Noy Holland - What begins with bird

Then I could cut Pa’s pants from him. Who cannot reach to do it. Who have not kept him from it. The selvage dug well in.

Pa kept on as I knew he must who knew by him the way of things who knew to watch him swing his rasp he swung at Goose’s head his knees enough to think he’s mine. He is mine he is mine he is mine .

Will be.

I will cook and clean for him and sew and scrub his feet for him and shine his boots and buckles.

Keep him safe from harm.

Say that.

That it was easy, it would have been easy — to lose an eye on the washroom wall on the hooks and nails we hang tack from he could do it to himself tell her he could do it easy .

That he is fractious. He is meant to be worked and strong tell her. How quick the dark came on .

It came on.

Pa beat at Goose about the knees the rasp struck in behind and hard where you can hear the bones in him where you can make him buckle.

I would not have pictured it — that you could make him buckle. That Pa could fell him in the crossties hanging ready for the blow.

Goose dropped to his knees his rump yet high as if to let me throw my foot my leg across and ride him. My hat flying up to school. Wheeo .

He quit there-to let before Pa came at him his last breath ratchet through. And then Pa came at him.

I thought how the white swept up. Pa fallen across the road. Wheeo .

Because Pa could not have rolled from him. Pa could not have moved.

He swung the rasp back. He brought it hard across his head his rolling curdled eye I saw.

Cricket you Cricket you .

Quick a girl’s sweet wurbled note. Quick as that the wettish thuck the jellied seep of his eyeball burst the flies the puss like honey.

We set him out then. When it was done then. I walked Goose out on his blinded side and set him loose like Pa had said back in the back and hidden field the deer came to to lie in. We walked up the hill and washed our hands and sat and ate our supper.

She had fried three eggs for supper for us as Ma had come those weeks to do no matter what Pa said of it and three again come morning. And Pa said nothing of it and not again when light had come and Ma went out with her boy in the snow that as we slept flew down. Her tracks went out to the fence I sat the days Goose ran the sloping field and turned toward the barn and quit there well shy of the bend in the road.

She came back then. I put my mind to it — to the tracks I had to go by. There were two of them going she left in the snow and not a step she came back by.

She had gone away twice down the hill, I thought. She had gone away once the mother we knew who sat for us in the window. Then look on her heels came the other. Here came the one from before the boy we had forgotten was hers to ever be or ever was ours to know.

I liked to think of it — that she could walk herself out away from us from what we did or did not do she could call herself out on the road going out going out in her boots in the unbroken snow that we would know at the last we had lost her.

And yet the tracks quit.

She would find Goose in the barn she thought. She would see him she thought from the bend in the road see what we had done to him who sat at her table after and ate the meal she cooked for us and slept in the beds she made for us and so she quit well shy of it and came away back to home. She walked herself back up the hill to us walking backward her back to the wind to keep her boy from the snow.

The snow climbed in the trees in the fences. A night would pass a morningtime and soon Pa would set upon her again and break what eggs I brought to her that the hens before the rooster quit still had in them for laying. After that I did not bring the eggs. After that they did not lay them.

The rooster went from the field and back to sit the broken back of the couch stood up in the ice of the pond. No thought in his head to rooster. No eggs to bring for Pa to break for Ma to fry for supper then even should we want some.

I thought I would not want some. I would break an egg in his socket I thought let the yolk freeze bright and round. Should Goose lie down.

And then he lay down — the night of the day the wind came warm and the thaw set in the sudden melt and the birds appeared and bickered and swerved in the steam twisting up from our farm.

We hitched the trailer then. That we might use him. Sell him off quick on the hoof down the hill in the warm while we could move.

I had kept Goose’s tail in a braid for him and kept his head in a hood for him so the wind could not eat at the socket. The last of our sorry apples dropped I had kicked to him in the field where he lies where he pawed at the snow for what grass there was and picked the leaves he could get to yet from the beech the oak the whippy trees at the edge of the woods that held them. What he did not eat the deer took to and to the cobs of corn I brought and his coat grew thick and ratted in the wind and his hipbones stood out from him.

We kept our heads down. The cold had deepened. I tramped a path past the coop the failing hens the rooster would not when the cold had come leave the pond to rooster.

I thought at first he would ride with me out in the pail with the corn to the field. And so I stopped at the bank to cluck at him. He turned his tail to me. I brought his prize hens to the bank to see and scratch to spread to tempt him. Before the pond was skinned with ice I ferried him back through the muck the weeks yet never once did I see him eat nor seem to think to rooster, never once did I pass the crib to climb the hill to the house to Ma but that he hadn’t flapped back out to the couch to announce what we had done.

This was when the freeze augered in, this was in the thaw.

In the thaw of the year when the water rose Pa’s bird seemed to walk upon it.

I went the while before the thaw before the hillsides snicked and steamed and then the once thereafter after Ma had gone. I knew to call to him, picking my way once the creek froze through between the spindly boles of trees the needled limbs of the buckthorn there where yet the small dark berries clung the beads in rimpled clusters. I shook in my pail as I went to him the corn I was not to bring to him. I brought cigarettes and sugar cubes crumbling apart in my pockets.

Hope hey. Hope hey . I meant to tend to him, to swab and slowly doctor him. To sweep my thumb through his socket. A day came I came upon Goose there forgetting myself to speak to him and stood upon his blinded side and he swung away and kicked me. I let him kick me.

Then it was easy. Then I could quit then.

The field was hidden. I tossed my pail back to the back of the crib and the rats there shied and scuttled out and trotted away to the barn.

So it was easy. The cold had deepened.

I went the once Pa sent me out when the thaw set in to fetch him. I saw his head rise up to see me. Otherwise I went no more.

We snugged in when the worst of the cold had come and fashioned a room with the blankets we had with the tablecloths Ma kept to spread should a guest appear should Christmas. I rode Pa’s back to drive the nails to stand in his hands in the stirrups he made and hit at the few ruined crooked nubs the old people left to hang the walls. We brought our sheets our pillows in and ate and slept in what warmth there was from the fire we nursed and prodded. Ma ripening in her gown. Our shadows should we sit in quiet there yet flinching against the walls.

Ma kept her eye fast on her boy. Sitting her silk chair.

“Time was I thought the milk teeth came to make the women stop it,” Pa said. “Let them rest a time — for the next to breed. Give a man his chance abed. Time was.”

She set the baby down on his feet at her feet. Should he squall she swung him up again.