She asks if I sing. I say, “No,” She says, “It doesn’t matter. Not at all.” Then, “Will you join the contest? Please.”
I don’t know what she means and it must show on my face.
“The contest!”
I squint and clack my teeth, not from choice but from nervousness.
“The mating. For all of us. And for me! For me!”
“Of course I will.”
“Until then,” she says and moves away, magnificently—swaying side-to-side on purpose to lure me.
But I’m too anxious to be tempted to the extent she wants me to be right now. I have to find out what she’s talking about without seeming to ask. I worry. We have contests, too, but I already suspect what theirs might be. Of course would be. Gliding! Probably from higher and higher branches. That’s what that tree is for. Once you really look at it you can see worn spots and claw marks, branches flattened out into platforms. I can’t be seen doing that. Or even trying to do that. Besides, I’d break every leg—at the least. I don’t have to join the mating contest but I want to.
If I don’t do it, I can just hear it. “Lost your wings? An accident? The punishment for some crime? What crime is that, to make you one of the Lesser? Go up north where you belong.
Until I came here, I had no idea they call us the Lesser. Though that makes sense. Except we’re so large and strong, and we have such a beautiful iridescent blueness.
For the next few days, as I wait for the contest, I show off by lifting things none of them can. I carry heavy loads for long distances. I feel superior to all of them. And I have managed to get three young ones who can’t yet squeak out to their mothers what I’ve done, and removed their first hints of feathers. That leaves no scar, and leaves them fledglings who will never fledge.
I have an entourage of admirers. Young ones who want to be just like me. Several females want me to glide for them when the time of the contest comes, but I’ll stay true to my exquisite pink singer.
I remember when I was small and had heard about these others. I couldn’t believe that I was Us and not them… I was sure I could glide. A group of us climbed a tree and jumped, squeaking out our triumph. One died, two broke legs as did I. All of us bruised and chastened. Almost all our young males try it. After that we stick to our own contests, broad jump, high jump, skittering….
We try not to let our little ones hear about those others, so like us, until they’re old enough to understand we’re Us, and that we can’t glide no matter how hard we try.
Here, they’ve been practicing their glides. The handsomest, the youngest, the most fit. I’m all of those, but of course I don’t practice. At least not that way. I’m awed by the heights they leap from. I’d be frightened just climbing up that high and looking down. So that’s what I practice—just climbing up a bit higher than I’m comfortable. I sit on a branch. I make myself stay there until I’ve stopped hanging on so tight my limbs hurt—until I’ve stopped sweating … stopped breathing hard. Then I go up a little higher and do it all over again.
I miss the afternoons of Lee-ah’s singing. I have to do it then because there’s nobody around except a few sentinels. Thank goodness none posted near their tree.
There are two times a day I dare practice, when she sings and in the moonlight. (Though the ground is all in shadows, it’s even scarier then.) I get to know the tree so well that I know every branch.
She sings for them everyday at midday. It’s the time for a rest. It’s hot and the burrows are cool. Everyone hunkers down in that vaulted cavern to listen. They just leave a few guards outside. That would be a perfect time for Us to get almost all of them in one operation. All we’d have to do is close off the entrance and station warriors at the escape hatches.
When I’m up on the branches, I imagine launching myself into the air, leaping away, as far out as I can to avoid the lower branches, my limbs spread. (I’ve watched how they do it.) I imagine the glide. It doesn’t help to think about it. I feel sicker. I cling all the harder. Besides, I know it’s hopeless. And when I practice by moonlight I worry about owls. Almost more than the height. They’re so silent. I’d be prey and never know it until I was in the sky.
I’m so busy and exhausted with my practicing … my useless practicing…. (How can it do any good, I’ll never glide.) I’m so busy with myself I’ve only cut the beginning wings of those three fledglings. I did, though, get better at looking down without trembling and sweating. I can walk across the highest branches with assurance.
Someone must have seen me climbing up and then down again without gliding. As I sit, half-asleep…. (I was up much of the night practicing. I was feeling good about myself. In just a few days I had mastered my fear of heights.) … I hear someone whisper, hot breath right into my ear, the clack of teeth, whiskers pricking me…. He says, “You’re not what you pretend.” It’s one of the guards. I know him, he’s usually stationed at the escape hatch of the main burrow. He has a piercing whistle. I’ve told him how much I admire it. I also said I knew what a hard job he has, standing up straight to watch for so long. But he’s no friend. “I know your kind. Always trying to be us. Second best if best at all. Third best. Fourth best. There is no second best to us. Who are you?”
“One of your own.”
“A half-breed.”
“Of course not.”
“Live by the leap. Live by the song. Die by the red tail, or by the great white head. Live by the granary.” His red eyes glint in a nasty way. “Or live by someone else’s granary.”
“Our granary, I suppose.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you’ve got them all now.” I’ve revealed myself. “Are you telling?”
He wiggles his nose as though I’d told a joke. Perhaps I have, says, “I’d rather wait and see what happens at the leaping.”
The day of the great flights (they keep calling it flying) dozens of sky folk whirl on thermals so high we can just barely see them. Guards with rock launchers stand by. First aid stands by. Runners with stretchers stand by to rush the wounded to burrows.
The leapers climb, first to the height they’ve decided is the highest they can safely glide, and then they climb higher.
The leap, the dive… the lovely glide, arms out as though sky folk … those little shiny wings spread…. And if they survive, it’s a leap into the breeding pool. Perhaps this glide contest is exactly for creatures like me. To winnow out us lesser ones. Make sure the offspring will all at least glide. At least that. Will all be them and not Us.
All goes well for the first few leaps, but then someone lies crumpled. An eagle drops… falls… straight down, as they always do, wings tight to his sides, and before the stone throwers can even begin to think to do anything, the young one is scooped up. Again they, and I also, call out, Goodbye and love. Then there’s silence. Not just us, but all birds, the jays, the quail, and even the crickets, even the cicadas, even they, feel the danger. And there’s still plenty of sky folk circling up there, so high they’re mere specks.
Even so, they start the glides again. I thought they’d stop and I was free until the next time. But they cheer each other more vigorously than before. Call out, “Fly, fly, fly,” (as if they really could), and with more bravado.
Shortly before my turn, Lee-ah tells me I don’t need to go too high. She says she doesn’t love me for my glide and she doesn’t want me to suffer even one broken leg. She’ll love me no matter that they’ll ridicule me if I’m the lowest jumper. She says she’s not afraid of ridicule. She says she had plenty herself before she learned to sing. Maybe she suspects. Maybe she already knows all our offspring will be lesser ones. She doesn’t need to see me leap… or rather not leap … to prove it.
I wish she’d told me this before. It might have made a difference.
I’m fearless. Even more so, here in front of them all. I climb higher than any of them have dared. I might as well. To one like me there’s no difference, high or even higher. I look down on them… at all
those who call us the Lesser ones. If I’m quick…. If I’m clever….
Many shake their heads as though to warn me. I wonder how many know.
Lee-ah stands below, her arms raised as though to catch me. I hope she doesn’t. I’d kill her if I fell on her. But then she starts to sing and everybody turns to look at her. They’re instantly enthralled. They squat down to listen as they always do. She must know what I am. She’s giving me a chance. Perhaps I can climb down the back of the tree, come out at the bottom from around the trunk. It’s thick as ten of us. Enough to hide me all the way down. But I choose the doom I’ve already picked out for myself.
My branch is higher, therefore thinner. I’ve already gnawed it half way though. I won’t launch myself out beyond all the other, lower branches, limbs spread, nubs in full view. I want to come down right on the lower branches. I bounce on my branch as though getting ready to leap.
I come crashing down, hitting one branch after the other, reaching out to each as I fall. A feat of skill and strength for one of my kind. And I wish my kind could see me. If I ever have the chance to tell them, they’ll not believe.
Even as I fall I’m thinking I hope nobody examines the branch. I gnawed it as best I could to make it look as if it broke on its own, but I’m sure it still has my teeth marks.
Actually nobody sees me. Lee-ah is still singing.
The last part of the fall is the most dangerous. Nearer the ground, there are no branches to grab. I’ll have to trust my legs. I wrapped them to strengthen them, but it won’t help much.
As I fall and grab branches, I break some of their best leaping platforms.
The last drop. The worst. I plummet down. Crash. I’m so shocked, I hardly know what happened. I’m on the ground… broken legs for sure, maybe all of them. And Lee-ah, on her knees beside me. Looking up, teeth clacking. From fear or a warning to the___
The hawk drops. Almost into Lee-ah’s arms. They rush to save her. They mustn’t lose their singer.
But I’m grabbed. I’m whooshed away so fast. So high. The hawk’s squawk and the sound of wings drowning out Lee-ah’s calling out, “Oh love. Oh love.”
Higher yet…. I see the whole world. I even see my own land. Little dots that are my own kind. Unaware of me. Crawling from hillock to hillock. We all do. Even these others, gliders though they be, do little more than that. Whatever they call it, it isn’t flying. The only way any of us, we or they, ever really fly, is like this.
I had not thought there’d be so much wind. So much flap, flapping, and shaking, and that it would be so dazzling. So spectacular. I had not thought… the world so all embracing. Astonishing. If only I could tell them.
MY GENERAL
I WAS IMMEDIATELY TAKEN with the general though he was an awful mess and had obviously been tortured. I could hardly see what he really looked like. He was lying on the rubble of a ruined basement. The house above had been bombed out so the basement had no roof. They’d thrown a dirty tarp over him. It had been a cold night but at least it hadn’t rained.
He smelled as bad as the place they’d thrown him—of urine and vomit and feces. I cleaned him off before I had them load him in my cart. That whole headquarters area is getting to be a garbage dump: rusty cans, oil drums, the remains of fires where soldiers have cooked and tried to keep warm…. Of course where they throw the prisoners is the worst.
They’d given up on getting any information out of him. They said he was mine to do with as I wished. We always take them along with us and get them back in shape for our farms. “Don’t be treating him too nice,” they said. “He’s dangerous.” They say that every time. Nothing has happened so far and it’s unlikely considering the shape they’re always in. Besides, most of them are happy to be with us instead of with our men. Of course we’re not supposed to take a general. I’m not going to tell anybody back home.
There’s something about this one. I don’t even know what. Perhaps because he’s a general, but I don’t think that’s it. My husband is a wide man—wide face, wide body. This man is gaunt, and elegant, and has black hair. Even lying there unconscious, he looks sad. You’d think it would take eyes, open, to look so sad.
All our men are off fighting, or, if they’re away from the front, they’re torturing prisoners or planning new battles. Nobody’s helping us on the farms. They haven’t for years. The ground on our terraces is rocky. I and my donkey can hardly plow through it. Some things are a lot easier with a man around.
The men flop the general onto my donkey cart and we start back. Nobody has fixed our road since the war began. They fix the roads that go to the front but not the roads to the villages. I was afraid he’d wake up, what with all the bouncing over rocks and potholes. Or die. I checked on him every now and then. Sometimes I go to all the trouble of getting one home and he’s dead by the time I drag him off the cart. I wanted to know it before that happened. If it did, I would dump this one off along the way and come back for another. (My old one had died a month ago. Since spring, I’ve done all the work myself.)
It’s late when I get home. Nobody’s about. I tip the general out and drag him into my hut. We’re allowed to bring them in when they’re sick or unconscious. Otherwise they have to stay outside. I take off his general’s uniform and put some of my husband’s old clothes on him. I cover him with a quilt and put wrapped-up hot stones by his feet. I let him have the place closest to the fireplace. I got him this far alive, I don’t want to wake up to a dead man. Before I bank the fire for the night, I burn the uniform, medals and all.
With all those bruises, it’s hard to tell if handsome or ugly. Ugly now, that’s for sure, what with swollen jaw and lips, and the lumps on his head, but I don’t think he was very good looking to start with.
I don’t ever let my little girl see the men when they’re first brought in all bruised and battered. We always keep the children away until the men are well enough to work. She talks to them. She doesn’t know any better. There’s no point in telling her not to. Back in my day I was curious, too. Besides, those were the only men I knew. My father was always gone. It’s the same old war.
My daughter comes by first thing next morning to say hello. I suppose she really wants to get a peek at the new man. I kiss her and send her away. She has the goats to look after. I haven’t seen her father but five or six times since the night she was conceived nine years ago. When he’s at headquarters, he picks out a prisoner for me, checks their condition and their muscles, and helps me load them. This time he was at the front. I picked this one out by myself. I don’t know why I wanted a general. They’re liable to escape or start a revolt among our other prisoners. But nobody stopped me.
My husband said never to take anybody higher than a sergeant. I wonder how good a general will be at taking orders. I chose him on purpose. I wanted to make something happen. I’m sick and tired of the way things are. I hardly know what men are like except for these prisoners.
The men are supposed to sleep out on our doorsteps—after they’re well, that is. I always give mine a pad and a blanket. They last longer that way. We usually work well together. Sometimes I wonder if I was born on the wrong side.
I feed the birds. I net a few finches to fry-up whole. I pluck them and singe them. When I sit down to my midday tea, he begins to stir. I watch him wake.
It’s the birds at the feeder bring him round. He looks up, suddenly, as though to find finches on the underside of the thatch. He listens to their warbling as carefully as though they were song birds. Then, even with his bruised lips, he tries to imitate the sound. I do it for him. He turns and stares. My husband’s eyes are blue. His are black. He seems to look right through me. His eyes are, as I knew they would be, sad. I have to turn away.
I always enjoy the times when a man is recovering. I stay near the hut as much as I can. (The kitchen garden gets well tended.) I like it when he’s hurting too much for me to really get to know him so I can make up anything I want. I can pretend he’s on my side and we’re friends
. Actually I pretend we’re lovers. We’re all starved for males here, though we don’t talk about it.
The prisoners are always wary—flinching at every noise or fast move. At night they groan and cry out. I make sure it’s quiet for them. My hut is set well back, away from the rest of the village. I do sing. I think a woman singing soothes them. Bathing helps, too. I bathe mine every few days. They always fall in love with me but it’s not real love. Being cared for after all that torture, makes them grateful. Some call me an angel. Of course later on, on the terraces, they change their minds.
The general mostly seems to listen… to the birds… to the sheep and goats when they’re brought in to be penned for the night…. (Mine are penned up at a neighbors for the time being and my daughter sleeps at friend’s.) I suspect he’s trying to figure out where he is.
He doesn’t talk but I haven’t talked either. I like it that way. When he starts talking I’ll have to face who he really is but for now I can daydream all I want. I pretend the war is over and here’s my husband, come back to stay.
Sometimes it’s right when the prisoners are getting better that they have the worst nightmares. This time I can’t wake him up. I stir the fire so I can see, then I shake him hard, and harder, but I must have hurt him more. He thinks he’s being tortured again. He lashes out at me. I shy away and bang my head against the stone fireplace. He won’t stop fighting. I don’t know what to do. Finally I lie over his shaking body and hug him. Hold him down. Right away he stops yelling and puts his arms around me and I feel, yet again, the lack of my man. I even think, serves my husband right. (I’d not, ever before, even been tempted to lie down on top of a prisoner no matter how he was yelling, but this one is my choice.)
He runs his hands up and down my back, pulls me tight against him … as if I’m his salvation. I feel his erection. I forget… that he’s a prisoner and I, his overseer—though he doesn’t know that yet. Perhaps he thinks I’m his rescuer. (They often think that in the beginning and are surprised when I, wearing my pistol, bring them to the fields to work.) He kisses me. First my forehead and cheeks (I feel his scratchy unshaven jaw against mine) and, then desperately, he kisses my lips (as if only my kisses could save him from more torture). I let him. His breathing …. mine also … is ragged. He trembles more than he’d done back when he was yelling. I do, too. He holds me against him by my buttocks. I let him. It’s been so long since I’d slept with my husband—or anybody.
I Live With You Page 15
