Winter Birds (20 page)

She answers, “There isn't anybody to dream of.”

She draws a sharp breath when he touches her gown. “There's got to be something keeping you so cold to your husband.”

She says, “You don't have any idea what that could be?”

“I have some ideas.”

She looks him in the eye and says, “I don't want to be close to you. I can't stand it. I would rather you killed me like you killed that dog.”

“I didn't hurt that dog,” he says. His voice swells and rings. In your sleep you stir, Danny, as if you know. She feels his stillness before it frightens her. He rises and she
sees what he is reaching for. In his face the same coldness and sharpness as the blade. “I never hurt that dog,” he says. “I never hurt you either.” She is transfixed by the thing and the look on his face, and for no reason she thinks of him when she first knew him, when they were first married, and she sees without doubt that his face was softer then, that he has changed to become this, that he has changed for good. He raises the piece of arm, the blued end. She half-rises from the bed, but suddenly he is leaning over her and she cannot move. The knife shines close to her chin. Something in his eyes makes her think he doesn't know her any more.

When he raises the knife her body floods with a wash of coldness. Her blank cry rising, a perfect silence, that this simple blade and act and night might become everything, that there might be nothing after this. Her furious heartbeat reminds her
breathe, breathe
, and she watches him hovering close. The sob she sobs catches all of her, and she hears him laughing. But it is not him. She has never been so far away before. She knows the knife is cutting through her gown. The tip of the blade is cold.

He smiles but she is not sure she is looking at him. She is looking at nothing, she is looking at the ceiling and the receding shadow. His voice follows her. “I'm not good enough for you,” he says, “I'm scum, I'm some kind of bitch you don't want to touch,” he says, “ain't nothing good enough for you except your children,” he says, “you
love them three times as much as you love me.” She makes a low cry as the keenness slides along her skin. “You ain't had a minute for me since the day they was born.”

She says, “I'll fuck you, please stop.”

He says, “Oh no, I'm not good enough for you, I'm not your real blood kin.”

She says, “I'll do whatever you want, please.”

He says, “But you only like it with your kin. Well I can get some of that for you right now.”

You must have heard, Danny, even though they kept their voices soft; you must have heard, because this call is for you.

You will remember the footsteps, or maybe the sound rises out of memory even as you hear the coughing in the bathroom.

Though maybe the memory really begins when he touches your sore shoulder. Suddenly you are awake and you rub your eyes. Maybe you make some soft sound. When you recognize him, leaning down over you, you stiffen. He shakes his head thoughtfully. “Come on,” he says in a voice that rumbles through your bones. “Your Mama wants to see you.”

There is something you want to ask him, now, while there is still time.

But he lifts you like some lifeless doll and you do not make a sound even though pain flashes through your shoulder. He carries you pale through the cold room where Mama waits with the sheets tangled around her,
watching you and watching the knife in Papa's hand. It is not much of a journey. It only leads you where you would be anyway if your Mama had slid past your Daddy in time.

In the morning when you wake, white light is filling every corner of the bedroom, outlining each bleached plank of the walls, coloring Amy's arm folded in the blanket. When you sit up, careful of your shoulder, you can see the side yard from the window. A clean layer of whiteness covers the familiar ground from the house to the fields beyond, more perfect and unbroken than you would have imagined. You feel full of something like peace. For a moment you cannot remember why it seems strange to have wakened in your own bed.

Then you do remember, and whiteness closes over your mind.

You are riding in the dark with your face against Papa's stubbled neck, you can smell the sweat in his T-shirt.

Allen stirs beside you, mumbling you ought to lay down before the cold air runs under the blankets.

You listen for any sound from the rest of the house.

Then you hear voices in the kitchen, Mama and Papa talking quietly as if this were any morning, as if yesterday
had never happened, and you wonder how your Mama can go on talking to him like that.

Allen says, “Lay down Danny, I'm cold,” and so you do, but it is hard to breathe because you are afraid. With snow on the ground Papa might not have to go to work.

You hear Mama say once, “The water won't get hot a bit faster than I can get it hot,” and Papa laughs.

When you close your eyes the pattern of the yard and snow-covered field is reflected in what you see against your veined eyelids. Since you cannot distinguish words in what they are saying any more, the sound of their words becomes like a river washing you, and the thought of that is like another kind of whiteness. You are tired, you drift into something like sleep.

You dream you are lying in the crook of a tree.

Far below, the golden lion lashes his tail and watches you.

You had been playing with him in the clearing, he would like to go on playing.

Your thigh is bleeding from deep gashes that run the length of the muscle, and you are dumbly watching the blood ooze out from the marbled flesh. You have only stray thoughts, like whether you would be more comfortable if you could break off some branches to cushion your head, or why the lion's eyes are such a golden color. Meanwhile the big cat shakes his mane and sniffs. He thinks your blood smells delicious, he wants some. He wants to play with your body a while in the grass and then taste your tender thigh. He is watching you with that
eager impassivity, that simple hunger. From the base of the tree he calls out to you, a throaty rumbling, and he shakes his mane and parades from side to side.

But at the moment when River Man would have entered the dream to save you, the sound of your Papa's voice and footsteps penetrate to you and you sit upright in the bed.

Papa has come to the bedroom door. He stands with his back to the doorjamb, watching you with a fixed intensity. You swallow and take deep breaths. You are surprised to learn you are not afraid of him, you are able simply to contemplate his sober aspect, his neatly combed hair and freshly shaven face. He watches you and you do not flinch. Finally he asks, “What do you think you're looking at?”

You answer, “I don't know,” and your shoulder throbs where he gripped it, fingerprints of pain.

He frowns and turns away. He says, “Go back to sleep like you're supposed to,” and you do lie down in case he stops to peep at you from beyond the door.

The sounds of his voice and footsteps cause Duck and Amy to stir restlessly in their sleep and Grove wakes at the sound, sitting up, watching you.

Papa's heavy footsteps round the circular house.

Grove whispers, “I wish he would stay away from us,” and you nod, but now you can hear Papa's voice again and it is hard for you to breathe. He is saying something about Queenie. The dog's name is the only word you understand, but when you hear it a sudden restlessness consumes you.

You get out of bed quickly so the cold air will not disturb Allen, asleep again with his mouth open and one arm shading his eyes. The glass dresser-drawer knobs are cold to the touch. The folded clothes inside have your Mama's smell. You are careful not to disturb the ordered piles but you dress as quickly as you ever have, considering you can hardly move your shoulder at all. Your coat is hanging ready in the closet. When you pull it over your sweater Grove says, “You ain't supposed to go outside this early. It's snow on the ground.”

“I don't care.” You button the plastic buttons with some difficulty, the pain in your shoulder makes your fingers move slowly.

Grove says, “I'll tell Mama.”

“No you won't.”

“Yes I will.”

“You ain't going anywhere near Mama while Papa's in there, you can't fool me.”

Grove considers this and lies down in bed again. “I'll tell her when she comes to check on me.”

You stand over his bed. His swollen elbow rests on a thick feather pillow and his eyes are dark from troubled sleep. You say, “Lie down and be still. I ain't going anywhere but to the river.”

“What do you go to that old river so much for?”

“I ain't ever seen it in the snow.”

The back door is beyond his bed. Cold pours through the window glass, through your corduroy sleeves; cold from the doorknob pierces the bones of your arm.
Grove says, “I was awake last night. I heard what Papa did.”

Winter light is pouring around his shoulders, throwing shadows across his face. You say, “I don't want to talk about that,” and you remember, for an instant, your mother's face, the tangled sheets, and you shut the image away, opening the door.

Grove waves good-bye solemnly as if you are taking a long journey.

On the porch you move as if Mama is already hunting for you. The back of her head is visible above the tin of black pepper resting in the windowsill. You crouch low beside the table that holds the ice plants. Through the walls Mama's voice travels to you clearly, though she is speaking to Papa. “I reckon if you can drive around blind drunk in a snowstorm half the day yesterday you can drag yourself to work this morning.” When she moves away from the window, gesturing to Papa with a bottle of syrup, you slide through the screen door and round the corner of the house like a wraith.

Here you can pause and rest. Out beyond is the white world you watched from your window, only full and broad, smelling of pine from beyond the fields and another smell, acrid smoke rising from a pillar in the trash can. Mama has already burned the trash this morning.

Beside the cinderblock underpinnings are your footprints from last night. Here is the place where you peed in the snow. You walk beyond that to the side yard and the fields.

Now you can see the tracks from last night, where Papa chased Mama across the field and where you children followed, but in the morning light there are not as many footprints as you would have thought. The wind gathers at your back. You can almost picture the moonlight on Papa's shoulders as he stood shouting into the forest.

You shiver and walk in another direction, toward the river road to the clearing where your brothers were shooting birds yesterday. You walk with your head held high as if you are a grand prince with your ermine-lined cloak thrown over your shoulders, your expression serene as if you are dreaming. Only once, when you happen to look down, you note that you are crossing a trail of crisp dog footprints, a single sere line headed toward a particular point in the middle of the field.

You walk more quickly toward the river, but you cannot escape the image that follows: first the dog spinning in the air and then your Mama again, twisted in the sheets, watching you as Papa holds you above her, and watching the knife in the same hand that holds you, Mama frightened but saying, “Be careful not to cut him, Bobjay,” and Papa making an odd sound, like a sigh, when he strips down-the sheets and sets you on her belly. Mama not seeing you at all then, Mama watching the knife and then closing her eyes, turning away and pressing her hands flat against you to keep you from touching her breasts.

You take a deep breath and shake your head clear.
The ground is icy. You calculate each step, certain you will not fall. No one needs to tell you to be careful. No one needs to tell you anything. When Mama's image tries to reappear you shake your head again. It passes. Only the icy ground remains, and nothing there can harm you.

Inside the pine forest there are heights where you would like to soar, rooms you can see far above, formed of icy branches, curved arms of crystal that would embrace you; but you are far too heavy to float in the air.

Soon you reach the river. The moss is crystalline, treacherous to the foot, so you get down on your hands and knees and crawl till your knuckles are blue. You reach the train trestle, the bed of honeysuckle vine, and you sit there with your legs crossed like an Indian, hands folded in your lap. The trestle is silent. You picture a dark train plunging toward you down the icy tracks, guided by a fierce light, driving your crushed body deep into the earth; or you imagine River Man rising out of the black water, ice dripping from his muscular chest and arms; he kneels, finds you wounded in the honeysuckle and carries you down to the bottom of the river. You are certain he is in the black water somewhere, as certain as if you could see him.

Maybe you will walk down to the bottom of the river to find him. But for now you are content with the cold and you wrap the brown coat tight, stretching the sleeves of your sweater over your fists. Still the cold rises from your blue jeans into your thighs, your marrow. You sing quietly,
Shall we gather at the river, the beautiful, beautiful
river?
and you know, and you do not know, which gathering the song means.

You sit there a long time. At one point, from far off you hear the sound of a truck driving away from the house, down the long road. You know that means your Papa is going to work and so you smile. But it is only a little noise from here, and even now you are content to sit still on the snow-covered vine. You do exactly that long into morning, frozen in a trance, singing the same words over and over while now and then a branch falls from far overhead, a cracking like glass or like the cry of a bird struck by a copper BB pellet.

A long time passes. The river blackens. The gray sky threatens more snow. You contemplate the numbness in your legs. The snow is as white as the sheet that tangled your mother's arms.