On Little Wings (41 page)

“Do you know that Little has a tattoo?”

“Really? I guess I’m not shocked. What is it? Or dare I ask,
where
is it?”

“Two black wings right in the middle of her back. To get her up to heaven. Because the only man she ever loved is there. She is going to tell him off and then kiss him like no one’s ever been kissed.”

Mother leaned her head up to the sky and laughed. “That would be something to see.”

I thought of those small wings, growing limp and saggy on Little’s wrinkled back as the decades passed. “Do you mind if I go say one last good-bye?"

There was a grimace in her eyes as her smile retreated. “I guess that’s okay. But it’s late. Don’t stay long.”

I watched her puzzled expression as I stood and turned left, away from Boulder Bend and Nathan. “I’ll be home as soon as I’m done.” If Sarah was right –
let Sarah be right!
– I’d see him in the morning. Morning was a deep, warm longing in my stomach.

The moon’s confused gaze followed me to Pilgrim’s Point, laying a broken path of light across the uneven ground. Before I made it to the back door I called out without restraint, like Darcy. “Little!” The night shook with the sudden sound and high overhead a bird burst from a tree in a wild flap of feathers. The sound felt good in my throat, filled it with words instead of waiting tears. “Little!” I shouted again and rapped her back door sharp enough to wake her, living or dead. The curtain over the window shook as she pulled the door open and stood in front of me.

She didn’t look surprised to see me. She didn’t ask. Didn’t admonish. Didn’t joke. She waited, her face set in a sober frown. Before I could speak one word the brewing storm shattered inside of me and water, saltier than the sea, washed down my face. She pursed her lips in sympathy, the wrinkles falling into each other across her puckered face, but she didn’t interrupt the loss washing over me. Didn’t try to save me from it. “I came because …”

The wind gave a mighty push across my body and wrapped me in the fresh spray of the ocean. Like a quilt. Like words curling around me. Like ghosts reaching out their insubstantial hands to comfort the stark, isolated, magnificent suffering that wound its barbs around my very breaths.

I looked at her eyes, swirling with the same stormy waves, the same hidden currents, as the fathomless ocean. And in that moment I knew that Newell had seen. Whatever excuses he invented or reasons he gave himself, he must have noticed the blue flames lapping through the icy whites of her eyes.

“I have a story,” I whispered.

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Poems
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Translated by James Wright and published in English in 1971.

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Knickerbocker Magazine
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“like a thunderbolt…”
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