mother
had a regular washday, when a hired girl came to help her wash all the sheets and the tablecloths, and they'd hang out on the line, swaying so gently when a breeze came, like old ladies in white dresses, dancing slow. They'd hang out there all day as long as it was fine, just drying and gathering up a nice smell.
"Then, on the following day, my mother would iron them all, and I would hide under the ironing board while my mother pressed. The sheets would drape down on both sides at the ends of the board like a tent, and I'd crawl in under there to hide. It was always warm and steamy and smelled of starch, and the light was white and soft, like being in a cloud.
"My mother liked to recite Shakespeare when she ironed, although I didn't know at the time what she was saying. I only knew it made a lovely sound. And the iron would thump-thump, thump-thump over my head
like a beating heart, and I could hear my mother's voice not talking to me but knowing I was there. No one could see me, hidden under the ironing board."
Ma stopped talking, and she let out a sigh. I looked up at her, past the one big braid that came down over her shoulder and tickled my nose. Beyond her head, sheets were nailed into the walls and ceiling to keep the dirt from falling into the bed. My ma still looked miles away.
"I'm sorry I'm such bad company for you, Susie," Ma said, pleating the bedspread with her fingers. "I shouldn't let you make breakfast while I lie here feeling sorry for myself." I had to swallow hard. My throat was tight. "I don't mind it, Ma."
"Well," she said in a brisk and hopeful voice. "I should get up, anyhow. This is a farm, not a manor house."
She shoved the covers back in one fast sweep, and shooed me out of bed. Her night
dress was as white as the sheets, and her face was very white, too. We both wriggled our toes into our shoes. Ma rested one hand on my shoulder.
"Are you going to ride to town with Pa, today?" she asked me. Her eyes were gray and kind, as always, but I was worried that she might still be lonesome.
"Not if you don't want me to, Ma."
"No, of course not. Go ahead and have some fun," she said.
I put my arms around her waist. "You come too, Ma. I'll ride with Pa on Whitey, and you can come on Poker. Or we'll take the wagon." I tipped my head back to look up at her, and my heart beat hard. "Say yes, Ma. It's a fine day for riding. Pa says you used to be a real fine horsewoman."
She smoothed my hair back and let my braids slip through her hands. "No, Susie. I'll stay here. I'll stay inside."
I hung my head, and she walked to the
stove to check on the cornbread, hitching a blanket around her shoulders as she stooped to the job. And then Pa came in, and he began to talk about what he intended to do in Medicine Fire, and I didn't add anything more to the conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, anyway, as it was mostly Pa speaking, and waiting for Ma to say something in reply. For the most part she didn't contribute much from her side, and I could hear that sound in Pa's voice that meant he was in a struggle to keep talking himself.
I ate my cornbread and worked some lard into Whitey's bridle so that it'd get well seasoned. By doing both at once, I managed to cover my hands and Whitey"s bridle equally in lard and cornbread crumbs. But I knew Whitey wasn't exactly a proud animal, and was in no position to object.
Since my folks were still having their conversation, such as it was, I took myself outside, just to see how the day was coming
along, and if the truth be told, to see if that wouldn't be a hint to my Pa to hurry up. Then a piece of fire appeared to skim by my vision. I spun around, and it was an orange butterfly.
"Hold on there," I cried, and dropped the bridle and lit out after the monarch.
For such a fragile thing, it was capable of some speed. I chased it, and it continually fluttered up out of reach, and then settled down like it was resting. Then I'd sneak up on it, ready to make a grab, and off it'd go in another direction altogether, with me in pursuit. I ran after it, through long grass and crickets, until I could scarcely breathe. It fluttered on its way as if it had never noticed me at all.
"Have a good trip!"
I stood there, and the wind moved through the long grass like a dog sniffing for flickertails. And then I heard a whistle seet!-and that was a flickertail. So I ran in that direction to see if I couldn't spot the hole before the gopher disappeared.
Seet! from behind me and I ran off that way, and seet! to the right, like some invisible trickster flickertail that only wanted to bedevil me.
Seet!
"I give up!" I laughed, wiping my brow. "I'm not having any luck catching things today."
As I stood there collecting my breath, the grass made a whispering sound as if to say Take a look. And there I found myself, out on Buffalo Ridge, with nothing but prairie on every side. I turned around again, trying to place myself.
In times of consideration, I like to sit and consider. So that is what I did. I sat down. Up above me, the tops of the grasses leaned over like a crowd of mourners

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Little support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Colorful, figurative

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Concrete/Simple Social

Chapters

Features

Character traits

Integral Setting - Historical

Simple Plot

First Person

Topic

Feelings/Emotions

Attitudes

Adaptability

Moving

*Feelings, Behaviors

Low Frequency Words

acre	acres	advancing	applied	bedevil
burrow	centipede	clambered	consideration	continually
contrast	contribute	conversation	cottonwoods	daybreaky
earliest	eastern	elders	enjoyment	faraway
farthest	fewer	flickertail	flickertails	fragile
fully	gathering	glance	gopher	homestead
hopeful	horizon	horsewoman	hup	informed
intend	intended	intending	invisible	ironed
ironing	knowing	ladies	level	lighting
likely	livestock	lonesome	lonesomeness	ma'am
manor	medicine	memories	mentioned	mind's
misgiving	monarch	mounds	moundy	mourners
nailed	notion	object	oiling	operation
opinion	overall	palms	perfume	persistent
pictured	plains	pleating	plucked	possibility
pouring	prairie	prays	prospect	purist
pursuit	recite	rectangular	regarded	reins
result	ridge	rippled	rude	rumor
rumpled	scarce	scarcely	seasoned	section
seldom	shakespeare	shoved	smoothed	snugged
sodbuster's	sodbusting	sodhouse	sprang	squinted
stirred	stoked	storytelling	stubble	stubborn
suggestion	surely	suspenders	swallow	swept
swiveled	tablecloths	territory	trickster	vision
wandering	whiteys	winced	wriggled	wrinkled
yanked