So it was Pa shot him.
It is for my sake Pa shot him.
I was in the stall beside him and the trailer shook and ringing quit and the blood of my face where Goose opened it ran free in my mouth and warm.
Enough for me. No matter.
Ma looked back the once and went on.
All that she had left to us and what is yet to come to us the oaks on the hill the lightning hits the fox in the field in the weeds I keep gone red to gray come autumn — it is enough for me. No matter.
I will sing Pa her song the getting up song she sang to me in the morningtime when she leaned to me to nudgle me and the baby was in her hair.
I could smell him from her hair.
I slip through the muck the gone-by weeds the flatted grass the dogs bend down and think if I could run from him else think I never came on him wallowed up on the couch in the green suppose Cricket supposing.
We sat on the shore and watched him.
I did not know in myself what to do for Pa nor what there might be in tending him to call so even gently. To say: I tend him gently.
Pa would have me poke at him. He would have me pinch and twist at him.
Yet to say: I tend him gently. And ever in the dusk in the sinking light I knead his feet his withered legs to move the gout and feed him.
Am I not his girl Cricket?
Enough for me. No matter.
I sing Ma’s song to him.
Our blessings count.
Enough for me to keep our Goose and in myself the truth of him and the dogs grow fat and eat of him and by the silken sweet of glue we spread across our palms to peel the skin I feel him with me and feel of the seeds that split in me and of the living harvest, shell and hide and cloven tongue and of the fruit and fowl we strew the yolky eyes the deer we cull the great whales flensed for blubber.
Ever so. Ever so gently.
I lie in the field and picture it. Who have come to be one to picture it. How long it was Goose hung there. Such a time it was he hung there pawing softly at the stars.