The Weight of Feathers

They hadn’t turned to crows. No black feathers sprouted from their arms. They looked at her not like they planned to kill her and scavenge her body, but like they’d caught her undressing.

They didn’t know. The old man hadn’t told him.

“I think I broke the lock,” Lace said. “I’m trying to get it open.”

“With a steak knife? You’ll kill yourself.” Clémentine pulled a pin from her hair. “Here.”

Lace set the suitcase down and pretended to fiddle with the lock.

“What’s the matter?” Eugenie asked.

Lace turned the suitcase so they couldn’t see the lock, and kept moving the hairpin. Her heart felt squeezed tight, giving off blood like juice from a plum. Maybe the old man had told only Cluck, and would leave her to him.

“I shouldn’t have said anything about Alain,” Lace said.

Clémentine sat on the built-in bed. “Alain Corbeau’s an old mule. If he felt a heart attack coming on, he’d say he was too busy, could it come back next week.”

Lace jerked the hairpin like it had done the trick. “Thank you.” She handed it back to Clémentine.

Eugenie hopped up on a counter. “If it makes you feel better, he’s angrier with Cluck than he is with you.”

Lace dropped her shoulders, the tension swimming down her back. Maybe Alain Corbeau hadn’t told Cluck. But his stare told her it was not her place to interfere. Entre dos muelas cordales nunca pongas tus pulgares, her uncles would say. Don’t put your thumbs between two wisdom teeth.

The old man’s face would never tell her anything. She wanted to look at Cluck and find out what he knew.

“Where’s Cluck?” Lace asked.

“He’s at his tree,” Eugenie said.

“His tree?”

Clémentine swiped a cotton pad over her face, rubbing off her eye makeup. “Every place we stop, he has his tree.”

Eugenie gave Lace vague directions to the cottonwood. But Lace did not go there first. She found Cluck’s grandfather leaning against the Morris Cowley, a half-burned-down cigarette between his fingers.

He took the pack out of his shirt pocket and held it out to her.

“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m trying to quit.”

He hummed a quick laugh and put the pack away.

She wanted to ask why he hadn’t told Cluck who she was, but bit back the question in case she’d been wrong. If Alain Corbeau hadn’t recognized the Paloma in her, hadn’t seen the feather on her arm, she wasn’t telling.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But Cluck had to know.”

“It made the boy feel better,” the old man said. “And it was nothing to me. Doctors are les crétins. They can’t make me do what I don’t care to.”

The end of his cigarette glowed against the dark, a flake off a harvest moon.

Lace tried not to touch the burn on her cheek. “You used to work at the plant?” she asked.

“Years ago.” He put out his cigarette and went inside.

Lace followed the clean, honey scent of wild roses through the trees. It drifted over the old campground, heavier and sweeter at night, like gardenia.

She spotted the white of Cluck’s shirt and the pale soles of his bare feet, moon-brightened. In the dark, they were all of him that stood out. The black of his hair, his dark trousers, the light brown of his face and hands faded into the tree.

“Well.” He saw her and climbed down, hands and feet gripping the branches. “If it isn’t the only person my grandfather likes less than me right now.”

“That’s not how Eugenie tells it,” she said.

Cluck got down from the lowest bough. “She’s probably right.” He gave her a worn-out smile.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Just angry.”

“Why?”

“He doesn’t take care of himself. Never has.”

She set her hand on the trunk and looked up. “How do you climb without shoes?”

“I’m not sure I could climb with shoes. I’ve been doing it without since I was five.”

“What do you do up that high?”