Winter Birds (19 page)

You hear Papa start to run and then you see him, and something cold rises up in your throat.

The silver flashing up and down.

You step away from the tree and so do your brothers, but Amy is the first into the field. You run and run and then, far off, Mama sees you and stops still. She waves you back, but cannot wait to see if you will do as she says. In the deep snow her steps falter. Papa's longer legs carry him faster; he is a flattened shadow along the ground. He closes the gap between them and you think he will catch her if she can't go faster. Amy calls out for her, and then so do you all, and Papa stumbles in the snow. Cursing, he rises, glittering white, and runs again, but Mama vanishes into the dark forest, her white gown dissolving into shadow.

Ahead, Papa kicks free of another cornstalk and crashes to the ground.

Amy calls you all to her side. “We better not get no closer,” she says. “Mama can't hide with five younguns to look after.”

“Is he going to kill Mama?” Grove asks, but no one answers.

Papa roams the snow back and forth in front of the place where Mama disappeared. His steps wear a dark path in the snow. Over the wind his deep shouts carry
clearly. “I'll find you, you goddamn bitch. I'll find you if I have to look behind every tree that ever grew!”

Allen moves closer to Amy.

“I know you hear me,” Papa shouts. “You better run if you want to get away.” He stretches out his good arm and the silver shines. “But don't think your children will get away. I got them right out here in the field with me. You see them, don't you? You ain't going nowhere as long as they're here, don't you think I know it? You always would have traded ten of me for one of them.”

A stirring in the bushes, a flash of white. You feel your heart rise.

Papa sees the movement and rushes toward it.

But when you see the wagging tail you know it isn't Mama, it's Queenie. She breaks free of the bushes and trots toward him.

When Papa sees her he stiffens.

He speaks more softly but you still hear. “You are a bitch just like this dog,” he says. Queenie sniffs his ankle, watching him talk. He lays his knife against her head. “You are exactly like this dog, do you hear me?” His arm rises with that gleaming at the end. From far away the motion is only a tiny arc of silver, but to Queenie it must seem like thunder when that silver blade descends. Again, again, again. Only after a moment do you understand what he has done. By then you can feel it all through you.

He lifts the limp dog by the hind legs and throws her flopping end over end into the forest.

Afterwards he stands as if he is listening. He stares at
his hand a long time. He kneels to cover the dark place in the snow with whiteness, stands still holding the knife, turns it in his fingers, no longer gleaming.

You don't even know enough to be afraid.

Mama steps out of the woods and calls clear, “Are you finished now, Bobjay?”

He turns sluggishly. The knife dangles.

Mama walks neatly through the snow. He shouts, “I ought to kill you,” but Mama pays no mind to him, walks wide of him and comes to you. With relief she kneels and embraces you, turning your faces up to hers. “Walk real quiet and calm,” she says. “He doesn't know what he did.”

“Are we going to stay here?” you ask softly.

She simply looks at you. “Where would we go? Just walk, that's all we can do. Real quiet and calm. Don't look back at him.”

She closes the door when you have come inside, and switches on the faded lamp between your beds. She makes Grove lie quiet on the cot at the end of one bed and stands watching him. “Does your arm hurt much?”

“No ma'am, it's still so cold.”

“Amy, wrap him up some snow in a towel.”

Amy marches off silently, fetches a towel, and opens the back door tossing her hair. When she comes back she says, “Papa's standing right where he was before.”

“I expect he's surprised with himself,” Mama says, not looking at any of you.

Amy settles the towel gently against Grove's bent arm. “He's wicked,” she whispers. “He's like the devil.”

Mama shakes her head. “You ought not to think your Papa is a bad man.”

“He killed Queenie,” Duck says. No one answers. You close your eyes to stop from seeing it again, but it does not stop: the dead thing spins as it flies into the trees. Mama says to get ready for bed. In the middle of
putting on your pajamas you hear the front door open and close.

Heavy footsteps resound through the rooms. When Mama looks at you her eyes have that look of dullness again, and you ache to send that look away. Papa is in the other bedroom by now. Staring at the unmade bed. Now you hear him in the bathroom. You turn your face away from that doorway. You watch his shoes. His voice rakes along your skin. “I wondered where all of you were,” he says.

Mama says, “It's time to put the younguns to bed.”

He says, “I reckon so.”

“Go sit down and I'll make you some coffee when I finish.” She buttons Grove's pajama top and settles the cool towel into place.

“Is our baby sick?” Papa asks.

Mama swallows when he comes too close. But her voice never falters. “His arm is swelling. But I'm keeping cold on it.”

Papa nods his head and lumbers away. You step to the door and watch his back darken and disappear. Mama gazes at Grove and strokes his forehead. She pulls the covers over all of you and kisses each of you on the forehead. Almost as if she were kissing you good-bye. When she turns out the light you hear her footsteps recede endlessly far. You gaze at the ceiling and feel the dark night swell.

For a long time you lie awake listening. The house is quiet. Everyone's breathing makes a different sound, you could count them separately. Once or twice you hear the
heavy thud of Papa's footsteps and wonder where he is walking. You hear the quiet click of Mama's careful tread, but never at the same time as Papa's. You picture her watching him from corners, near doors. She waits for him to sit down before she goes into the kitchen. You picture the match she strikes to light the stove, igniting with a small hiss. You gaze into the darkness overhead. Something turns over and over deep inside you. Except for Mama making coffee you hear nothing but the wind at your window. A brush of snowflakes from the sycamores. You picture Mama beside the window drinking her coffee. You know she is standing because once Papa asks her to sit down, and she whispers she doesn't want to, she can't keep still, she's too nervous. He goes back to his chair. She is silent. You picture her gazing through the window at the snow and the moon, maybe at the arcs of light on the crusted tree branches, steam from the coffee rising into her face. Maybe she wishes she had curled up in a blanket out there in the woods. Maybe she would not mind going to sleep in the cold either. She sips her coffee and takes deep breaths. A long time passes. The house makes few of its usual noises. Beside you Allen, exhausted, has fallen asleep. You hear Duck's regular breathing, and Grove's as well. Amy makes no sound. You hear Papa's deep cough, you hear the chair creaking, the flare of a match. Later Papa asks Mama to help him pull off his shoes and after a moment she does. You hear them drop to the floor. Silence falls again. Mama steps nervously from kitchen to living room. You picture her face passing out of light into
shadow. The house falls so calm you can hear the refrigerator humming and your own heart counts moments into the night. Though the room is pitch dark you can see everything in it clearly. Grades of shadow from the beds, the coats thrown on the floor, Duck sprawled in the blankets, Amy sleeping with her mouth open. Grove turning restlessly, murmuring. Allen curled up in a ball touching no one. The quiet does not ease you. In the living room you hear Papa shift in his chair. Mama comes to the bathroom, scrubs her hands in the sink.

Suddenly they are talking. Their voices are calm. Measured bits of conversation, and silence between. Now and then you hear a word you know: your own name sometimes, or Grove's, or Queenie's, or Delia's later: the sound passing through your head like a stream. Vague images flicker in your mind: Delia laughing in the kitchen, the orange dress limp on the clothes hanger, Mama's white hands on the front door, the silence when she closes it, the moonlit field, Queenie's body spinning over bushes. You remember the softness of the earth under the house, the sight of Papa's legs, the pieces of glass and the cold biting your skin. You hear Papa walking again, and Mama saying, “I don't feel like coming to bed right this minute.” The words flow distantly overhead. After a while Papa's weight sinks slowly into the mattress in the next room. Your own heaviness mixes with the silence that follows. It might have been that you fell asleep. Though even there you keep watch on the darkness with your sleeping mind, and nothing moves in any room that does not raise some image in you.

Mama walks restlessly in the living room wondering about the morning. Papa turns on the groaning springs and coughs. Coughs so sharp the sound almost wakes you: a hand that retreats in the darkness from touching your shoulder. Someone watches you sleep tonight, you turn over and over. You can feel somebody staring in the dark from far away. Maybe you know Mama waits in the living room hoping Papa will fall asleep before she has to go to bed herself. Though to tell the truth she must have waited many nights that way, before and after this night, and maybe some of your memories are only dreams of other nights; maybe when you are sleeping you can feel all nights, past and present, stretching ahead and back for many years.

You toss and turn, and this time when you touch Allen it is you who are repelled.

Papa's cough punctuates the night, lifting you close to wakefulness again. A match strikes. In some dream you are having, you picture the flash of orange. In the living room Mama stiffens and closes her eyes. In the silence she can feel Papa waiting. Still she sits by the window, watching the clear light fall onto the snow like white fire. Everywhere the emptiness summons signs: a flash of headlights on the road, the drift of a pale cloud overhead or in the silent house the creak of a spring, the heavy fall of a footstep. When Mama hears it she has been expecting him for some time. Papa comes to the doorway and asks, “When are you coming to bed, honey? It gets so cold in here by myself.”

“I'm not tired yet,” Mama says, keeping her back to him.

“It's no wonder you don't sleep, as much of that coffee as you drink.”

“I need it to relax,” Mama says.

“But I need you to relax,” he says.

“If I came to bed I couldn't keep still. I'd turn over and over all night.”

After a pause Papa's voice changes. “Turn around and look at me.”

“Please leave me alone, Bobjay. If you lay still for a while you'll fall asleep.”

“I can't rest without you. You know what I mean.”

Mama hugs herself to keep from shivering. “I don't think I could stand for you to touch me right now.”

“I didn't ask you whether you could,” he says quietly.

She says good-bye to the white snow on the yard and beyond. She lets the curtains fall into place. When she turns she has already begun to count her breaths.

He has the knife. He holds it so lightly. He himself leans against the doorsill, smiling so earnestly. His pale, hard flesh shining. He reaches to switch off the lamp. In the darkness he speaks so softly his voice reminds Mama of a cat purring. “Come to bed with me. It's late.”

He gestures with the stained blade. She takes a deep breath and shakes her dark hair. The thought that she might run again makes her smile. She walks calmly past him into the other room.

She watches the window. When she hears his footsteps
follow after her, she tells herself she can get through this, she will live. When he lies on the bed behind her, she feels the mattress sink down. Now gravity pulls her toward him too, and she swallows. The moonlight spills softly through the window, washing silver over a patch of floor. Now the whole house is dark and quiet. From the back of the house she can hear you children breathing in your sleep.

“Lay down,” Papa says.

The wonder is, when she turns, the knife does not make her afraid. She might long for it, if it would bring any rest. She says, “Put the knife down,” and he blinks at her. He lays it on the sheets. When he settles back against his pillow she can't see it. He is smiling, though; it will be all right. He leans toward her, the good hand descends gently to touch her and she holds her breath. But she shivers when she feels the hand on her. Oh please, she thinks, help me to be still.

But in the end nothing can stop her from trembling and drawing away. He draws away too, and watches her darkly. She whispers, “I don't know what else you expect, after today.”

“You're my wife,” he answers. His voice resounds. She starts to tell him to be quiet so he won't wake up the younguns, but he covers her mouth with the good hand. He slides against her. She tries again to let her body go, to let him take it. But past his shoulder she sees knife again. It makes her think of the white dog. For a moment she is in the woods, parting the leaves with her fingers, watching
as he bends over the dog and lunges and lunges and at last flings the dead thing spinning. Its shadow crosses the snow. She hears the fall behind her, she does not know how close until she turns. Queenie has come to rest in the root of an oak, and Mama bends over the body counting the deep wounds, the torn belly heavy with burst life. Now this same man kisses her neck. The smell of him thickens and rises all through her. He asks, “Why do you act so cold?”

She answers, “I am cold.”

“Let me make you warm,” he says.

But the smell is too much, she backs away, and something darkens in his eyes. “Who are you dreaming of now?” he asks. “Who is it you want so much tonight that you don't want me? I saw the bed won't made when I came back.”