And then he lay down — the night of the day the wind came warm and the thaw set in the sudden melt and the birds appeared and bickered and swerved in the steam twisting up from our farm.
We hitched the trailer then. That we might use him. Sell him off quick on the hoof down the hill in the warm while we could move.
I had kept Goose’s tail in a braid for him and kept his head in a hood for him so the wind could not eat at the socket. The last of our sorry apples dropped I had kicked to him in the field where he lies where he pawed at the snow for what grass there was and picked the leaves he could get to yet from the beech the oak the whippy trees at the edge of the woods that held them. What he did not eat the deer took to and to the cobs of corn I brought and his coat grew thick and ratted in the wind and his hipbones stood out from him.
We kept our heads down. The cold had deepened. I tramped a path past the coop the failing hens the rooster would not when the cold had come leave the pond to rooster.
I thought at first he would ride with me out in the pail with the corn to the field. And so I stopped at the bank to cluck at him. He turned his tail to me. I brought his prize hens to the bank to see and scratch to spread to tempt him. Before the pond was skinned with ice I ferried him back through the muck the weeks yet never once did I see him eat nor seem to think to rooster, never once did I pass the crib to climb the hill to the house to Ma but that he hadn’t flapped back out to the couch to announce what we had done.
This was when the freeze augered in, this was in the thaw.
In the thaw of the year when the water rose Pa’s bird seemed to walk upon it.
I went the while before the thaw before the hillsides snicked and steamed and then the once thereafter after Ma had gone. I knew to call to him, picking my way once the creek froze through between the spindly boles of trees the needled limbs of the buckthorn there where yet the small dark berries clung the beads in rimpled clusters. I shook in my pail as I went to him the corn I was not to bring to him. I brought cigarettes and sugar cubes crumbling apart in my pockets.
Hope hey. Hope hey. I meant to tend to him, to swab and slowly doctor him. To sweep my thumb through his socket. A day came I came upon Goose there forgetting myself to speak to him and stood upon his blinded side and he swung away and kicked me. I let him kick me.
Then it was easy. Then I could quit then.
The field was hidden. I tossed my pail back to the back of the crib and the rats there shied and scuttled out and trotted away to the barn.
So it was easy. The cold had deepened.
I went the once Pa sent me out when the thaw set in to fetch him. I saw his head rise up to see me. Otherwise I went no more.
We snugged in when the worst of the cold had come and fashioned a room with the blankets we had with the tablecloths Ma kept to spread should a guest appear should Christmas. I rode Pa’s back to drive the nails to stand in his hands in the stirrups he made and hit at the few ruined crooked nubs the old people left to hang the walls. We brought our sheets our pillows in and ate and slept in what warmth there was from the fire we nursed and prodded. Ma ripening in her gown. Our shadows should we sit in quiet there yet flinching against the walls.
Ma kept her eye fast on her boy. Sitting her silk chair.
“Time was I thought the milk teeth came to make the women stop it,” Pa said. “Let them rest a time — for the next to breed. Give a man his chance abed. Time was.”
She set the baby down on his feet at her feet. Should he squall she swung him up again.
“But it makes your ma keep at it, same with that boy as you.”
Her boy. Him lolling yet at her bosom.
We woke for weeks to snowfall the curling drifts the wind banked up to pin our flapping door. The hedge disappeared the leeward fence cow Maggie walked out over to find her way to the barn. No school for weeks no place we went our tractor left with the broken plow on the road where Pa sprung off from it come up on him and over until all but the lip of the highside tire the wind picked clean seemed gone.
Then of a night a velvet wind and foreign swept our farm.
Pa legged me over the windowsill. He heaved me out in my mucklucks onto the slope of snow. The slabs of snow of thickened ice already in the pooling glare crept across the rooftops. I took my list to go by: cigarettes sardines D-con cheese.
Barn and barn and crib and pond and on the pond Pa’s rooster — spun — our grudging weathervane. I think he thought to crow at me who never crowed by morninglight and so I waved my cap at him and waved as I went at his baffled hens, sunk to my peep in the snow.
“How you?”
They had lights at the store and the woodstove burned and the wind flown hard in the blackened pipe sucked and moaned and tumbled. I gathered my goods and bagged them. The girl held out her hand for the money she knew my pa would never send me with and quick I turned for home from her the thaw sunk deep upon us.
Every stone and matted leaf and fence and sloping fallow steamed. The ice on the pond broke soft when I passed and soft the newts the spotty frogs the dull fish frozen in. The barn the mossy pond I smelled and in the wind the flowers bloomed where it had crossed to reach us. It came on.
Ma went back in her blotted gown to the back of the house she had happened from and found her hat her dungarees her chalky split galoshes. So quick I went to fetch Goose. He lay in the field on his blinded side in a patch pawed free of snow.
I let him stop for a time for the apples that dropped and palmed him the last of the treats I had kept the months for him in my pockets.
We took the path past the crib. I knew no other way to go so as not to pass her. She would go on. She had her bag at her knee her hat on. Her boy in a bunch in the wheelbarrow.
I led him along his hood pulled free him lathered in the sudden warm his brisket gaunt and heaving. Cricket you Cricket you.
It would not be long. I knew as much to look at Ma her flicks and starts and sudden flush her voice like something burst in her should she gap her mouth to use it.
I went on. I led him up between the barns where Pa had drawn the trailer up and stood the high gates open.
Ma turned back the once and once again to bring herself to go. We stood on the road and watched her. The road black in the wet in the sudden thaw in the steam that dipped and gathered grown so thick to squat upon our pond that it seemed not our rooster there but the air itself yet crowing.
Stay. Stay. So go.
I gave Goose his head to lunge at Pa to beat the air to strike at him should Pa swing past where Goose could see else think to speak or touch him. To see if she would tend to him. But Ma was going on.
She went up through the lopped and pollarded trees I kept as she went a count of. Pa’s dogs at her heels since the barn. Good dogs.
I leant against Pa’s legs with them. I licked his pants when I was small with them with him not looking. Quick.
You get.
Pa toddling off for his gun.
Goose scraped at the road the piddling stream with the shoe those months he had not thrown that I would pry for luck from him and clip the braid of his tail from him hung fat with the mud we had hauled him through, the slickened clay and loamy sweet, and thinking I would go there yet where Goose yet lay in the sun and moon I found a tree a buckthorn near and deep against it hung them.
I blinkered him to calm him.
I walked on in ahead of him and we could hear Pa coming back, I was backed against the trough with him wedged away under the bars from him and Pa had creaked the swing-gate shut and Goose went back to thrashing. I felt my head flung back. Pa stood up on the running board and the shaft of the gun pushed through.