He seems to quit there. He seems to quit and stiffen, ready for the blow.
Goose would throw himself off from us. He would fly himself over the barn he thought come soft on his hooves in the field where he grazed with we two dumbly watching.
Then he was over. Goose flung himself on over. I heard his bones, the clatter and snap, his head a rind against the road bursted wetly open. He lay there — his legs sprung stiff, his corded neck — his body hauled in chinked from stone to mark the field the fallen dead the bloody day forgotten.
Pa softly now, “Let up.”
I held the line taut. I saw I held the line taut still from the coil where I let it.
The nightsky stooped and held its breath, the trees bent too to listen — for the sputter and tick the quieting tide of Goose’s reedy pipes and valves the rocking iridescent humps and hollows of his organs.
And Pa again, “Let up.” Still I heard Get.
Pa struggled up from where he fell and knocked the grit from his pants I stitched, the sloppy hem, and he nodded. Pa came at me with his hand high up. He had never hit me yet but still I stood to let him.
The line had cut some through. I had looped it over the curl of fur above the hoof you sell them on and it had dug some through. His eye had spun wide up in the dark to regard the stars above. The moon on its slow crossing.
His burblings — mine — my cross to bear, my thin bitten birdish shrill he let, my name though Pa had thought it Goose. Goose and also Cricket. We were named for the sounds thrown from us yes for a dream’s long soured tongue.
And so I loosed it. I shook the line some. Nothing not a twitch not a nostril flared no breath no lifting brisket. So I could do it easy ease the loop the cable from his pastern where I cut him. I felt the heat rise from him. I felt the give in my knees when I kneeled by him and the heat of the softened road. So we could winch him up now. He had made it easy. We would wait for the light for the morning.
Morning. Hello, little farm.
Still we wake to him up come sunup. We are sleeping all on the sheet Ma spread and Goose is scrolloping over the road.
I snip Pa’s toenails for him turn his hem and tic his boots who cannot reach to do it.
I can smell the barn. I smell in my hair the baby too he gummed it as we rode.
Pa clips the leadshank on him. He feels along his bones.
Pa leads him off between the trees me and Ma standing out in our gowns she wears to walk in time the fallen dew the hill we climb to reach her. I sit the chair her chair to watch her, watch the nightshade fill behind her see the bats loop briefly through. Her small boy nearby sleeping.
At length when once the snow has come to keep us snugly home, Ma goes sunup to nightfall gowned else sits the bath from meal to meal the latch thrown once the baby walks to keep him always with her to keep him safely in.
She has heard us at our chores by then. We have backed Goose onto the slab by then. The rooster crowing on.
Pa’s dogs spooked about for the moons Pa clipped, for the tailings curled from his hooves filed flat to take the shoe and he cussed them. Cussed his horse his dogs. His girl with the mangled paw stumping in who sat with me at his knees should he sit should he think to nudge her head. Let her bump her ribs against him.
After her I found the others easy. You go by your nose through the weeds for the traps going low to the ground like a dog. Red fox I found and muskrat, coon and the paw of what I do not know in the muck cow Maggie made of the banks of the pond I would wade in the dry out into.
The old people could have found them caught in the dry time when they moved. Then I would not have had to. Would not have had to smell them then nor burr my hair to get to them nor haul them onto the bridge for Pa so Pa could see to flay or gut or what any else he did to them or sort the parts to bury.
We buried them back by the chicken coop in sight of the pond where they swam if they swam or only came and drank from. Soon the rooster flapped over the pond — his Goose had gone from the field. The rooster come to sit Goose’s back flapped in his grief to the couch when Goose passed come rain come sleet come snow. Crowing on.
His hens in the coop to hear him. I lay in my bed and heard him, the moon sweeping past, the stars.
Cricket you Cricket you.
See the white of his face swung up?
His bright eye webbed and curdled?
And then when we had blinded him and set him out in the field to browse I saw the skin seal and crumple saw in the cold it was blent and gathered.
They will do it to a baby too a rooster will give him half a chance he does it to his own. And his hens’ eyes are small.
I lay in my bed and pictured it.
Pictured Pa when I came upon him.
I came upon him in the wet months yet the flying leaves the sinking grass the geese dropped from their wedges yet and scudding across the pond.
I had come on the bus from school. I skipped. I swung my feet through the fallen leaves to smell the sweet wet smell of them to smell the wind the needling rain that in the night had felled them. The leaves flew up and clung to me to the ratty flounce of the skirt I wore the bitten ridge of my shinbones. I stopped at the pond to peel them from me.
I could hear the tractor then. You turn the fields to fallow them. I liked to listen for Pa to know where he might leave the harrowbed the plow.
I heard him. But I did not think Pa at first I did not think listen. I sang my song the coming home song against his note I had not heard and hope again to never. Still I looked about and saw him. He was wallowed up on the couch in the green with the yellow bead the pond was deep on the couchback scarcely showing.
He could not be Pa. He was something in the wet the old people left that had loosed itself from the muck as it went and yet it spit my name. With still our barns to pass between, the hill to the house to run. I ran. I ran the day the bees got Pa and ran the day I held his Goose in the washroom where we shod. But I did not run far. I heard him bellow. You try it try to run. Drop to your hands if the grass is high and dream he cannot find you there with your heart knotted small as the rabbits new-born he brings to you in the crown of his hat the days he plows to calm. But I have never saved one. I have never saved one yet of all the ones he brings to me I have lost them all.
I lay on the bank and watched him. The longer I kept away from Pa the harder it was to go to him.
And yet I went to him. I knocked the bees from his neck for him Pa gone in his hurt not hearing me not a place on him to hold him by I held him by his hair. Through the green I swam him. I could have walked the pond but it took my shoes from my feet the silken bottom. Me and Pa dragged a stripe in the green where I swam where it folded against Pa’s head. Pa Pa.
Once we grew a pig so fat even its eyelids fattened, ear and jowl and bursting cheek and by and by its eyeballs — squeezed — stood away loose from its head.
Then Pa. Bellowing out of the wallow. The cow to her teats to cool. The tractor run up on a stump and stopped and still at its ticking idle. I made my hands a stirrup — Pa’s legs were too swelled to bend. Swing up. And from the time of riding shotgun years I knew which stick to muscle, which to back to raise the plow when once we had it scraping up loud against the road.
Ma in her chair past autumn. Us come up come dew come snow. The baby let to his knees at the screen to scream the day the bees swarmed Pa and Ma came out to swat at us going Gracious lord above.
Think back to when time was in her — my soft head broken through. Before that. When time was she was Pa’s. Before my hair I grew in her that made her retch and swoon.