Birds of a Lesser Paradise

by Megan Mayhew Bergman

  Pawlet was a small town in southern Vermont, the kind of place where you couldn’t count on cable or phone reception. We’d been used to living in wild places, quiet towns that sat on the verge of nothing, towns that bordered vast deserts or thousand-acre tracts owned by paper companies. Six months ago we’d moved to Pawlet to be near my grandparents, taking a rental next to their house. Mom was sick. Every night, every family dinner, there were unspoken words in her mouth: When I die.

  Our life in Pawlet was a contrast to the solitary existence we otherwise led; we went to basketball games at the high school, pancake breakfasts at the community center. In her last months Mom wanted to be around people, to feel the warmth of connection, for both of our sakes.

  Mr. Simons’s driveway was iced over and Mom and I shuffled our way from the dirt road to the front door in the country dark. The house glowed, and the silhouettes of neighbors filled the windows. The floodlights revealed the breath of the horses grazing in the side pen, the slick spots ahead of us.

  That’s coyote scat, I said, pointing at a pile in the driveway.

  Dog, Mom said, trying to hurry me inside with a palm on the back of my neck.

  Similar but different and I know when I’m right, I said, standing over it. You can always tell by the hair. And the oval prints.

  Mom was afraid of coyotes, and for good reason. Back in Utah, one sank its teeth into her leg as she defended her favorite dog, a terrier named Aida. Round about fall, people in Pawlet started talking about a seventy-pound albino coyote in the woods behind our house. I’d noticed Mom stayed out of the backyard. I hated to see her scared.

  Lightning can’t strike twice, I’d said, but then we’d both thought about the return of her cancer. The theory was shit.

  Mr. Simons’s slate steps were slick with ice. The soft roar of the party enveloped us as we opened the door. Mom scanned the overburdened coatrack. I stuffed my mittens into the pockets of her jacket for safekeeping. I was notorious for losing things.

  Remember, Mom whispered, squeezing my hand, gripping a bottle of wine in the other, be polite.

  Marvelous! Mr. Simons cried, walking toward Mom and me. He kissed us each on the cheek. So glad you’re here.

  Where are your folks? he asked Mom.

  Florida, she said. I made them go. They never travel, you know. They deserve it.

  Mom had begged them to leave; they hadn’t wanted to. I think Mom saw the cruise as a premature thank-you for taking care of me, a chance for them to rest before the cancer worsened and she needed more help.

  The party crowd was old, dignified, their un-made-up faces welcoming in the low light. Bakers, lawyers, farmers, quilters, retired teachers. They wore heavy knit sweaters to keep out the Vermont wind, long velvet skirts, artisan earrings. The kitchen and dining room tables were crowded with potluck fare. Masking tape marked the plastic trays and wooden bowls: Daniels Family. Griffin. Please return to Bob C.

  Pepsi, please, I said to the sullen man behind the card table bar. Maker’s on ice for my mom. Stir in a little orange juice to make it healthy.

  Point to your mother, the bartender said.

  Mom waved.

  Mom had one breast and a habit of moving towns when she got bored, dating men who could never hold her interest. She liked it that way. But now her cancer was back and she was weak. She held on to the kitchen counter as she greeted friends, mostly people my grandparents knew. She smiled, but I could see the dark circles around her eyes, her hollowed-out cheeks and thinning hair. I memorized her body, her voice. Everything she did felt like the last time. Everything she said felt like the last word.

  Last summer Mom and I had lived in a single-wide in Moab. We’d patrolled a stretch of the Colorado River in a rubber boat, Mom’s dog, Aida, running from end to end. Every night we heated a simple dinner, usually scrambled eggs with black beans and diced peppers, and held court over a splintered picnic table next to the trailer. Mom drank warm wine and read romance novels, Aida safe on her lap. At sunset, a lone coyote would come to drink at the river, the water between us like a moving fence.

  What will it be tonight, I always asked him. Chicken? Rabbit?

  At night I imagined the coyote coming to me like a dog, resting his head on my knee as I groomed his coat with my fingers, leaving tufts of hair on the dry ground.

  Watch out for a pack, Mom had warned me. You’re bite-sized.

  By December I had already tired of the gray Vermont winter and found myself wanting to return to red-rocked Moab, the dusty bike trails and wide-mouthed sky. I loved to run and in Utah I could go for miles without ever seeing another person. But Pawlet was the right place for Mom to be.

  One of Mr. Simons’s poodles, Fauna, forced her head underneath my dangling fingers and leaned against my thigh. Her coat was sculpted perfectly, a living, breathing, manicured hedge.

  Hey, lady, I said to her. Nice ’fro.

  Aren’t they marvelous, Mr. Simons was saying across the room, pointing to his moccasins. Millie made these for me when I was in college.

  Thirty-six years ago, Millie said, adjusting the tortoiseshell comb at the nape of her neck.

  Millie Banks was a hundred years old. She was slight and stooped, and wore her white hair in a loose bun on her crown. Brown leather boots peeked out from underneath her plaid flannel skirt. When Millie spoke, no one interrupted. We looked at her as if a centenarian were another species. I followed her as she walked down the hall to the living room.

  Every year Millie played the violin and led the string trio in carols at Mr. Simons’s party, and every year I stood at the back of the room pretending to sing, watching her face. She was legendary. When she was seventeen she’d fought off a cougar in the woods behind her father’s dairy. Talked it down for half an hour in a calm voice, I’d heard, then poked its eyes out with her thumbs when it finally lunged. People often asked to see the claw marks on her calf; they knew she’d oblige. It was her story, part of her myth.

  Millie lived alone, drove her own tractor until she was ninety-two. Split her own wood. She and Mom had much in common—except their longevity. They were independent outdoorswomen, native Vermonters.

  I wanted to be near her, siphon off a handful of her years and give them to Mom.

  Millie turned the corner just as Erik Sanderson caught my arm.

  Hannah! he said, popping a shrimp tail into his mouth.

  Erik was in his early thirties, good-looking but strange. He lived down the road from the place we were renting and was interesting as hell, but I’d have to find a way out of the conversation. Even though I wanted to talk to him, I couldn’t stand to make Mom worry any more than she already did—she’d think I was flirting.

  Don’t take up with someone like that, she’d said recently, referring to Erik. I heard words she didn’t add: when I’m gone.

  Pawlet was the kind of place where young girls fell in with older men and got pregnant; slim pickings led to cross-generational romance. Mom was insistent that I stay single and go to college.

  Erik means well, I’d said.

  I’d recently found myself thinking of Erik at night. He was robust and competent, a survivalist who wasted nothing. He lived in a tricked-out shed with a woodstove and a composting toilet. I liked his wild eyes, the gray hairs in his beard. I liked the way he looked at me; he didn’t talk to just anyone. He was the kind of man who made you feel safe.

  He’d suck the joy out of a young girl’s life, Mom said. He’s always waiting for a financial meltdown, the apocalypse—Lord knows what he’s got stashed in those outbuildings.

  Hear the coyotes these last few nights? he asked, standing close enough for me to smell the wood smoke in his sweater.

  I nodded. I had, only because our dogs woke us at weird hours, howling responses through the windowpanes into the dark night.

  They make Mom nervous, I said. She’s keeping the horses in the front pasture, under the lights.

  Erik speared a sauced-up minifrank with his toothpick.
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br />   Coyotes, he said, got my friend’s beagle down the road. One drew him into the field and the others converged from the tree line. Brutal. I saw . . .

  Is this a ship in a bottle? I asked him, pointing toward the mantelpiece. I couldn’t stomach any stories about death.

  More of a Plexiglas box, Erik said. You can cut a custom box with any old band saw.

  You could always draw Erik onto the next thing as long as you talked how-to’s. How to transplant a raspberry patch. How to keep foxes out of the henhouse.

  Erik had been learning Chinese and stockpiling reading glasses, scrap metal, and tampons. I’ll be rich in the next barter economy, he claimed.

  I found a jacket that might fit you in the church lost and found, Erik was saying. Kid’s down jacket, I think.

  People began filtering in from the kitchen to cluster near the piano where the string trio had assembled. I caught Mom’s eye across the room.

  Erik tugged his ear and looked at the threadbare Oriental rug.

  Mr. Simons tapped his wineglass with his fork.

  Time for carols, Erik said. He nodded at me and moved toward two French doors that opened onto a patio. Mom left the kitchen and stood behind me, held me by the shoulders.

  The house became silent as Millie tuned up, resting and readjusting her wrinkled chin on the violin. Guests thumbed through the lyric bulletins with the righteous glow of people who are about to SING.

  I found myself dreading the carols. This year, something inside of me was too sad, too tired to hit the notes.

  Erik rested his forehead against the back door. I imagined he was used to colder rooms and was coming up for air in the corner by himself. He wore a leather vest over his sweater, chewed a toothpick.

  Just as Millie lifted her bow, Fauna shot out of the doggie door into the backyard. Fauna! Mr. Simons yelled, running toward the door. Erik looked at me, then bolted outside. As Millie’s bow began to smart the strings of her violin, I watched him disappear behind the tree line, iced grasses knee-high and strangling his legs. The carol was anemic, though a few continued with the song, unconcerned. Dogs will be dogs, someone said. Through the window I could see Mr. Simons pacing the back patio. I wondered how fast Erik could run.

  Make peace with the food chain, Mom had told me out West one night when we were looking at the neighbor’s chicken coop. Do it now, before it breaks your heart.

  Last week I’d seen a hawk fly onto a branch, wings massive and gray, and snatch a squirrel from a maple. I’d watched, helpless, as the yellow-eyed bird sank his claws into the writhing gray body, brought it to the frozen ground. The squirrel had made a sound that stayed in my ears for days. The bird had concentrated on his kill, eyes wide as if he were straining to get the job done. I yelled and charged him, but he would not be moved. He flew when satisfied, carried the squirrel’s limp body across the field and into the trees.

  The best predators, I realized, had no empathy.

  People finished singing and Millie put down her bow. The rest of her trio followed suit; the pianist folded his hands into his lap.

  Millie, someone said. Show us your scars.

  Millie stood up and handed the pianist her violin. She made a motion for him to scoot to the edge of the bench. One hand hiking her skirt, she used the other to roll down her hose.

  There, on Millie’s pale leg, were three deep scratch marks, raised, the color of dark wine.

  I felt Mom stiffen beside me. She had her own scars. Bite marks on her calf. Her right breast now folded into itself, the nipple gone, a purple ridge across her chest.

  I can still feel them, Millie said to the room.

  Suddenly Erik burst through the back door, Fauna in his arms, blood on his leather vest.

  They took her down, he said, chest heaving. But I beat them off with a branch. The white coyote was there. It’s a bitch, too. A bitch coyote, with some wild dog in it. Pups to feed and mean as hell.

  Fauna’s neck was bleeding. Erik wrapped it tightly in an old T-shirt and helped Mr. Simons take her out to the car.

  I apologize, Mr. Simons said to the room as he was leaving, but the party’s over. Linger if you need to—

  Call the vet at home, Erik said. Long driveway off of Route 30. He’ll meet you at the barn when it’s a real emergency.

  After Mr. Simons drove off, people began to say their good-byes—kissing each other on the cheek warmly, shaking hands. I took another long look at Millie. Every year I thought I’d never see her again.

  Mom and I walked slowly to the truck. On the ride home I cracked the windows to feel the cold sleet on my face.

  What are you thinking about? Mom said.

  The right answer would have been this: blood. How all my fear, all the looking over my shoulder added up to nothing—what I really wanted was a fight. To come out the other side, wiser.

  At the side of the road, I could see our headlights pool in the eyes of a smattering of deer in the apple trees. A herd of five, they rooted in the snow for fallen apples.

  The coyotes are coming for you, I said.

  Don’t be dramatic, Mom said. I’ve told you about being dramatic.

  Mom exhaled. Her breath hit the window.

  I thought: This is the last time her breath will hit the window.

  The night Mom found out her cancer had returned, I’d slept by the doorway to her bedroom, just in case she needed me. I wanted to be close to her.

  The night of Mr. Simons’s party, Mom went to bed in her clothes.

  I’m tired, she said. Can you check to make sure the horses’ water isn’t frozen?

  I went out to the pasture and kicked snow from a crate of crab apples. There were ice crystals like webs on the horses’ hocks, trails of hoofprints in the snow. We’d come home too late to lock the hens in and they’d gone up into the trees. A few clucked and cooed as I walked past.

  Mom had always taught me that a horse would sense danger first. If your horse won’t go, she’d say, don’t go. Snakes, bears, coyotes—the horse’s instincts about them are better than yours.

  So, I asked the horses. What’s in the woods tonight?

  Half asleep, they stomped and stared and prodded my clenched fists for food. Their breath hung in the air like small clouds.

  It’s all about apples with you, I said.

  That night, before falling asleep, I thought of the famed fourteen-year-old Texas boy who’d killed hundreds of wild hogs by leaping onto their backs and slitting their throats with a butcher knife. My grandfather had told me that one way to hunt was to make a sound like a dying cat and then lie in wait.

  I mean really wail, he’d said. Cry like a baby if you have to. Sound like something worth eating.

  At two a.m., the rooster crowed. Roosters are dumb as shit. They’re so brave they’re stupid, or they’re so stupid they’re brave. I’m not sure which. Regardless, they’ll fight anything.

  I couldn’t fall back to sleep, so I walked down the hallway to Mom’s room. I pushed open her door and watched her. Her sleep was deep and fitful and God knows how many painkillers she had to take to shut up all of the worries and hurt.

  Years ago, Mom had studied to be a dental hygienist. She’d always liked teeth. She swore to me she’d cut my baby teeth by pressing the back of a silver spoon against my gums. She would clean my teeth herself, using her old equipment, which she doused in mouthwash. Sometimes, when I was talking, she’d slip a finger into my mouth and pull down my lip to check for tartar. She’d done it just the other day and I’d thought: This may be the last time Mom checks my teeth. Her finger felt rough on my gums. I could hear her jagged breath, see the yellow in the whites of her eyes.

  The dogs were all sleeping in her room now, as if they knew something. I slipped down the hall to the front door, careful not to wake them. I pulled on Mom’s coveralls and the sweatshirt that she kept on hooks in the garage. I cuffed the legs so they wouldn’t get soaked when I went outside.

  It was snowing just a little and the air was cold enou
gh to freeze the inside of my nose. The horses were still and the rooster was quiet and the old silo in our backyard shone underneath the moon. The silo was full of bats and busted rakes and looked like a grounded spaceship. The moon was a waxing gibbous, almost full, bright enough to get around in.

  The snow wasn’t deep. The ground crunched as I walked through our back fields. I kept walking. Whatever made me love running made me love moving, distance, an open field. My fingers were cold; I should have worn gloves. I reached the old orchard and put one leg over the barbed-wire fence. The apples weren’t good enough for whoever owned them, so they rotted, fed bears.

  Hundreds of trees bore fruit in the fall. Now the apples were black and the trees without leaves. There were cattle out here—heifers and calves. I could hear them at night, especially when they were in heat. Soon they’d take the calves from the mothers and sell them for meat. Dark hulking shapes; I could feel the warmth of their bodies and smell their fermented breath as I moved past.

  I knew that if I followed the ATV path through the orchard, I’d come to the back of Erik’s fields. The moon caught the ice on the branches. I concentrated on the sound of my boots in the frozen snow.

  I came to a barbed-wire fence Erik had thrown up over one of the old stone walls. My grandfather told me once that at the turn of the century Vermont had been near bald, all the trees stripped to make pasture for sheep and dairy cows.

  Nearby, I heard branches breaking. Probably a spooked deer, I told myself.

  I wondered if Erik was up at this hour, but I knew a high school girl had no business knocking on a grown man’s window in the middle of the night. Still, I imagined slipping into his bed, moonlight streaming through the window, the surprised look on his face, the tender way he’d remove my clothes and drape himself over me.

  If he was smart, he wouldn’t do it. I knew that. He’d get into trouble; I was too young. But I liked the idea, the heat it generated in my body.

  I pushed on. The skin on my face was so cold that it moved in slow motion. My boots weren’t waterproof and my feet were starting to feel damp and numb. Erik once told me never to come into the woods without a leather belt, that with a belt you could do anything.