The mechanism by which you reveal yourself—by which you are revealed—it’s blood and bone, it’s black feathers and red ribbon. L Ann Dulin
You have been living in the cornfield since summer started. No one has noticed you, no one has shooed you out, you have dug yourself a pit to sleep in in the middle of the slender stalks. When the combine comes to tear into the earth, to tooth through the dead things, you will move on.
But for now it is June. You are fourteen years old. L Ann Dulin
It’s forever to get to town, but there is food in town, there’s food for a dirty-faced girl no one recognizes but neither do they consider that she is out of place, just another summertime kid out of school and barefoot, running the countryside however she likes. All of them do it, you have always done it. Every town is the same, the people are the same. You blend right in.
Just before the town limit, there’s a trailer park, a strange-eared boy who lives there will trade you some coins for any dead thing you bring him. Today you have a mother mouse and her tiny pink babies. “Did you kill them yourself,” he asks, and you say you did not, you found them this way. He doesn’t hear Blackbird, he isn’t a child of Blackbird. He will not understand.
You leave his face beaming and bright, twelve quarters in your pocket. He will dress them up, the strange-eared boy, he will create them a family, mother and babies. L Ann Dulin
Twelve quarters gets a hot dog and a soda with change leftover. You eat seated on a ledge in front of the courthouse, watching. The people in this town scurry like there is somewhere to be. Post office, movie theatre, office space. The steel mills are just outside of town, no one stinking of burnt metal here. But guys in mud-crusted boots bringing in cow shit air—lots of them in and out of town, hauling supplies for their farms, animals, trailers with big-eyed cows, angry pigs. Children race, on bikes on foot, laughing or fighting, skinned knees and tans and neither are they children of Blackbird.
You could take just one. You could take just one of them, and no one would suspect you, no one would think of you.
“Gabby, right?” L Ann Dulin
The kid who has plopped down next to you, smiling face and bare feet on him, he holds out an ice cream cone.
“Gabrielle.” L Ann Dulin
“Gabrielle then,” he says, waggling his head at his ice cream, his voice a mimic. “I’m Eric. Alex told me you like dead stuff.”
“Alex likes dead stuff. I like him giving me money.”
Eric shrugs. “I like your hair,” he says.
Your hair is long and black and dirty with soil and drying corn husk dust.
*
At night, Blackbird Father sings a song of urgency, desire, a call to become, to be new. By morning, you have hunted and strangled a tomcat.
“Did you kill it yourself?” the strange-eared boy asks.
“Found it like that.”
It isn’t enough, sings Blackbird Father that night. The boy, the boy. I will be so proud. You will become.
The next morning, a squirrel in hand and the strange-eared boy, Alex, looks disappointed.
“Found it like that, huh?”
You hold out your hand. He drops five quarters. His eyes are this bright blue, you have never noticed before, bright blue in a freckled face, tanned from sun, his nose scrunches up and you have disappointed him. And now, the desire in Blackbird Father’s song makes sense.
You want.
Blackbird Father’s song winds around you. The boy, the boy. You will become.
“Thanks,” you say, you rush away. You have never rushed away. You have never felt desire before now.
In town, Eric hands you an ice cream cone.
“Is that a bird skull?” he says, pointing at your neck.
It is. It’s smooth, white now, a small bird skull on a string, sitting there just under your collarbone.
“Did Alex make it for you?” His mouth tilts, sour pout. Jealous.
You have never noticed his eyes either, and so you look, but they are dull, this boy is dull, and his jealousy is irritating. You could take him instead.
“Want to take a walk? Out in the corn?”
Eric shakes his head.
*
At night Blackbird Father’s song fills you, the boy the boy, become become, thunderous, you do not sleep, you hunt and hunt and hunt, for things to give the boy, Alex, to earn quarters, to see him beaming and bright—
Morning comes and there is blood on your hands and you give him the rabbit, the owl. The gopher is still feebly kicking but you give them all to him, all of them and you wait.
He watches you, quiet, takes them from you, does not touch the red on your hands.
“Found them like this?” he says. Bright he is, you wanted him beaming and bright, but he is standing apart from you, and he does not touch the red on your hands, and he is not beaming but is bright with something else, and he takes the dead things like they are objects of reverence. They are.
He drops a handful of quarters into your hand without counting them.
This is the one. Take him. And you will become, the thing that you are. But you can’t, you can’t. Not this one. Not this strange-eared Alex.
You grab Eric by the arm before he can buy the ice creams, and you pull him into a shadow, between two buildings, out of sight. And you ask him to meet you that night. You ask him to meet you, it is a secret. You place his hand onto your chest, your breast there, and his breathing goes quick, eyes locked to his hand. He nods. He wants.
*
The boy the boy—at night Blackbird Father sings, and you are singing, and Eric is laying in the middle of the cornfield. He is dull, dull all over and dead things frighten him and he is quick to sulk but he is easy to appease, in the lull of his satisfaction, you slit his throat, red ribbons across his skin, down into the soil. As you dress him in the field, organs and meat, bones for the burial, you are dressed. You can feel the flight rising inside you, black feathers surround you. You wash Eric’s bones and write Alex’s name on each of them, all over, a sacrifice to appease Blackbird Father. In the strange-eared boy’s stead, this dead thing, take this dead thing. All night, you work, all night, and you will become.
The mechanism—it’s blood and bone, it’s black feathers and red ribbon. But you will maybe take that strange-eared boy with you, into flight.
Eric’s bones and Alex’s name wait for the combine to come.
