The Weight of Feathers

The girl filled her arms on the way to the counter. Soda bottles, caramel corn, praline cashews from a farm one county over.

The man at the counter jerked his newspaper to straighten it. “More popcorn, eh?”

The girl flicked him off. The man chuckled, an almost-friend laugh. Almendro was so small nobody bothered to renumber the town sign after the census a few years ago. The man probably knew the girl’s mother and all her sisters if she had any. She’d probably been coming in to buy sour worms and neon sodas since she was in grade school.

They probably did this every week, the man’s teasing, her middle finger, his laugh.

“You want anything?” the girl asked Cluck.

Cluck wondered how someone her size ate all that. “You don’t mess around, do you?”

Her hand paused halfway to a bag of peach rings. “Excuse me?”

He braced to talk himself out. He forgot girls didn’t need to be heavy to feel heavy. Last summer, half his cousins lived on honey and chili powder, a diet they read about in a magazine. Eugenie planned on doing it again this year before they got to Stanislaus County, where she had a park ranger who thought he was her boyfriend.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “Here.” He tried to take the bags and bottles. “Let me buy. Least I can do.”

She dropped everything on the counter, bag of ice and all, and walked out. The bell on the door jingled and knocked the glass.

Cluck followed her out. “I can do this all night.”

She stopped and turned around, arms crossed tight. The wind fluffed up her skirt, like the bottom half of her was underwater. “Do what?”

“You say something and feel bad about it,” Cluck said. “I say something and feel bad about it. Just warning you though, I say a lot of stupid things, and I’m good at feeling bad. You’ll get tired before I do.”

She walked off, the thin film of her dress lapping at the backs of her knees.

He still had to get the milk. The man at the counter grunted to his newspaper, huffed at the mess of packages Cluck had made the girl leave on the counter.

“Sorry.” Cluck paid for a quart of milk, and put everything else back. Soda bottles in the refrigerator case, dried mango and a whole jicama with the other fruit.

The man looked over at him like he might shoplift. He should’ve combed his hair. His grandfather said wearing it as long as he did, down over the collar, wasn’t doing him any favors. But his grandfather knew why he never cut it shorter. He knew what it was hiding, why Cluck never pulled it back in public. It would’ve been as bad as turning his head over, showing strangers the red.

Cold water dripped off the sides of Cluck’s palm. He still had the girl’s scarf, full of ice.

He ran outside after her, but she was already gone.



A mal nudo, mal cu?o.

Meet roughness with roughness.

Oscar and Rey saw Lace holding the bucket of motel ice and knew they were in for a show. But she hitched her thumb toward the door to order them out. They grumbled and took their soda bottles and chicharrones down the hall to Matías’ room.

Justin lay sprawled on the other bed, the motel’s patterned spread crumpled under him. He snored the low drone of june bugs, one hand shielding his eyes from the TV.

He and Matías could get away with anything. They were Abuela’s perfect little soldados. Matías was ready for a fight whenever a Corbeau looked at one of them. Justin always had some plan to sabotage the Corbeaus’ generator or spread vegetable oil on the tree branches.

They were Abuela’s good boys, sus nin?s buenos, and las sirenas were clumsy fish. Abuela always pointed out when one mermaid was looking a little soft, another too bony. One of them had put on too much cream blush, another hadn’t speckled enough paillettes over her body, so the ones covering her escamas were too obvious.