Auraria: A Novel

by Tim Westover

  Chapter Seventeen

  Three months later, on a gray morning, Holtzclaw and Shadburn stood on a dais high above the valley. The dais stood at the center of an iron bridge that spanned from the Great Hogback Ridge to Sinking Mountain. Originally, the dedication ceremony was only for the bridge, but Shadburn had insisted that it serve for the dam as well. It was time to close the floodgates and let the lake begin to fill.

  Holtzclaw thought it was lunacy. Once the waters started to rise, the old town site would be underwater in a week, and the rest of the valley gone in a month. Far too soon! Holtzclaw had too much work still to do—for Shadburn and for Ms. Rathbun. He had yet to find any investors or any of Auraria’s promised fortunes. He did not have the capital to see either hotel to completion.

  “Shadburn, it’s not too late to postpone the flood,” he said, while Dr. Rathbun swelled to a rhetorical flourish in his remarks to the crowd. “There’s no shame in waiting, only prudence.”

  “First, Holtzclaw,” replied Shadburn, “I don’t want to endure the indignities and expenses of two opening ceremonies. One barrel of fruit drink will suffice for both of them. Surely you would approve of such frugality. And second, an unstoppable deadline always inspires the best and most rapid work. Set a fire. Start a flood. Place the explosives and light the fuses.”

  “It is irresponsible,” said Holtzclaw. “I have hurried as much as our resources will allow.”

  “And even then, it is too slow.”

  Around the dais was only a handful of spectators. More would have come if the event had been better catered, but when word spread that there would be no cakes, no liquors, no roasted meats, many would-be attendees stayed home. Those who did attend seemed to regret their decision. A woman in a yellow bonnet yawned broadly. Two men in matching cravats studied each other’s shoes. The handful of children, too bored to play with enthusiasm, tugged at the hems of their clothing.

  Holtzclaw looked over the valley below. It was a ledger of unfinished tasks and failures. Holdouts needed to be evicted and relocated up the mountain. Buildings and homes needed to be burned so they would not interfere with navigation on the lake. Farm fields had food in them still. Harvesters would take what was large enough to grasp—tomatoes, berries, young corn—and leave the rest for stray turkeys.

  The unfinished outline of the Queen of the Mountains glared impatiently at him. Columns and poles and girders stuck out at awkward angles. The hotel’s lawns and gardens were only mud fields. Springs ran untamed; pavilions to cap them had not yet been built. It did not look much like a first-class hotel, but a first-class mess.

  The Lost Creek Valley, over which the Queen of the Mountains was meant to preside, was no longer sublime nor picturesque. Forests had been harvested for the flume of the dam, the hotel, the company town, and many thousands of railroad ties. Stone and earth had been borrowed for the dam, leaving strange depressions and open wounds of mud. Even an ugly lake would be a welcome disguise for this scarred landscape. Despite the great deal of sweat and fretting that Holtzclaw had plowed into the land, the promised harvest, judging from the current state of the valley, would be meager indeed.

  A silver streak far down the valley caught Holtzclaw’s eye. It was the hull of Ms. Rathbun’s floating hotel. Holtzclaw had deflected questions by telling the railroad men that it was part of the hotel, by telling the hotel crew that it was part of a civic water source, and by telling those responsible for pipes and springs that it was an integral part of the dam’s construction. Making the hull had required a great deal of his personal capital and nearly all of Ms. Rathbun’s as well, but they had made a seaworthy beginning. Had he not been trying to administer two projects, perhaps he could have had the valley cleared by now. But his efforts would do no good if he could not find more money. The empty shell of a boat will attract very few visitors.

  In the distance, the dam bottled up the far end of the valley. At the top, the dam was twenty feet thick and stretched three hundred feet from rim to rim of the gorge. At the bottom, the dimensions were nearly reversed. Because the gorge walls came together, the dam was only a hundred feet wide at its base, but to resist the concentrated weight of the water, the dam was two hundred feet thick—thicker than it was wide. Large boulders were manhandled onto the lake-facing surface of the dam to protect the earthworks from tides and currents. The open side, facing toward the Terrible Cascade, was shielded with gravel as a protection from rain.

  During construction, the Lost Creek was channeled into a narrow watercourse that passed below the body of the dam. Now floodgates were being lowered into the channel. Permanent plugs of rocks and earth would be added for reinforcement. The railroad twins swore that this was the only possible method, given the size of the lake. No screw or hinge would resist the force of such a large body of water, they said. If storms came, regular floodgates could blow out, emptying the lake into the lowlands. Thus, the design of the dam required that it empty itself, at both normal pool and storm surge, through the spillway. The wooden flume that carried the water away, over the head of the Sky Pilot and down to the powerhouse, was invisible over the dam’s horizon.

  A smattering of applause issued from the crowd. Holtzclaw joined reflexively but was startled when Shadburn approached the podium. Shadburn had been a virtual recluse during the construction; he was appearing before an assembled public for the first time in many months. Holtzclaw had hied hither and thither while Shadburn bided his time, waiting for this very moment. For now was a grand moment for a grand speech. Shadburn would reap the fruits of their affections—the hat-waving and bowing and scraping due to every rich and respectable man.

  Holtzclaw straightened up, coiled and tense, ready to be stirred to applause. Shadburn was no orator, but surely he had prepared a mighty speech.

  “In a few months, we have done much for you,” said Shadburn from the dais. “Now we are nearly finished. You have a dam that will soon make a place to fish and sail. You will have a fine hotel to which the best people will come to be refreshed. You have a railroad to bring you wonderful things to buy. And best of all, you now have better work, which comes with salaries. I think you should be very grateful. You’ve got a better town now, and I gave it to you.”

  Shadburn walked away from the podium, accompanied by polite clapping. Holtzclaw could not bring himself to applaud; his hands went limp. Shadburn’s words flopped feebly in the air, like fish out of water.

  What could save face after such a farcical statement? Holtzclaw considered getting up, extemporizing a few words based on great monologues that he’d once committed to memory. But instead he did nothing. Would anyone really remember if he delivered a decent oration on the occasion? It would be forgotten, like so many other little tasks. Better that he leave the people to ponder Shadburn’s failures than his own middling successes.

  Dr. Rathbun leaned over to Shadburn and whispered. Shadburn looked startled.

  “Holtzclaw, I am supposed to open the bridge. How do I open the bridge?”

  “I suppose you loudly declare it. Throw up your hands or some such.”

  “I don’t want to do that. Can it not just … be open, without being opened?”

  “Evidently, the people expect a gesture,” said Holtzclaw. “A respectable one.”

  Shadburn straightened his jacket and aligned his hat appropriately with his ears. Then he stepped to the podium, threw out his hands as if he were embracing the valley, and roared, “I declare this bridge open!”

  There were only a few slow claps. Someone in the crowd said, “What’s its name?”

  “It needs to have a name too?” said Shadburn. “What shall it be, Holtzclaw?”

  “I wouldn’t venture a guess.”

  “Let’s call it the New Bridge,” said Shadburn.

  “But there was no old bridge,” said Holtzclaw.

  “The name doesn’t have to be explained.” Shadburn turned again to the crowd and repeated his gesture, this time calling, “I declare this bridge, the New B
ridge, open! And the dam too! Say hallo for Lake Trahlyta!”

  There was some fumbling behind the dais. A match was struck, and then a rocket launched into the sky. It exploded over the valley, letting off a rain of green sparks. They were only visible for a moment against the gray sky; then they were lost in the daylight. If the men at the dam had seen their signal, they were sealing the floodgates now, but it would have been easy to miss such an unspectacular display.

  A wooden barrel of fruit drink was wheeled into the crowd. Men and women drank the red, red stuff from tin dippers.

  Shadburn did not wade out among the crowd. He stayed on the dais, half-covered in Holtzclaw’s shadow. No one came up to chat or congratulate. The crowd communed with itself, but with only half the verve of a party. Perhaps it was the strangeness of seeing their valley turned into a streak of mud. Perhaps it was the absence of spirits.

  “Well,” said Holtzclaw, “do you think we should mingle? Shake hands? I thought this would be a proud moment for you.”

  “It makes me too thirsty to talk to them. To be in Auraria makes me thirsty.”

  “Well, there’s fruit drink. Shall I ladle some up for you?”

  “Anything but. Where did you get such a terrible recipe, Holtzclaw? Our native potations are far superior.”

  “You could have chosen anything you like, Shadburn. How should I know how to cater a bridge opening?”

  “It’s not important, Holtzclaw. When the hotel opens up, and there are superb guests—then I shall be a perfect orator, and you, I’m sure, will be a perfect caterer. But right now, I’m thirsty. Like in the old days.”

  The burble of conversation around them soon subsided; in its place was disquiet.

  “Why is no one leaving, Holtzclaw?” asked Shadburn. “Do they expect an all-night entertainment from me too? I’ve forgotten how to swallow fire, and my legs don’t know how to jig.”

  Dr. Rathbun sidled up with an explanation. “The matter,” said the mayor, “is the folk tradition that the first person to cross a new bridge is soon to die.”

  “Many people crossed it when it was being built,” said Holtzclaw. “I walked it end-to-end two dozen times, inspecting. The workmen ate their lunch on one end and relieved themselves from the other.”

  “Yes, all well and good,” said Dr. Rathbun. “But that was just a span of wood and metal, not a bridge. A plank laid across a creek is not a bridge. This structure—now that it has been opened, now that it has been named—is unequivocally a bridge, and you have on your hands a boodle of over-cautious people, none of whom want to be the first to cross it.”

  “I suppose the only recourse is for one of us to be the first,” said Shadburn. “We must lead by example, even if we find it exhausting.” Shadburn linked elbows with his assistant and began walking, with Holtzclaw stuttering and shuffling to match the pace of his taller employer. Just at the end of the bridge was a warped board that curled up an inch. It interrupted Shadburn’s stride; he was forced to take a short step to avoid coming down on top of it. Holtzclaw’s left heel landed on earth a moment before Shadburn’s right.

  •

  On the lake-facing side of the dam, a painted red line on the closed floodgates marked the natural level of the river. The water already ran a handspan above the line. Quiet tides lapped against the metal. On the obverse of the dam, though, where men were reinforcing the gates with rock and clay, there was a frenetic scene. The Sky Pilot harangued the workers, tossing pellets of ice. The ground rumbled, throwing workers to their knees and shaking apart the barriers of clay as they were curing behind the sealed floodgates.

  “They’re on my land!” said the Sky Pilot to Holtzclaw. “Every time one of them puts a foot across this line, they’re on my land, and I have the right to pelt them with ice. And that’s because I’m a kind soul. I could shoot them in the back as trespassers or punch them clear through the ribs, and I’d feel clear in my conscience.”

  “I don’t think a jury would uphold you shooting a man in the back because his foot slips into your land,” said Holtzclaw. “What is it that you want?”

  The Sky Pilot threw a cube of ice at a young worker that had come too close. The ice hit the boy on the shin; he cried out in pain and scampered back like a wounded animal. His companions glared across the dividing line at the Sky Pilot. Holtzclaw worried that if he had not been present, the workers would have invaded the property and made their revenge, against all claims of trespassing.

  “This dam cannot be removed now that it displeases you,” said Holtzclaw. “If you are holding out for money, it is too late. I have no money to give you. So, what do you want?”

  “I want you,” said the Sky Pilot, stabbing his finger into the space between Holtzclaw’s second and third ribs, “to talk with my friend. Since you’ve turned off his river, he weeps so much.”

  For the second time, Holtzclaw was suspended from a rope harness and lowered down to the cave of the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin that Lives Under the Mountain.

  The dam workers had paused from consoling the injured boy to warn Holtzclaw about putting his life in the hands of the crazed enemy, but Holtzclaw didn’t think that the Sky Pilot would drop him on the descent. On the return, though, if he could not come to an agreement with the Terrapin, then Holtzclaw would request that someone else belay him.

  No spray splashed at his feet. The tiny scrub pines that had clung to life in the crevices were starting to wither. In place of the constant roar of the falls were the cries of men, the chirping of birds, and the settling and stretching of the earth.

  Holtzclaw alighted on the ledge, removed the rope harness, and entered the cavern.

  “Little morsel, I am sad!” said the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin. He scraped his claw-tipped legs against the stone of the cavern, and the mountain quaked.

  “I am sorry,” said Holtzclaw. “What can I do?”

  “The mountain is pressed. The rocks are complaining. There is too much quiet. I miss the flow of the waters over the rock. They were many voices in excited conversation.”

  “So you would like the men up there to make more noise? Talk more? I could have them set off an explosion on the half hour.”

  “Long ago,” thundered the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin, “when the world was not yet baked, there was a great river that followed across the world, end to end, and back around to itself. And when the Great Hog and the Great Turkey and even I, the not-yet-Great Terrapin, were thirsty, we came to the river to drink the fresh, sweet water. And when the Great Sweet Potato and Great Corn were thirsty, they stretched out their roots through the soft earth and drank from the river. But the Great Beaver could not master his instincts. He gnawed through the children of the Great Pine and the Great Chestnut and the Great Poplar—the children wailed as they fell across the river, and the Great Beaver sealed them together with sticks and twigs and mud. He dammed the single great river! And when the water could no longer flow downstream, then it could no longer loop around to itself and feed from the top of the stream, and the river became a dry canyon. There was great thirst in all the land because there was no water, no water. And there was no more roar of the cataracts and waterfalls. No more bubble of the streams. The world was quiet except for the wails of the thirsty.”

  The Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin sobbed.

  “I look out of my cave and I see the dry river and I hear no roar and I am reminded of the terrible sadness long, long ago, when all were thirsty and quiet. I think about the Great Hog. His shiny bristles turned dull and fell from his skin, and he grew small and became a naked pink creature of no significance. I think about the Great Corn. He was tough and noble, a hard and useless and proud thing that grew wherever he wished. Now he has been made fat and sweet. He hides in his little silken house. He is a fancy dandy, a rich idler, as your people say. Oh! And your people raise his children by the thousands and grind them into your bread. It is a terrible fate. I have too many memories, t
oo many stories.”

  “You enjoy telling them,” said Holtzclaw. “You would go on for hours if I let you.”

  “It is necessary to tell them! Long ago, there were more stories, but they have been forgotten. They were not told, and they went away into the earth. Too few knew them and they withered, like seeds that are scattered too thinly across a field. They cannot take root. The weeds of lesser stories choke them.”

  “Listen, terrapin! I’ll build you an amphitheater. I will put it here, just at the entrance to your cave, with a staircase leading up to the gorge rim. All day and night, visitors will come and listen to your stories.”

  Holtzclaw attempted to calculate the costs of such a promise. Building steps in vertical rock, bringing wood for benches—these were not easy projects. To make a promise is inexpensive and easy. For the moment, it needed only to be made, not fulfilled.

  “There would be many people?” asked the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin.

  “There would be as many people as you like,” said Holtzclaw. “We can advertise your names in all the best weeklies, and you will have a constant throng of admirers. Families will bring their young ones, mouths brimming peanuts and sweet pies and yelps of glee and boredom and affection. They will applaud thunderously, like a waterfall. Or we can invite only the finest guests and sell very few tickets very dearly so that any who buy them would treat the same experience with deep reverence. The women will wear long gloves, and the men will put on tails. After your stories, they will clap primly, and the mingled sound of their appreciation will be the babble of a gentle stream.”

  “And what must I do to receive this boon?”

  “It is very simple. You and your companion, the Sky Pilot, must not trouble my works nor undermine the dam. Leave it alone, and you will have your audience.”

  “It is agreed,” said the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin.

  The Sky Pilot appeared behind Holtzclaw during his last monologue. He had climbed down to see if Holtzclaw had appeased his friend and, if not, to obtain more ice to throw at trespassers. The Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin lifted his head. His beaked face, streaked with leathery lines, cracked with recognition.

  “Friend, I am glad,” said the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin. “This little morsel has promised that he will bring me people to hear my stories. They will sit on something called an amphitheater, and they will listen.”

  “I’ve heard all your stories,” said the Sky Pilot. “And I would gladly hear them again. Do you need more friends who will listen? Am I not enough?”

  “You are not a roaring stream. There must be a Great and Wide and Infinite River from the Mountain. But you are my good friend.”

  The Sky Pilot ran to the terrapin; he embraced the terrapin around a keratinous claw.

  “Now,” said the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin, “I will play the Song of Comfort.” A simple scalar melody lilted from the turtle’s shell. The Sky Pilot, still embracing the terrapin, swayed in time. He smiled like a child about to sleep.

  •

  Mother Fresh-Roasted sat on the front porch of her riverside cabin. In her lap was a broken banjo. It had no strings, but she strummed the air above the scoop and fretted the neck as though she were playing, teasing some sound from it. She had sold her land readily enough but had put off the move, blaming the mules. They were too comfortable in their present home.

  “Mother Fresh-Roasted, the water is rising!” Holtzclaw called out to her as he approached. He’d acquired the wrong impression of her on his first days in Auraria. Emmett the druggist had set her up to be a witch doctor, purveyor of potent potions, but Holtzclaw now suspected that image was motivated by professional jealousy. Rather, Holtzclaw found Mother Fresh-Roasted to be quite charming, if stubborn. By the time he’d arrived on her farm, well into his stay in Auraria, her peculiar familiars did not spook him in the least.

  The woman cast aside the banjo in a rough way that explained how it lost its strings. “I saw a wet hen run smack into a wet dog this morning. Guess they had both been at the springhouse, and when they were coming up here to get their feed, they got all tangled up. Usually means a storm’s coming, but I guess this time it meant flood. Is it minutes, hours? You are so winded. You must have hied like lightning to tell me.”

  Holtzclaw panted, but it was an act—he had not hurried, and his knees were accustomed to the mountain roads. He hardly needed any Effervescent Brain Salts to take away their aches.

  “Well, it will be four weeks until the whole lake is filled,” he said. “But your stables will be underwater in a few days. You must move now.”

  “Graciousness! It’s lucky that Emmett sold me a solution for the mules.” She ducked into her cabin and rummaged. Holtzclaw heard the sounds of metal on metal, glass on glass. Something shattered, and heavy piles slid and tumbled. Mother Fresh-Roasted emerged with a glass bottle.

  “I normally like to mix up my own,” she said. “But none of my brews made those stubborn mules get up their get-up.” She uncorked the bottle, filling the air with a strong smell of alcohol. “Emmett called it highlife and said I should put a dab just so. I need you to lift up his tail. Don’t hold on too tight!”

  She dunked an index finger into the bottle as Holtzclaw grasped the switching tail of one of the mules. He lifted it, and Mother Fresh-Roasted placed her dripping finger at its base. The mule brayed fiercely, lurched forward, and galloped into the sloppily cut underbrush. Holtzclaw was left holding several tail hairs.

  “I told you not to hold on too tight,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted.

  “How does he know where to go?”

  “I sent the singing tree up there already to tidy the place up. They’ll hie to his voice.”

  She approached the next mule; Holtzclaw barely held the tail between his two fingers, and Mother Fresh-Roasted’s finger gingerly touched just the base. This mule too was shot through with vim and courage, barreling away uphill into the woods following the beaten track of its brother.

  “That is some strong stuff,” said Holtzclaw.

  Mother Fresh-Roasted upended the bottle into her mouth and took a long swig. “It’s all right,” she said. Holtzclaw waited for her to explode into green sparks, but when he saw only a small shiver, he reasoned that the special effects of the highlife were confined to either mules or topical application.

  “Your mules will be all right on their own, with just a singing tree to look after them?” said Holtzclaw.

  “If you’re worried, we can put a little highlife under your tail, and you can catch up with them.”

  “I would prefer not!” said Holtzclaw. But he took a sip from the bottle that she held out to him. It burned clear and tasteless—a fine spirit.

  “Besides,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted, “the Admiral will keep them in line and pick them up if they get lost.” Hearing his name, a gray mop-like dog snuffled between Mother Fresh-Roasted’s feet. “He executes my orders, and all the animals follow.”

  The Admiral wheezed and spun around in place half a turn, pursuing his tail until it escaped him.

  “Only trouble is, sometimes he gets to chasing after ghosts. He doesn’t like them, even if they never harm anybody. So I have to put a glass button around his neck to stop him. Oh, Admiral! You’ve lost your button. It’s a good thing that mushroom girl hasn’t been by here. You wouldn’t have given her any peace, would you?”

  Mother Fresh-Roasted knelt down and removed the lowest button from her dress. She tied it to the Admiral’s collar with a piece of thread drawn from her pocket.

  “There, now you’ll stay on task. Keep those mules moving, sir!” The Admiral wheezed and plodded toward the trees.

  “He needs some highlife,” said Holtzclaw.

  “The Admiral is a teetotaler.”

  They went next into a shed that served as a shelter for the chickens. The coops themselves were built into a wheeled cart—ten coops long, four high, two abreast.

&n
bsp; “Eighty hens, and each one has a window seat,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted. “They’ve been so cold lately, so cold. I bring them into the house at night in the worst weather and put them right in front of the hearth, but they’re still laying snowballs.” She lifted one of the hens and withdrew a packed clump of snow, oval just like an egg.

  “How do they cook up?” asked Holtzclaw.

  “Tastes like ice cream,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted.

  “That could be a very profitable treat to sell by the roadside, when there are more visitors to the valley, as long as the weather cooperates.”

  “It may not be the weather after all. It may be unnatural fraternization with the cows,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted. “We have seen the strangest signs. Rainbow-colored clouds in the sky. Ghosts and cats playing chuck-luck. My pond spring has flowed with gravy on two occasions.”

  The wheeled coop was hitched to a brace of oxen, and Mother Fresh-Roasted set this ungainly creation on its way with a clicking of her tongue.

  Behind her cabin, in a stand of trees, were beehives. “My proudest creation,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted. She lifted the lid of a hive, and a green light shined forth. Holtzclaw approached the swarm without hesitation, drawn by light. When he peered inside the hive, he saw that each bee pulled behind it, through the twilight and shadows, a firefly-like lamp.

  “I have made a marriage,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted. “A firefly has a light, but no purpose. A honeybee has a purpose, but no light. Their children inherit the best talents of their parents!”

  “This is not unnatural fraternization?”

  “No, not in the least. Can you imagine a more natural pairing? The fire-bees can work in the dark and make a double crop of honey. When the honeybees gained illuminated tails, they lost in recompense their stingers, which is a boon for the hides of my visitors.”

  “So you have left your sweet and lucrative creations defenseless?”

  “I have a gun, which is better than any stinger ever devised by Nature.”

  “How will you persuade them to move ahead of the waters?”

  Mother Fresh-Roasted motioned for him to stay put, then walked to a copse of chestnut trees that had not yet been cleared. Leaves rustled, and a smaller tree staggered forward. A deer, adult size but swayback and knock-kneed, carried a blooming peach tree. The tree was not held in a pot of soil but grew from the deer’s back. Despite this, the tree was in excellent health—shiny green leaves and bright white blossoms, even in this late season.

  “That odious Sky Pilot shot her with an arrow he took from a peach tree, but he did not kill her,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted. “I could do little for the poor creature. The peach-wood arrow had already taken a root inside her, and to try to remove it would cause a bleeding that I couldn’t stop. The peach tree and the deer are one creature now. The tree shares the mast that she forages and the water that she drinks. The deer sleeps beneath a continual cover of shade and has a ready source of fruit.”

  “No one has tried to chop her down?” asked Holtzclaw.

  “As I said, I have a gun,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted. She clicked sideways out of her mouth, and a boy came out from the woods. He wore overalls and a straw hat, and he was covered in dirt across his body, but his hands and face were clean. He dropped his fishing pole next to Mother Fresh-Roasted, who inspected his hands and face approvingly.

  “Keeping them clean, that’s a good lad,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted. “Do me a kindness and lead our lady up to the new farm. You remember where it is?” The boy nodded. “It’s a hard walk for her.”

  “We can let her rest her middle on the wheelbarrow, and I can pull up on the handles and help,” said the boy.

  “Why, that is a splendid idea and worth twice the pay.” She withdrew from her pocket two silver coins and two walnuts. The boy gobbled one of the walnuts quickly and placed the other three objects into the pocket of his overalls. He placed his hands on either side of the deer’s face. Her eyes, weary and wary and sad like the eyes of all deer that Holtzclaw had seen, regarded the boy; then a black tongue emerged to lick the boy’s hands. The boy laughed, the bees hummed, and the amalgamated creature—boy and bees and deer and tree—rounded the edge of the barn and disappeared.

  Mother Fresh-Roasted’s turkeys lifted their heads and opened their throats to the sky, as if expecting rain. Their alien warbling filled the air.