Our house is big enough for all of us and we are just myself living in it. Will there be a visitor come like it used to? No questions, please. Am I the one the animals make circles around? I’m sorry. He said if we say it, it is true, and I get to be the one that chews on the cloth here in his room, putting my scratch in his bundle. No announcements. Please, my Michael. He said to scratch the white off of it. They hauled him off. She would say please to him. His bundle is blue. We dug holes, and I got to be the one that stayed under. The messenger will collect my scratches, and a man is allowed to hide when the messenger comes. Father said the lips shouldn’t show. I can’t see anyone coming up. The cloth can cover it, but we need to cut holes for the eyes. They made fires mainly to the feet of them, and we got to lie down. I was the one looking out when they poked down. The bird won’t let me burn if I finish. They stitched the mouths and you could still see cloth coming out. We heard the teeth try to chew when they couldn’t move, and I heard the cloth stay inside me and keep me from speaking out. The dirt wasn’t heavy, but I couldn’t cut holes in it for my eyes.
In this house, the dogs don’t look at me, which means I am alive. If the bird leaves, I will live here still, but there will be some things I won’t know, like where to breathe and how to put my hands up when I have no food in them, and when to dig myself up out of the pit if they have left me in it. I will never neglect the cloth and how to make it all fit into my mouth. This keeps the air out and my face gets fat and sings on the inside. My father said that animals sing so slowly that we can’t hear it. We have to reach our hands in them to know what they are saying. We have to pull fires upon them. I try to sing slowly with the cloth in my mouth. I try to forget what I am saying.
This will be the time to say things not on the outside. I will be the scratcher, the mister. No chores for me now. I can make up my own chores. I can make up what I think the animal is saying without having to go arm-deep.
There is so much whiteness here, his bundle. He was scratching down here what he thought the animals were saying, but I can’t. His numbers and his lines make me smart. Big shelves and his windows are blacked out where a bird might have gotten trapped in each piece of glass. The messenger will know what to do. He will have the arms for this type of grabbing.
[7]
I put my ear on the horse Tom Blue to hear what he was hearing and Tom Blue kept quiet. I want Monk to come back to this side of the bird. After he was smashed, my father said Monk had to go to the other side of the bird and get fixed. I want to fix Monk here and stitch his hair back on. He said I can’t save hair. He left his shape here; the animals sniff at it. I have all of the hair in the bottom of my blanket. Good-bye, Monk. I didn’t get to say that. When I don’t put the black air on my eye under the blanket, I open the blanket and take out Monk’s hair. My father has all the other hair in his lab room. I am not supposed to fix him if he lies down. I am not supposed to go in there. I go in there when the bird eats white air, so I can see. There is so much hair. My father isn’t here and I am supposed to be the one who marks on this bundle. I put the food on myself in his room.
[8]
When we work during our season, I get to be the one that will throw string. When it falls, I will know who to kill. I throw with my girl arm because my boy arm is tired from dragging the sled. The string falls in the shape of the name of the animal I will down. The string is always falling in the shape of a squiggly animal name and my father helps me read it. He says we can’t read unless we make squints, which is like pretending there is no bird. Squints is a way to shrink things, and we shouldn’t always do it or the bird will die, and then black air will rule. I think I can hear the bird make a stung noise after I throw string, or a man has held a noise inside him after being surprised. I wonder to my father what would happen if the string fell down into the shape of a squiggly name that was the bird’s name. Who would get up there to kill at it? Would he climb up there to give a kill at it, and then who would eat the white air after that? If nothing ate white air, then how would we see to breathe and see which body was our own that we should pick up and carry inside? Could we cover our own body with a cloth if the bird has been killed?
[9]
Cheeser is the one that drags. His eyes are big and his face drags behind them. Father has gotten his smashes off on Cheeser and Cheeser walks slowly. There is no hair left on him, but his hair stays close. It is near, in a pile. Cheeser doesn’t leave it, and I will stick it back on him, or make for Cheeser a new hair. He needs a new hair, but he would never act that way. Father says that we need to pull our smashes off on Cheeser because he is as hard as almighty and what’s inside is worth the wait. I am supposed to pull a smash off on Cheeser when my father is not here, but when I am with Cheeser, I rub him and feed him grass. Because he is shorn, he will be an animal that will guard me.
[10]
Mind the hill. Throw the water. Pull the wood. Crack up the fires. Fix their feet. Don’t talk. My father says do this when we have the good air. But it is empty here, and so I will mark instead, in case the messenger comes. No one is climbing up. My Jason hasn’t climbed up, nor ever has Grandover since they hauled my father up the mountain. Am I supposed to put food out for them? We have the wood that holds our meals. I brought it in from the birdless side of our hill. Can I ask a question now?
[11]
I pray to the bird and I know that the sky is bird. How many times until I am hollow, the way the bird is when it flies? Yes or no, Father said that the bird has to be hollow so it can eat itself and keep flipping inside out. He said that if I looked at it right, I could see it flip over and over and hear the wings beating to keep it from falling. That’s what the noise in wind is, and if wind didn’t make noise, it would mean the bird was falling all over us, so that we would be getting pecked at and pecked at. How many other hills are there? I want to ask. How many other birds are stuck up there guarding how many other hills? Or does our bird know about us? I am making a plan so that I will become known to it. If I leak out, it is because I need to become lighter to fall up there. Get an uprush and make my fall. Father said that there would be a day when I could take the air and squeeze it, and whatever fell would fall first onto me.
[12]
Here’s how I stop what is moving. I’ll follow it until it makes noise and then I’ll do the rush. Rush is how you go fast and grab necks. My grandover said the hunter makes a rush for the eye of the animal, so that you don’t get sight-stopped. That’s when something can look you into being stopped. If you rush the eye, they can’t sight-stop you. Don’t get seen, is what he said, and you can keep moving.
[13]
[14]
There is nothing here. Report says empty. My father’s bundle is clean and there are no scratches. It will be enough of me to scratch on it to get most of the white off. Put things where they go is my chore.
I have a sound inside me that scratches to itself and I am not allowed to listen. When I open my mouth, it is a hum that dogs notice, and they come to me and wait. Father doesn’t hear it. He works around me when I open up and doesn’t notice. I hold the hair onto my open mouth and the hair shakes. Then I put it back in the dish in his lab. I think that maybe I can go and listen later, to hear what the sound has done now that it has shot out of me. With my mouth closed, my face itches and I have to rub it with air. When I speak, it shuts up.