Winter Birds (17 page)

She leans far out over the porch edge, one arm encircling a post. She sticks her tongue straight into the air as far as it will reach, and closes her eyes and smiles. “Ash,” she says. Grove laughs. You say, “You're the one who's going to fall and break your neck, Amy Kay.”

She ignores you, sticking out her tongue and cooing. “This is what I like to eat,” she says, “this is my favorite food. Nice cold snow falling straight down out of the sky.”

“It doesn't fall straight,” you say, “the wind blows it around for miles and miles.”

“Mr. Know-it-all,” she says.

The wind rises again, and cold soaks through every part of you. Amy says, “I'm so cold I can't hardly move.” Grove shivers and hides behind you. The shivering hurts his arm. You see that on his face though he says nothing. “You ought to go inside,” you tell him, and Amy says, “We all ought to go inside, before we catch pee-new-monia.”

“I'm staying out here,” you say.

“You don't have on enough warm clothes to stay out here,” Amy says.

“It's not that cold.”

She has some smart answer to throw back at you, but the wind freezes it in her throat, smashing her skirt into a tangle and ripping through her hair, tossing bales of snow against the three of you. Grove edges toward the house holding his elbow, though there is still delight in his eyes. Amy stands square on the porch stroking snowflakes out of her dark hair. Shivering, she says, “Well you can do whatever you want to, crazy person, but we're going inside and shut the door.”

YOU WATCH
the snow alone then, feeling easier in the silence. The snow drifts down from the clouds and piles against the earth, the gentleness of its drifting and piling giving you rest in some deep place. You take long breaths of the cold air, smelling the fresh, sharp smell of the evergreen at the side of the porch. You hunch your shoulders
forward and blow out breaths that blossom into white clouds.

Finally descending the steps, slowly and carefully, hearing your Mama's voice in your mind.

But out in the full fall of it you don't think about being careful any more. The snow is all around you, falling slowly, close so that you can see the fluttering of particular flakes spinning over and jerking back, or far away so that you can watch the thousands descending, one great mass.

You trudge around the house, quiet under Mama's windows but wondering, still, if maybe she lies a little easier under the blankets, facing the window so she can watch the snow; maybe it eases her the same as you.

Above, clouds, and you imagine stars behind them, displeased to be kept from watching, maybe arguing with the clouds.

The grass beneath the snow crunches when you walk on it. The snow cools your shoes and then your feet. You blow into your hands.

Almost night. Almost dark. There, across the fields, over the gaunt line of pines, easing down against the house, vast fields full of the reflection of white, the snow settling to soothe the cracked earth, the broken cornstalks.

You wish you could lie in a bed of snow, let your head fall back into it slowly and never come out of it. You wish you had fire to warm your hands. You wish the snow would never stop, you wish Papa would never come
home, or you wish you were in the middle of that field, out in the open space where the snow could swoop down at you from every side, seeming more and more endless; you can almost see yourself, turning and turning in the widening fall of the snow, lifting your arms and then bringing them down, as if you and the snow are one creature. You wish you could find a field wide enough that if you stood in the middle of it you would never see another house, where you could watch the snow pile higher and breathe the cold air deeper and deeper till your insides are as cold as your outsides.

You walk slowly across the open yard, you stare straight up into the falling flakes where you can see forever deeply into the one cloud. Almost dark now. Though you have seen the house and fields this close to night before, you have never seen anything like this, in motion, and you feel yourself rising with the same slow steadiness that the snow falls.

Above the snow, though, a sound. A droning, a motor, the approach—you half turn toward it—of a truck, headlights blaring, and you run into the front yard, almost to the ditch bank, to see.

Papa drives slowly past the house, honking his horn again and again, wipers beating away the snow.

If he sees you he makes no sign. He drives past the house, honking the horn always on the same beat. At Mama's windows the curtains stir, and a hand pauses at the glass. The red lights of the truck vanish down the road.

The curtains settle into place again. The day becomes quiet night. You walk away from the empty road to the house, wondering when he will come back to stay. Round you snow drifts like ash stirred up by wind, cold ash from a cold fire, a slickness that you carefully travel across.

In the kitchen you stamp snow from your shoes onto a torn paper bag. Amy fusses in whispers that you must be a fool to run around in the yard like you don't have the brains to know hot from cold. “Maybe you ain't as smart as everybody thinks,” she tells you, gesturing with a spoon. “I think maybe you're a moron. I'm fixing you a cup of hot coffee to thaw out your belly.”

“Papa drove by the house,” you say softly. “Did you hear him?”

After a moment, Amy nods. She lights the burner on the stove, careful of the flame. “I guess he'll be coming home soon.”

The house is mostly quiet. In the living room your brothers watch television with the sound turned low. The murmurs from the vague screen throw a hush over the room. Your brothers sit in a line on the couch. Once Grove asks if it's still snowing and Allen answers yes, he can see it falling through a crack in the curtains. Duck says he hopes it snows a whole six feet, though Allen tells
him not to be stupid since it don't even snow that much at the top of a mountain. They keep their voices soft even when they disagree, and they watch the silent bedroom door. From Mama's room you do not even hear the whisper of breath.

Amy says quietly, “Pull off them wet shoes. This coffee water is almost hot.”

“I don't want to drink any coffee.”

She shakes the spoon beneath your nose. “Don't argue with me. You can put sugar in it.”

“Even sugar don't make it good.”

“It ain't supposed to be good. It's supposed to heat up your gizzard.”

You step out of your shoes and sit at the table. She spoons the instant coffee into two cups and pours the water over it. Steam rises. “I'm going to drink me some too,” she says, “sitting right at the kitchen table like I'm thirty-five years old. You can drink yours there too, and we can pretend like we're too old for TV.”

“Let me put the sugar in mine. You don't ever put enough.”

“You put in so much it might as well be syrup.”

“Who's drinking it, me or you?”

“Don't leave your wet shoes right in the middle of the floor either. You won't raised in a barn.”

You set the shoes in the corner and get canned milk from the refrigerator. Mama drinks her coffee black and Amy drinks it with sugar, so she can look like a grownup, but you like your coffee light brown. You watch the swirls
of white in black, spinning and widening at the same time. Amy says, “Drink it before it gets cold.”

“When I feel like drinking it, I'll drink it.” You blow across the top. When Delia was here, she poured coffee from the cup into a saucer, and drank off the saucer like a cat. You sip your coffee from the cup like you're supposed to. The hot makes you swallow fast. Today you like the taste. You like the quiet too, with the refrigerator humming and the gas heater hissing, its firebricks bright red and glowing hot. The lights are dim in the living room, and Amy has left the kitchen dark. Snowflakes tumble against the windows. “I bet Papa is miles away,” Amy says.

“I don't care how far away he is as long as he isn't here,” you say. “Maybe he'll stay gone a long time.”

“He might,” Amy says mysteriously. The same impulse comes to both of you and you look at his empty chair. You don't have to be afraid of the living room now. You could even sit in that chair if you wanted to. The thought of the snow outside comforts you too, along with the silence it has brought to the highway. Though maybe you listen a little too hard. Too many things can sound like the motor of a truck. Amy laughs softly, raising her arms over her head. “We could pile up all the snow for miles around and build a big old wall to keep Papa out of the house. Except he'd just pee on it and melt a hole so he could get in.”

When you laugh she signs you to be quiet. But you smile at each other. You hold the warm cup in your hands. Amy is half done with her coffee, though you have sipped
only a little of yours. “I'm going to fix me another cup,” she says. “Then I'll stay awake all night long.”

“You will anyway, whether you drink coffee or not.”

“Then it won't be different from last night, will it?”

“I wish I could go to sleep and not wake up, no matter how loud he yells. Except then I'd be scared to wake up and see what he did when I was asleep.” You stir the coffee again, to make the sugar finish dissolving. Amy lights the burner on the stove and sets on more water to boil. She passes her hand through the steam. “You didn't leave me enough sugar for a mouse,” she says, tilting the sugar dish for you to see that it's almost empty. You drag a chair to the cabinet to get down the bag of sugar. When you lift it your shoulder gives you a sharp pain. You set the sugar on the cabinet, the white grains sticking to the tips of your fingers. Amy holds the sugar bowl close to the bag, pours the sugar and then puts the bag back where it belongs. By the time you sit down your coffee has cooled and you can drink it faster. “Is it still snowing?” Amy asks your brothers in the living room. Duck stands at the window, gripping the curtain in a fist. He says, “It ain't falling as fast as it used to.”

“If it don't keep falling there won't be enough of it left on the ground to keep us out of school Monday,” she says.

“It's piled up over everything,” Duck says.

“One good sunny day will melt it all.”

“It's snowing for miles and miles,” Duck says. He presses his face to the glass. “It's not ever going to stop, and Papa's never coming home.”

When Amy takes her coffee to the living room you wonder if you should follow. You hold your own cup and swirl the last of the coffee around and around the bottom. You drink it and set your cup on the sink. In the darkness you gaze at the velvet window, where one tumbling snowflake appears and whirls against the black glass. You wish it would stay this way, so peaceful and quiet, with Mama asleep in the bedroom and none of your brothers or sisters arguing. But Duck says, “Here comes a truck,” loud enough for you to hear, and you go to the living room and watch at the window with the others.

The truck lights blaze on the falling snow. You can barely see the shape of the truck behind. But you know when you hear the horn that this is Papa driving slowly past. From the bedroom you hear muffled footsteps. Mama opens the door, a gray shadow. “Come away from the window,” she says softly, “you're standing too close.”

You let the curtains fall and follow the others to the center of the room. The fire in the gas heater shines. Mama slips to the window buttoning her house robe. Her dark hair tumbles over her shoulder. She stands to the side of the window and watches. “He's not going to stop,” she says.

“He came by here one time before,” Allen says.

“I know. I wasn't asleep.” Mama closes the curtains but still watches through the crack that remains. The truck's red tail lights round a curve and vanish. The highway shimmers with snow. Mama sits in Papa's chair, thumbnail between her teeth. She asks Amy Kay to bring
her some Anacin. She rubs her forehead and takes a deep breath. The dark bruise glistens on her face. She takes the tablets from Amy's white hand and swallows them and sets the water glass beside the chair. Amy offers to make her a cup of coffee and Mama says yes, thank you. You watch her clotted figure in the light from the window.

From the couch you feel Grove's gaze, and you bring him fresh ice for his arm. He thanks you without moving. He asks, “Are the doors locked?”

Amy answers, “I pushed a chair against the door in the back bedroom.”

Mama stands, holding the coffee listlessly. “I'll check the windows,” she says. She pulls her sweater around her arms, letting the sleeves dangle free. She walks from window to window, watching the reflection of her face in the glass. You follow her from room to room. In her bedroom you press your face to the glass and smile at the lightened fields. The moon is a pure white shining in the clouds. “There's so many drafts in this house it's a wonder we don't all blow away,” Mama says softly from the back bedroom. She stands in the middle of the floor shivering. “This room is so cold. How do you younguns stay warm enough?”

In her bedroom you study the tangled blankets on her bed. You hear her soft step and follow her through the door. She watches the highway, holding the coffee cup so close to her face that the steam envelopes her eyes. The snow has slowed. The flakes are smaller now, points of light that hang in the air. High in the clouds, the moon's
patch is brighter than a moment ago. The clouds are breaking. On the highway you see tracks of tires.

“Did we check the screen door on the porch?” Mama asks.

“I locked it,” Allen says.

“That little lock won't stop Papa,” Duck says.

Mama sits in the chair again and sips coffee. You take her place at the window. When you lay your head against the glass the cold cuts like a nail through your brain. You study the snow in the roots of a sycamore. Someone turns the television louder. The blue light colors the room, soft on your brothers' still faces. Frail laughter bursts from the box, but your brothers don't laugh.