Read Online Winter Birds by Jim Grimsley - Free Book Online Page A

bordered with silver trees, lines of slim ladies and gentlemen walking along the banks, filling the sky with the soft fogs of their voices. The dream changed and you became new things, things you never remembered afterward.
    You remember a long car ride and then a new hospital with forest green walls, in a city whose name you would always remember. Mars Hill. The doctors here spoke to you often. They called you by name. “How are you this morning, Danny? Is that tongue still leaking, Danny? Don’t you worry, Danny boy, we’ll have it stopped soon, there’s nothing to worry about.”
    You smiled back at them, feeling the stickiness. Their faces made you want to laugh, even Mama’s. The blood kept falling, no matter what they said or did, and you were sure that even here, even in this new hospital, nothing would change. All day long you felt the blood running down your chin, away into the air, a smoke that vanished in front of you.
    You slept and woke and finally did not wake, easing in and out of grayness. Sometimes you saw the shapes of faces, no longer caring to see more, feeling their presence as one feels the brush of a fly’s legs. You stared into the wall behind Papa’s head, over Mama’s shoulder, into a place neither of them saw: a river, a gate, a long stairway;you were following someone, following music, following the bare back of a man whose face you might recognize if you could catch him and make him turn around. You hurried after him because you wanted him to give you something, you didn’t know what it would be.
    Mama said, “Danny if you drink this cocola your mouth will taste better.”
    Papa said, “If you get better I’ll buy you a little guitar.”
    Mama said, “Don’t be such a quiet little boy, talk to me.”
    Papa said, “He don’t care, he’s just going to lay there.”
    Mama said, “Darken the blinds again, so he can sleep.”
    Papa said, “It seems like if he’s going to—if there’s nothing we can do about it—it seems like we’re going to pay a lot of money for him to lay here like this.”
    Mama said, “He can’t help it.”
    â€œI know, you say it all the time, it’s his blood, it’s his goddamn blood.”
    â€œDon’t talk like that in front of him. You don’t know how it makes him feel.”
    â€œAll I know is everything in this room has to be paid for by somebody, and I got a feeling it’s going to be me.”
    â€œHe’s a little boy, he can’t help the money.”
    After a while Papa said, “Well, at least we ain’t going to take any more chances. We been lucky since Danny, we got two good sons. We won’t have any more.”
    Mama’s voice took on a nervous sound. “You thinkwe’re going to stop because you say so?”
    â€œOne of your fancy doctor friends can tell us what to do. There’s pills you can take to keep from having babies.”
    â€œThat’s fine if there’s not one already started,” Mama said slowly. “But what if it’s already too late?”
    Right in front of their eyes the man’s bare back retreated, so close he might have slid his hand right through the solid look of hate Papa gave Mama when he understood what she was telling him. They only saw each other and the wound in your mouth. You knew then you might have followed the man forever, might finally have caught him except, now and then, for the look in your Mama’s eyes.
    Mama told you, years later, about the night Papa came back to the hospital after he learned he was going to be a father again. Your bleeding had slowed. The doctors hoped a clot would form soon. Papa drove all the way to Mars Hill muttering about the baby and drinking beer. In the hospital he let Mama know everything he had thought about her since he saw her last, and picked a fight with her in front of the nurses. When he began