The Weight of Feathers

The pain of a jammed finger throbbed through Cluck’s hand. It hadn’t faded by the time the police came for him.

His family’s murmurs and his mother’s shouting all faded under the crisp flapping of the crow’s wings.

The soreness in Cluck’s left hand gave way to the weight in his right. With as many times as the risk manager had said Pépère’s name, Cluck needed, even more, to leave this handful of earth in a well.

“Please,” Cluck said as they tried to force his wrists behind his back. “There’s something I have to do first.” He had to do this one thing right for Pépère.

He would not open his right hand. If he did not reach the well, no one would do it in his place. His family would call these things old superstitions. They would leave Pépère held to the earth like a moon.

Cluck fought their hold. “No.” But they clicked the locks into place.

He felt small hands under his, taking the earth.

Eugenie stepped into his sight, the soil filling her palms. She held it in both hands, cupping it in front of her like she’d caught a finch. She was so little, so quick, that she’d slipped behind him and away again before the police could think to stop her.

“Please,” Cluck told her. “There’s a well out by County Road 27.”

“By the almond orchard,” she interrupted him. “I know. I’ll bring it.”

Her hands had been raining petals onto their audiences for years. They knew when to stay so closed it looked like she held nothing, and when to open.

“Nais tuke,” he said as they pulled him away. Thank you.

She smiled. “Always.”

Cluck breathed out until he’d emptied his lungs. He stopped fighting, and let them take him.



El amor es ciego.

Love is blind.

Tía Lora told her not to go back. This was what she asked in return for the things she told her.

“There is nothing for you there, mija,” she said, making Lace drink borraja tea to calm her, the honey taste of the flowers helping the bite of the leaves go down.

But Lace went anyway, her hands prickling with the truth of what happened the night the lake swallowed the trees, a truth only she and Lora Paloma knew.

And how Justin, Oscar, and Rey could have called Cluck a chucho, a word that meant not just wild or stray but mutt. Why Cluck’s gitano blood showed so much more in him than in his mother and brother. This truth half the Corbeaus knew. They just hadn’t bothered to tell Cluck.

Lace didn’t find him in the trailers. She searched the mourners in the Corbeaus’ kitchen and dining room. But she did not see Cluck.

She didn’t see Dax either. So she threw open his bedroom door without knocking.

Dax looked up from a writing desk, hand paused over a ledger like his mother’s.

“Where is he?” Lace asked.

“Who?” Dax asked.

“Cluck,” she said, yelling more than she meant to.

“Where do you think? He’s in a holding cell.”

She held her hands to her sternum, her great-aunt’s truths stinging her through her dress. “What?”

“He hit one of the men from the plant. Some lawyer or actuary, I don’t know. Eugenie didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Lace said. She hadn’t seen Eugenie.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get by without him. Call tonight is the usual time.” He went back to writing.

Lace set her back against the wall. “Dammit, Cluck,” she said under her breath. He’d never hit anyone in his life, and he had to start with a lawyer.

“Stop calling him that,” Dax said. “He’s not a chicken.”

Her shoulder blades pressed into the wallpaper. “And you’re just leaving him there.”

“Suis-je le gardien de mon frère?” Dax asked.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“Genesis four-nine.” He took a Bible off the bookshelf and handed it to her. “If you’re going to keep working for us, you’ll need to learn a little French.”