Night Birds, The

by Maltman, Thomas

  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.

  Her brothers crashed through the prairie grass behind her, still calling her name. Hazel held up a hand, “Stop,” she said. “You’ve done enough.”

  Her voice was a clear alto. All these years of silence and suddenly she spoke.

  Caleb was shaking. He’d really done it, pulled the trigger. And he felt no exhilaration, only regret. Ahead of him he saw his sister kneel. There was the boy and the rusty shotgun lying beside him. There was his dark-haired sister cradling the boy’s head in her lap and the boy’s blood staining her apron. The boy was still alive. His skin was the freckled color of a fawn, his black eyes like mirrors, glazed with pain. Caleb saw the stark jut of the boy’s ribs, each one like a curving blade. The boy was much younger than he’d imagined. His sister was studying him with her clear green eyes. Again she spoke, and her voice in all of this was the strangest thing in his ears, “Help me carry him inside,” she said.

  BLOOD PRAYER

  THEY MADE A space for him beside the stove, cleared the floor of blankets and laid him down. In the shadows of the cabin the blood pooling below him looked black, a ceaseless trickle from his abdomen. “The lantern,” Hazel said. “Bring it here.” She undid his medicine belt, felt the boy shudder when she pressed a hand to his chest. Lines of goosepimples rippled along his arms. When they fluttered open, his eyes were dark lakes, all pupil. Hazel was kneeling in a warm pool of his blood. She saw that the bullet had passed through the lower right abdomen at a downward angle. She heard her voice, a tinny sound in her own ears, so long unused, as she gave commands, sent Asa to gather wood for the stove, set Caleb to tearing strips of cloth and helping her pick up the grunting weight of this boy so she could study the exit wound. And the blood continued in a ceaseless stream, each breath a shudder. Hazel smelled the boy’s fear and her own that matched it.

  I am the daughter of a healer , she thought. She closed her eyes and tried to remember Emma, but the voice she heard in her mind was not her mother’s but that of the blood healer she and her father had visited one night on the river, the only one of them that ever touched Hazel. That night her father had left Hazel alone with the woman. He had been a long time gathering yarrow flowers.

  She saw the reflection of herself in the boy’s black pupils and this image, herself within the eyes of another, cast her mind back to the close-smelling room of the healer. She shut her eyes, remembering how the woman’s tallow candles smelled of the animal they once were.

  That night the woman had withdrawn her hand from Hazel’s throat and studied the girl before her. “I will tell your pa what he came to hear,” she said. “But it is useless to him.” The woman’s baby continued to suckle at her breast while she spoke. Hazel heard the river all around them, ever-rushing like a heartbeat. The woman’s gray eyes, the color of stone, held Hazel transfixed. “He is only a man and what do men know of the blood hours between birth and death? They go through this life as warring children. But you, child, will know both in this lifetime. Hold out your hand.” Hazel’s hand had shaken as she stretched it out. When the healer touched her palm, the skin felt fevered. Her fingers were long and fine. “You must understand that there is no magic. Do you hear me?” The girl nodded, mesmerized by her touch. “There is only belief, something far more powerful. Even demons believe in the Son of Man. They know his name and fear it. The yarrow flowers and the Bible verse are only a ritual. Power comes from your touch, skin against skin. Power comes when your belief joins with theirs. If belief is powerful enough to build and destroy nations, then surely it might command the blood in its narrow travels from heart to wound.” She withdrew her hand from Hazel’s and when she stepped away Hazel’s reflection faded from her eyes.

  The skin along her hands prickled now with the memory of the woman’s touch. She had wanted to ask how it was possible for her to do such a thing if she had no voice. She was only a child and didn’t understand all of what woman meant. If you cannot pray aloud, how can others share what you hope? Before she could find a way to communicate the door had creaked open as her pa shouldered back into the room with useless yarrow in his fist.

  The memory lived within her as she knelt by the boy and saw her own reflection go dim in his eyes. Hazel felt her breath burn in her throat. It was that simple after all. The thing her mother would have wanted Hazel to do more than anything. She only needed to continue speaking.

  The boy’s eyes blinked open and his lips curled over gleaming teeth while his hands probed the wounds below and tried to brush away the cloths Caleb was pressing there. The blood ran black through his fingers. Hazel saw the small, coin-shaped hole and the burned tissue that puckered the edges of the wound. With each breath the boy took, a new stream slicked out to join the widening pool beneath him. All her life she had only been a witness for the things that happened, never someone with the power to shape events.

  Hazel shut her eyes, imagining that she was that healer with the pale elegant hands. When she opened them again, she was certain what she must do. The boy had curled onto his side below her. Her thin fingers slid perfectly into holes of the boy’s body as though made for the wound. Into either side of him she slid one index finger and felt the warm jelly of his tissue and the quick pulse of his blood. The boy shuddered but did not cry out. In the six years since her mother, Emma, had died Hazel had not spoken a single word before this afternoon, but now she began to pray aloud, imagining the healer’s husky voice and her words, imagining the healer’s touch moving down through her and into this boy. She spoke the verse from Ezekiel that the woman had taught her: And when I past thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto the
e when thou wast in thy blood, Live: Yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live! Over and over she said these words like the men in revival tents who prophesied in spirit languages not heard since the beginning of time. The words were old King James and nonsense to the boy, and yet she felt him respond below her as though his blood recognized this language. She kept her eyes sealed shut and prayed that prayer into the room. Her head felt filled with light like a song, a chant of becoming. Hazel felt Caleb press his hand over the top of her own, applying more pressure, his touch cool while the blood between her fingers was thick as heated jelly. She forgot about the room and the boys gathered around her and felt the words travel like smoke through her own blood and down into her fin- gertips, until she could no longer feel the blood spilling. How long she prayed, she didn’t know, but when at last she eased her fingers out of the hole in his body, the flow had slackened and congealed. Caleb pressed fresh cloth around it.

  The Dakota boy’s eyes were shut, his jaw clenched tight even in unconsciousness, but in the frail light of the cabin his chest yet rose and fell. Hazel held up her own fingers in wonder. Both she and the boy had been transmuted by this moment. He would continue on some underworld journey and come back no longer a boy, the gray in his lock burnished to silver. And what had she become, a girl long used to silence, yet capable of such utterances that blood spoke unto blood?