One Grave Less

them sounded beautiful. Others sounded very frightening. She was glad she had found such a large clearing. She felt safer out of the forest.
    She examined the ground as she walked around to the passenger side to get Rosetta. There was a lot of burned stubble, with bare soil in a few places.
    “This is a fine place to camp,” she said, lifting the little girl from the truck.
    Maria led them only a few feet into the darkness. She’d brought torn squares of the fabric with her and handed one to Rosetta. After the two of them took care of business, Maria took Rosetta’s hand and led her back toward the truck.
    “Look up at the sky,” Maria said. “See that pathway of stars? That’s the Milky Way. That’s the galaxy we are in.”
    “Mama told me that,” said Rosetta.
    Maria smiled in the darkness. “Did she tell you about the Southern Cross?” she asked.
    “What’s that?” said Rosetta.
    “That’s what I’ve been trying to catch a glimpse of, to make sure we’re going in the right direction.”
    “You have a compass,” said Rosetta.
    “Yes, I do, but it’s good to double-check your compass. Sometimes things cause a compass not to give accurate readings. The hands can be a little bent and can stick, or we could be near a place where the ground contains a mineral called magnetite that throws off the reading. In Kentucky, where I grew up, my father and grandfather taught me how to navigate using the stars. Unfortunately, I’m now in a different hemisphere and the stars are different.”
    “So you can’t find your way with the stars here?” said Rosetta.
    “Oh, I think I can. I looked at the star charts before I came on vacation here,” she said. Maria turned on the light so Rosetta could see her point at the sky. “See those two bright stars there?” she said.
    “Sort of,” said Rosetta.
    “Those are Alpha and Beta Centauri. Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in this whole part of the sky. That makes it easy to find. And Beta Centauri is the second brightest. They are called pointer stars because, if you draw a line from Alpha Centauri—the really bright one—through Beta Centauri and keep on going with the line, it points to the Southern Cross.”
    Maria drew a line in the sky with her finger. “Can you see that small cluster of five stars that’s shaped like a long diamond?”
    “I don’t know,” said Rosetta.
    Maria took a stick and drew the stars on the ground as they appeared in the sky.
    “Look again now.”
    “Yes, I see them. How does this help you find our way home?”
    “We have to use a little geometry and a little imagination,” said Maria. She shined her light on the figure on the ground. “First we draw a short line between these two points on the diamond. That forms the arm of the cross. Then we draw a line from the top of the diamond—where Alpha and Beta Centauri are pointing—to the bottom tip of the diamond. That makes the cross. If you keep going in a straight line out the bottom of the cross, it points in the direction of the South Pole.
    “The really neat thing is, if we make another cross using the line between the two pointer stars as the arm of the new cross . . .” She redrew the line in the dirt. “Then draw a line perpendicular to that one. That means like this.” Maria showed Rosetta with her two hands what perpendicular was. “That makes the new cross.”
    “Okay. I think I see,” said the little girl.
    “Good, smart girl. Now let’s draw that line out long, the way we did before, until it meets the line coming out the bottom of the Southern Cross. The point where those two lines cross each other is the South Pole. The opposite direction is north—the way we want to go.”
    Maria did the geometry again in her head as she looked at the stars. She collected several sticks and arranged them on the ground so they made an arrow pointing due north.
    “This way,” she said, “we can still see where north is tomorrow in the daylight. I’ll double-check it with the compass.”
    Maria was hoping the impromptu lecture on the Southern Cross would help Rosetta not be afraid of the dark if she could see that darkness could help them find their way home. As brave as she was, Rosetta must have been afraid most of the time since the tragedy that separated her from Diane Fallon. There were so many things to be afraid of. Maria wanted to make one less for Rosetta.
    “Now, let’s get back in the truck before the mosquitoes find us,” said