A girl. And her boy sick and small. I took the strength she had in her. I kept them up nights nights in her: their Cricket. Chirruping in the swill.
Boy, her boy, her funny runt. He could not be Pa’s. Who came before they thought his name and stayed they had not thought he might for such a long time after. Boy, she called him. Goose, you goose, and mister—Ma thinking not to choose a name to have to have to call him by should he be taken from her.
We never took him from her. Even when he crawled. Nor say I ever came to her to cut my name most fine in her not before nor after Ma swelling as he grew.
I was all Pa’s girl. The barns were mine and the hay in the barns and Pa and the trees and the cows. Cow Maggie leaned against me. The birds flew south by the stars. Barn and barn and barn and pond the road climbing out through the fields. Mine and Pa’s, my pa’s. The high quiet wobbledy stars. And Ma where she sat in the window was ours and sat in the shut-away buttery gold, the dogs at our heels the stars. Should you wish.
Ma’s shirt bled pinkly through.
The seed-blown fields the wickerings. The slickened births and murders, ours, the fierce wide blowing day.
I tended to him gently. Pa wallowing in the tub. He would swell to fit it. And swell till he could not budge from it and I would spoon a mash to him and keep the water cooled for him and nest his head in my pillow. His eye unloosed like a doll’s. Fetch a sledge. Break him duly from it.
Pa’s arms puffed out to float from him and seep in milky puddles, his skin so hot to touch it scalds. I did not touch it. I worked the coughing spigot, churned the cold to sap the heat slowly not to hurt him. And made as not to hear him his voice not his no voice at all — a green sea rief a great whale culled and keening in its traces.
I daubed a paste where he was stung a curdly dull against his skin I first swiped bright with butter. Pa. Who plowed the bees it comes to me to see if Ma would see to him to sec if she would tend to him but Ma would not have come.
Why seem at last to hear him? Ma would not have come.
And who was it came upon him?
And so I took it slow. I made Ma’s clucks and muddlings and swabbed and slowly doctored him. I had no Goose to think of no price to fetch no mouths to fill no deed to hide the doing of.
No day yet when we shod.
It’s me Pa Pa it’s Cricket.
Get.
I was not her. Not Ma and never Cricket quite but proof she had not come.
I took to sleeping in the barn else the sinking grass in the leaves unhinged in the wind. Pa’s rooster nightly crowing.
Pa when he was up again and shrunk into himself again rode Goose unshod through our honeyed woods our creeks our windfall autumn. Among the lowly creatures named and ours to daily tend. We are sloppy in our tending. Our swallows catch in the raftered dark our rabbits are turned from the fields. Fox we trap and whistle pig and the spotty domes of our turtles crush in the wet upon our road. And in our hay we gather. And too the narrow fellows sunning lazy in the stubble catch — snakes pressed between the flakes of hay as though we mean to keep them, and faith by them in the shut-away days the snowbound weeks we wait to breathe that the fields are strewn and rooted through with bees with bodies sleeping.
Pa wore Goose away his hooves split and curled and then a day I came from school Pa brought him to me saddled and swung me up to ride him. Pa gave me a whip to run him with. Goose could not walk it looked to me he seemed to wince to stand there.
Up the hill I ran him.
We ran until Pa could not see and then we let him come to us come gimping up the hill to us to snap the lunge line on. Pa swung me up again. So he could run us. So we might see she watched him run us. He stood at the hub of the circle we ran in whatever dusk was left to us and Ma appeared in the windowlight in her sorry robe. Hup ho.
The night closed in the early cold. Goose beneath me frothed and steamed and still my hands my skinny arms grew thick to me and shook. My bare legs burned beneath my skirt against the sweating saddleflaps and so I tried to hold them off so that when Goose tripped he threw me, he would throw me, I would fly through the trees like a doll. Soon enough.
Quick the snow the brittling cold. As quick the thaw comes on.
I trick Goose into the trailer then his blinkers on to calm him and grain in the bin to steady him after we have beat at him and cussed and poked and whooped at him till Pa has gone off for his gun.
After the day we shod this was. After the snow the thaw had come.
No bird for us no Christmas.
The snow slumping against the barn. “You load the cur before I’m back else I am going to have to—”
To have to. Pa could do with him what he wanted — he was toddling off for his gun. I did not try to stop him but to think to walk Goose in.
Ma gone from her chair the tent jerked down we had hung at the hearth to snug in. Yet we were not what kept her. It was not in us to keep her.
And so I walked him in.
The first I saw I ran from him. I did not think Pa at first but is it dead or living.
This was before we blinded Goose before the time we trailered him our Ma going off with her wheelbarrow her boy in a bunch in the wheelbarrow how small against the road.
Before any of that. Before we shod this was. Before the rooster flapped onto the pond.
And yet I ran from Pa. Crept back. Before the bees died off I did. Before the fescue yellowed. I lay on the bank to look at him. The pods of the milkweed swelled and split and the seed by its silken feathery plumes as it was meant to do broke away.
And then we shod him.
The day was dull the day we shod him and cold before the snow had come and Pa sent me out to fetch Goose out of the withering grass where he browsed. I walked through the gate with my pail at my knees and called to him over the field.
He came to me.
He let me come to him, whinnying, that day as any other.
The days were dry then. The corn a stubble. The apples blew into the fields, a glut that year — I could find him. It was easy enough to find Goose — he was feasting beneath the trees. He quit to look at me. Pa’s rooster pecking lazily a drubbing on his withers.
Pa had fired the forge in the barn the barn dark to me but for the embers there the shadows rayed and flinching the cottony raftered dark. Goose was shy of it, I brought him gently in, he was skittish.
I backed him into the washroom into the crossties where we shod. I leaned my chest, a boy’s, against him. I felt my heart at the bone in his head his breath the wet of the grass he ate and sweet against my belly. Hush.
I kept it to me.
At the first even Pa was kind. He clipped away where the hoof began at the end to hook and tear. He kicked the shards the cutaway moons to his dogs to take to nibble at at the end of the barn and hide. He rasped the hoof flat, he picked a small stone from the frog.
The shoe nested in the forge on the fire outside, winter’s early winded dark advancing slowly on.
The rooster stood to crow for it. That day as any other. But Pa when the rooster crowed jerked up and let his hollowed sound he made the day I came upon him swarmed. He jabbed Goose in his brisket. Goose already lunging. Pa gone to his knees on the slab.
The rooster flapped to the rafters. The sparrows swept from the barn.
He filed the hoof flat. You have to rasp it flat to take the shoe to ride the wash and hillside slopes to pass the house and Ma in the house to pass the coop the chickens.