The Weight of Feathers

“Don’t worry,” Cluck said. “They get along enough.”


He picked up a shed feather, pulled garden shears from his back pocket and clipped it. He threw the lower half to an adolescent tortoiseshell cat. It chewed on the hollow shaft, back feet kicking the feather barbs.

“How do you get enough feathers if you pick them up one at a time?” Lace asked.

“I don’t. They’re not shedding much now, but come the end of summer, they’ll molt.” The feathers would half-carpet the ground, like la couleur of fruit blossom petals turning the ground pink in spring.

A gasp parted Lace’s lips, one breath away from a laugh.

Cluck knew why before he looked up.

They both watched the white peacock shake itself out of the tall grasses. The bird took one slow step, then another, his body so covered in white Cluck always expected it to dust the ground like powdered sugar.

Cluck crouched so he’d look smaller. It made the birds shed their skittishness like molted feathers. He didn’t ask Lace to. She wasn’t much taller than the peacock’s upright tail fan.

The peacock took one step into the sun, like toeing cold water. In full light, he looked made of the fringe off white bearded irises.

He dropped a single tail feather, long as Cluck’s arm, and left to follow after a peahen with eyes like black marbles.

Cluck lifted the plume off the grass, cradling it so the stem wouldn’t bend, and clipped the hollow shaft of the calamus.

“You’re gonna touch that?” Lace asked.

“I’m not gonna catch anything.”

“No,” she said. “I mean because it’s white.”

He got up from his crouch. “And?”

“I don’t know. I thought since yours are black.”

He laughed. “I have black feathers, so I won’t touch white ones? No.” Was that one of the rumors going around Almendro? Just because the name of that other family meant “dove”? None of them despised the Palomas for their name, or even for the white scales that showed up on their bodies. It had never been about doves or birthmarks.

It had always been about what they’d done.

He handed Lace the eyespot. “If you look close, it’s not all white.”

She held it in the light, tilting the left side down, then the right. Most of the feather was pale as bleached linen, but from different angles, the iridescence on the eyespot showed tints of color. Pollen-dust yellow. Traces of blue, like bits of sky and robin’s eggs. Dusk colors, violet blue and bluish lavender. A pink that matched Lace’s mouth when her lipstick wore off.

Now she laughed, light as the colors on the eyespot.

“It’s because of the white,” he said.

“Because white has every color,” Lace said.

Pépère would like her for knowing things like that.

They stood there as the light fell, watching until the peacocks scattered.

Having her there made him look at the birds a little less. When she was watching, he could watch her. He could study how her skin and her eyes and hair were all gradations of the same color, lighter to darker. The only parts of her face that broke the sequence was the pink on her lips and the deep red on her cheek, like crushed raspberries. If he stopped thinking of how much it must have hurt her, that patch on her cheek was beautiful.

“You hungry?” Cluck asked when he started the Morris Cowley. “Or do you always wait until the middle of the night to eat?”

She reached over the gearshift and shoved his upper arm.

“Oh, good,” he said. “You’re becoming a Corbeau.”

Her eyes opened a little wider.

“I was kidding,” he said.

The park disappeared into the rearview.

“It’s not catching, I promise,” he said. “You’re not gonna grow feathers from being around us.”

She nodded and looked out the window. She may or may not have believed him.



Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.