The Weight of Feathers (7 page)

Their parents followed those small hands. That cloud drew a shared gasp from mothers, a
what-the-hell
from fathers. The siren swelled from background noise to a shriek, and they registered the sound.

Pépère
closed the space between him and them. “Ladies and gentlemen, my apologies,” he said, his voice level but loud. It carried, pulled their eyes from the sky, covered the faint breath of glass chimes. “We’re going to have to cut tonight’s show a bit short.”

Cluck watched him, his own muscles sparking and restless. How did Alain Corbeau keep such stillness in his voice?

“I’m going to ask you all to proceed to the road,” his grandfather said. “There’s a service station very close. Everyone go there. Stay inside or under an awning.” He spoke in his safety engineer’s voice, a pilot directing passengers.
Stay calm. Breathe. Brace.
“Do not try to go to your cars. Do not try to go home.”

Cluck’s cousins climbed down from the boughs, light as cicadas. Never rush when they can see you, Nicole Corbeau had taught them. The women moved no faster than the blooms that pulled loose from their flower crowns and drifted down.

The audience scattered.

“If you need assistance to the road, ask any of us,”
Pépère
said
.
“If you’re wearing anything cotton, and you can remove it easily, then do so, but the important thing is to get to the service station.”

“Cotton?” a man with a camera strap around his neck asked the question Cluck could see on every face. “Why cotton?”

“The fallout may contain adhesive intermediates,” his grandfather said. “Cotton will stick to the skin worse than other fabric.”

There was no screaming, no flurry of clothes tossed aside. Alain Corbeau’s voice calmed them like a song. Men took off cotton pullovers. Mothers urged children out of cotton jackets. But shirts, pants, and dresses stayed on, and the audience streamed toward the gas station at the road’s edge, quick, but not running. Alain Corbeau’s stillness assured them that, cotton or no, they would be fine as long as they took cover.

Cluck pulled his grandfather aside. “Cotton. They’re all wearing cotton.”

“They won’t be hurt,” his grandfather said. “Between the station and the pump awnings there’s enough cover.” He eyed the sky, gauging how long they had. “Half of them are already there.”

The cloud balled like chewing gum. Soon it would break into rain. Once that cloud fell, full of the plant’s adhesives, polyester would stick to their skin just as bad.

“Why did you say cotton?” Cluck asked.

“Think, boy,”
Pépère
said.

He heard these words from his grandfather more than his own name.
Pépère
always asked him questions to make sure he stayed
vif,
sharp. What was the difference between primary and secondary remiges? What were the components of structural coloration? If Cluck didn’t give the answer as easily as the day of the week, he heard “Think, boy.”

But his grandfather was choosing now to quiz him?

Pépère
walked a few paces behind the last audience members, a wary shepherd. “What do they make at the plant?”

Cluck went with him, his muscles tense with wanting to run. “I don’t remember.”

“You remember,”
Pépère
said.

There had to be somewhere Cluck needed to get. The mayor’s house? Not that he knew the address. The police station? Anyone who could do something about the strands of cloud tangling overhead. This town was deaf to those sirens.

“What do they make, boy?” his grandfather asked.

“Cyanoacrylate, okay?” Cluck shouted.

The feeling of the word stayed on his tongue.
Cyanoacrylate
. Those six syllables rooted his feet in the underbrush. The memory of
Pépère
crumpling newsprint crawled up Cluck’s back. A one-paragraph story in the paper. The worker who had never been given enough safety training to know not to wear cotton. The spray of chemical eating through the man’s jeans.

Cotton and cyanoacrylate. An exothermic reaction. It ran hot and quick.

The need to run, to do something about the truth in those sirens, came back to Cluck’s legs.

“Why didn’t you tell them?” he asked.

“You don’t set off a gun in a field and then try to herd sheep,”
Pépère
said. “It would have panicked them. It would have taken twice as long to get them to the filling station.”

Cluck looked where his grandfather looked. The cloud swam and twirled, the surface of a bubble a second before bursting. It would rain the same cyanoacrylate that had burned through a plant worker’s jeans.

“Get to the house,”
Pépère
said. “Now.”

“What about you?” Cluck asked.

His grandfather nodded, a lift and lowering of his chin meant to say,
Yes, I’ll be there
.

He wouldn’t. He would stay until everyone who’d come to see the show found shelter. This had been his work once.

Cluck’s cousins drained from the woods.

He hadn’t seen Eugenie. It gave him the feeling of stopping short just before a hillside. He noticed the lack of her, a missing pair of wings.

“Where’s Eugenie?” Cluck asked.

She never flaked on a show altogether like Margaux or Giselle, but a little too much Melon Ball wine and she couldn’t find the ground, forget the grove of cottonwoods and maples.

Pépère
searched the wings. “She wasn’t with you?”

Cluck didn’t bother going back for his shoes. The wanting-to-run feeling broke, and he took off toward the stretch of woods Eugenie wandered when she got lost.

“Boy,”
Pépère
called after him. “Your shirt.”

Cluck heard those three syllables. They reached him. But they didn’t register.

He got halfway across the woods. Then the cloud condensed into beads and fell. The sky rained hot, sticky drops. He kept his head down, shielding his eyes. The rain seared his neck and arms. His back felt scraped, stung with vinegar. The pain augured into his chest.

His shirt gave off a low hiss. He looked down. The fabric let off steam.

The hiss went deeper, eating through his shirt.

Cotton. His pants, the ones his grandfather once wore, were flax linen, but
Pépère
’s dress shirt and Cluck’s own undershirt were cotton. They were burning him like an iron.

It was getting into his body. His skin would give up and vanish. The heat would singe his lungs and his rib cage.

He ripped open the buttons on his shirt, tore it off. The rain on his hands found the cotton. The pain made him bite his cheek. Blood salted his tongue.

He pulled off his undershirt. It covered him with the feeling of wrenching away thread stuck to a scab. It left him raw to the hot chemical. It fell, and all he could do was grit his teeth against it.

Nunca llueve a gusto de todos.

It never rains to please everyone.

She got out of the water, legs free of her tail, sirens pinching her forehead.

The cloud fanned out and crept across the sky. First it looked like white cotton candy. Then it thickened, like milk curdling in tea.

She followed the lights her father left for her, candles in glass jars to help the mermaids find their way. She felt for her dress in the underbrush, pulled it on over her costume bra. Buttoned it quickly. Ran for the motel.

Then it started to rain. The canning jars hissed and flared. Whatever had blown up at the plant turned the flames different colors, like light through prisms.

First the rain felt warm, like bathwater. But then it seeped through Lace’s clothes, and she felt the sting of a shower turned all the way up. Even under her dress. Especially under her dress. Her arms and calves, her hands and feet went numb to it. But her breasts and shoulders, her back and thighs felt scalded. The searing feeling ate through her, singeing her lungs, and she couldn’t get enough air to run anymore.

Pain sucked away the tail end of a breath, and she dropped to her hands and knees. She opened her mouth for more air, but it only sharpened the feeling that each bead of rain was a little knife cutting down through the sky, piercing her hard and fast.

The woods spread out in front of her. All those trees and all that distant darkness pressed the truth into her like a hand on her chest, that she did not have the air to get up and run again. She could not get up until those little knives stopped falling. Even if she crawled to the nearest stretch of road, it would offer less cover than these branches.

But she couldn’t even move enough to crawl. All she could do was pull herself under the nearest tree, gritting her teeth against the feeling that her dress was soaked and heavy with poison. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to keep out what was falling from the sky. If she blinked enough of it in, it might leave her blind.

The rain burned into her. She curled up tighter, cheek against her sleeve. She shut her eyes tight enough to see comet trails of light. She tried to keep out the feeling that the rain was a million lit matches. And the strange smell in the air that was a little like apple cider if apple cider was the venom of some night creature, the rain and stars its teeth.

Cherchez la femme.

Look for the woman.

The moon showed Cluck a stripe of water. He knelt at the river’s edge and plunged in his hands, still burning from touching his shirt. The cold water hushed his palms.

“Cluck?” said Eugenie’s voice.

“Eugenie,” he called out, looking around. “Eugenie.”

Cluck stood up, fingers dripping river water. A dozen little flickers of motion pulled his eyes. The rain weighted down the tree’s branches, making them bow. Older greenery that couldn’t stand up to the chemical withered and slipped down.

The night was coming apart, because this town hadn’t let
Pépère
save it.

“Eugenie,” he yelled out.

“Cluck.”

He would have missed her if it weren’t for the wings looming over her. She had her back to a tree, leaves sheltering her. Her wings shone with the chemical. It slicked her flower crown and made it look heavy as glass.

Whatever she’d been drinking had flushed her cheeks, but her eyes stayed wide. The moon filled her pupils like milk in a bowl.

Cluck grabbed a handful of her dress. “Is this cotton?” He stretched the fabric, trying to tell.

She sucked air in through her teeth and pointed to his chest. “What happened?”

“Is this cotton?” His shouting cut her off.

“Silk,” she said, the word startled out of her. “
Mémère
’s.”

“Come on.” He pulled her with him, and they ran, the ground sticky under their feet. “Watch your eyes,” he said. Drops had fallen onto his cheeks and forehead. The fumes made him tear up.

The animals had all taken cover. No rustling in the underbrush. Only the steady rhythm of siren calls.

Eugenie stopped cold and slapped Cluck’s arm. “Look.”

About thirty yards off, a girl was curled under a tree, sparser than the one Eugenie had picked. Drops of the chemical rain trickled down.

The girl shielded her head with her arms.

Cluck knew the shape of her. He knew her hands. He’d seen her set them on her hips. He knew her hair, now frosted with chemicals.

And he knew with one look that her dress was made of cotton.

The rain would eat through her dress to her skin, and she would not know why. She was following the rules every teacher since kindergarten would have taught her.
Cover your face. Protect your eyes.
It held true for earthquakes, debris, hail, but not tonight. Because she was smart, and followed those rules, the rain would dissolve her.

Cluck held Eugenie’s elbows. “Get back to the house. Stay inside.” The rain on his palms cooled. He dropped his hands before they stuck to Eugenie.

“Cluck,” she said. Her pupils spread, the twin moons growing.

“Dammit, Eugenie.” He was shouting again. “Do it!”

She froze. She must have thought he didn’t know how to yell. But he wasn’t Alain Corbeau. When the sky started falling, he yelled.

She wasn’t hearing him. She only heard the panic in him. He saw it in her face. She picked up on his fear, tuned in to it like the static between radio frequencies, because she knew what fear looked like on him. She’d just never seen anyone but Dax put it there.

It threw her. He needed it not to throw her. Not now.

He grasped for something that would get to her.

“You need to make sure Noe and Mason get inside,” he said.

Georgette would have herded all the younger cousins into the house by now. But the names of Eugenie’s little brothers was all it took, and she ran.

Jugar con fuego es peligroso juego.

To play with a flame is a dangerous game.

The feeling of hands throbbed through Lace’s body.

“Don’t fight,” said a voice she couldn’t place. Those hands tore at the back collar of her dress. She cried out at the sound of ripping fabric. The back of her dress being torn from her felt like getting her body slit open.

She wrenched her head up, away from her shoulder. Heat stabbed through to her mouth. Her cheek evaporated like water on a dust road. There was nothing but pain spreading through her face.

Her hair tethered her, tangled in the weeds. She pulled, but it held her.

The boy from outside the liquor store held scraps of her dress in his hands. Her bra had gone with the fabric. Only a thin layer of nylon stuck to her breasts. The fake pearls had melted, the plastic stuck to the buttons on her dress.

She looked down at her body. The small movement seared her cheek. Shreds of her dress had stayed, burned to her breasts and stomach. Her body let off wisps of smoke, like steam off a lake on cold nights.

But there was no cold; she was all heat. Everything was. Her back and the riverbank. Her breasts and the underbrush. Her hips and the sycamores, all melting like the clocks in her father’s favorite paintings. Each losing drops until they were gone.

The boy from outside the liquor store didn’t have a shirt on. No undershirt either, just the silt brown of his chest.