The Weight of Feathers

“It’s not a drill,” Cluck said. He pointed to the sky. The ball had thinned to a veil. It spread out over the town, opening like a trumpet flower.

To his mother it must have looked like cloud cover. Nothing more. She had begun to tip her chin back down to her work when Cluck heard his grandfather’s voice.

“He’s right,” Pépère said. Cluck could see the readiness in those hands, his fingers half-bent. But what would he do with those hands? The plant had locked him out years ago, so he wasn’t there to check gauges or turn off valves.

Cluck’s mother watched the sky. The veil thickened and grew uneven, like la religieuse, the hard layer coating the bottom of a fondue caquelon.

The pen fell from her hands. “Et maintenant que faisons-nous?” she asked Cluck’s grandfather. What do we do now?

It was the first time Cluck had heard her sound like Pépère’s daughter, her voice open and fearful, instead of annoyed, put-upon, as though the old man were an aging dog. Her words so often brimmed with “Et alors?” What now? Now they were full of “Papa, take this, fix it.”

The three of them didn’t whisper. The audience couldn’t hear them. A hundred yards, the trees, and that siren took the sound.

But the audience saw the cloud. Children watching for fairies spotted it first, thinking it was the magic of winged beings. They squealed and waved at the fairy cloud.

Their parents followed those small hands. That cloud drew a shared gasp from mothers, a what-the-hell from fathers. The siren swelled from background noise to a shriek, and they registered the sound.

Pépère closed the space between him and them. “Ladies and gentlemen, my apologies,” he said, his voice level but loud. It carried, pulled their eyes from the sky, covered the faint breath of glass chimes. “We’re going to have to cut tonight’s show a bit short.”

Cluck watched him, his own muscles sparking and restless. How did Alain Corbeau keep such stillness in his voice?

“I’m going to ask you all to proceed to the road,” his grandfather said. “There’s a service station very close. Everyone go there. Stay inside or under an awning.” He spoke in his safety engineer’s voice, a pilot directing passengers. Stay calm. Breathe. Brace. “Do not try to go to your cars. Do not try to go home.”

Cluck’s cousins climbed down from the boughs, light as cicadas. Never rush when they can see you, Nicole Corbeau had taught them. The women moved no faster than the blooms that pulled loose from their flower crowns and drifted down.

The audience scattered.

“If you need assistance to the road, ask any of us,” Pépère said. “If you’re wearing anything cotton, and you can remove it easily, then do so, but the important thing is to get to the service station.”

“Cotton?” a man with a camera strap around his neck asked the question Cluck could see on every face. “Why cotton?”

“The fallout may contain adhesive intermediates,” his grandfather said. “Cotton will stick to the skin worse than other fabric.”

There was no screaming, no flurry of clothes tossed aside. Alain Corbeau’s voice calmed them like a song. Men took off cotton pullovers. Mothers urged children out of cotton jackets. But shirts, pants, and dresses stayed on, and the audience streamed toward the gas station at the road’s edge, quick, but not running. Alain Corbeau’s stillness assured them that, cotton or no, they would be fine as long as they took cover.

Cluck pulled his grandfather aside. “Cotton. They’re all wearing cotton.”

“They won’t be hurt,” his grandfather said. “Between the station and the pump awnings there’s enough cover.” He eyed the sky, gauging how long they had. “Half of them are already there.”

The cloud balled like chewing gum. Soon it would break into rain. Once that cloud fell, full of the plant’s adhesives, polyester would stick to their skin just as bad.

“Why did you say cotton?” Cluck asked.