Stillbird

by Sandra Shwayder Sanchez

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  His father tricked him. Jamie was in the cupboard, and Alwyn lay crying, curled up in a protective ball, keeping even her tears secret, and Abel had run and hidden inside the hollow of an ancient, nearly dead oak tree not far from the house. He could hear his father crying, “Don’t leave me alone!” And there was such pain in his father’s cry that he, Abel, had been moved to immeasurable sadness and left his hiding place to go comfort his father, who was sorry for beating his mother. He came up behind him and hugged him around his knees and his father was surprised and stank from whiskey, and crying still and for a while he spoke tearfully to Abel, sorry for himself and wanting Abel to understand his loneliness, but then he remembered that Abel had run from him and hidden himself and left him alone, and he got angry again and beat Abel too, leaving bruises all over his arms and legs, and later when Abel would look at the bruises, he couldn’t understand how his father could be so sad and so angry at the same time. His father had finally left, and Abel had curled up next to Alwyn and touched her, and they cried together and held each other. Even as he hated to remember the fear and confusion about his father, Abel cherished the memory of his mother holding him and the two of them sobbing together, more together than they would ever be in simple conversation. When Abel remembered this, he sobbed again and held himself as he rocked back and forth, unaware of Charles watching him. Charles could do nothing but watch his father’s grief.

  The crows surrounded the house each afternoon in summer, eating the elderberries that grew like weeds up against the windows even against the loft. Noiselessly they ate and watched and listened and heard nothing but the steady rocking and occasional sobs, the only thing left of Abel’s voice. Charles walked all over their land and beyond into the woods, and the crows would take flight, leaving the elderberry bushes one by one to follow high overhead, watching the farm, the village, all the people all at once, as they moved around each other in a mystical dance, the steps dictated by a twisted instinct, and only the crows could see the patterns they made.

  As the summer drew near its end, Stillbird gathered wild berries and apples and other fruits that grew here and there as well as the wild onions and watercress and mint that had grown in abundance since spring. In the last beautiful days of autumn, she found a doe killed, but otherwise untouched, outside the entrance to the cave, and she labored all day to skin the animal and slice off the meat in thin strips that she hung to dry in the cave over a smokey fire. And she stored up the sunlight in her body, up and out before dawn to watch the mountains emerge from the mists, with an excitement that felt like youth, and lingered outside long after dusk, rejoicing in the crisp clearness of the evening air, the sharpness of the moonlit trees that reached graceful beyond their few remaining leaves, cutting the infinite sky into myriad shapes that fascinated her eye. Stillbird reached out her own arms in a quiet dance that imitated the trees, and the wind and the years fell away from her, memories of years and years with Abel and Charles forgotten, meaningless now. Her spirit was free and memory didn’t matter. Once clenched around her child, her arms now opened by themselves and felt like powerful wings as she moved them around and around and let her body follow. Then she would collapse into piles of leaves and smell the air, fighting sleep, not wanting to miss the beauty of the night.

  After Abel told Charles the story of the giant’s hidden soul, he struggled to remember everything, every day of his life, for there were more memories than he had thought about throughout the summer and fall and he knew he would die soon and he wanted to say good-bye to his life and all of his memories, the bad as well as the good, for they were all he had of love and companionship; just those memories of his mother and father and his brother, Jamie and a few others who came and went briefly in the story of his life. To Charles, he must have appeared in a silent shock, an open-eyed sleep, but he was working hard not to forget a single day, a single word. He knew by now that he could die any time, but he wanted to get ready and do it right, not like Jamie or his mother--rushed out of life so suddenly and without warning. And he wanted to apologize to God for the mistakes he had made, and he expected God to convey his apologies to the woman. He saw her often living in a cave, and he was certain she lived in the cave where the cat had killed the doe, but he knew he couldn’t go there, and now he didn’t even want to try. He just wanted to think it all out and die. Once he tried to tell Charles and talk to Charles, but whenever he spoke of death, his son bid him sleep and rest and promised to do things--find the woman, make amends--and Abel realized that Charles didn’t understand that that was what he was doing and that it was nearly over. He felt sorry for Charles, but had nothing to give Charles that Charles could understand, and it was too late now. Charles still didn’t believe in the stories, and Abel realized that the young don’t really believe in death either, and only when a man believes in death, can he then believe in the stories. And then all reality changes. Anger had been Abel’s reality and now he had none left. He was not even angry that for all the times he had remembered Alwyn, she never came to him in dreams to tell him what death was like. He would know soon enough. And he knew he would not visit Charles either to tell his son about death. He paid no more attention to Charles, and even left the cabin with renewed energy to wander in the woods just to get away from his son’s voice, because it was the voice of the living, and Abel was yearning for the magic voices of the stories, the fairies and the magical animals and Stillbird, if he could find her. He would not look but thought she would come to him if he became a part of the stories. Abel prayed that there was no soul to live on after the death of the body and yearn eternally, for then he knew he would yearn always after Stillbird, and he wanted to believe that they two could rest somehow together, without desire or rejection, without anger or even love, just the comfort of a shared sleep. So Abel prepared by thinking of each thing he had to think of, just once so he could throw it away and empty his mind, his soul, and rest.

  That winter was mild but late, even after the buds had grown bright and ebullient upon the trees, there was one last long snowstorm. The world was buried so deep within the snow that it seemed a peaceful, silent blank, and Abel’s mind as well went blank until the snow thawed and the streams overflowed their banks, flooding the fields and the roads, coming up so close to the cabin that Abel thought he looked out upon a lake. He remembered then following his mother to a lake where he had watched the geese and watched while she walked right into the middle of it, and with a dance-like movement, twirled down into the water and lay there. It was early spring then, too, and still quite cold. She would not drown, but surely she would freeze.

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