Night Birds, The (15 page)

“Listen,” said Asa. “I read about this in one of Jakob’s papers. It happens along the flyways in Kentucky. We can gather them. They’re supposed to be good eating.”

“And how?” said Caleb.

“They’re dumber than sand. You don’t need any more than a stick.”

“I don’t want to go outside,” Daniel said. “I don’t like this place.”

“You cut out the breasts,” said Asa. “Then you smoke them over a fire. Listen to the sound of them out there. We could sell in town what we don’t eat.”

Hazel cinched her bonnet tight and followed her oldest brothers out into the coursing wall of noise. They left the two youngest seated on the porch where they could still see them and headed toward the grove where the birds were thickest. Branches crashed down from the weight of the many birds, often crushing entire congregations of pigeons below. The ground was slippery with white dung and dead birds. Caleb had carried along the rifle and fired once into a dense mass of swirling birds above his head and the resulting rain of blood and feathers drenched him. It was more efficient for him to swing with the butt of the stock and he moved into the woods and did this now. Asa and Hazel also swung staves of wood at the birds on the lowest branches, and true to what Asa said, the birds were stupefied by their own masses and easy to kill. They harvested them like apples from a brimming orchard.

The sound of the birds’ wings and cries filled up their minds until it seemed like they killed them in a trance. They were hypnotized by the relentless flapping of wings, children moving like ghosts in a world where they made no sound. As many as they killed, more fluttered down from the vast ranks around them.

There was not a single thought in Hazel’s mind while she killed them. Later this would trouble her, the absence of thought while she struck and struck them from the branches. Is this what the soldier felt in battle, this hollowness of being and thought, all the mind residing in the strength of the arm that swings, the unconscious pleasure of striking true?

Gradually they became aware that they were not alone in the woodland of pigeons. Creatures close to the ground: foxes bright as autumn leaves, bandit-faced raccoons, and hungry weasels fed next to feral dogs upon the carnage. Crows pecked at the corpses and stole away with gray hunks of flesh. Each animal was blind in its own feeding frenzy; they were joined together by this feast, all the ancient enmities of the animal kingdom forgotten in their common hunger.

When the Indians arrived, piling the carcasses on canvas sheets and buffalo robes, they didn’t pay the children any mind. There were women and children mostly, and a few old men with white braided hair and leathery skin. They seemed to come from the trees themselves, emerging from the brown trunks to join the harvest.

The children weren’t in any danger, but once Caleb noticed how surrounded they were, he shepherded them from the forest. They came back a little later with the wagon, dragging it by hand down to the grove, and piled as many of the dead birds on it as they could. Caleb wasn’t sure how to hitch the oxen and it took considerable effort for them to push the wagon back up the small slope to the cabin.

Once back inside the cabin they smelled and heard themselves again. Matthew and Daniel huddled in a corner and watched them shuck off coats and jackets white with excrement and blood spatters. The passenger pigeons stayed that entire morning, devouring every bit of scattered grain from the earth, every last acorn from the grove, and then as if by some inner signal, they lifted in more billowing lines, rank on rank, and streaked farther north.

The silence they left was a ringing sound in the children’s ears and bodies. They moved about the yard as though they were the stunned survivors of some great battle. From the porch they watched the Indians gather the remaining birds from the woodland wreckage before they faded back to their side of the grove. One of them, an old man with copper armbands, stepped forward to wave at the children before rejoining his people.

In the echoing hum she heard within her mind, Hazel felt a great hollow space. The small mound of birds they had gathered had been only a fraction of the flock, a few blades of grass from a vast meadow. Individually, the passenger pigeons were beautiful. They had long sweeping tails and graceful azure-colored breasts. Their eyes were red jewels, the females dusky and elegant in their fine silver-brown plumage. She smoothed the soft down of them and didn’t know she was crying until Caleb touched her shoulder, his brow furrowed. “No reason to be sad,” he said. “You saw how many there were.”

She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her dress and then looked north where the flock had gone. Was there any name for such things? She thought of the woods and all creation humbled by this force that came and went.
Grace. We have been joined by this blood, made communal
. As she thought this she felt her throat thicken with emotion, a welling up inside her.
Yes, grace
, she thought, looking off toward the sky that had swallowed up the birds,
and you will never see such things again, here on earth or in heaven
.

A Dutch oven. Steaming buckets of water to keep Matthew away from. The cat Freyja gnawing on coils of intestine. Lift, dunk, plop. Hazel’s hands ruddy with steam. The boys with their sharp knives. Feathers coming loose in hot water with a slight touch to reveal a pale-saliva like film beneath that did little to stir their appetites. Slicing out the breast. Fingers slick with birds’ blood. Lift, dunk, slice, plop. The weary routine of it. The smell of the death moist in their lungs. And then Asa singing for them, a hymnal, “How Great Thou Art,” in a grown-up’s voice. Buckets steaming. Scalding feathers. Down stuck to blood stuck to fingers and hands. Feathers in their hair and teeth. Spitting them out. The smell of the meat sizzling in the Dutch oven with sliced potatoes. All afternoon: lift, dunk, slice, plop, sizzle. And Asa,
Then sings my soul. . . .

They took a short break to feast, not bothering with silverware. The pink-eye potatoes swollen with juice. Grease running down their mouths. “Like wolves,” Caleb laughed. “Look at us.” Their teeth tore into the meat that tasted of brine and leaves and blood and smoke. Meat they swallowed part raw and felt it run hot down their throats and fill their empty bellies. They ate the entire contents of the Dutch-oven and then, refreshed, turned back to the remaining mound of birds. Freyja slumbered, fat with offal, her belly swollen and Matthew, a sheen of grease around his lips, slept beside her. For the others there was more work. Caleb made a wickerwork of branches. Asa and Daniel fetched wet wood from the grove that smoked, black and oily, in the fire. Hazel’s wrists went numb from the weary monotony of plucking the birds and laying them on the branches. Fifty, and then a hundred. A bonfire of wet wood.

The sun looked immense on the horizon as it faded into the far grasslands. They were sore and tired and stained with this world. “There,” said Asa. “Do you see the fires on the other side of the river? How far do you reckon they are?”

“No more than a half-mile,” said Caleb.

“Do you think they are as weary as us, or as joyful? Do you think they are over there saying, ‘I hope to God never to see another pigeon in my lifetime?’”

The children laughed. Then it was dark and the children’s fire burned down to a husk of flame. The fires of the Indian encampment flickered, spectral, and the night was warm and clear. A few stars swam close to earth. “Pa will come back and find we’ve gone wild,” Caleb said and then regretted it. The invocation of his absence altered how they looked at the fires, the dark. “Let’s go inside,” he said, and they went to their beds.

In the morning the children woke to the reek of the guts piled outside. They’d lost count of the breasts they’d plucked after a hundred. Even the cat shied from the spoiling mound of gizzard and beak and the children began the process of carrying it away. Wind from the south brought with it the smell of rain. For three days their father had been gone. They tried to put it out of their minds, except Caleb. The oldest boy watched the tallgrass waving in the wind.

The gold grass was heated by the morning sun. Lower, the growth was green and new and itched against Wanikiya’s belly as he lay upon it watching Tatanyandowan. This time he had followed his brother across the river, ducking behind the trees, keeping the shotgun close to his chest. With each branch or leaf that crackled beneath his moccasins, he expected his brother to whirl and confront him, but in his rage Tatanyandowan had not looked back.

When he heard of the missing stone, Tatanyandowan had painted his face and chest black and then drizzled white powder along his eyes and mouth. He wound gold grass through the same headband with three feathers and then, taking only his knife, went across the river. The white family was busy carrying away the corpses of the pigeons, their faces crinkling up from the sour smell. They did not see the warrior watching them in the grass, just as Tatanyandowan did not see his brother coming up behind him. Only once did the oldest, the gold-haired boy, turn in their direction, his nostrils flaring as if he smelled them out there in the grass.

I know what I must do
, Wanikiya thought.
It is what the old man wants. This will save my people from future violence. When the time comes I will murder my brother, just as he once tried to murder me
. He felt a flut- tering sensation in his chest, a feeling that had been there since he sacrificed his owl. Nights when he lay there striving for sleep, he had the sense of his mind drifting across the prairies on white wings. A new sensation, this wandering while he slept. And he had the feeling too that he was not alone out there as his spirit drifted. There were larger things moving in the darkness of the trees, somewhere an old man’s voice singing out a spell of protection.

Caleb saw the grass that was not grass, the dark head that ducked down. He remembered the boy they had seen throttling the owl.
They are here
, he realized. His hands were slick with pigeon guts, the smell brimming in his nostrils.
Why did they come?
In some sense he knew that whatever lay out there was related to his missing father.
Don’t panic. Stay calm. The rifle is back in the cabin. This time I won’t let him get away.
“Sing for us,” he told Asa. “Sing like you did before.”

“Not in the mood just now,” Asa said glumly.

“Do it,” Caleb said, his voice lowering.

Yesterday’s hymnal sounded sarcastic in the face of the grim task before them, and Asa’s voice warbled along. They trudged back to the cabin and then Caleb ducked inside, his brother following after him. “What’s happening?” Asa said.

Caleb took down the rifle from the mantle and poured in gunpowder. He used the ramrod to tamp it down and then packed in one of the lead balls. “The Indians,” he said. “They’re out there watching us. I’ve felt them all morning. They might have something to do with Pa going missing. I don’t intend to scare easy.”

Wanikiya inched his way close in the grass, keeping low, slithering. When he was only a few feet away, at last his brother rolled over and took notice of him. Tatanyandowan had the knife close to his chest. His expression was lost in all the paint he wore, but his mouth opened and closed.

“Forgive me, brother,” Wanikiya said as he stood and pulled back the hammer. His fingers were slick along the trigger. Beads of sweat began to come down into his eyes. He looked down the barrel at the presence of his brother, prone before him, his face a mixture of black drizzled with ghostly white paint. The bow shape of his ribcage. The tongue darting out to touch his lips. The chance for this would never come again. He must pull this trigger. As soon as Tatanyandowan rose and tried to flee, he would shoot him. Wanikiya had been unable to pull the trigger with his brother’s back turned and now looking down the barrel into his eyes, he still couldn’t do it.

Tatanyandowan did not seem surprised or frightened. He smiled and then spread out his arms, letting his knife fall away. “Go ahead,” he said. “I am not afraid to die.”

An explosion of gunpowder and though he had sworn not to do it, his eyes were shut. The smell of blood and powder all around him in the grass. Shouting from the
wasicun
children. Tatanyandowan held his chest, touched along his skin. His brother had gone down. He was alive. Tatanyandowan stood and looked off toward the cabin where even now one of the white boys was beginning to reload, dropping the ramrod in his haste, the other boy beside him shouting, hopping up and down. Tatanyandowan went over and peered at his brother fallen in the grass, his blood staining the ground all around him. Wanikiya kicked and struggled, holding his stomach, his eyes glassy with shock. Tatanyandowan knelt and touched his hand to his brother’s forehead, a farewell, and then he fled into the grass.

He’d left smears of his blood in the tall gold grass, a stained tunnel of bent, glistening stalks where he had dragged himself. She could hear him, but couldn’t yet see him, the boy in panic or terror as he dragged himself along trying to escape her brother. He groaned; his breath came in short gasps. Everywhere, the striped trail of blood and crushed golden stalks. Then the grass opened she saw the boy, his eyes blurred by his sweat. She saw he how held the rusty shotgun, positioned against a red stone, and how he fought to steady his aim. “Sh!” she said, not quite a word, not able yet to talk.
If you don’t say something at this moment, you will die. He can’t see you, doesn’t know that you’ve come to try to help him.
Hazel began to speak in low Germanic tones, the way her father had spoken to her as a child. The words felt strange in the unused muscles of her throat. She kept her voice low and lulling, held up her hands to show that she meant no harm.
You speak
, a voice said inside her.
Though you promised after your mother died, now you are speaking and there is no taking the words back.
The boy let the gun drop and it clattered against the stone.