Noy Holland - What begins with bird

His breath comes weak and shallows. I let the line slack. He throws himself to kneeling and his bones knock against the road. He shoves his muzzle down on the road to rest so his thick head saws above. Pa touches his flank with the gun. I case up I think I am easing up, the line gone slack to tap the road but I can never see Goose quite. I can scarcely see him stand but to see the yellow of his eye swing up and the white of his face against the road.

So he is up. I hear Pa humming to him slow and the coins in his pants when he moves to him going, Ho , going, Hope hope ho .

Pa ought to have a sugar cube, a cigarette to give him.

He throws his head up. The stripe in his head when he throws it streaks and see the dark will bleed it free, will from him in the darkness wick the whiteness clean away. It is like our pa has thrown it — how his bird dogs quake and trill.

You goose . First she called Pa so to tease him. But then Ma called the baby goose and by and by each name for Pa I used to hear her call him by she picked to name the baby with and mine I had forgotten. Now we are only Pa to her and Pa and his girl Cricket. Moving slowly in the road.

He throws his head up. It is like our pa has thrown it, gone from the trees from the creek where he likes to work his dogs to the field. Good dogs.

We can do with him what we want to. Sell him off quick on the hoof if we like to grind his bones to give the dogs the inly tubes and organs keep them fed and fit and strong. They are field dogs, bird dogs all. Pa throws them the wing of the cut-away goose in the falling dark and the dogs at his feet and they stay they stay, the wing dipping down until he moves his hand to school them.

And then his long high sound. And so Pa named him Goose for the goose for the wing he throws his dogs.

Goose lunges at Pa so much as he can but I have got him looped up still, Pa tripping back with his gun at his chest so I ratchet the line to hold him. I cannot hold Pa. Only watch him slowly falling. He takes a long time falling.

Pa’s dogs bed down and whinge. You quit . But they are thinking what will happen what is next to come?

Time comes Pa thinks to ride him. Out between the barns. He rides to the oaks the lightning hits along the fence cow Maggie rubs to leaning while she fattens. Past the coop the chickens pecking slowly at their corn. Past Pa’s prize yellow rooster learned to blind his favored hens.

Pa’s dogs, they are bird dogs all — but are they bird enough to guess at him? At Pa’s prize yellow rooster? Who appeared in a fluff in the barn — the day Goose rode Pa past and every day thereafter. And sat his back thereafter. Who flew his coop to bide his days sitting Goose’s withers — could they guess at such as him?

And at the day we shod him?

And of the bees Pa plowed?

I am not one to picture it not nearly even half of it not Main her chair past autumn not the wrangled plow. Nor Goose. The rooster shyly by him. Pa’s. And then the rooster Goose’s. Only walking back to rooster pecking gently at his hens.

Nor that. I had not pictured that. And not the picked-over eyes of the hens bright as the yolks of the eggs we take left seeping in their feathers.

Not the blood the baby lets not the milk the baby lets, Ma’s shirt run pinkly through. Nor that. Him plumping at her bosom.

Time was I was Ma’s. Nor that. Nor time was Pa was also.

Not Pa when I come upon him. He has dragged across the pond.

I am not cut to picture. To stand at the bank and puzzle out I am cut to cut and run.

The gun fires when he wallops the road. Then Goose is up and hanging.

The old people have come. I thought Goose had seen the old people come rolling home to claim him.

And so he hung there. What to do.

I touched the line once. They couldn’t loose him. They could go on back from wherever they’d come and forget they ever saw him stood and pawing where they left him in a heap upon the road.

They could find another. There are others after Goose. There are Mouse and Pepper, Blue, Prim Sue and Candysara. Cribbing at the barn.

I tie Pa’s bootstrings every morning. Did his bootstrings loose I tied for him did his pantlegs make him fall?

Ma takes one pair and me another. We hem the legs on Pa’s short side from the time when Pa was a boy my size and crumpled in his bed. Get up . And Pa could not get up and not. And not for a long time after. So is it mine or Ma’s dread cross? Who take one pair and one another. We are not much with our needles. And Pa is fallen across the road.

He seems to quit there. He seems to quit and stiffen, ready for the blow.

Goose would throw himself off from us. He would fly himself over the barn he thought come soft on his hooves in the field where he grazed with we two dumbly watching.

Then he was over. Goose flung himself on over. I heard his bones, the clatter and snap, his head a rind against the road bursted wetly open. He lay there — his legs sprung stiff, his corded neck — his body hauled in chinked from stone to mark the field the fallen dead the bloody day forgotten.

Pa softly now, “Let up.”

I held the line taut. I saw I held the line taut still from the coil where I let it.

The nightsky stooped and held its breath, the trees bent too to listen — for the sputter and tick the quieting tide of Goose’s reedy pipes and valves the rocking iridescent humps and hollows of his organs.

And Pa again, “Let up.” Still I heard Get .

Pa struggled up from where he fell and knocked the grit from his pants I stitched, the sloppy hem, and he nodded. Pa came at me with his hand high up. He had never hit me yet but still I stood to let him.

The line had cut some through. I had looped it over the curl of fur above the hoof you sell them on and it had dug some through. His eye had spun wide up in the dark to regard the stars above. The moon on its slow crossing.

His burblings — mine — my cross to bear, my thin bitten birdish shrill he let, my name though Pa had thought it Goose. Goose and also Cricket . We were named for the sounds thrown from us yes for a dream’s long soured tongue.

And so I loosed it. I shook the line some. Nothing not a twitch not a nostril flared no breath no lifting brisket. So I could do it easy ease the loop the cable from his pastern where I cut him. I felt the heat rise from him. I felt the give in my knees when I kneeled by him and the heat of the softened road. So we could winch him up now. He had made it easy. We would wait for the light for the morning.

Morning. Hello, little farm .

Still we wake to him up come sunup. We are sleeping all on the sheet Ma spread and Goose is scrolloping over the road.

I snip Pa’s toenails for him turn his hem and tic his boots who cannot reach to do it.

I can smell the barn. I smell in my hair the baby too he gummed it as we rode.

Pa clips the leadshank on him. He feels along his bones.

Pa leads him off between the trees me and Ma standing out in our gowns she wears to walk in time the fallen dew the hill we climb to reach her. I sit the chair her chair to watch her, watch the nightshade fill behind her see the bats loop briefly through. Her small boy nearby sleeping.

At length when once the snow has come to keep us snugly home, Ma goes sunup to nightfall gowned else sits the bath from meal to meal the latch thrown once the baby walks to keep him always with her to keep him safely in.

She has heard us at our chores by then. We have backed Goose onto the slab by then. The rooster crowing on.

Pa’s dogs spooked about for the moons Pa clipped, for the tailings curled from his hooves filed flat to take the shoe and he cussed them. Cussed his horse his dogs. His girl with the mangled paw stumping in who sat with me at his knees should he sit should he think to nudge her head. Let her bump her ribs against him.