passages that will throw the growing distance he feels into a lucid and explicable relief. He wonders if he has always been removed and is only now finding the words to articulate that sense. He pores over the tremendous globe set on a rosewood stand in the corner behind the old woman’s rocking chair. He touches the continents, the warp where a mountain range has torn up from the earth. He moves his fingers across the wide and unkempt chunks of blue. The oceans fit like shim stones in his hand. He has read Wegener’s theories of Pangaea and continental drift, and he knows that the jigsawed edges once meshed together into a single mass of land that broke along its weaker faults. He will glimpse how they are still splitting, how the continents are as rootless as the men he has seen digging on the flats: fine, black splinters crawling on a skin of rippling light.
He spins the globe through his hands, trying to regather a sense of its wholeness. The foreign names of countries stumble in his mouth with the winter smells of lanolin and coal. The rain falls through the long window and clings to the branches of the willow tree as the wind cracks along the edges of the sill, and he will think of the girl, pale andtumbling down that summer hill. He begins to map her vibration the way one might sense the heartbeat of a bird.
That fall, the fever moves through the town. It grows the way the sea blight grows, its seeds thrown to a strong wind. It spreads through the grass, sinks into their water, and they drink it from the well. It sticks tough like the grainy meat of an old rabbit, quartered, when the leg sinews refuse to give way from the bone. It lodges under their fingernails and eats them from the insides.
Jake senses the wrongness a month before when Wes, eighteen, his hands already sprouting huge out of his sleeves, strides out onto the front steps and takes down the goose on the wing. The goose flies alone, black in the sky, a lean and solitary pattern that slices the bottom third of the moon. Wes takes it on one shot, and the bird drops, a plummet of wings and thick body, passing through levels of the dark until it is lost in the field across the road behind Maggie’s root cellar.
Jake goes out with Wes to search. He is looking for a black-on-black shadow. He leaves the wagon path and cuts through the wreck in the stone fence and the tangle of greenbrier. Without knowing, he has begun to move the way his brother moves, boneless, his limbs cut free like the silk of milkweed pod.
He comes out into the lower meadow. The bird lies still, a twitch of the moon in the grass. It is white, not dark, and its whiteness catches in his throat and grows fear, swollen there. Maggie’s rooster strides in tight circles around it. When Jake comes close, the cock flies at him with its beak, furious, and a high-pitched cry.
Wes peels out of the shadow from the juniper trees on the opposite side of the field. He pelts the rooster with a stone and hits its leg. Screeching, the cock limps off.
He stops when he sees that the bird is white. It’s bad luck, he knows, to kill a white goose.
“I thought it was a brant,” he says.
Jake doesn’t answer.
“You pick it up.” Wes nods at him. For a moment they stare at one another. Neither of them moves.
“I told you to get it.”
Jake moves in and picks up the snow goose. It is as light as dried rosemary in his arms. It smells of salt and the cold.
They walk back toward the house.
“I thought it was a brant,” Wes says again. “Looked like a brant from where we shot.”
“From where you shot.”
Wes turns on him sharply. “You don’t tell Ma, hear?”
“I won’t.”
“You tell her and I’ll thrash you good.”
“Said I won’t.”
They continue up the hill.
“No such thing as luck anyhow, wrong or good,” Wes says, bending to pick up a handful of stones. He skims them toward the woods that line the wagon path. Jake hears the dull thud after thud as the rocks strike
He spins the globe through his hands, trying to regather a sense of its wholeness. The foreign names of countries stumble in his mouth with the winter smells of lanolin and coal. The rain falls through the long window and clings to the branches of the willow tree as the wind cracks along the edges of the sill, and he will think of the girl, pale andtumbling down that summer hill. He begins to map her vibration the way one might sense the heartbeat of a bird.
That fall, the fever moves through the town. It grows the way the sea blight grows, its seeds thrown to a strong wind. It spreads through the grass, sinks into their water, and they drink it from the well. It sticks tough like the grainy meat of an old rabbit, quartered, when the leg sinews refuse to give way from the bone. It lodges under their fingernails and eats them from the insides.
Jake senses the wrongness a month before when Wes, eighteen, his hands already sprouting huge out of his sleeves, strides out onto the front steps and takes down the goose on the wing. The goose flies alone, black in the sky, a lean and solitary pattern that slices the bottom third of the moon. Wes takes it on one shot, and the bird drops, a plummet of wings and thick body, passing through levels of the dark until it is lost in the field across the road behind Maggie’s root cellar.
Jake goes out with Wes to search. He is looking for a black-on-black shadow. He leaves the wagon path and cuts through the wreck in the stone fence and the tangle of greenbrier. Without knowing, he has begun to move the way his brother moves, boneless, his limbs cut free like the silk of milkweed pod.
He comes out into the lower meadow. The bird lies still, a twitch of the moon in the grass. It is white, not dark, and its whiteness catches in his throat and grows fear, swollen there. Maggie’s rooster strides in tight circles around it. When Jake comes close, the cock flies at him with its beak, furious, and a high-pitched cry.
Wes peels out of the shadow from the juniper trees on the opposite side of the field. He pelts the rooster with a stone and hits its leg. Screeching, the cock limps off.
He stops when he sees that the bird is white. It’s bad luck, he knows, to kill a white goose.
“I thought it was a brant,” he says.
Jake doesn’t answer.
“You pick it up.” Wes nods at him. For a moment they stare at one another. Neither of them moves.
“I told you to get it.”
Jake moves in and picks up the snow goose. It is as light as dried rosemary in his arms. It smells of salt and the cold.
They walk back toward the house.
“I thought it was a brant,” Wes says again. “Looked like a brant from where we shot.”
“From where you shot.”
Wes turns on him sharply. “You don’t tell Ma, hear?”
“I won’t.”
“You tell her and I’ll thrash you good.”
“Said I won’t.”
They continue up the hill.
“No such thing as luck anyhow, wrong or good,” Wes says, bending to pick up a handful of stones. He skims them toward the woods that line the wagon path. Jake hears the dull thud after thud as the rocks strike
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