Bluegrass Symphony

by Lisa L. Hannett

  Aurora sighs and puts down the pail. Straightening up, she wipes her hands on the back of her pants, then adjusts the fox’s tail tucked under the ribbon of her hat band. With a flick of the wrist, she sets its length drooping over the brim, its fur a striking contrast to the faded grey of her braids.

  “Me and hope ain’t exactly seeing eye to eye these days.” She directs Ida-Belle to the Shaker-style rocking chair at the foot of the stairs. The girl perches on the edge of the seat, clutching her purse in her lap, close-lipped while Aurora continues. “That vixen blinds fools with promises then snatches them away just for kicks. Makes a person think she’s doing the right thing for her relationship when, in fact, she ain’t.”

  “Oh.” Ida-Belle slouches under the weight of her disappointment. When she goes to stand, Aurora places a grimy hand on her shoulder to keep her seated.

  “Quit your fluttering, Ida. If I had a mind to be rid of you, you’d already be gone.” From the way her client’s hands keep straying to her midriff, Aurora can see what it is the girl wants, why she’s here—but the words have to be said if the magic’s to work. “Get your thoughts in order, once and for all, then talk loud enough for my lasses to hear you. Nice and clear, mind; none of this faffing about hope.”

  Ida-Belle takes a deep breath, exhales as she settles back into the chair. “Me and Jimmy’s been married nigh on six months now.”

  Aurora keeps quiet as she waits for the girl to go on. The silence lengthens, broken only by the chickens’ chattering and cooing, and the steady creak of cicadas conversing in the cornfields. Aurora searches through her apron pockets for a pipe and some leaf. Finding both, she presses a thumb’s worth of tobacco into the bowl, clenches the stem between her teeth as she rummages around for a match.

  “My friend Loretta said you helped her out once—” Ida-Belle’s face reddens. “She said you could see the future.” Aurora lifts an eyebrow, puffs her pipe to life neither confirming nor denying the girl’s implicit question.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” Ida-Belle says, “but ever since she came here, Loretta ain’t had to face a single one of her mother-in-law’s visits. Even the ones what weren’t planned ahead! And when I asked how she got so lucky, always being out when Gerdie comes ’round to piss her off or tell her how to run her own household, Loretta showed me the little calendar you gave her—the one what’s got a bunch of dates and times written on it, starting from the day she came here and running well into the next five years.”

  For the first time, Ida-Belle looks Aurora straight in the eye. “She wouldn’t tell me how you done it, Rori. Only that you done it.”

  Aurora doesn’t smile, even though she’s glad to hear her previous clients continue to remain discreet in advertising her wares. Wouldn’t do no one good to have the whole town flocking to her for answers whenever they got too lazy to do things the hard way. Ain’t time for that, far as she’s concerned.

  Head wreathed in blue smoke, she leans against the elevated porch and gives Ida-Belle no more encouragement than a simple, “Uh-huh. And?”

  Visibly steeling herself, the girl says, “I need to get knocked up, quick.”

  Aurora nods, head bobbing to a familiar tune.

  “Six months we’ve been married, Rori. Six months and so much fucking my nethers is rubbed raw—and still. Nothing.” She leans her head back, watches a sparrow flit from the henhouse roof to the chimney of Aurora’s cabin on the opposite side of the yard. Her lower lids well with tears. “Jimmy’s been eyeing that skank from the Buy ‘n’ Save all winter. I reckon if I don’t give him some reason to stick around, he’ll be gone before shearing time.”

  Aurora takes the pipe from her mouth, flips it and taps it on the edge of the porch. Soft clumps of ash drop to the ground as she asks, “So which do you want to know? If you’ll be pumping out wee ones soon, or if you’re going to lose Jimmy? We can only cover one thing at a time.”

  Tears spill onto Ida-Belle’s pale cheeks. “Babies,” she whispers, while twisting the ring with its tiny zirconium stone, spinning it around and around her wedding finger. Aurora looks down at her own left hand; still surprised, even after a week, to see the bright white space where her own band of gold used to be. She clears her throat.

  “You do realize there’s only so much we can do?”

  Ida-Belle smiles through her tears, thoughts of Loretta’s success making her deaf to the older woman’s caveats. “Anything’s better than nothing.”

  “Fine.” Aurora pockets her pipe and heads for the stairs. “Stay here. A few minutes and we’ll have you an answer.”

  Aurora’s chickens would never be satisfied with a standard coop.

  Stacks of cramped aluminium boxes, barely large enough to accommodate a hatchling, much less a brooding hen, definitely wouldn’t suit them; nor would short plywood walls, so low they’d force their keeper to slouch while visiting her charges; nor wire mesh ceilings or floor-level apertures of the sort typically knocked together to aerate, and confine, egg-laying chooks.

  Aurora’s lasses wouldn’t have a bar of that. They perch on overstuffed cushions; each nestled securely on mahogany bookshelves stretching well over forty feet to the rafters of the house’s double-peaked roof. They are hand-fed three times daily, given heaters when the seasons turn cold, and special treats on their birthdays. Unlike ordinary hens, Aurora’s tiny oracles smile, snack, and lay their fortunes in comfort.

  When she enters the henhouse, the gabble of voices crescendo in fear; the racket ebbs once the chickens recognize Aurora’s shape silhouetted against the screen. Hanging on the wall next to the door, an enormous blackboard gives the names and shelf numbers for every bird in the coop: fourteen hundred and seventy six clairvoyant biddies—one for all but two of Napanee’s townsfolk. Enough warm light streams in to illuminate the hand-written list, but it isn’t bright enough to hurt the lasses’ sensitive eyes.

  Scanning the columns of names, Aurora mutters, “Ida-Belle Capli . . . Ida-Bell . . .” and wishes, not for the first time, that she’d had the presence of mind to house the girls in alphabetical order. Sixteen rows down, she sees what’s left of her own entry. Aurora Jenkins, Q42. She glosses over it when she notices Ida-Belle’s berth is P43.

  Damn you, Rey, she thinks. She’s steered clear of Minnie’s roost all week; now there’s nothing she can do but try not to stare at it while she negotiates with Ida-Belle’s hen. Double-checking the supply of Tic Tacs she keeps in her top apron pocket, and hooking a pouchful of dry-roasted seed to her belt, Aurora weaves her way between bookshelves to reach the far side of the room.

  The oracles generally pay her comings and goings little mind, unless she’s got riddles for them to solve. But this week they’re bursting with questions, most concerning Reynard. Every third step or so she’s forced to stop, kiss their baby-smooth cheeks, stroke the bridges of their button noses, and reassure them that he won’t be back any time soon. Although her caresses calm them, her words sound hollow. She knows it’ll only be a matter of minutes before they forget and get anxious again.

  Their far-seeing skills are flawless—except when the future involves that trickster she’s called husband for twenty-five years.

  “Excuse me, Miss Rori?” A tiny voice chirps at her as she passes aisle G. She stops and looks up to the top shelf, into the pale green eyes of an ancient Plymouth Rock lass. The oracle’s plumage is patterned like black and white tweed, each feather neatly groomed despite the bird’s age; her face a perfect replica of old widow McGeary’s, the crone who’d just celebrated her eighty-fifth winter.

  “What can I do for you, Valma?” The hen tut-tuts at being addressed so informally—she prefers to be called Madam. She wrinkles her coffee-coloured face into a grimace; her wide lips shrivel into a frown. A red pillbox hat slips down her forehead until her arched eyebrows are hidden beneath its decorative veil. She leans over to scold Aurora.

  “Rape!�
� The word shrills out of the hen’s throat, then is clipped short in a panicked bu-gock. “Those gold demons you let loose in this place keep making advances, trying to have their filthy way with me while I’m asleep. I feel them pecking at me—peck, peck, pecking all night! I just know they’re aching to get beneath my frillies.”

  “Oh, Valma,” Aurora says, her tone exhausted. “I thought we dealt with this already. The roosters can’t reach you all the way up there, hun. That’s why we moved you, remember?”

  “I ain’t so sure about that, Miss Rori. I see them eyeing me all day, just waiting for me to nod off. No matter how high I fly above their heads to show they can’t have me, they keeping coming back. The perverts.”

  Aurora sighs. None of her sibyls can fly—in that way they’re no different from bird-faced chooks. And the roosters are just that: roosters. It’s their nature to be curious; they don’t know any better. A pair of twin Brahma hens to Valma’s right, one girl and one boy, start giggling at the oracle’s rant. Their near-identical faces, accentuated by tufts of herringbone feathers, are both at least half a century away from her kind of senility. To the aged hen’s left, a New Hampshire brown studiously avoids Aurora’s gaze. She gently shifts her bulk to hide a long, sharp piece of straw sitting next to her pillow.

  “Stop crowding me!” Valma squawks. The twins’ laughter redoubles.

  “Be quiet, the lot of you.” Aurora reaches up, snatches the straw, lifts the heavy brown lass back onto her cushion. “You been using this to torment Val while she’s sleeping, Jolene?”

  “She snores like the devil,” the oracle announces, head tilted at a haughty angle. “It’s the only way to shut her up.” The twins nod their agreement, clucking, “It’s true, it’s true!”

  “You’re a pain in my backside, that’s what you kids are.” Aurora turns back to Valma and says, “Open wide,” then tucks a mint beneath the old woman’s tongue—both to still her complaints and to reward her for putting up with the other chooks’ crap. Ignoring the jealous looks Jolene and the twins shoot her way, Valma hums with satisfaction.

  “I ain’t got time for this now,” Aurora says. “But I will deal with you—mark my words.”

  It’s enough to have Rey stirring shit in here, she thinks as she walks away. Without the seers getting in on the pranks as well.

  H, I, J, K—there’s a gap in the rows, a small crossroads separating the double-digits on the left from the triple on the right, bookshelves and chooks on all four sides lit by a series of crazed skylights above—L, M, N . . . . Aurora’s pace slows. She passes through mote-filled beams of light, reluctantly moving into the shadows beyond.

  The space where Minnie used to sit is still littered with ragged feathers. A lavender-scented blanket lies twisted like a snarl across the cushion. Red is splashed on both where the other lasses had drawn blood defending their shelfmate. Even now the air stinks of fear, smeared straw, and gore.

  “Calm down, ladies, gents,” Aurora says, barely audible above the oracles’ shouts.

  “It ain’t fair, Rori—”

  “—where’s my goddamn bird? What’s my future?”

  “Hush now,” Aurora urges. The hens keep yelling, their scratchy voices repeating the argument she and Reynard had had in front of them last week.

  “I can’t take it no more, this bird telling you secrets—”

  “—shitting out eggs filled with god-knows-what each week—”

  “—unnatural stuff what keeps you looking like you was twenty-five—”

  “That’s enough,” Aurora says.

  “Stay away from her, Rey—”

  “—put her down!”

  Minnie’s neighbours lunge at her vacant pillow, as if Reynard were still trying to throttle her. Meanwhile, the lasses on higher and lower shelves mimic the trickster’s pleas, his accusations.

  “—you said you’d stopped using!”

  “—and I ain’t got no magic yolk to keep me fresh—”

  “Enough,” Aurora repeats.

  “—I share my magics with you all the time, but things ain’t even between us—”

  “—ain’t my fault I’m different from you—”

  “—Am I even in that future she shows you?”

  “Shut up!” Aurora’s chest heaves, her pulse races. That’s twice now she’s lost her temper in this very spot; twice her words have brought the bickering to a halt. Life ain’t even, she’d hollered a week earlier, walloping her husband’s pointed ear. The blow had saved Minnie, but not before the prophet’s little face had turned blue, neck purple from the crush of Reynard’s frustration.

  It took a sedative tablet to keep the oracle from flapping herself into an early grave; draping a lavender-scented blanket over her shivering body had helped soothe her into a doze. Such measures wouldn’t cut it now. Faced with several dozen anxious birds, Aurora’s patience is stretched. “I don’t want to hear any more of that talk, you got me? Either look forward like you’re meant to, or shut the fuck up.”

  Apart from a few sniffles, a couple squeaks of dismay, the hens do as they’re told. Hands shaking, Aurora reaches up to wipe tears away from P43’s blue eyes. The chick’s nose is red from crying, its tip curved exactly like Ida-Belle’s.

  “It’s all right.” She pushes damp feathers away from the white Delaware’s freckled cheek, adjusts the red coronet so that it sits straight on her head. “Everything’s okay.” She offers two Tic Tacs; the chook gobbles them up. Holding a third just out of the hen’s reach she asks, “What’s your name, hun?”

  “Ellie.”

  Aurora pops the mint into Ellie’s mouth. “Good girl,” she says, tracing the grey barring on the ends of the bird’s hackles, wings, and tail with a finger. Smoothing the feathers down; settling the hen’s nerves along with her own. “Did you hear what Ida-Belle needs?”

  Ellie says, “I think so,” but her expression is uncertain. Aurora takes another mint, places it in the flat of her palm.

  “The girl wants babies. Will she have them?”

  The oracle licks her lips, looks up like she’s consulting the heavens, though her gaze has turned inward. A moment passes, then with a confident, single nod she says, “Yes. Sure will.”

  As if on cue, the instant Ellie’s prediction is voiced the other oracles begin gossiping about her technique; critiquing her accuracy; commenting on how much better they would have done in her place. Aurora rewards the young lass with another sweet; waits until she has stopped crunching it before asking, “Any chance you can give her something to speed it along?”

  Big smile. “I reckon.”

  Ellie inches her hindquarters over the back of her green pillow, which is heavily speckled with white. Throat vibrating with the force of her clucks, face crimson, pearl teeth making semi-circular dents in her full lower lip, the oracle pushes.

  Grunts.

  Pushes.

  A throat-tearing squawk. A sound like a marble rolling across a wooden table. Sweat beads Ellie’s forehead. Her colouring returns to normal and her breathing steadies. She grins sheepishly as Aurora reaches beneath tail feathers to poke around through the straw and moult. Pride gilds her features as she sees what Aurora digs up.

  A bright red egg, displaying Ida-Belle’s name in silver cursive, sits large and shiny in the cradle of Aurora’s hands. Congratulations roar out from all sides, deafening, as the oracles in rows P and Q compliment Ellie on her first delivery.

  “You’re in luck.” Aurora places the egg, still warm, onto Ida-Belle’s lap. “She was feeling talkative.”

  Confusion creases the girl’s brow. She picks up the egg, turns it over. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  The older woman lights her pipe, takes a long pull. Sweet smoke fills her mouth and drifts out her nose, temporarily replacing the lingering scent of fowl. She lifts her hat to wipe the sweat and feathers cli
nging to her forehead and says, “What do you think? Crack it.”

  “D’you got a bowl or something I can drop the yolk into?”

  Aurora shakes her head. “Just crack it as is, Ida. On your knee.”

  Ida-Belle is only half-successful at keeping the sneer from her lips. She looks down at the egg, then at the clean culottes she put on special for her visit to Aurora’s. Such a clever design—she’d stitched them herself. Grey cotton patterned with orange and red pansies, they look like smart pants when she’s sitting, and a skirt when she’s standing. But they won’t look nowhere near as stylish with yolk dribbled all over.

  Hesitant at first, then more forceful when she sees how tough the shell is, Ida-Belle strikes the egg against her kneecap. With a crunch, fractures appear across its red surface, spreading out from a circular indent. She digs her thumbs in, waits for the white to ooze out. Her hands remain dry. Small fragments break off as she splits the shell in two; it separates with a sound of twigs snapping, and releases its furry contents onto her lap without mess.

  Three miniature bunnies, perfectly proportioned, each one no bigger than a lamb’s eye. All white with beige patches, velvet ears, and pink noses twitching, they roll across Ida-Belle’s thighs and snuggle into the warm space where her legs press together. Blinking, they look up at her; sprigs of parsley, chives, and garlic tied like bows around their necks.

  “Good work, Ellie.” Aurora’s voice startles Ida-Belle from her inspection of the rabbits. “You got three chances to get it right, thanks to your generous lass. Now, tell me. How does Jimmy like his stew? Beef? Lamb? What’s his favourite?”

  “Lamb’s cheapest,” Ida-Belle says, slowly.

  “Of course,” Aurora says. “You got some ready for cooking back home?”