Swallow

The boy hates taking his grandmother anywhere,

it means useless hours in front of stories of people

long dead, or dead to him.

He's at that age

of inconveniences, of knowing what he considers

to be enough.

The front room smells of dust and something burnt,

just as he thought it might. And the old couple torpidly slips

into their chairs as if they are being swallowed alive;

the same dull looks he had seen on blue gills and crappie.

The grandmother tries to draw him in,

but her praises of his good deeds and accomplishments

are like trying to pull something heavy

with a small thread.

This clock is over two hundred years old,

the old man says.

It is black and square and looks like a coffin.

On the side are carved the numbers 1772. It doesn't work,

the boy says, his eyes finding something to occupy:

old, older.

Its the oldest thing we have. Your great-great...grandfather...

the boy wonders if he can lay any claims to this clock,

but surely the untold generations framed around the room

have spread his claims too thin.

Can I go outside? He asks,

and leaves

them there, with their clock.

Outside there is a barn

with a frightening lean. Black and white cats,

like the illegitimate offspring of the Holsteins in the field,

sup at a fly-speckled hubcap filled with milk. They dissipate

when he approaches.

These are not the house cats

he has known.

Near the barn are ceramic jugs,

the raised XXX

calls him near,

as they have called many before him.

They are filled with spider's web

and spiders

and grey dirt.

But he pretends to drink from them anyway.

This is much better

than inside with the recollected.

Inside the barn

it is bone black

with only the falling dust,

which seems to keep falling,

illuminated. Then there is hay,

grey and moldy,

and some boards,

also greyed and laid bare of their intentions

to right the lazy barn.

And then something whisks past his face,

like a cold breath,

only

there was blood. It comes again,

this time his hair

is torn away.

It is a barn swallow, he sees it flit into the loosened rafters,

disappear,

and then there it is again, whooshing past his face,

its black wings

appear like scissors, sheering the air.

He picks up a board.

Thwuh. FFFlititit. More blood,

on his face. He's worried his eye

might be scratched, but he's worried more

that he will be defeated

in leaving the house.

He swings again, Thwuh.

Tuh.The bird lays

at his feet. Its neck lolls over and its beak, like a paper game, opens and closes, black tongue

retracts. Its tomato orange stomach moves a little, and the thin feet, the outstretched toes, also

open and flinch, grasping at the air the wings had cut, spreading wide enough only to pluck a

green grape,

or clutch one of its own eggs.

Inside the house they are silent.

Could it have been rabid?

A mud daubber? The old couple calls everything on the farm after

what it is known for. No.

Could it have just gone crazy?

Not likely. They speak to him like this. In homey truths.

And then the grandmother ventures,

She might have been protecting

her nest.

But surely his grandmother is wrong in this thing as well.

He never saw a nest, he pleads. Only the dark figure of a bird and

his own blood at the tips of his fingers.

---

Sample Works: Big Mike | Going on 99 | Swallow | Dear A.J. Rathbun
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