The Weight of Feathers

by Anna-Marie McLemore

  A string of bubbles slipped from Lace’s lips, the last air she had left. The dark water turned to stripes of light. Red like the Cheerwine in the liquor store refrigerator case. Green as lime soda. Electric blue like the Frostie bottles.

  She’d been taught to protect her tail like it was as much part of her body as those little girls thought. But now its weight and its trailing fabric were killing her.

  She braced for ripping the fabric to hurt, and tore the fin in half. The tail split up the side. She kicked out of the river roots. The empty tail dangled from the colander, leaving her naked except for the fake pearls of her costume top. She floated toward the surface like a bubble.

  Her grandmother would wring her neck for leaving her tail, but not as hard as she would if Lace washed up dead. A mermaid drowned in the North Fork. What would that do to their ticket sales? Abuela would use every yerba buena in her suitcase to bring Lace back to life just so she could kill her again.

  The net came with her, caught on her fingers. The threads, aqua as a swimming pool, almost glowed in the dark water, this awful thing like the one that nearly killed Lace’s cousin.

  She shook the nylon threads off, and they sank back toward the river roots.

  Lace surfaced to the noise of far-off screaming, and a long call like a tornado siren. Louder than her gasping. Louder than her coughing. Louder than her sucking the air from the dark.

  Her half-drowned brain fizzed at the edges, making her hear things. She got her breath back and shook her head to clear it all.

  But the screaming stayed. So did the siren’s yell. She rubbed her eyes and temples, circling her bare legs to tread. She pressed behind her ears to clear the water. But the noises kept on, joined by a thrumming through the ground. A whole town running at once.

  She lifted her head to the sky, a shade of blue from dark.

  A cloud swirled over Almendro, so thick it seemed made of liquid. It looked deeper as it moved, solid as water. Tilting her head up made her dizzy with wondering if it too held a current and tangles of roots, a mirrored river banding the sky.

  Qui vivra verra.

  He who lives will see.

  It took Cluck ten seconds to get up the cottonwood. He didn’t even have to paint iodine solution on the soles of his feet the way his cousins did. Climbing had turned his rough as bark.

  The moon looked wedged between the hills, yellow as tansy buttons. It got free and rose, paling. He could almost make out the ringing of distant glass chimes, the show’s only music.

  Then sound broke the sky open. The moon shuddered. The siren’s first scream filled the dark, turning the stars to needles. It grew, spreading out from the plant like air thinning a balloon’s skin.

  Cluck put his hand to the tree’s trunk and steadied himself. His heartbeat clicked in his ears. Another drill. By now, Almendro had gotten used to them. When Cluck’s grandfather worked as a safety engineer, the plant ran drills more than regulations mandated. Now they just blared the sirens to make the plant sound compliant, while telling employees to ignore the noise and keep working.

  The ground wavered like a pond’s surface. The porcelain vines flickered with life, lit up with the chatter of small creatures. Sparrows flitted to their nests. He made out the dark shapes of wild rabbits and prairie voles darting into burrows. Squirrels scratched up trees. Two stray cats slipped into a hollow trunk, a gray fox into its den. They scrambled like wasps into a nest, sensing rain coming.

  Cluck lifted his eyes to the moon. Wisps of white-gray cut across its gold, like curls of smoke off his grandfather’s cigarettes.

  He looked over his shoulder. A ball of cirrus clouds rose from the chemical plant, a nest of white thread. He swore he felt the cloud reach out through the night, the threads tangling in his hair, cutting through his throat toward his lungs. The closest he’d ever come to le vertige. Not from height, but from the distance across Almendro’s sky.

  The moon pulled back. The cloud spread out from the plant, a blanket unfurling. The siren throbbed between his temples.

  Cluck half-climbed, half-jumped down.

  He ran through the woods, calling his grandfather. “Pépère,” then “Alain,” then “Pépère” again.

  Cluck ran down the hill. He found his mother sitting on a costume trunk, counting ticket receipts.

  He caught his breath. “We have to stop the show.”

  She looked up from her ledger, pencil paused.

  “We have to stop the show now,” he said.

  She shook her head and went back to her numbers.

  He slammed the book.

  She backhanded him. He knew that kind of slap, meant to knock sense into him as much as to reprimand. Suggesting they stop a show was little distance from cursing the family name. They’d gone on through sprained wrists, jammed shoulders, nosebleeds. If one fairy twisted her ankle, the rest kept on. The first night Margaux took off with a local, they put Violette in her place, like changing out a lightbulb.

  Cluck turned his face to his mother again, his cheek hot.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

  He lifted his hand, toward the siren’s swell. The glass chime sounds died under its rise. But even the audience ignored it. The sirens annoyed the residents of Almendro, but they were used to them. The tourists took their cues from the locals and figured no tornado or air raid was coming.

  “It’s not a drill,” Cluck said. He pointed to the sky. The ball had thinned to a veil. It spread out over the town, opening like a trumpet flower.

  To his mother it must have looked like cloud cover. Nothing more. She had begun to tip her chin back down to her work when Cluck heard his grandfather’s voice.

  “He’s right,” Pépère said. Cluck could see the readiness in those hands, his fingers half-bent. But what would he do with those hands? The plant had locked him out years ago, so he wasn’t there to check gauges or turn off valves.

  Cluck’s mother watched the sky. The veil thickened and grew uneven, like la religieuse, the hard layer coating the bottom of a fondue caquelon.

  The pen fell from her hands. “Et maintenant que faisons-nous?” she asked Cluck’s grandfather. What do we do now?

  It was the first time Cluck had heard her sound like Pépère’s daughter, her voice open and fearful, instead of annoyed, put-upon, as though the old man were an aging dog. Her words so often brimmed with “Et alors?” What now? Now they were full of “Papa, take this, fix it.”

  The three of them didn’t whisper. The audience couldn’t hear them. A hundred yards, the trees, and that siren took the sound.

  But the audience saw the cloud. Children watching for fairies spotted it first, thinking it was the magic of winged beings. They squealed and waved at the fairy cloud.

  Their parents followed those small hands. That cloud drew a shared gasp from mothers, a what-the-hell from fathers. The siren swelled from background noise to a shriek, and they registered the sound.

  Pépère closed the space between him and them. “Ladies and gentlemen, my apologies,” he said, his voice level but loud. It carried, pulled their eyes from the sky, covered the faint breath of glass chimes. “We’re going to have to cut tonight’s show a bit short.”

  Cluck watched him, his own muscles sparking and restless. How did Alain Corbeau keep such stillness in his voice?

  “I’m going to ask you all to proceed to the road,” his grandfather said. “There’s a service station very close. Everyone go there. Stay inside or under an awning.” He spoke in his safety engineer’s voice, a pilot directing passengers. Stay calm. Breathe. Brace. “Do not try to go to your cars. Do not try to go home.”

  Cluck’s cousins climbed down from the boughs, light as cicadas. Never rush when they can see you, Nicole Corbeau had taught them. The women moved no faster than the blooms that pulled loose from their flower crowns and drifted down.

  The audience scattered.

  “If you need assistance to the road, ask any of us,” Pépère said. “If
you’re wearing anything cotton, and you can remove it easily, then do so, but the important thing is to get to the service station.”

  “Cotton?” a man with a camera strap around his neck asked the question Cluck could see on every face. “Why cotton?”

  “The fallout may contain adhesive intermediates,” his grandfather said. “Cotton will stick to the skin worse than other fabric.”

  There was no screaming, no flurry of clothes tossed aside. Alain Corbeau’s voice calmed them like a song. Men took off cotton pullovers. Mothers urged children out of cotton jackets. But shirts, pants, and dresses stayed on, and the audience streamed toward the gas station at the road’s edge, quick, but not running. Alain Corbeau’s stillness assured them that, cotton or no, they would be fine as long as they took cover.

  Cluck pulled his grandfather aside. “Cotton. They’re all wearing cotton.”

  “They won’t be hurt,” his grandfather said. “Between the station and the pump awnings there’s enough cover.” He eyed the sky, gauging how long they had. “Half of them are already there.”

  The cloud balled like chewing gum. Soon it would break into rain. Once that cloud fell, full of the plant’s adhesives, polyester would stick to their skin just as bad.

  “Why did you say cotton?” Cluck asked.

  “Think, boy,” Pépère said.

  He heard these words from his grandfather more than his own name. Pépère always asked him questions to make sure he stayed vif, sharp. What was the difference between primary and secondary remiges? What were the components of structural coloration? If Cluck didn’t give the answer as easily as the day of the week, he heard “Think, boy.”

  But his grandfather was choosing now to quiz him?

  Pépère walked a few paces behind the last audience members, a wary shepherd. “What do they make at the plant?”

  Cluck went with him, his muscles tense with wanting to run. “I don’t remember.”

  “You remember,” Pépère said.

  There had to be somewhere Cluck needed to get. The mayor’s house? Not that he knew the address. The police station? Anyone who could do something about the strands of cloud tangling overhead. This town was deaf to those sirens.

  “What do they make, boy?” his grandfather asked.

  “Cyanoacrylate, okay?” Cluck shouted.

  The feeling of the word stayed on his tongue. Cyanoacrylate. Those six syllables rooted his feet in the underbrush. The memory of Pépère crumpling newsprint crawled up Cluck’s back. A one-paragraph story in the paper. The worker who had never been given enough safety training to know not to wear cotton. The spray of chemical eating through the man’s jeans.

  Cotton and cyanoacrylate. An exothermic reaction. It ran hot and quick.

  The need to run, to do something about the truth in those sirens, came back to Cluck’s legs.

  “Why didn’t you tell them?” he asked.

  “You don’t set off a gun in a field and then try to herd sheep,” Pépère said. “It would have panicked them. It would have taken twice as long to get them to the filling station.”

  Cluck looked where his grandfather looked. The cloud swam and twirled, the surface of a bubble a second before bursting. It would rain the same cyanoacrylate that had burned through a plant worker’s jeans.

  “Get to the house,” Pépère said. “Now.”

  “What about you?” Cluck asked.

  His grandfather nodded, a lift and lowering of his chin meant to say, Yes, I’ll be there.

  He wouldn’t. He would stay until everyone who’d come to see the show found shelter. This had been his work once.

  Cluck’s cousins drained from the woods.

  He hadn’t seen Eugenie. It gave him the feeling of stopping short just before a hillside. He noticed the lack of her, a missing pair of wings.

  “Where’s Eugenie?” Cluck asked.

  She never flaked on a show altogether like Margaux or Giselle, but a little too much Melon Ball wine and she couldn’t find the ground, forget the grove of cottonwoods and maples.

  Pépère searched the wings. “She wasn’t with you?”

  Cluck didn’t bother going back for his shoes. The wanting-to-run feeling broke, and he took off toward the stretch of woods Eugenie wandered when she got lost.

  “Boy,” Pépère called after him. “Your shirt.”

  Cluck heard those three syllables. They reached him. But they didn’t register.

  He got halfway across the woods. Then the cloud condensed into beads and fell. The sky rained hot, sticky drops. He kept his head down, shielding his eyes. The rain seared his neck and arms. His back felt scraped, stung with vinegar. The pain augured into his chest.

  His shirt gave off a low hiss. He looked down. The fabric let off steam.

  The hiss went deeper, eating through his shirt.

  Cotton. His pants, the ones his grandfather once wore, were flax linen, but Pépère’s dress shirt and Cluck’s own undershirt were cotton. They were burning him like an iron.

  It was getting into his body. His skin would give up and vanish. The heat would singe his lungs and his rib cage.

  He ripped open the buttons on his shirt, tore it off. The rain on his hands found the cotton. The pain made him bite his cheek. Blood salted his tongue.

  He pulled off his undershirt. It covered him with the feeling of wrenching away thread stuck to a scab. It left him raw to the hot chemical. It fell, and all he could do was grit his teeth against it.

  Nunca llueve a gusto de todos.

  It never rains to please everyone.

  She got out of the water, legs free of her tail, sirens pinching her forehead.

  The cloud fanned out and crept across the sky. First it looked like white cotton candy. Then it thickened, like milk curdling in tea.

  She followed the lights her father left for her, candles in glass jars to help the mermaids find their way. She felt for her dress in the underbrush, pulled it on over her costume bra. Buttoned it quickly. Ran for the motel.

  Then it started to rain. The canning jars hissed and flared. Whatever had blown up at the plant turned the flames different colors, like light through prisms.

  First the rain felt warm, like bathwater. But then it seeped through Lace’s clothes, and she felt the sting of a shower turned all the way up. Even under her dress. Especially under her dress. Her arms and calves, her hands and feet went numb to it. But her breasts and shoulders, her back and thighs felt scalded. The searing feeling ate through her, singeing her lungs, and she couldn’t get enough air to run anymore.

  Pain sucked away the tail end of a breath, and she dropped to her hands and knees. She opened her mouth for more air, but it only sharpened the feeling that each bead of rain was a little knife cutting down through the sky, piercing her hard and fast.

  The woods spread out in front of her. All those trees and all that distant darkness pressed the truth into her like a hand on her chest, that she did not have the air to get up and run again. She could not get up until those little knives stopped falling. Even if she crawled to the nearest stretch of road, it would offer less cover than these branches.

  But she couldn’t even move enough to crawl. All she could do was pull herself under the nearest tree, gritting her teeth against the feeling that her dress was soaked and heavy with poison. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to keep out what was falling from the sky. If she blinked enough of it in, it might leave her blind.

  The rain burned into her. She curled up tighter, cheek against her sleeve. She shut her eyes tight enough to see comet trails of light. She tried to keep out the feeling that the rain was a million lit matches. And the strange smell in the air that was a little like apple cider if apple cider was the venom of some night creature, the rain and stars its teeth.

  Cherchez la femme.

  Look for the woman.

  The moon showed Cluck a stripe of water. He knelt at the river’s edge and plunged in his hands, still burning from touching his shirt. The cold wat
er hushed his palms.

  “Cluck?” said Eugenie’s voice.

  “Eugenie,” he called out, looking around. “Eugenie.”

  Cluck stood up, fingers dripping river water. A dozen little flickers of motion pulled his eyes. The rain weighted down the tree’s branches, making them bow. Older greenery that couldn’t stand up to the chemical withered and slipped down.

  The night was coming apart, because this town hadn’t let Pépère save it.

  “Eugenie,” he yelled out.

  “Cluck.”

  He would have missed her if it weren’t for the wings looming over her. She had her back to a tree, leaves sheltering her. Her wings shone with the chemical. It slicked her flower crown and made it look heavy as glass.

  Whatever she’d been drinking had flushed her cheeks, but her eyes stayed wide. The moon filled her pupils like milk in a bowl.

  Cluck grabbed a handful of her dress. “Is this cotton?” He stretched the fabric, trying to tell.

  She sucked air in through her teeth and pointed to his chest. “What happened?”

  “Is this cotton?” His shouting cut her off.

  “Silk,” she said, the word startled out of her. “Mémère’s.”

  “Come on.” He pulled her with him, and they ran, the ground sticky under their feet. “Watch your eyes,” he said. Drops had fallen onto his cheeks and forehead. The fumes made him tear up.

  The animals had all taken cover. No rustling in the underbrush. Only the steady rhythm of siren calls.

  Eugenie stopped cold and slapped Cluck’s arm. “Look.”

  About thirty yards off, a girl was curled under a tree, sparser than the one Eugenie had picked. Drops of the chemical rain trickled down.

  The girl shielded her head with her arms.

  Cluck knew the shape of her. He knew her hands. He’d seen her set them on her hips. He knew her hair, now frosted with chemicals.

  And he knew with one look that her dress was made of cotton.

  The rain would eat through her dress to her skin, and she would not know why. She was following the rules every teacher since kindergarten would have taught her. Cover your face. Protect your eyes. It held true for earthquakes, debris, hail, but not tonight. Because she was smart, and followed those rules, the rain would dissolve her.