I Was Trying to Describe What it Feels Like

by Noy Holland

  I looped the steel loop around his pastern first as quick in the dark as I could. I walked the slack out. I worked the handle some.

  I saw the light go on in the house up the hill and then Ma in the window passing. So they left a light with the chairs all gone so Ma could see to sit the floor and hitch up her shirt for the baby. The baby always goes to the one so I ask who is the other one for. She laughs. You are as bad as your pa. Get on.

  There are chickens to feed and cow Maggie. Two cobs twice for Maggie. There are board fences sure to creosote and thistle to dig from the fields when it bolts before the purple crowns. I muck the stalls and soap the tack and vet Pa’s dogs they run the fields flushing birds all day. I am his girl Cricket. I climb the big oak on the hill Pa’s hill even after when it is hit and burns and the burn blacks my skin my clothes.

  I work the handle some and the slack is out and I can feel the horse start to pull over the hump of gravel. He lets his long high sound. Pa says it is like a goose so Goose but I never heard a goose as that so long as that it warbled, not a sound like that and never since from bird nor horse nor man. Not even when Pa hit him.

  He hit him in his head. Then was a sound a girl-girl lets, queerly sung and pretty. But that was some time after. That was when we shod.

  First Pa thinks to work with him when he is up and well enough and we walk him down in the sun in the heat on the road between the barns. First Pa thinks to gentle Goose to ride him days we do not plow afternoons we do not need to hoe nor pick nor harrow. Pa went to him first going easy talking sweetly in his ear. Hope hope.

  He never did hit Goose at the first the night when Ma went off up the road. She went up the hill with the baby quick her hair a knot on her brightened head he reached for when she rested. First it was me Ma reached for. Then after me she rested. I took the strength she had, Pa said, so after me she rested.

  Pa gets the hills and the oaks on the hills the old people called the farm by. Ma gets the house she climbs to, her shoes tapping bright on the road. Our ma gets the boy not yet a boy for Pa to need to work the fields while he is weak and small. She gets the way he smells the way he gums her how he coos.

  Goose lets his long high sound. I feel him shudder across the gravel the ratchet clicking slow. I see him rest if I rest and flutter his nose but Ma will have something fixed for us and sits her chair to watch for us and sheets on the floor she has spread for us and the light is gone from the barn. They have loosed it from its socket hung from the spavined wall of the barn. Get up.

  I taut the line some. I bring him easy.

  I haul up the traps in the muck by and by from the bank where the old people left them. The dogs come to drink from the pond. They beat out a flattened path in the weeds in the burrs that catch and mat my hair flown loose when first I found one. First how we knew to look at all was once I heard Pa’s dog. She had her paw snapped up in the mouth of the trap in the gone-by weeds that mark the pond in the rattling pods come winter. Summer coming to its close. The fescue stiffly yellowed. And in the night Pa’s dog cries out from the drawn-back lip of the pond.

  Be slow. Our Goose.

  See the road slopes up. Take your time to calm you.

  His breath comes weak and shallows. I let the line slack. He throws himself to kneeling and his bones knock against the road. He shoves his muzzle down on the road to rest so his thick head saws above. Pa touches his flank with the gun. I ease up I think I am easing up, the line gone slack to tap the road but I can never see it quite I can scarcely see him stand but to see the yellow of his eye swing up and the white of his face against the road.

  So he is up. I hear Pa humming to him slow and the coins in his pants when he moves to him going, Ho, going, Hope hope ho.

  Pa ought to have a sugar cube, a cigarette to give him.

  He throws his head up. The stripe in his head when he throws it streaks and see the dark will bleed it free, will from him in the darkness wick the whiteness clean away. It is like our pa has thrown it—how his bird dogs quake and trill.

  You goose. First she called Pa so to tease him. But then she called the baby Goose and by and by each name for Pa I used to hear her call him by she picked to name the baby with and mine I had forgotten. Now we are only Pa to her and Pa and his girl Cricket. Moving slowly in the road.

  He throws his head up. It is like our pa has thrown it, gone from the trees from the creek where he likes to work his dogs to the field. Good dogs.

  We can do with him what we want to. Sell him off quick on the hoof if we like to grind his bones to give the dogs the inly tubes and organs keep them fed and fit and strong. They are field dogs, bird dogs all. Pa throws them the wing of the cutaway goose in the falling dark and the dogs at his feet and they stay they stay the wing dipping down until he moves his hand to school them.

  And then his long high sound. And so Pa named him Goose for the goose for the wing he throws his dogs.

  Goose lunges at Pa so much as he can but I have got him looped up still, Pa tripping back with his gun at his chest so I ratchet the line to hold him. I cannot hold Pa. Only watch him slowly falling. He takes a long time falling.

  Pa’s dogs bed down and whinge. You quit. But they are thinking what will happen what is next to come.

  Time comes Pa thinks to ride him. Out between the barns. He rides to the oaks the lightning hits along the fence cow Maggie rubs to leaning while she fattens. Past the coop the chickens pecking slowly at their corn. Past Pa’s prize yellow rooster learned to blind his favored hens.

  Pa’s dogs they are bird dogs all—but are they bird enough to guess at him? At Pa’s prize yellow rooster? Who appeared in a fluff in the barn—the day Goose rode Pa past and every day thereafter. And sat his back thereafter. Who flew his coop to bide his days sitting Goose’s withers—could they guess at such as him?

  And at the day we shod him?

  And of the bees Pa plowed?

  I am not one to picture it not nearly even half of it not Ma in her chair past autumn not the wrangled plow. Nor Goose. The rooster shyly by him. Pa’s. And then the rooster Goose’s. Only walking back to rooster pecking gently at his hens.

  Nor that. I had not pictured that. And not the picked-over eyes of the hens bright as the yolks of the eggs we take left seeping in their feathers.

  Not the blood the baby lets not the milk the baby lets, Ma’s shirt run pinkly through. Nor that. Him plumping at her bosom.

  Time was I was Ma’s. Nor that. Nor time was Pa was also.

  Not Pa when I come upon him. He has dragged across the pond.

  I am not cut to picture. To stand at the bank and puzzle out I am cut to cut and run.

  The gun fires when Pa wallops the road. Then Goose is up and hanging.

  The old people have come. I thought Goose had seen the old people come rolling home to claim him.

  And so he hung there. What to do?

  I touched the line once. They couldn’t loose him. They could go on back from wherever they’d come and forget they ever saw him stood and pawing where they left him in a heap upon the road.

  They could find another. There are others after Goose. There are Mouse and Pepper, Blue, Prim Sue, and Candysara. Cribbing at the barn.

  I tie Pa’s boot strings every morning. Did his boot strings loose I tied for him, did his pant legs make him fall?

  Ma takes one pair and me another. We hem the legs on Pa’s short side from the time when Pa was a boy my size and crumpled in his bed. Get up. And Pa could not get up and not. And not for a long time after. So is it mine or Ma’s dread cross? Who take one pair and one another. We are not much with our needles. And Pa is fallen across the road.

  He seems to quit there. He seems to quit and stiffen ready for the blow.

  Goose would throw himself off from us. He would fly himself over the barn he thought come soft on his hooves in the field where he grazed with we two dumbly watching.

  Then he was over. Goose flung himself on over.
I heard his bones the clatter and snap his head a rind against the road broken wetly open. He lay there—his legs sprung stiff, his corded neck—his body hauled in chinked from stone to mark the field the fallen dead the bloody day forgotten.

  Pa softly now, “Let up.”

  I held the line taut. I saw I held the line taut still from the coil where I let it.

  The night sky stooped and held its breath, the trees bent too to listen—for the sputter and tick the quieting tide of Goose’s reedy pipes and valves the rocking iridescent humps and hollows of his organs.

  And Pa again, “Let up.” Still I heard “Get.”

  Pa struggled up from where he fell and knocked the grit from his pants I stitched the sloppy hem and he nodded. Pa came at me with his hand high up. He had never hit me yet but still I stood to let him.

  The line had cut some through. I had looped it over the curl of fur above the hoof you sell them on and it had dug some through. His eye had spun wide up in the dark to regard the stars above. The moon on its slow crossing.

  His burblings—mine—my cross to bear, my thin bitten birdish shrill he let, my name though Pa had thought it—Goose. Goose and also Cricket. We were named for the sounds thrown from us, yes, for a dream’s long-soured tongue.

  And so I loosed it. I shook the line some. Nothing, not a twitch not a nostril flared no breath no lifting brisket. So I could do it easy ease the loop of cable from his pastern where I cut him. I felt the heat rise from him. I felt the give in my knees when I kneeled by him and the heat of the softened road. So we could winch him up now. He had made it easy. We would wait for the light for the morning.

  Morning. Hello, little farm.

  STILL WE WAKE to him up come sunup. We are sleeping all on the sheet Ma spread and Goose is scrolloping over the road.

  I snip Pa’s toenails for him, turn his hem and tie his boots who cannot reach to do it.

  I can smell the barn. I smell in my hair the baby too he gummed it as we rode.

  Pa clips the lead shank on him. He feels along his bones.

  Pa leads him off between the trees, me and Ma standing out in our gowns she wears to walk in time the fallen dew the hill we climb to reach her. I sit the chair her chair to watch her, watch the nightshade fill behind her see the bats loop briefly through. Her small boy nearby sleeping.

  At length when once the snow has come to keep us snugly home, Ma goes sunup to nightfall gowned else sits the bath from meal to meal the latch thrown once the baby walks to keep him always with her to keep him safely in.

  She has heard us at our chores by then. We have backed Goose onto the slab by then. The rooster crowing on.

  Pa’s dogs spooked about for the moons Pa clipped for the tailings curled from his hooves filed flat to take the shoe and he cussed them. Cussed his horse his dogs. His runt with the mangled paw stumping in who sat with me at his knees should he sit should he think to nudge her head. Let her bump her ribs against him.

  After her I found the others easy. You go by your nose through the weeds for the traps going low to the ground like a dog. Red fox I found and muskrat, coon and the paw of what I do not know in the muck cow Maggie made of the banks of the pond I would wade in the dry out into.

  The old people could have found them caught in the dry time when they moved. Then I would not have had to. Would not have had to smell them then nor burr my hair to get to them nor haul them onto the bridge for Pa so Pa could see to flay or gut or what any else he did to them or sort the parts to bury.

  We buried them back by the chicken coop in sight of the pond where they swam if they swam or only came and drank from. Soon the rooster flapped over the pond—his Goose had gone from the field. The rooster come to sit Goose’s back to drub his back to calm him flapped in his grief to the couch when Goose passed come rain come sleet come snow. Crowing on.

  His hens in the coop to hear him. I lay in my bed and heard him the moon sweeping past the stars.

  Cricket you Cricket you.

  See the white of his face swung up?

  His bright eye webbed and curdled?

  And then when we had blinded him and set him out in the field to browse I saw the skin seal and crumple how in the cold it was blent and gathered.

  They will do it to a baby too, a rooster will give him half a chance he does it to his own. And his hens’ eyes are small.

  I lay in my bed and pictured it.

  Pictured Pa when I came upon him.

  I came upon him in the wet months yet the flying leaves the sinking grass the geese dropped from their wedges yet and scudding across the pond.

  I had come on the bus from school. I skipped. I swung my feet through the fallen leaves to smell the sweet wet smell of them to smell the wind the needling rain that in the night had felled them. The leaves flew up and clung to me to the ratty flounce of the skirt I wore the bitten ridge of my shinbones. I stopped at the pond to peel them off me.

  I could hear the tractor then. You turn the fields to fallow them. I liked to listen for Pa to know where he might leave the plow the harrow bed the baler.

  I heard him. But I did not think Pa at first I did not think listen. I sang my song the coming home song against his note I had not heard and hope again to never. Still I looked about and saw him. He was wallowed up on the couch in the green with the yellow bead the pond was deep on the couch back scarcely showing.

  He could not be Pa. He was something in the wet the old people left that had loosed itself from the muck as it went and yet it spit my name. With still our barns to pass between, the hill to the house to run. I ran. I ran the day the bees got Pa and ran the day I held his Goose in the washroom where we shod. But I did not run far. I heard him bellow. You try it try to run. Drop to your hands if the grass is high and dream he cannot find you there with your heart knotted small as the rabbits new-born he brings to you in the crown of his hat the days he plows to calm.

  But I have never saved one. I have never saved one yet of all the ones he brings to me I have lost them all.

  I LAY ON the bank and watched him. The longer I kept away from Pa the harder it was to go to him.

  And yet I went to him. I knocked the bees from his neck for him Pa gone in his hurt not hearing me not a place on him to hold him by I held him by his hair. Through the green I swam him. I could have walked the pond but it took my shoes from my feet the silken bottom. Me and Pa dragged a stripe in the green where I swam where it folded against Pa’s head. Pa Pa.

  Once we grew a pig so fat even its eyelids fattened, ear and jowl and bursting cheek and by and by its eyeballs—squeezed—stood away loose from its head.

  Then Pa. Bellowing out of the wallow. The cow to her teats to cool. The tractor run up on a stump and stopped and still at its ticking idle. I made my hands a stirrup—Pa’s legs were too swelled to bend. Swing up. And from the time of riding shotgun years I knew which stick to muscle, which to back to raise the plow when once we had it scraping up loud against the road.

  Ma in her chair past autumn. Us come up come dew come snow. The baby let to his knees at the screen to scream the day the bees swarmed Pa and Ma came out to swat at us going, “Gracious lord above.”

  Think back to when time was in her—my soft head broken through. Before that. When time was she was Pa’s. Before my hair I grew in her that made her retch and swoon.

  A girl. And her boy sick and small. I took the strength she had in her. I kept them up nights in her: their Cricket. Chirruping in the swill.

  Boy, her boy, her funny runt. He could not be Pa’s. Who came before they thought his name and stayed they had not thought he might for such a long time after. Boy, she called him. Goose, you goose, and mister—Ma thinking not to choose a name to have to have to call him by should he be taken from her.

  We never took him from her. Even when he crawled. Nor say I ever came to her to cut my name most fine in her not before nor after Ma swelling as he grew.

  I was all Pa’s girl. The bar
ns were mine and the hay in the barns and Pa and the trees and the cows. Cow Maggie leaned against me. The birds flew south by the stars. Barn and barn and barn and pond the road climbing out through the fields. Mine and Pa’s, my pa’s. The high quiet wobbledy stars. And Ma where she sat in the window was ours and sat in the shut-away buttery gold, the dogs at our heels the stars. Should you wish.

  Ma’s shirt bled pinkly through.

  The seed-blown fields the wickerings. The slickened births and murders, ours, the fierce wide blowing day.

  I TENDED TO him gently. Pa wallowing in the tub. He would swell to fit it. And swell till he could not budge from it and I would spoon a mash to him and keep the water cooled for him and nest his head in my pillow. His eye unloosed like a doll’s. Fetch a sledge. Break him duly from it.

  Pa’s arms puffed out to float from him and seep in milky puddles, his skin so hot to touch it scalds. I did not touch it. I worked the coughing spigot, churned the cold to sap the heat slowly not to hurt him. And made as not to hear him, his voice not his no voice at all—a green sea grief a great whale culled and keening in its traces.

  I daubed a paste where he was stung a curdly dull against his skin I first swiped bright with butter. Pa. Who plowed the bees it comes to me to see if Ma would see to him to see if she would tend to him but Ma would not have come.

  Why seem at last to hear him? Ma would not have come.

  And who was it came upon him?

  And so I took it slow. I made Ma’s clucks and muddlings and swabbed and slowly doctored him. I had no Goose to think of no price to fetch no mouths to fill no deed to hide the doing of.

  No day yet when we shod.

  “It’s me, Pa. Pa, it’s Cricket.”

  “Get.”

  I was not her. Not Ma and never Cricket quite but proof she had not come.

  I TOOK TO sleeping in the barn else the sinking grass in the leaves unhinged in the wind. Pa’s rooster nightly crowing.