The Weight of Feathers

He clasped Lace’s shoulder, waking her. She shook off sleep, eyes opening to the wisps of red.

The feathers wafted down through the branches, stopping before the ground. They hovered near the cottonwood’s trunk.

Cluck and Lace followed them, him taking her waist to help her from one bough to the one below, guiding her through the air the way she pulled him through water.

They got to the ground, and the feathers stilled in the air, hovering like dragonflies.

Lace looked toward the Palomas’ part of the woods. Cluck mirrored her, looking toward the trees that led to the old Craftsman house. Their gazes crossed. She stared in the direction of the place she’d lived when her family did not want her. He watched the space between the trees. Somewhere on the other side of them was the family that would have been his if he had not grown feathers.

Then came the look between them, the question of Did we mean this? And if they did, where were they going?

They could follow those feathers. They could take his grandfather’s truck and drive, not turn around until they felt free of their own names, until they knew what to do with the truths his father and his mother had left them.

He slid his hand over her palm, asking the question he couldn’t say.

Her fingers answered his. She took his hand, held it, trapped its heat against hers.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yeah?” he asked. He wanted her sure. He wanted to know she understood. This was different than going with his family to Madera County. This was choosing him, just him, and herself, apart from every other Paloma.

She turned her head, looked at him. “Yes.”

The wind picked up. It made the trees whisper and breathe.

The feathers took off on a gust, tumbling over themselves. Cluck and Lace ran after them, following them through the new light. When the feathers floated over the old Craftsman house, the two of them got into Alain Corbeau’s Morris Cowley, and Cluck pulled it onto the road.

They drove past the Blackberry Festival, where Almendro crowned a new queen who would add sons and daughters to this town.

They drove past the grocery store and the bus stop, and the truck got up to speed on the highway. A flock of birds made a V in the corner of the windshield. They had to be calling to each other to stay together, but if Pépère hadn’t taught him that, he’d never know it from here. They seemed quiet as the clouds.

He couldn’t tell if Lace noticed them. She didn’t watch the sky as much as he did. She kept her eyes low, like she was always looking for the sun glinting off a ribbon of water.

They covered miles of highway, past the roadhouse. Past Elida Park, where a leucistic peacock crossed the crabgrass. Far enough that the sound of glass chimes in trees and breath through reed pipes could not reach them.

Far enough that he couldn’t hear the flight calls that told him to come back, to fit himself into that small space his family made for him. His grandfather had kept that space a little bigger, held it open like pulling aside hornbeam branches. Now that he was gone, it had collapsed in on itself. It couldn’t hold Cluck anymore.

Empty land flew by, studded with cornflowers. The scent, like celery seed and desert grapevine, filled the truck.

“What happened to your hand?” Lace asked.

The question drifted between them. Her words brushed his forearm like feathers.

“My brother broke three of my fingers when I was nine.” He just said it, eyes still on the highway ahead, no glance over fearing her pity or wanting it.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

His nickname did not wait on his tongue. It curled and hid on the back of his neck, where his feathers touched his collar. He straightened his shoulders, and it slept.