INTERVIEWING MRS. WILKINSON: The Shape-Shift

Some lawyer tried to make out that Gram was crazy, but she wouldn’t let him. Said she wasn’t any crazier than anybody. She told the judge and jury it was a shape-shift, said that even though Daddy was from this side he had that trouble. His great-grandmother was a Martin, after all. Martins were always shifty. Likely that’s why they took so easy to drink, she said. It’s hard, knowing you could change, one minute a man, next a fox or a rabbit or who-knows-what-all. Daddy came out a bear. She’d been suspecting. There’d been a bear about sometimes, winters, she said, when everyone knows they’re supposed to be up in the hills asleep. She would have shot anyway, she told them, even if she knew it was him. They can be more dangerous even. It was because she said that, they sent her to jail. She hated being cooped up and all, only took her a couple years to die.