She released my hand and shook Carey’s.
The places were filling quickly around us, Katie and Tuck, Elle and Jen, Maggie and others. Each table covered in dishes. Katie told us what everything was as everyone settled: the rabbit soup, crab chowder, salads, sauerkraut with dulse, bread and cheese and butter, sweet roasted squash custard, bottles of dandelion and elderberry wine. Carey looked calm but out of place in his uniform.
Sister stood at the head of our table and soon the room fell quiet. She nodded and smiled as she scanned the room, taking time over the faces of those gathered.
“Here we are,” she began, “once again under a harvest moon, on our great green island. Among friends, new and old. All family. We gather to celebrate the work we have done, to give thanks for another year.” She picked up a glass and held it aloft. We all did the same.
“Another year!” she called.
“Another year!” came the response.
We drank. I caught Carey’s gaze over his glass.
There was a long pause while we set our glasses down.
Sister began again: “I saw my first shrike of the season this week. I was pulling garlic mustard from the potatoes at the field’s edge. We here—”
Sister looked at me, then at Carey.
“—we here have come to know the shrike, who shows up in the fall. The migration. Thousands of birds gather and fly in the night, by some inner coordinates, never questioning, never asking why? Just following the calclass="underline" north or south. They land in our trees at night, feast on our mosquitoes, our horseflies, or they pass us by, urged on by the call. You might hear their wing beats under the stars and wonder whose spirit has flown this island. Yet some of our winged friends spend the winter among us. The hardier ones”—laughter trickled through the group. “We welcome them, we accept them as our own for as long as they choose to stay. The shrike is one of these: a winter guest. The shrike has an unmistakable song: a cheerful trill, uplifting, like a ladder of light, when your hands are in the dirt. This morning I heard her song and I knew she was among us again. I listened to her for a good while, thinking of the work we do to survive and the songs we sing. Soon the shrike was done with her morning call, and I heard the smaller birds again — they bounced from branch to earth all around me, the sparrows diving to and fro, and the nuthatches in the trees. Then there was a thrashing in the brush beyond the field and the mewling call of the rufous-sided towhee, foraging in the undergrowth, her feet in the earth — as mine were — her head to the ground, as mine was, working for her food, toiling for sustenance. What a blessing, I thought, to find myself in this time and place, among the creatures—one of the creatures of this island, our island, this Earth.”
Sister looked down at her hands.
“I worked on, prying out those garlic mustards root by root. After a while, there was another curious call from the towhee, and another thrashing in the brush, and a flock of sparrows scattered, lining up along the fence across the field, watching as a chase commenced in the bushes before me, the sounds of wings and a struggle in the leaves. Then all was quiet, and I heard the call of the shrike again. I couldn’t spot her. Her soft gray crown and her black mask. I returned to my work; I listened. The bird chatter resumed. I gathered my tools and headed for breakfast. Coming back along the fence line, I looked for the shrike. I wanted to see her, the first of the season. I never found her. But I did find her morning work: a rufous towhee fastened through the neck to a barb in the wire—”
The silence in the room deepened — so still I could feel my heart beating at my rib cage. Sister’s voice deepened, her words coming slower, heavier.
“The shrike, of course, though her song lifts the soul at work, will also mimic the calls of her cousin birds, luring them to her table, darting from her hidden perch when the songbirds begin to feast. She strikes with her fierce beak, carries her prey to a thorny bush, or in this case a barbed wire, and she impales the creature and eats its flesh. She saves the remains, safely snagged above the ground, for her mate. In this way, she survives the winter among us. Of the rufous towhee, the sprightly grub-eater, the industrious nest-builder, we may say that she was unsuspecting, that when she heard the shrike mimic the towhee song, she did not hear the arrival of her own death. So why did I weep for the towhee? Released of its flesh, the soul flies. Why weep for the towhee? Why did I not rejoice with the shrike?”
Sister J. bowed her head. Others bowed or stared into the middle distance, solemn. Tuck still had that trace of a smile on his lips, his eyes moist — was he crying? Carey glanced at me; he seemed unnerved. I could see the sweat on his brow. He shifted in his seat and met my eyes again, holding my gaze this time. He seemed uncomfortable, from the parable of the shrike, maybe, or the closeness of the bodies around us.
Sister continued in a brighter tone, and I looked away from Carey.
“Ignorance is God’s greatest gift to us,” she said. “Ah, you would say, but we have learned so much on this earth that is of use, that sustains us, that sustains those who come after us. And yes, I concur! It is the ignorance of what is beyond this moment that I’m thinking of. We know only what has come before and what is now, but not what is to come, and that, that ignorance, it is a gift. And then there is all that we think we know, but which is yet to be further illuminated. The mysteries of the stars, the cells, the cosmic dust we came from and into which we will dissolve. What we don’t know, what we are incapable of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting — indeed what we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste but cannot comprehend — this is the gift that allows us to sleep at night, to dream, to love each other, to sow and reap, and to build, to bear—”
She stopped short and held back. Elle inhaled sharply next to me.
“—to bear the burdens, the losses,” she continued. “We sleep at night because we don’t allow ourselves to believe that the murderer does not sleep, she stalks us every moment, behind every shadow, under our fingernails, from the forest canopy, in the depths of the sea, out of cracks in the earth, between colliding atoms. We dream because what we have seen, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted has filled us up with life and there is no room: our bodies, these organisms we inhabit, cell by cell, spend every second of every day trying to make sense of this, this—”
She slapped her heart, opening her arms to the room, hands cupped around some weighty, invisible substance.
“Look at what we have built! Could ignorance build this? Could ignorance take this burnt, poisoned crust of land and make it green again, and make it live again? We have witnessed a resurrection! We are living a resurrection!”
Her voice lowered to a whisper, but it carried down the table and up to the rafters in the still space.
“And yet. And yet. Death waits. Death watches. Death sings from the branches while we work, lifts our unknowing souls, calls us to fly.”
She bowed her head again, and the entire room seemed to exhale. Heads down or eyes closed, some tears, some blissful smiles. Sister lifted her head and signaled to Maggie and Katie, on either side of her. Everyone rose and joined hands around the tables. Maggie hummed the key and started to sing. Voices around the table joined in:
Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace.
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above,
Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it, mount of thy unchanging love.