Read Online Night Birds, The by Thomas Maltman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Thomas Maltman
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more, perhaps fearful that her husband would be conscious enough to understand. When she spoke these words, she felt them inside her. She should not have shown her father the pamphlet before it was distributed. She should not have gone inside a room where angry men gathered. Her husband was on this table now because of her, and despite every argument, every moment of unhappiness she had felt in her life with him, she found that she still loved him.
“You need to understand how things will be if you are going to continue living here on my land,” Josiah said. He turned his attention to Hazel holding the dripping candle, a girl whose shivers cast uncertain shadows over her pa’s body. Just then, candle wax dripped into one of the man’s shining wounds. His eyes flashed open and his neck arched. A hiss of breath escaped through his clenched teeth. The legs of the kitchen table bowed outward while he twisted on the surface like a stuck hog.
Kate laid her hand on his chest. “We’re almost done, Jakob,” she said. “It won’t help matters if you bring this table down.” The touch of skin against skin, her palm against his clammy chest, gave her confidence. She might still be able to control this situation. “Hazel, you watch how you hold that candle now. Your father doesn’t need any more burns.” She settled the brush on the rise of Jakob’s stomach and pulled her hair out of her eyes. “What is he to do now that your men have ruined his press?”
“He ain’t much for field work, but he could keep the books for my sawmill and salt mines. Might do him some good to apply his mind to a more useful end.”
“And if he refuses?” She couldn’t hold his gaze any longer. Kate turned her attention back to the last dark spot on her husband’s forearm where the tar was spread like a bruise. She had poured a tea of ground poppy leaves down his throat after he was carried in, a tea she used to soothe the children when the damp winters made them bronchial.
“I could not have foreseen what your husband was going to print in his paper. Had I done so, I might have been able to give him warning. If any speak against the border guard, they will be silenced. If a man among us questions our very institutions, his words must be trodden down. With all that’s going on, Kansas turned to blood and Missouri on the verge, your husband picked a poor time to express contrary opinions.” The words had a practiced ring in Kate’s mind, like an orator working a crowd.
The girl didn’t pay attention to either of them. She followed the shallow breathing of her pa and the blue rush of veins beneath his pale skin. His eyelashes fluttered and he seemed to be dreaming. She traced the curving bones of his ribcage to an outer dimple of a gleaming wound in his side. Lines of goosepimples rippled across his skin. The soft pine planks beneath him groaned in time with his breath. Where his breastplate joined his neck there was a hollow shadow, a gathering of darkness like blood spreading from a bullet wound. Her hand hovered over this spot and it came to her that her father would die one day, and there would be no one to defend her from her brothers, to bring her horehound candy when he walked back from town, candy that melted like molasses, something secret and sweet, while they rode together in the woods and he sang to her in the language of the Old Country. She couldn’t stand to look at him any more, his skin already going blue and pale with the knowledge of what would come. Hazel set down the candle on the hewn bench and ran out into the rain. How did it come to this?
Once Hazel had walked with her father through a rare grove of mountain aspen and climbed the high hill that overlooked the Missouri River. The silver aspen leaves quaked and shuddered as the two passed under them. He did not sing to her, but walked slowly, holding her hand and allowing her to set the pace.
“Do you know why the leaves
“You need to understand how things will be if you are going to continue living here on my land,” Josiah said. He turned his attention to Hazel holding the dripping candle, a girl whose shivers cast uncertain shadows over her pa’s body. Just then, candle wax dripped into one of the man’s shining wounds. His eyes flashed open and his neck arched. A hiss of breath escaped through his clenched teeth. The legs of the kitchen table bowed outward while he twisted on the surface like a stuck hog.
Kate laid her hand on his chest. “We’re almost done, Jakob,” she said. “It won’t help matters if you bring this table down.” The touch of skin against skin, her palm against his clammy chest, gave her confidence. She might still be able to control this situation. “Hazel, you watch how you hold that candle now. Your father doesn’t need any more burns.” She settled the brush on the rise of Jakob’s stomach and pulled her hair out of her eyes. “What is he to do now that your men have ruined his press?”
“He ain’t much for field work, but he could keep the books for my sawmill and salt mines. Might do him some good to apply his mind to a more useful end.”
“And if he refuses?” She couldn’t hold his gaze any longer. Kate turned her attention back to the last dark spot on her husband’s forearm where the tar was spread like a bruise. She had poured a tea of ground poppy leaves down his throat after he was carried in, a tea she used to soothe the children when the damp winters made them bronchial.
“I could not have foreseen what your husband was going to print in his paper. Had I done so, I might have been able to give him warning. If any speak against the border guard, they will be silenced. If a man among us questions our very institutions, his words must be trodden down. With all that’s going on, Kansas turned to blood and Missouri on the verge, your husband picked a poor time to express contrary opinions.” The words had a practiced ring in Kate’s mind, like an orator working a crowd.
The girl didn’t pay attention to either of them. She followed the shallow breathing of her pa and the blue rush of veins beneath his pale skin. His eyelashes fluttered and he seemed to be dreaming. She traced the curving bones of his ribcage to an outer dimple of a gleaming wound in his side. Lines of goosepimples rippled across his skin. The soft pine planks beneath him groaned in time with his breath. Where his breastplate joined his neck there was a hollow shadow, a gathering of darkness like blood spreading from a bullet wound. Her hand hovered over this spot and it came to her that her father would die one day, and there would be no one to defend her from her brothers, to bring her horehound candy when he walked back from town, candy that melted like molasses, something secret and sweet, while they rode together in the woods and he sang to her in the language of the Old Country. She couldn’t stand to look at him any more, his skin already going blue and pale with the knowledge of what would come. Hazel set down the candle on the hewn bench and ran out into the rain. How did it come to this?
Once Hazel had walked with her father through a rare grove of mountain aspen and climbed the high hill that overlooked the Missouri River. The silver aspen leaves quaked and shuddered as the two passed under them. He did not sing to her, but walked slowly, holding her hand and allowing her to set the pace.
“Do you know why the leaves
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