Black Helicopters

by Blythe Woolston

“This is the queen,” says Da. “She can move all of these ways.” He slides the piece along the board, back and forth, side-to-side, and corner-to-corner. “She is the most powerful piece on the board.”

  “This is a pawn. He’s kind of a little guy.” Da taps the little round head of the piece. “The first time a pawn moves, it gets to take two baby steps, one, two. But mostly they just march along, one step at a time. If another piece is in front of him, he’s just stuck. He can fight, but only if the other piece is right close, kitty-corner.”

  “You aren’t reading,” says Da. “You are just looking at the pictures.”

  “I am too reading. I know the words.”

  “You just got it memorized. That’s not reading,” says Da.

  I look at the pictures. There are mice dressed up in beautiful clothes. They live in a house. When I look at the pictures, I hear the words in my head. It sounds like my Mabby.

  “You need some more books. Some books without rabbits with clothes on. Rabbits don’t wear clothes, Valley,” says Da. Then he walks over to the cook stove and shoves my book in the fire.

  “They wasn’t rabbits,” I say. “They was mice.”

  “Mice don’t wear clothes either,” says Da.

  In the morning, I sneak and check to see if the book is all burnt up. It is ashes, mostly ashes, but there are some pictures that didn’t burn all the way. The edges are black, and the paper is brittle and brown, but I still have a mouse in a blue dress.

  I hide the bits of pages in the den.

  Bo knows I have them, but he doesn’t care.

  We are so, so happy to hear his truck tires on the gravel. We don’t climb out of the den, but we are so, so happy. Da says we can’t trust our ears; that one truck sounds like another; that we should never come out until we hear his voice give the all clear. But our ears know the sound of our own Da, and our bodies are so excited we almost squirm out of our skin.

  “Pickled beets.” It’s Da’s voice. It’s the all-clear words. Bo and I both hit the ladder at the same time, and we are fighting a little bit to see who gets up first, but it’s both of us really since our arms and legs are so tangled up together.

  “Did I say pickled beets?”

  We nod. We are sure he did. We heard it. I’m maybe a little afraid I made a mistake, but no, Da’s face is happy. We got it right.

  “I should have said cherries.” Da points at the table. There’s a whole big flat box of dark cherries.

  “The job was up at the big lake,” says Da. “And I thought about how much my pups love cherries.”

  We do love cherries, but we never had so many before. Who knew there were so many cherries in the whole world? Da carries the box out onto the back porch. The summer heat smells like pine needles. The summer heat tastes like cherries, black as blood blisters, but juicy and sweet.

  Bo and I sit on the porch with the box of cherries between us and crush them into our mouths so fast the juice runs down to our elbows. We spit the seeds like target practice. Then we spit at each other — not just the seeds but chewed-up cherry juice jam. It spatters us both. Then we rest. We stretch out on the porch boards and slowly, slowly eat cherries while the big white clouds scoot across the blue glass sky.

  I’m the first one who has to run to the outhouse. My insides are full of growling cherries, fighting and biting to get out. The door bangs open. It’s Bo. The cherries are eating him, too. Then I don’t do anything except hunch over and hang on until I am just a shaking skin full of nothing at all. I’m afraid to stand up and pull up my pants. I’m afraid the cherries aren’t done with me yet. So I just sit there on one hole and Bo sits on the other while the shiny, droning flies bang against the screen on the outhouse window. They sound like cherry pits spit out so hard they buzz before they hit.

  After a while, Da calls us. He strips our clothes off and stands us side by side on the rock by the front door. Then he pours buckets of water over us and washes us off from our head to our feet.

  “Maybe you know now,” he said. “About cherries. Do you want some more?”

  “Yes.” I did. I think Bo did too, but he didn’t say it.

  Da laughs and says, “There’s a few for tomorrow. Maybe don’t eat them so fast. Now, though, you are going to bed. But one thing more. I got you some new books. I want you to try hard and learn the words, not just look at the pictures.”

  There are no animals with clothes on in the book Da puts in my hands. It is just a thin little book, but there are many pictures on each page. Da points to a girl with wings on her hat. “See her, Valley? She is a valkyrie.”

  I take the book and look at the pictures. The valkyrie has a knife and a horse. It’s a pretty good book, I decide. I don’t think I’ll miss my mouse and her blue dress.

  “Look,” says Da, and he points to a word on the cover. The letters are squiggly, but when Da says, “It says raven,” I know it is true.

  The long daylight of summer isn’t over, but it feels good to climb under the covers in my loft bed, naked and clean. I think I’m going to read until it’s too dark, and that would be hours and hours, but I fall asleep before the sun does.

  The words in my new book are difficult. The pictures help me know the story. This is a great battle. Here the father is dying. Now the valkyries ride out of the sky, and they are beautiful. These others, green with pointed teeth, they should not be trusted. It is interesting, but confusing. I think maybe I will need Da to read it to me one time, to help me learn, but then I turn the page and there is an animal with clothes on. It isn’t a rabbit, but that won’t make any difference to Da. He will burn this book if he sees it, I think, so I keep it hidden in the den.

  Every day, I study my book. Some words I know: PICKLE, QUEEN, BRAVE. Some words Bo helps me know. He can read better than me because Mabby taught him. Mabby would have taught me, too, but Mabby is gone. Bo likes my book, so he doesn’t mind.

  Some words do their own talking: the sword swings, “SKRAATH,” and the storm shrieks, “HAAOOOOOWL.” I copy the words I don’t know carefully, exactly as the letters are in the book: AVALANCHE, ABYSS, CHAOS. When I show that list to Da, he says that is smart, to work hard that way. He pets my hair away from my eyes and touches me on the nose. He teaches me each word, how to say it and what it means. Then I have to take the words back with me and see how they work in the story.

  Bo and I have a long talk about some of the words in my book. The letters, if they are letters, do not look right. Are they letters? Are they words? It seems to be the things that ravens are saying.

  We stand on the porch and see if we can talk to ravens. We try to sound like they do, but we don’t know what we are saying. Whatever we are saying does not seem to be very interesting, because the birds hardly ever talk back. When the ravens do answer, they might be telling us to shut up. We don’t know. We try using the names for ravens we learned in the book. “Hugin! Munin!” we yell in people talk, but the ravens don’t pay any attention to that either.

  There is a dead raven in the woods. We think, at first, somebody shot it. Maybe Those People don’t like ravens. Maybe they kill them like coyotes. But when we turn it over and look, there isn’t any bullet hole. There is just a dead raven. Its claws are drawn up into bony little fists.

  Bo takes off his knife and cuts off one foot and drops it in his pocket.

  “Feel this, Valley,” he says while he pets the raven. Under my fingers, the feathers are like soft glass, shiny as a black mirror.

  “I’m going to take these for you, Valley.” Bo is sliding the point of his knife into the joint where a wing meets the body. He takes off both wings, very neatly. Bo is good with a knife. He is a good butcher.

  “I’m going to put these on your hat. Valkyries have wings on their hats,” says Bo. Bo is a good brother.

  Mites and maggots are hatching in my wool hat.

  “They came out of the feathers. They came for the raven,” says Da. “We should burn it up, and get a new hat.”

  I do
n’t want to give up my beautiful hat. “Maybe we can just bake it in the oven for some days?” I bargain.

  “Well, we can try that way,” says Da, “but I get to look at it before you wear it again. I don’t want mites and maggots living on you. And you kids should maybe not play with dead things when you find them. It’s different than if you kill it. You don’t know how it died. It might be poison, or it might be sickness. A person doesn’t know, so a person shouldn’t play with dead things.”

  We put my valkyrie hat in the oven. The maggots stop moving and the mites stop crawling. I have to shake the dead ones out very gently so I don’t mess up the wings.

  The wings aren’t spread out like in the pictures of the valkyries; they are closed and drooping down. They are heavy for the hat, but I don’t mind. When I run, or when the wind blows hard, sometimes the wings lift up and I imagine they spread out like a flying bird. That’s good enough for me.

  “It is time to learn more chess pieces,” says Da. “This one, the horse one, is called a knight. He’s a tricky one. He can jump over other ones.”

  “That’s what a horse is good for, jumping.”

  “Yes, but that’s not all of it. He doesn’t go straight. He always goes a little bit sideways too.” Da moves the horse in the funny L-shaped paths it can travel.

  “The valkyries in my book ride horses. They are kind of like knights.”

  “Well, yes, they kind of are.”

  “Will we have horses one day?”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that. We got a truck. A truck is better. I think all the valkyries got trucks now, too. But they still wear the hats with the feathers on. . . .” When I look at Da’s face instead of the knight in his fingers, I see he’s teasing now. He’s got a little-boy smile playing hide-and-seek under his whiskers.

  “Da!”

  “Let’s get serious now. Let’s see how fast you can learn. You show me where this knight can go.”

  No fire, don’t go outside in the daytime, and no flashlights anywhere except the den. Those are the rules. As long as we follow the rules, the black helicopters can’t get us. He knows he can trust us. If he ever finds out different, then he’ll have to lock us inside. Nobody wants that. Da says it’s good we don’t like being trapped. He says it means we are free people. He says he knows it is confusing. For now, we have to be cooped up a little, like chickens. We know what happened when the chickens had their freedom. The world is a bad place, and too much freedom was bad for chickens. It is bad for children too.

  I can’t lean back into the seat of the U-Haul truck because my vest gets in the way. So I perch forward and stare out the window. Nothing I see matters. The big rolls of hay, the trailers surrounded by junk and clunkers, the hillsides where all the trees are burnt to black bristles. I just look at those things because they are there when I open my eyes.

  “Gas,” says Dolph, but then he pulls right past the pumps and parks between a big silver tanker truck and a sky-scraping sign that says THE BEAVER TRAP — BEST TAILS IN THE WEST. At night the neon beaver’s tail probably flashes up and down, but it’s not night and stopping for this is ridiculous. Live Nude Exotic Dancers are not part of the mission.

  “Gimme forty-five minutes,” says Dolph.

  We’ve already had the conversation about time and the plan. Dolph says he can make up time — there’s no reason to drive so slow on the open interstate. He’s wrong. We can’t call attention to the truck, and we might if we go too fast. Bo understood those things. Bo taught me those things. But it is impossible to teach Dolph anything. Dolph is a waste of skin. His brain is made of earwax. His mom should have flushed the toilet on his birthday.

  I wish I could kill him right here, but I need him to drive.

  Two ravens swoop in front of the windshield and glide to land on the posts of a ragged barbwire fence at the far end of the parking lot. They are big and still and looking right at me. I jerk the door handle up and jump down onto the asphalt. The ravens are waiting for me, so I walk across the lot, past the Beaver Trap, past the casino, past a restaurant, until I come to the edge of the field.

  There is a dry irrigation ditch between the fence and me where the two birds sit on top of the wooden posts. The sunlight on their feathers turns black to silver. They are shiny and bright-edged as volcanic glass. They are obviously magic. Odin’s ravens: Hugin and Munin, Thought and Memory. I’m not sure which is which.

  I slide down the bank of the ditch and hunker at the bottom, looking up at the ravens. One looks at me. The other rustles its wings like a fan.

  “I’m here,” I say.

  The sound of the explosion is loud enough to knock me onto my knees, even though the bank of the ditch protects me. The weight of my vest pulls me forward until I’m flat on the ground before the second explosion moves over me in a stink of heat.

  When I open my eyes, the ravens are gone, turned into black smoke that chokes the sun into a little silver spot. My ears aren’t right. I crawl along the bottom of the ditch away from that place. I crawl and crawl until I come to some cottonwood trees. Then I let myself climb to the top of the ditch bank and look back.

  Stupid Dolph wasted the truck bomb on some scumbags and strippers and waitresses with tired feet. Stupid, stupid Dolph. This is not according to plan.

  I hear a siren. My ears are recovering. They still feel full of water, but I hear the siren. It is coming from the blacktop road that connects the town, whatever town it is, to the interstate. It is a little red fire truck. Good luck, little truck. Maybe you can keep the fire from spreading into the empty fields or up the hill to the on-ramp. I hear other sirens now — troopers probably. Guys with fast cars and guns are more useless than that little red truck, but they are coming anyway. Those People will be on the scene.

  I could walk up to the volunteer firefighters and the troopers and blow them up. I might even kill some paramedics. It’s an opportunity, but not much of one. It is only marginally less wasteful than standing in the middle of the field and using the vest to flip some dirt and dried-up cow patties into the air. I can do better.

  If I want to do better, I can’t hang around here. The question is, Where should I be instead? And how am I going to get there? Hitching a ride is easier on the two lanes than the interstate. Bo taught me that. He also taught me that hitching is the last resort. Hitching means giving up control. Giving up control is always the last resort. But the highway between the town and the place where the Beaver Trap used to be is too exposed. It will be the site of abnormal activity. People will be noticing things, and I don’t want to be noticed.

  I climb up onto the ditch bank. There is a path, not much used. It is dotted with scrub willow here and there, so there is some cover. Not that anyone will be looking at the ditch banks. A ditch bank is far less interesting than the fire and the smoke and the flashing lights, glittering blue and red. It isn’t a direct path into town, but it is the way to go. Here in the fields, no eye will see me because no eye will look. I’m as invisible as a cow or a bale of hay.

  It is time for us to learn about work.

  “It is always best to buy used stuff,” says Da. “And don’t buy it close to home.” Then he pushes the glass door open, a little bell rings, and we go in. Bo and I are holding hands. We must not let go of each other, and we must not touch anything in the store. We may look, but no touching.

  It is a very big place. There are so many clothes. We follow Da between clothes and clothes and clothes. The air tastes funny. I pull my sleeve over my nose so I don’t have to smell when I breathe.

  “We need to get our Valley a dress,” says Da, and he stops in front of a wall of colors, dresses in so many sizes. Da unhooks one hanger from the rest and holds the limp yellow dress in front of me. “Too big.” Another one, red and white with cherries — I like cherries — but Da says, “Too little.” Then a pink one with little flowers made of ribbons. “Just right. You keep ahold of this.” He wraps the dress around the hanger and puts it in my hand.
/>   Then Da leads us on, out of the canyons of clothes to a wall full of books.

  “Bo, you get to pick a new book.”

  Bo points to a book with a shiny green cover and red words. He doesn’t touch it. He waits for Da to touch it. Da picks it up and reads, “Tarzan of the Apes.” He opens it and looks at the pages. “You sure this is the one you want? There are some big words in here: carcass, barbaric ornaments, dexterity. This isn’t an easy book.”

  Bo just nods. Yes, this is the book he wants.

  Da puts the book in his hand. Bo can see it close now and so can I. There’s a guy wearing underpants and a knife. He has a monkey. I want this book too. Bo made a good decision. I like that book way more than I like this stupid dress.

  Then we walk on past glass bluebirds and cups and things-I-don’t-know-what-they-are. Da picks a clock up from the shelf; he turns it over and looks inside. “Batteries,” he says. “All the clocks got batteries now. Got to go to a damn antique store to get a decent windup.” He puts the clock back on the shelf and leads us back toward the door.

  There is a woman waiting at the counter.

  Da says, “Put the stuff up here.”

  She picks it up and smiles. “Did you find everything you needed?”

  Da nods and gives her money. I know Da would have liked a different kind of clock. I know I would have liked a different kind of dress.

  “Your children have such good manners,” says the woman. “Can I give them a little present?”

  “Yes,” says Da. “They are good kids.”

  The woman hands me a plastic woman no bigger than a hammer handle. “You can make her some clothes.” The plastic woman is totally naked. Her hair — she has a lot hair — is a fuzzy yellow clump.

  “This is for you,” she says to Bo. “Oh, I’m sorry. . . . Do you let him play with guns? I know some folks now they don’t want their kids playing with toy guns.”

  “Not a problem,” says Da. Then the woman smiles and puts the gun into Bo’s hand.

  “You all come back again,” says the woman, then she turns to the next customer, who has an armful of clothes she wants to buy. She is carrying more clothes than we got in our whole family.