Rebecca Coleman - Heaven Should Fall

In the midst of the morning’s work, I heard squawking in the barnyard and looked out toward the henhouse. Ben Franklin’s green wings went up, flaring and thumping the air before he tumbled a large white bird into the dust, using his thick-clawed feet to make the lesson hurt. I didn’t have to look closer to know who the unfortunate bird was. One of the capons had gotten scrappy lately, tussling with Ben Franklin a dozen times a day, and all the hits he took didn’t seem to be teaching him who was boss. After the first few fights, Dodge had named him Mojo. “Sure doesn’t act like he got his balls taken out,” he’d commented, watching Mojo goading Ben Franklin into another go-round among the hens.

That was the problem, and I knew it. Castrating the roosters in the kitchen that day, I’d felt eager to prove my worth, but I was inexpert with the details. In the confusion I must have missed something, and now the sexless rooster was proving to not be so sexless after all. Mojo was maturing into a beautiful bird, pure white in his body with black-and-white feathering up his neck, crowned with a red comb. A flash of green-black tail feathers swayed when he strutted, and his feet bore tufts of white down, like marabou slippers. But he wasn’t supposed to turn out like that. His alpha-male rooster characteristics never should have developed. We had eaten his brothers months ago, but I wasn’t sure what to do with Mojo. He wouldn’t be any good to eat, none of the families around us needed another rooster and I hated to kill him without purpose. Dodge liked him, too. He enjoyed watching the impromptu cockfighting.

“They going at it again?” asked Dodge. He had come out to the porch at the sound of the squabbling.

I nodded and said, “I think we need to build Mojo his own enclosure.”

“No way. Let the best man win. Or bird, I suppose.”

“It’s not safe for the hens, though. To have all those claws flying.”

Dodge shrugged. “Get Cade to do it. If he’s got time to mope, he’s got time to work. So God knows he’s got it to spare.”

This was true. When Cade had first announced he was going on a camping trip to get his head together, I had thought we were on the path to healing. He came home with some of the old fire to him, having had the epiphany that in the past year he had spent too much time sulking and not enough showing leadership. Showing leadership: that was his new pet phrase, and it encompassed everything from not working harder to get help for Elias, to his contentment about staying in a crummy job, to the fact that he and I were still not married. Two weeks after Cade returned from the woods, we drove to the courthouse and were married by the justice of the peace. It was all subdued and almost casual. Had I been the type of girl who’d dreamed of the wedding she would have one day, I would have been terribly disappointed, but I was not that girl. I wanted Cade to have the sense of control he craved in the face of chaos, and I wasn’t in much of a mood to celebrate. I was mourning Elias, too.

I understood Cade’s hurt. I understood his mother’s stoicism. It was Candy who puzzled and worried me. Since Elias’s death she had gone nearly silent, slapping down paper and pencils for her children at the dining table each morning after breakfast, offering a few perfunctory lessons from a math or grammar book before sending them outside to play for the rest of the day. The meals she made were strange. For supper one night she served three canned vegetables and nothing else; the next she put together an elaborate feast of all of Elias’s favorite foods. Leela worked to engage her in the craft show project, bringing down boxes of half-sewn garden flags patterned like the Stars and Stripes, a concession to Candy’s crafting preferences; she would tell her daughter in a firm tone that they needed to be completed by a certain date. Candy, who had set up the sewing machine at one end of the dining table, would hammer them all out in an hour, working at a sweatshop pace, then toss the pile back into the box and hand it over. She took not an ounce of pleasure in the work, and her frenetic energy set me on edge. I gave her a wide berth, working apart from her as much as possible.

One morning, as I was on my knees in Candy’s garden, I saw a truck coming from a long way down the road, a small shimmering shape growing larger against the mountains that had gone blaze-orange below the tree line. At first I thought it might be Dodge’s, until it came close enough that its dark green color was apparent. I rose from my task—pulling the last of the carrots from the ground before snow buried the garden—and shaded my eyes with my hand, trying to discern the driver. When the strange truck pulled into the driveway and a child climbed out, I stayed to look but didn’t go over right away. A few feet away from me, TJ napped in the laundry basket, bundled in a thick sweater and shaded by a quilt pulled half over the top. I didn’t feel comfortable walking away from him, as small as he was. A pioneer woman might have, but my pioneer skills didn’t extend that far.

As the child from the car approached, I saw that both of the little boy’s hands were occupied with a giant plate covered in aluminum foil that reflected piercing rays of the sun. He looked up at the house in an uncertain way, then started toward it. Hurriedly I waved him over. With Candy’s boys where once I had reported them to her for their obnoxious behaviors, I didn’t dare now. They had begun flinching when she even reached over their shoulders to gesture how to do a math problem or find a state on a map. It was still silly to think she’d manhandle a neighbor’s child, but keeping kids away from her had turned into a gut instinct for me.

The little boy was perfectly combed, in a neat flannel shirt and corduroys. He handed over the heavy plate and said, “This is for you, Mrs. Powell.”

“Oh, I’m not Mrs. Powell. But I’ll make sure she gets it. Okay, buddy?”

He nodded and squinted in the sunlight. “Are you kin to her?”

“Kin? Yeah…well, I’m her sister-in-law. Her brother’s wife.” The boy nodded again, though I was sure he was too small to make sense of the connections. “Thanks.”

He glanced back toward the truck. In a reedy little voice he rattled out, “Our family would like to express our sincere condolences at the loss of your son and brother who valiantly served our nation. The Bible says, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ John Chapter fifteen, verse thirteen.”

I stared at him.

“We have you on our family prayer list for every morning.”

“Thank you.”

Abruptly he turned and walked back to the truck. There appeared to be a woman in the driver’s seat. I waved, and she returned it with a vague wave of her own. The boy climbed in, and she followed the half-circle drive around before going back down the road in the direction from which she had come.

A folded note taped to the top of the aluminum foil fluttered in the breeze. I opened it and read the handwriting.

Dear Olmsteads and Powells,

Our sincere condolences at the loss of your son and brother. While it has been years since we last saw Elias, we grieve with you just the same. He brought honor to our family. Without regard to our past differences we would like to extend the offer of any assistance you might need in this time of grieving. Lucia and I hope you won’t hesitate to call on us. God’s blessings on your family.

I peeked under the foil on my way into the house. Cookies, mostly chocolate chip, but also sugar and molasses, with a loaf of banana bread in the middle of the arrangement. It crossed my mind that this was the family Dodge had been openly threatening to us for months now, but in the weeks since Elias’s death he had dropped the subject entirely. I had assumed that he must have seen Randy at the funeral and realized the man bore his family no ill will; and while Dodge would never admit to being wrong, it made sense that Randy’s show of respect had shamed Dodge into silence. Whatever the reason, I was glad to have that particular worry gone, and pleased at the prospect of their mending the rift. In the kitchen I handed the plate over to Candy, who regarded it with suspicion.