Catchfly

By Harlan Berger

Social unrest, disease, and environmental vectors we currently hold at bay have torn apart the country, perhaps the world. Two people fight to survive, one walking a many-mile trail for home, the other a woman who has survived the killing of her husband and daughter. Their path through alarms and attacks while they build hayricks and celebrate their love of music and literature is Catchfly’s story. They probe flamenco and Purcell’s haunting “Rondeau,” while scavengers hunt them. This is a near-future that has none.
Set in the Poconos and Central Pennsylvania.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Aug 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662910258

Book preview

—lady

A cabin stood on the east rise of an elongated meadow bowl. Gaunt limbs of an ancient oak, long dead, loomed at the back of the dwelling, and larches lined heavy forest behind the oak.

The cabin of square brown logs chinked white was roofed with tin rusted to a coarse red. It faced southwest. The round ridge cap was too new for the roof. A tan fieldstone chimney stood against the west end. Tobacco juice-colored creosote stained the stone, and a blackened flagstone cap topped the chimney.

High and narrow, only about five meters wide by eight or nine long, the structure had been heightened by setting a few logs on the original top course. These logs were lighter brown and the chinking whiter. A pair of shuttered half-windows looked out from the new wood. More headroom must have been wanted, likely a more comfortable sleeping loft. Except for the modern ridge cap and new logs, the cabin appeared abandoned, a derelict awaiting absorption by the meadow.

A path hidden in tall meadow grass said differently. It was visible only to someone coming across the rim of the bowl. And it linked the front door to a clapboard-sided spring house roofed with curling tin. Not far away stood a small privy. Too close to the spring.

North of the cabin lay a small piece of cropped pasture that couldn’t be seen from the floor of the bowl. I saw no cow though.

Shutters barred every window in my vision. They worried. Thick and louvered, these were functional, not decorative. They hid any watchers in the house and stood open slightly, just enough to shoot through. Better the feeling of Oedipal blindness, what one expected from vacant windows of old buildings.

Those veiled eyes looked out on about ten hectares of orchard grass streaked yellow with wild mustard. About the size of an uncle’s twenty-acre hayfield, his best field, he said. Yarrow whitened the south edge of the meadow. Near the cabin door stood a dark red clump. A huge wave of bittersweet broke green over an old trellis on the north side. A board fence at our stone house supported a similar clumping. My lady liked the bittersweet. She sketched birds sheltering under the stranding tendrils. Nothing ate them; they were poison.

In winter we watched birds work twin feeders under the bittersweet while snow hissed about the windows. Was the glass splintered? Did the birds invade the room as they did in many homes I saw on my way here?

North of the cabin lay a small piece of cropped pasture that couldn’t be seen from the floor of the bowl. I saw no cow though.

What of the woman, her smile, her drawings? Weeks since the lake community burned, and I was gone a long time from her.

At the north cabin corner, roses small and white clung to wire. Early morning mist hung in the trees near the white yarrow. On my side, the rising sun had already burned away most of it.

A cardinal, the dull-colored female, flew to the bittersweet, followed by the red flash of her husband.

Popping, the distant sound of shooting, drew me from my camp in back of the bowl. Didn’t know of this pretty spot until I followed the sound. Four or five shots—too quick for anything but an automatic weapon, the thinness of military rifle fire endemic in the first Asian war. Then a heavy thump, most likely a shotgun, followed by more popping and more of the heavier blasts. Nothing of the sharp, echoing crash of explosive rifle rounds the military now used. A general in the first of the Gulf wars wanted explosives. They kill better than bullets.

There was silence while I rolled the sleeping bag, stuffed the pack, and checked weapons. I walked to the rim and found a gurgling, ankle-deep seep that led me down a long slant of a crooked hollow thick with hemlock and rhododendron to a thicket laced with blackberry brambles. Through them I could see the cabin front.

Its door stood half open. Sunlight streaming over the roof cast the door in darkness, the opening little more than a blacker slice of dark. A hooded, disquieting blackness.

Three bodies blocked the spring house path. One nearest the house wore a flannel shirt and black bib overalls. Face up, his back pinned a rifle against the dirt, the leather sling crossing the suspender straps of the bib. He was clean-shaven; his chest bib showed three red splotches.

Another man closer to me, black-bearded, wore a camouflage shirt and pants, the back of his shirt perforated and bloody. Most likely he’d been dosed by the shotgun. He had slumped on his stomach, his hands dug into the grass. A military rifle flattened grass a foot from his right hand. A border collie lay between the two men. Blood pooled under them, and God’s flies swirled, more than the deity should permit anywhere.

Fresh splinters poked from the doorframe smeared with flaking whitewash. The white tint framed the slice of opacity that balked vision. No sound came from the cabin. Already the briar patch broiled. Early in the season for this heat. Mosquitoes whined and sank their needles into ears and every patch of exposed skin. Couldn’t swat, couldn’t show movement, with the open door looking into my briars.

The man in overalls must have been caught first. His dog too. The shiny bail of a bucket lay in the man’s hand.

Behind the house a cow began to bawl. The pasture question was settled. More mosquitoes dipped burning needles, and I twitched. A crow croaked overhead and swung into a tree behind me and began to rasp. Shut up, you devil. If these were country people, they would know. You in the house, move.

A figure flitted in the doorway darkness and a rifle chattered from the tree line, splinters leaping from the doorframe and door. Too late for the rifleman, but where was he? He must have good eyes. I cranked around in the blackberries to look away from the house front, and the briars tore at face and neck. A hole in the tree line shaded an open jeep. A man stood in the driver’s seat propping a rifle on the windshield. He must know the weapons in the house to remain exposed.

His rifle had a grenade tube underneath the primary barrel. Not good. He must want to stay since he could blow the cabin to pieces.

A shotgun roared from the side of the house away from me, and another rifle chattered. Its sound pulled me to an ancient apple tree to the southeast. A crotch held a figure obscured by limbs. Too far for the shotgun.

Apple-tree sniper, you’re mine anytime. The woods road shooter was more worrisome. My briar patch was not far off his line of fire, and his rifle was scoped.

Squirm, bring the rifle to bear on him. Forget blood oozing from scratches; smear some dirt on my face. It seemed fitting to defend the cabin. It belonged here.

Hold on his chest. Shoot through the windshield. Wait, shoot in the quiet, and be marked. Wait for the shotgunner to occupy the tree sniper.

The shotgun blasted, my rifle leaped, and the figure in the jeep disappeared. Screaming from the apple tree, Bob, what happened? Jesus, you said there was only two. His head bobbed in the tree. He jumped, hurried by two blasts from the shotgun. He went down, got up, ran, and I couldn’t follow with the rifle. The barrel snagged on briars. At the jeep, he screamed, You bastards! Bob was my brother. He sprayed bullets through the meadow and started the jeep, driving it one-handed, shooting with the other as he came.

My bullet punched another hole in the windshield chest high, and a heartbeat later, shotgun pellets tore through the raspberries and ripped at a shoulder. The jeep curved into the meadow and stopped, the engine thumping, and I shouted at the cabin, Don’t shoot! I got them both. Don’t shoot. Lost more skin backing out of the briars, hurried by the wish to escape the black doorway.

I crawled through the thick grass. No answer. While the cow bawled and the sun burned, I mopped blood as much from briar slashes as from pellet wounds. Mercifully, the shot gouges across the shoulder were shallow. I called again, The jeep should be stopped. Don’t shoot, will you?

No answer. I circled my half of the meadow, came on the jeep from the rear and cut the ignition. Two bodies drained blood on seats and floor. Littered in the back were grenades; a tin cartridge box, monstrously heavy with shiny brass; a shotgun minus half its normal barrel length; a lunch of apples, sausage, and hard-boiled eggs; greasy wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers; and a liter of whiskey. I let a little trickle down the throat and slopped some on the shoulder.

It gagged in the throat and burned the shoulder. Need water. Get to the spring house. Then the stomach rebelled and heaved its contents over my shoes before I could lean forward.

Bitter, choking taste. Wipe the slime off the shoes. Its stink brought another heave before I reached the spring house.

Good to rinse the filth. Call again to the house. No reply, and I didn’t like the next thought. Were they out? They weren’t at the jeep; they would have seen me walk to it. They could have left out a back door. Suppose they were stalking me? No more bawling from the cow.

The door hadn’t moved. I’m not your enemy. No reply. The house watched from behind its shutters and open door. I’m just passing through. The two shooters are dead. No answer. Please. No harm from me. I… Heck, I was talking to a house. No worse than talking to myself, and lately that happened. Blackness hung in the doorway, and the earth would have to rotate until the sun dissolved it. My throat thickened at the thought of entering the darkness.

Best walk away from this. Why get shredded by the shotgun? Who remained? Maybe someone was bleeding. I should see.

From the larches there was no entrance to the cabin, save a staved-in cellar door snarled in briars. A half-window high under the eaves. No glass gleamed through shutter louvers. Here a cowshed, and in it, an old Holstein, nearly stepping on her tits, chewed a mouthful of hay. To the south, the apple tree whitened in blossom. Shade there, peace, leaves turned in a welcome breeze. The jeep promised miles to be made and time to be saved.

Bridal-wreath spirea bloomed white in a line near the shed, four of the shrubs all in a row, fresh dirt around an end bush. Recently transplanted. The small-leafed, vase-shaped shrubs attracted countrymen.

Movement in a dim corner of the cowshed and then a piercing screeching. Oh boy. Guineas, their red crests and wattles quivering. For Pete’s sake, stop. I backed around the shed. Damn, now everyone knew where I was. A guinea padded up to me, head cocked. Don’t start squawking, please. The bird didn’t. It watched me a long time, chirped softly, and waddled away.

Old fellow, you’re trembling; you drip sour sweat; your legs shake. Don’t sit. You won’t get up.

I scuffled along the cabin’s east wall. The brown logs stank of creosote. No sash behind the first-floor shutters. A darting in the grass, a rabbit, and I nearly pulled the trigger before the brain cataloged the image.

I peeked around the corner to watch the front and reached the doorframe in a few steps. My heartbeat nearly drowned the buzz of flies. No sound from inside. In the dark stood a ladderback chair, its brown slats scarred. One of its rungs was split and mended with twine. Near it stood a molasses-colored, round-topped oak table. Varnish atop legs splaying from the center post was rubbed thin.

A narrow stairway of brown treads worn into troughs rose from a corner. From such a stairway, my friend had leaped with his ax.

White chinking showed between the logs inside; no wallpaper or paint. Poor even for a hunting camp. A whippoorwill farm, it would have been called long ago.

Stay here long enough, and the sun would pin me against the side of the house. Were they upstairs? My knees were knocking. Go on; move or collapse.

I pivoted through the doorway, through the blinding blackness. Fool, you should have shut your eyes a moment or two before entering. I backed into a wall, and something rammed into my stomach. It was tubular; it would not move.

Snouts of a double-barreled shotgun coalesced out of darkness. Brown, spiral pattern. Good God, they were Damascus steel. The piece was old, might burst, ridiculous. Who cared when the shot would smear guts on the wall behind me? A slight figure held the piece, and the hammers were cocked. A woman, hair near to the golden color of fresh corn, sat on the floor.

Her hair was mussed, eyes green as her head tilted up, her right cheekbone purple. My breath whistled, and the gun poked.

Don’t move. I’ll shoot.

Her voice told me more surely than her face. Her tone, the same rapid delivery but now no melody in it. My golden-haired love. Hadn’t seen her in forty years—I’d come to a reunion—and she had swamped me. No pump strong enough to bail me; her blonde hair shining and setting off her dark green suit; those huge eyes boring through me. I couldn’t talk coherently to her after forty years and probably didn’t all those years ago in school. Kristos, save me. Knees knocked, the spine went cold, and as I sucked in my gut, the muzzles followed.

A week or two later, I called her to tell her I loved her and then had no conversation with her for years. My blood might smear the wall behind me before I could tell her again.

She warned me not to dream of her, I’m just a crazy woman. Not you crazy. Never. Your wits were well about you. What are you doing here? You’re far from the Twin Cities. God Almighty, that image of you, your gold hair ashine, eyes sucking life from me. At the time I had no idea what was to fall on me.

Her hair was straight, shorter now, cut ragged at the bangs and in the neck. Tendrils curled at the ears.

No greeting in the cold eyes. A child lay in her lap, a dark hole in the temple and red webbing on her cheek. This lady’s hand brushed the girl’s brown hair, red highlights glinting in it. Maybe three years old?

Easy. She might pull the trigger. Her man and child dead, and someone strange on the end of her gun. Life might be less worthwhile to her than the blowflies she brushed away. She twitched as she waved at them, and that moved the barrels.

Domine, save me. Shotshell empties littered the floor.

Her eyes looked through my chest, flat as the eyes of the tree snake. All the children of our little village blew green, unripe fruit of bitter cherry trees through pea shooters, and I had reached into thick leaves for berries. A snake curled in a crotch, its head up, and I couldn’t move, fixed by stone eyes no more than a forearm’s length from mine. Until someone called, and I fell backward, legs churning.

Neither run nor move now. Pulse beat in the ear. No sounds now, please; nothing loud, nothing sudden.

I’ll do anything to help you, but you do not know it.

A soft bump from above. Her eyes flickered. Heard the same noise before, at home, in the summer, under a black-painted tin roof. A comfortable undercurrent then, thump and creak, as clouds blocked sun and the tin cooled; thump and creak, as the sun reappeared and heated.

It’s only the sun heating the roof—I croaked the words from a dry throat—expanding it. There’s no one left out there. She must know the source of the noises, but I needed to get her talking. All dead. None to hurt you. All dead. I wished to clear my throat, but the barrels were pushing.

My husband and daughter too. She looked at my face and I twitched; the shotgun muzzles poked.

I want to help.

You’re too late. Why would you?

You were attacked, and I wish I had come sooner, but I didn’t know of this spot. Heard shooting this morning. Was on the north rim.

I must stop this babbling. Look, take the shotgun out of my stomach. Please. I’m all the help you have now. I’ll put my guns on the table. Are you certain there aren’t more killers out there?

Careful. Don’t tell this woman you’re her sole support; she cares nothing about that. Your question was foolish. You aren’t thinking clearly.

My throat tickled and I coughed and the muzzles pushed again.

Sorry, couldn’t help it. My Lord, a woman half a lifetime away, a second love. Only two such violent loves in my lifetime, and you the last and in name only. Why would I want to help? Because I care deeply for you, I ought to have answered.

Her full-lipped mouth was drawn tight now. If she smiled, the room would need no lighting. Stop this. Stay attentive.

Thump. The roof again. Crows and buzz of flies. Green eyes now focused on mine, but the gun barrel didn’t yield. I will go or stay as you wish.

Sit at the table where I can watch. She pulled the gun back and kept it trained on me.

Thank you. My stomach would be sore.

Place your rifle on the table. The pistol too. Move slowly. I cannot miss this close.

Let me close the door. I shouldn’t sit in the opening. It’s—

Sit where I tell you.

I placed the rifle and revolver on the table and sat in the slice of lesser gloom. She did not know me; it must be the beard. Silence grew on us. Say something. Were there only three of them? I spit out the door. Asked for water. She took no notice.

Yes.

Lady, I hope you are right; I sit in the open.

She ran to the door before I could stop her. My little girl ran; I couldn’t catch her. She heard the shots that killed my man. She opened the door before I could stop her; it was the one on the path who shot her, and I shot him. I wanted to kill them all when I saw my husband and daughter dead. Push the shotgun barrels in their mouths and pull the triggers.

Tears splashed on the floor as she shook her head slowly. Why would anyone shoot my little girl? Only savages would, and you may be worse. She hesitated. Did you call me ‘lady’?

Yes. I… Nice question. What words of assurance? None. She sat there, arm across the child, the shotgun muzzles a pair of owl’s eyes watching me, the hammers back. My man, you said. Why not? Years between the meeting and this appearance. Why wouldn’t you have a man?

You and I went to school together. We met at a reunion many years later. I would never do anything to hurt you.

Now was no time to remind you. A futile, hollow statement. I hadn’t saved her family today, and I wasn’t free to do anything for her. I used lady in my time of discovery and anguish.

Oh. I know you now. No liking in the tone, no welcome. Your voice seemed familiar, but you have changed.

You haven’t. Your voice tears at me as it did after the reunion when it tunneled into me, pulling and insistent and warming. Your full underlip, often drooping, those eyes missing nothing, spearing me then as they must have in our classrooms. Looking into me, igniting unsuspected feelings.

Soft thumping overhead as the sun worked the roof. The shotgun lay across her lap and her child against her. She didn’t thumb the hammers down; her finger remained in the trigger guard.

Flies gathered, and she waved her free hand to shoo them and shifted position.

Don’t jar the gun, I murmured, I’ll bet the lock is sloppy.

She took no notice and asked, What brought you here?

I’m on my way home, a long hike. An accident I found you. I heard shooting, your shooting, this morning.

Stop babbling. We must work quickly. We must bury your little girl and the people outside, I said as softly as I knew how. I know it’s hard, but we cannot wait. It’s too hot.

No. Anguish in the eyes, life in them now. No. Not yet. Not my daughter. I want to hold her a little while longer. I must wash the blood from her and from my husband.

Then please start. I don’t mean to be unfeeling, but we haven’t much time. Allow me to shut the door. Shift the hammers to safe before you put the shotgun down. Please. I’d never spoken so many words to her. May I help?

She took time to answer. Yes, you may help. There’s a cart out back. Drag those three beasts to the old quarry. It’s close to the woods road and not far from the meadow. Dump them in. You might slide some stone over them. I don’t care if animals eat them. I wish they were only wounded; I would burn them alive. Her eyes glowed, her tone low and growling as she cursed them. She gestured to shut the door. I shut it. The room dimmed, and I stopped suddenly. Her breath quickened, and the gun came up.

Can’t see, I said loudly to tell her why I stopped. Light seined by shutter slats glinted from shotgun shell brass on the floor.

***

The old pit was close, too close to the meadow for the crude disposal, yet the heat nearly knocked me down before I dragged the three murderers there. When I returned, she was sitting, struggling with the flies. I pressed her about the burying. She nodded, brought the child to the table and began to wash the girl’s face. She began to cry and fell into a chair, nearly tipped it, and I steadied it.

A bit late in life for a child. You and I were past child rearing.

Green eyes teared, and the lost hope in them was worse than flatness.

Rest, I said, I’m sorry for you and your family. She murmured she was tired. So was I.

I moved to the door. Grackles talked and swept the grass. They would warn should anything come near. Several spots of glistening black perched in taller grass to watch, and more swayed in the tips of the briars.

I must speed things and asked her if I might wash the little girl’s face and she nodded. She gave me the cloth, and when I turned to the child, her face stopped me dead. Although her small pug nose and tiny chin matched closely my granddaughter’s, it was her eyes that cut me deep. Deep hazel, much like my little girl’s. Are you also, little one, rotting alongside your mother and father? I hope not; your parents went well-armed when the violence began. Lady, you little know how this hurts.

Never before had I touched the skin of dead people. My friends and the dead in the hollow and those here had been handled by their clothes. I could not touch their skin. But I must; I promised her this task. I washed the little girl gently. When I finished, I was crying and turned away, but tears splashed on the table.

Why do you cry?

A granddaughter. She and this little girl look much alike. I… That was true enough, but this lady’s closeness dissolved me. I shook, and she saw it, her eyes narrowed. Lady, I vibrate in your presence. Always did. I buzzed inside just as tuning forks hummed when old Harvey Becker, our physics teacher, struck one tuned to the other. But now my stomach protested again, and I slumped in a corner.

No, my granddaughter’s similarity to your little girl is not the only reason I cry. It hurts horribly to come across you crushed, your eyes lifeless, to see even less reason than before to talk to me. I’d often thought of a meeting to discover what you had done and become in the years previous and to ask you questions troubling me. You have answers, and now you may never again be your vital self.

She rose. You washed her well. You are kind. Thank you. I am ready. Give her to me. Take the shotgun. Now a hint of pleading, Would you dig a grave at the apple tree?

I nodded.

There’s a cart out back.

Sun and heat smote as we stepped through the door. Sweat burst from me as much from danger as from heat. Blessed was the cool of the house.

A spade sufficed in the soft earth beneath the tree. Sweat dripped into the split of the buttocks, dropped from the nose, stung eyes. Sour, nervous sweat. We were easy targets here.

The tree had taken root on a bit of a hump, the only high spot in the meadow. Blossoms already speckled the thick grass. One grave would do, she said, for both man, child, and Jasper. The last her dog.

You need not dig so swiftly. I would help, but I’m drained, and my shoulder throbs. Yep, pounded black and blue by the shotgun, no doubt. I shook my head at her question and kept digging.

She sat against the tree. Her eye sockets were deep, the nose strong, the cheekbones classical, a face more round than long, one I’d know anywhere. She looked at me, her large eyes expressive, lovely bulges under them.

As I dug, a face pulled at me, a face seen in old TV clips, the woman skater on a Russian pairs team involved in a judging fiasco often recounted at Olympic skating competitions. A muscled, short, gorgeous, yellow-haired woman; there was something about her. Perhaps her hairstyle helped, but when I saw her, I thought of this lady right away. I stole a look and compared the two visions, and it wasn’t so much a physical similarity, it was my memory of this lady’s smile and its comparison with the skater’s. A massive, warming smile on both.

Dig, darn it. Finish and get out of the open.

This woman’s right cheekbone was blue, and she fingered it carefully. Bruised from the stock of that old shotgun. She was not so thin as I’d thought, more large-boned, something of the same structure seen in Amish women. Strong wrists and solid forearms, and now she folded her hands over her knees. If her arms were an indication, she was one of those luscious women whose skin appears barely able to contain the flesh under it.

She wore an oversized flannel shirt, three buttons open. Black work trousers hung from suspenders. The open shirt invited, and to break the thought as well as to answer her, I blurted someone might come.

Let them. I will shoot them. With him and the child dead, I do not care. I—

I care. I want to shoot first. Stop. Do not interrupt. There is much to learn, and rudeness won’t help. I’m sorry. Came this far only by extreme caution. You watch hard, or…

I stopped, realizing the implied blame. She said nothing.

Roots interfered until she suggested I bring the ax from the cowshed, and I squared the bottom about five feet deep, the holy six too many this day. Too exposed we were, and my back protested. Dig with the legs; lever the shovel handle on top of the upper leg. From the sun, it was nearly dinnertime, and I suspected poor fare, if anything. In truth, tiredness was trump. To hell with eating; I wanted rest. She too, I imagine. Her man I carried to the hole, and she wrapped him in a wool blanket of rich blue and her daughter in an old shawl of white lace that took my breath away. A year ago, an auctioneer might have knocked it down for a thousand dollars.

Of what better use than to cover a loved one’s face from the earth? No coffin, and I doubted I could make one in time to prevent corruption even if lumber and tools existed. She kissed the little girl, caressed the man’s face, ran her hand over the dog’s head, and asked me to fill the grave. I will watch. I would help, but I’m weak and I ache terribly. She sat against the tree, rifle in her arms, shotgun across her feet.

I, too, lady, and trembly from the shooting and digging. Sore in the gut from the poking of your shotgun. But this I’ll do before I leave. Leave? Not now. She is too vulnerable.

We will say the Lord’s Prayer, she announced.

I butchered the ancient petition. Shamefully. My cadence and hers were at odds—I’d said it so often following others—and the image of her hands on her husband’s face distracted me. She frowned at my mumbling. We stopped, heads bowed. Then she fluidly began in another language. I know it better in Polish.

You have answered an ancient question in my mind, your family origin.

When she ended, I told her how smooth and fine the prayer sounded and asked the girl’s age.

Two years and eight months. She spoke softly of her farm—I took it she owned it before marrying—from which she and her husband and child had come. The violence around us drove us out; we came here early last autumn.

Three pilgrims back to the land. Who else would bring a Damascus steel shotgun and shells too powerful for the metal? No indoor plumbing, no electricity.

She sat next to the mound over her two, arms wrapped around knees, crying. Blossoms drifted, whitening her golden hair and the dark dirt.

There were no words of comfort. This was no cemetery. No mortuary room where the trappings of death were as familiar as our perfunctory phrases. No minister. We must do it ourselves. Reality always won. The dying we do well, a Jew told me. It’s the living that defeats us. Not we, I thought, not yet were we defeated. I thanked God the hellish host of grief counselors loosed on us in our old world were not here to gibber their memorized drivel.

Breeze stirred, and blossoms drifted on us. I wished to hold her, to comfort her, but feared her reaction. I’m nothing to you, I know. Crows called from the tree line. The old French melody, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, crept on me, and I hummed it softly so as not to disturb her. Her head came up; she startled me by singing the words. She sang beautifully, and I listened, not wishing to profane the melody with my dreadful monotone. Then I joined. I could not let pass the medieval plainsong. I stopped before the ending, and she carried it lyrically. I begged her pardon for intruding, explained my love for the hymn.

Yes, we sang it in a friend’s church, and it sounds better in Polish than in English. She chanted a verse, and it did. It was St. Peter’s Square, a ruined abbey, the buttresses of Notre Dame.

Salt tears on my lips surprised me. No tears from me after crossing the inlet to Paul’s body. Only a few for a father-in-law who died too young, for a mother dead from cruel stroke, and for a son lost in keeping those terrorist madmen off us. And none for an aunt who lingered with breast cancer or old friends cut off by heart attack.

These people had been long gone from me; we lived apart many years.

Now this woman’s loss and those years of spiritlessness rose up and flung a shawl of shame over me. Even a good friend devastated by cancer I had mourned tearlessly. A handball player, too, but much older, he played with a ferocious tenacity that more than matched my better skills. We sweated bullets playing summer singles in broiling courts left vacant by wiser men.

I visited him far into his illness, and he immediately asked me what he could do to further my graduate career, offering to sit on my thesis committee, warning I should watch out for his colleagues. The snotty sons of bitches would screw their mothers if they appeared before them to defend a thesis. On he ranted until I chuckled through my sorrow for him. He gave no hint he heard my laugh. You will need a friend on the committee. Let me know. I left, grateful for his maneuvers. We both knew he’d not live that long.

He died a month later, and at a friend’s invitation, I wrote a short memorial his wife praised. Said I’d caught his spirit.

For this lady, no words of comfort. My sorrow is for you and your child. And for my granddaughter whose face your little girl rekindled in my mind. She may be dead too. For others close to me. And for this entire silent world.

I hesitated. Go on. Say it. I’m sorry that we meet in this frightful way. I once hoped for something different. Her husband I didn’t mention. I envied him for his time with her. But no nonsense now; if he were here, I could not stay.

She watched me. She recognized the omission.

"I suppose I cry because I’m so poorly prepared for this blank world. Two friends died recently, and their passing beckons me to their peaceful state. Milost’ mira."

The phrase rose out of me, surprised me, and she translated.

You know Russian? I asked.

A little.

I cry, too, because I can’t remember events and dates. I’ve even forgotten people. I’d forgotten her. I see only fragments, except for scenes of recent terror popping up reborn, too vivid.

Stop. Do not say so. Her whisper was almost imperceptible. I see Janie too clearly. It is cruel. Jack too. My man was a good one, never a harsh word, and I may have deserved some. I will always miss him.

Forgive me. We’ll have more crying to do. Perhaps it’ll heal us.

A light breeze stirred in the apple tree. Hot as hell, and the lower regions had come on wings today.

Crows again. They fussed in the nearby tree line.

In our old world we diluted reality; we stretched life thin as though we drew time through a wire-making die. Our rules and conventions became transparently false. The young saw through adult charades and societal emptiness and had gone to drugs and suicide more and—

I cannot live this way with Janie and my husband gone. It is too sudden, too dreadful. Never to see or touch them again. I loved them so.

She lifted her tear-streaked face to me.

We’ll sit a while. Please lean on me. Go on, cry.

She nodded and cried a long time against me. Woman, your warmth was never more welcome. Your hurt and pain will not end soon; let it out as it floods over you.

She cleared her throat and shook her head. It will never end.

No. But I hope it diminishes, and I’ll help any way I can.

Thank you.

Will you be okay while I get my pack? There’s some lunch in it, and we should eat a little something. It’s late.

Eat? I couldn’t.

When I returned, she motioned me to take my rifle and revolver. Take them. You could have left or hurt me.

I shook my head. Something intruded. The scolding crows. They wheeled, dark clots in the tree line. Scolding? My wits were sodden. Black warnings, the birds swirled over a stand of young hemlocks near the woods road. I grabbed the weapons and told her to run for the house. She was startled, and I gripped her shoulder—she winced—and we ran.

—high honor

I sent her upstairs. Rest. I hoped she obeyed. A headache hammered, and sweat pained in the eyes as flies buzzed over the bloodstained floor. A nasty, close day.

Crows wheeled black against pink clouds fading into gray. Sash stood next to the vacant window casing, removed no doubt for the season. Shutters would keep out sun but not bugs. Doors and windows of our stone house stood open in an old picture, no screens obstructing insect passage.

My face bulged in the bubbled glass of the sash, one diminished eye edging into a cheek, the other monstrous. Movement rippled reflections into other distortions. At the stone house, my brunette lady and I peered through similar book-sized panes of old glass. Everything outside her sewing room windows gyrated and deformed as we moved past them. One winter’s day, a hawk sat a scant three meters from us, swaying in wind-blown snow, black talons on yellow legs clutching twinned tentacles of bittersweet. The glass gave him an eagle’s head atop a sparrow’s body.

These were original windows, foolishly retained. Every few years the old putty must be replaced. A lower sash required placement of the bottom half inch. The punk was sawed out, and solid wood glued in place. A rotted sill was replaced.

Our hawk regarded us occasionally, closely watching the feeder and the huge roll of bittersweet atop the board fence. Here birds often congregated. We bent to see through a lower pane, a middling clear one. The bird balanced, looking, but his dinners had flown. We fed birds, among them chickadees, nuthatches, sparrows, purple and gold finches, juncos, doves, thrushes, a cardinal and his wife, he strong in his fluorescent red, she dowdy. They stayed through the winter but were scarce lately, and now we knew why. The hawk’s dark head, more blue than gray, turned our way, and his blank eyes watched. He seems to want to talk to us, she said.

More likely wishing he could eat us, I replied.

A handsome creature, a chicken hawk, shot on sight years ago. Not here, although I wished he’d let the little birds alone. Take a turn at the woodpile; work on the mice and voles plaguing us.

A whitish breast barred with yellow-tan stripes. Perhaps a sharp-shinned hawk, maybe a Cooper’s. Couldn’t see much difference in the bird book.

I slumped at the window, elbows wedged against the casing. Numb mostly except where the belt cut at hips. My shoulder pulsed where her shot had gouged. Eyes burned and watered while the birds complained. Gut gurgled, mouth sour, and the head pounded.

Through the shutter slats the tree line began to swim, and the dark meadow dissolved into creek and tall cattails. His mustard-colored boots sprouted from the reeds. Scree, scree, scree of pulse echoed in ears, the scene solidifying, the solitary crow detaching from the wheelers and sinking toward Paul’s head. The vision rolled to his spread body, grass and cattails red with blood, the damned bird poised at his eyes. My childhood friend who tormented me in Sunday school, who had nearly squashed me flat last winter, who’d become a brother, lay there with his throat slashed red.

Shoot quickly. Before the beak reaches the eye, fire.

The shutters swung open, the barrel pushing them, black shapes wheeling through the rear peep sight. Crushing thunder of the first shot, then another, both dissolving into powerful thudding in the skull and screech of pulse. An owl swooped off. You fool, the crows had been tormenting the big bird. Someone spoke, a hand on my shoulder—how did they get in the house?

I pivoted and banged the rifle barrel against her face before it registered. She dropped to the floor, hair framing her face in a color matching my wedding ring. Her hand went to her cheek, and she watched me. Light glinted off a cartridge case onto her cheek.

Oh Lord, I didn’t mean to. Lie still. I’ll bring cold water for your cheek. I dropped the rifle and ran to the spring house, the long grass tearing at ankles. Her cheek, you may have broken it. Everyone near you sickens and dies. After all these years, she to care for, and you hurt her.

When I returned, she lay on the floor, green eyes wide with fear. There was no one, no one there, she whispered.

I know, forgive me. I’m sorry. I have cold water and a rag. Let me help you sit up and chill the bruise. A vision, a horror from last spring, drove me. An old friend, his throat cut, forsythia smeared with his blood, crows at his eyes, and a white boat scudding up the inlet, and I shot at them and the crows. When you tapped me on the shoulder, I was caught in the images. I’m dreadfully sorry… Stop babbling before you tell her of the two dead in the hollow, and she fears you even more. I hope your cheekbone is not broken.

Meadow pollen choked me, and I wheezed while bathing her bruise in cold water, dabbing gently the angry red, puffy welt. Lord, it was atop the bruise from the shotgun stock.

It does not feel broken. She fingered her cheek, and her eyes narrowed. It is so tender; it aches so, she murmured. Pain squinted from her when I wanted them widening in her soft, warming smile seen long ago. The swollen cheek slurred her words.

Your voice churned in me, your voice imprinted in me as my mother’s did, her quiet tone ringing in my head, and she dead fifteen years. Her leaving still hurt, her voice often impatient with my childhood failings. Too much like my father, she thought, he an excellent craftsman but with no skill with women and oblivious to her wants.

Not to this one would I be.

Please, more water, she asked, her words scratchy. "I thought you might have