The crows were uncommonly loud that
day. She heard them from inside the house even, as she stood beside the stove
stirring his oatmeal. Afterward, as she went out to refill the bird feeder,
they screamed at the woman, reminded her how she’d always thought them
harbingers of death. Their caws were so insistent she had to stop and lean against
the ancient oak in the side yard.
“This
is the day.” She spoke the words into a wad of damp handkerchief. When she finally
moved on, she repeated the phrase, added to it. “This is the day the Lord
hath made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.”
At
the back of the yard but nowhere near the actual property line, she twirled the
dial on the padlock that protected the shed’s contents, tugged on its weight
and in the evergreen shadows felt it fall open in her palm. As she entered the
dim, she paused a moment to watch her breath feather the mountain air. She
pulled the scent of pine deep into herself, held it there as long as she could.
"Just in case it's the last
time," she said on the exhale.
She
plunged both hands into a five-gallon bucket and withdrew twin mounds of
peanuts in the shell. She filled her jacket pockets then turned, clucked and made
kissy noises to signal the squirrels it was breakfast time. When she walked
back into the light squinting, there they were, a dozen or more clustered
around the doorway, waiting with soft bright eyes and twitching tails. Something inside her unclenched. The nuts
were gone in a blink.
“Hold
on,” she told her darlings. She disappeared back into the dark, heaved the half
empty five-gallon bucket waist-high and made her way back outside. In the sun's shine she tipped the pail and moved in a slow circle until the ground was littered
with peanuts.
The woman puffed a gray tendril away from her eyes. “I’d
tell you to make ’em last, but you wouldn’t, would you?”
One little fellow took to coughing and bits of nutmeat flew out of his mouth in a
spray. His tiny head thrust forward over and over as he made miniature, hacking
squeaks. The woman reached for him but
he bolted toward the woods and his friends followed.
“See? You gotta be
careful what you ask for,” she told the retreating crowd, “'cause you just might get
it.” She fingered the cross that dangled from a chain near her throat divot. “I
don’t even know if I’ll miss you,” she said to the place where they’d been. “I
have no idea.”
5 comments:
I love this...your writings always make me think and ponder :)
It's not over yet . . .
Diane, this is beautiful--so vivid! I want to read more!
Yay, Heather! Glad you liked it. I can see it all in my mind's eye. Now I just need to shut my mind's eye and watch what happens next and take really good notes:)
Hmmmmm...good stuff Diane!
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