Sown On the Wind
Lil wiped her hands on a bloody apron. She smelt of bird guts.
“Come just as soon as I could,” said Laroux.
“It’s happened again,” she said. “And it ain’t no fox. The hens is scattered all over and the house is wrecked. You’ll have to build me a new one.”
She had some gall, the old girl. Laroux was a neighbor and as far as he was concerned, he didn’t have to do a goddam thing he didn’t want to. He scratched his head. It was the darnedest thing. Not a hen in sight and the shed skewed at a drunken angle about to topple right over. He could shore it up for now.
“Musta bin a tornado, Lil.”
“Weren’t no dang tornado. Didn’t touch nothin’, 'cept the bird house.”
“Well, I can’t figure it,” said Laroux. “Didn’t you see nothin’?”
“Heard somethin’ like a wind but time I got out, there weren’t nothin’ to see but gone birds.”
Lil had got rid of the big livestock she couldn’t manage on her own. At first she kept wild fowl, geese, ducks, turkeys and capons just like she’d always done. Now she was down to hens and capons. With Christmas approaching they were her best hope of an income.
Laroux did a good job. Lil rounded the birds up and put down extra feed she could ill afford. “Don’t y’all disappear now,” she said as she padlocked the door. “Tomorrow’s slaughter day.”
She hastened indoors out of the cold and dark. The smell of chicken broth was as appetizing as the smell of chicken guts was repugnant but you had to do the guts to get the broth. Lil had a strong stomach.
She woke in the middle of the night to a sound like a honking wind. It was moving eerie and swift towards the house. She stood by the window with the shotgun. And then she saw it. A mighty flock of geese, greater than any single flock she’d ever seen or heard, honking and flapping like a force of nature. She got a couple of shots off but they never wavered from their path right over the house. As she pulled down the sash window one slammed into it. One for the pot.
Next morning there was no sign of any of them. Damned foxes were doing alright, Lil reckoned. She went out to see to the hens. Only there were no hens. There was no hen house. It had gone. Gone–as in disappeared altogether. She phoned Laroux.
“I tell ya, Lil, I never knew a tornado be this vindictive.”
“Weren’t no tornado, Laroux. It was geese, I tell ya. Real mean geese too. Came at the house like they was on a mission. You musta heard them. Why, they flew right over your house too.”
“Never heard nothin’, Lil, I swear.”
“Well I’m ready for ’em tonight.” She propped the gun by the window.
“You holler if you need anything, you hear?”
Lil heard that honking sound in the dark and then the flap of wings like a rush of wind louder and louder, building and building until the house cowered under it. Lil waited until her aim was certain. She fixed on the first target–saw right through it, just like it wasn’t there. Fixed on a second–“What the…?” She targeted bird after transparent bird, recognizing every beak she’d forced, every breast she’d plucked, every neck she’d cleaved. Insubstantial as air, yet powerful as a storm they flew straight at the window where she stood–unstoppable.
Laroux found Lil next day in a pool of blood, the gun never fired. Sharp daggers of window pane had severed her head near off and the hair had been plucked from her bloodied scalp. A shard of broken glass had ripped her belly open so that guts spewed out onto the floor. He witnessed a white cloud moving away east against the wind, unlike any cloud he’d ever seen. Death’s avenging arrow. A gaggle of ghosts.
Copyright: © 2007 Oonah V Joslin
