It is Autumn. The air is crisp. The sky is clear, with not so much as a speck of bird to mar its blueness. 
   In lieu of clouds, we sit to watch the cows ...Josephine and I ...that move slowly across the adjacent hillside, as if weightless, nudged along by the slightest of unseen breeze.

In the corner of her playpen, as far from the Maple tree as she can be, Josie is huddled in that tiny way she does when she is frightened and wants to be seen by nothing and no one other than myself. 

'What is it Jo?' I ask, leaving my work to go to her. 

'Monster,' is all she can squeeze from her shivers as I let myself in to the pen, 'Monster.' 

And it must be a fearsome monster, too, because I look, kick through the grass, and can't find a thing, and everyone knows the more fearsome the monster, the harder they are to see.