Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(27)

“Tomorrow, then? Let’s say four-thirty p.m.?

“I—I won’t be home then. I’ll be at the cemetery.”

“Fine! Great! I’ll swing around to the house and pick you up at about quarter to? How’s that sound? I’ve been wanting to visit Jimmy’s grave but have been crazy-busy for weeks and this is—the—ideal—opportunity for us to go together. Thank you, Claudie.”

Claudia tries to protest but the connection has been broken.


Your husband has left. Your husband has gone. Your husband will not be returning.

Calmly, cruelly the voice stalks her. Especially she is vulnerable when she is alone in the house.

Not her own voice but the voice of another speaking through her mouth numbed as with Novacaine.

Your husband has left. Your husband has gone . . .

Shaking out sleeping pills into the palm of her hand. Precious pills! One, two, three . . .

But the phone will ring if she tries to sleep. Even if there is no one to hear, the phone will ring. New messages will be left amid a succession of unanswered messages like eggs jammed into a nest and beginning to rot—Claudia? Please call. We are concerned. We will come over if we don’t hear from you . . . .

The doorbell will ring. He, the rapacious brother-in-law, will be at the door.

“I will not. I’ve told you—no.”

Hastily she pulls on rubber boots, an old L.L. Bean jacket of her husband’s with a hood. She has found a pair of binoculars in one of James’s closets and wears it around her neck tramping in the wetlands around the lake.

Here, the widow is not so vulnerable to the voice in her head. No telephone calls to harass her, no doorbell.

Rain is not a deterrent, she discovers. Waterfowl on the lake pay not the slightest heed even to pelting rain, it is their element and they thrive in it.

A sudden croaking cry, and she turns to see the great blue heron flying overhead. The enormous unfurled wings!—she stares after the bird in amazement.

Belatedly raising the binoculars to watch the heron fly across the lake. Slow pumping of the great wings, that bear the bird aloft with so little seeming effort.

Flying above the lake. Rain-rippled slate-colored lake. Chill gusty air, mists lifting from the water. Yet the heron’s eyesight is so acute, the minute darting of a fish in the lake, glittery sheen of fish-skin thirty feet below the heron in flight, is enough to alter the trajectory of the heron’s flight in an instant as the heron abruptly changes course, plummets to the surface of the lake, seizes the (living, thrashing) fish in its bill—and continues its flight across the lake.

That stabbing beak! There has been nothing like this in the widow’s life until now.


She is determined, she will be a good person.

James would want her to continue her life as she’d lived her life of more than fifty years essentially as a good person.

This catastrophe of her life, a deep wound invisible to others’ eyes, she believes might be healed, or numbed. If she is good.

She forces herself to reply to emails. (So many! The line from The Wasteland seeps into her brain: I had not thought that death had undone so many.) She forces herself to reply to phone messages by (shrewdly, she thinks) calling friends, relatives, neighbors at times when she is reasonably sure no one will answer the phone.

Hi! It’s Claudia. Sorry to have been so slow about returning your call—calls . . .

I’m really sorry! I hope you weren’t worried . . .

You know, I think there is something wrong with my voice mail . . .

Of course—I am fine . . .

Of course—I am sleeping all right now . . .

Of course—it’s a busy time for a—a widow . . .

Thanks for the invitation but—right now, I am a little preoccupied . . .

Thanks for the offer—you’re very kind—but—

Yes I will hope to see you soon. Sometime soon . . .

No I just can’t. I wish that I could . . .

Thank you but . . .

I’m so sorry. I’ve been selfish, I haven’t thought of you.

The phone drops from her hand. She is trembling with rage.


Still the widow is determined to do good, be good.

She will establish a scholarship in her husband’s name at the university from which he’d graduated with such distinction.

She will arrange for a memorial service for her husband, in some vague future time—“Before Thanksgiving, I think.”

She will donate most of his clothes to worthy charities including those beautiful woolen sweaters she’d given him, those many neckties and those suits and sport coats she’d helped him select, how many shirts, how many shoes, how many socks she cannot bear to think, she cannot bear to remove the husband’s beautiful clothing from closets, she will not even remove the husband’s socks and underwear from drawers, she has changed her mind and will not donate most of his clothes, indeed any of his clothes to worthy charities. She will not.


That hoarse, harsh cry!—it has been ripped from her throat.

Flying, ascending. The misty air above the lake is revealed to be textured like fabric. It is not thin, invisible, of no discernible substance but rather this air is thick enough for the great pumping wings to fasten onto that she might climb, climb, climb with little effort.

She has become a winged being climbing the gusty air like steps. Elation fills her heart. She has never been so happy. Every pulse in her being rings, pounds, beats, shudders with joy. The tough muscle in her bony chest fast-beating like a metronome.