Pew(23)

Well, I wasn’t going to cook it anyway, Tammy said, even if you’d slit its throat like regular—I wasn’t going to eat that bird.
It sure did seem to be some kind of evil—that’s all I was saying. It wasn’t—well, I don’t know … I don’t know what it was or wasn’t. Not really. Not for certain.
I made him bury it over on the other side of the tracks, Tammy said. I didn’t want that thing near me. She smoked and stared out at the yard. Where do people go when that kind of look comes over them?
So after I buried the hen, I put the last three peacocks in a cage in a fenced-off part of the garden so that nothing else could get to it—none of our animals, nobody’s dog, no wild animals, nothing. And wouldn’t you just know? Out of nowhere this storm swept in, lightning and everything, some hail even, and two of them got drowned and the last one was left shaking under the other two dead ones, and that last one, well, he held on for a week or so till someone stole him or he just up and left.
I bet he ran off. It was just nothing but hell here for those birds, Tammy said. I feel bad about it all the time, every day.
You didn’t mean no harm.
I wanted peacocks all my life, ever since I was little. Her eyes were glassing over. She lit another cigarette as she spoke. Then as soon as I finally get them, I go and mess it all up.
It just wasn’t meant to be. You didn’t do no harm, Tams.
But I did!
You didn’t.
Indirectly, I did.
Well, I don’t know about—
It’s just as bad—indirectly. Just as bad. Maybe even worse. I should have known more about how you keep them. I didn’t—I just didn’t—
She raised a limp hand to her face and shook beneath it.
Oh, Tammy. You couldn’t have known. I didn’t bring it up to make you upset, Tams. It’s been years now and I was just thinking of them. There’s all sorts of things a person can’t know till it’s too late.
A train passed us, seeming louder and longer than the others. When it was gone, I noticed a little cricket at the edge of the porch, chirping, and I wanted to say something to Tammy and Hal, wanted to tell them what I was thinking, what I felt, but the words were all out of reach. The words were not mine to use. I wished I knew how to make a sound the way an insect does. I wish everyone knew how to speak that way, just that one word, no language at all.
After a while, Hal said, it starts to seem like that train is always there, don’t it? That it’s always there only there are just times you can hear it. Don’t it seem that way to you? Like the whole house is always rattling, all the time?
Tammy smiled at him and sat on the porch steps, facing the weedy yard full of cats. None of us spoke for some time. Sunlight began to leave. Another train went by.



WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO COME ON IN? Tammy asked from the door.
Moths were clustered around the porch light. A television was speaking somewhere in the house.
It’s nice and cool in here now and you can have a Coke. She was still standing in the mouth between house and porch, nowhere. Only then did I realize that I was alone in the dark out there, though I couldn’t account for the minutes that had just passed, couldn’t remember Hal and Tammy leaving. As I looked at Tammy, a train went by, its noise massive, and I felt sure, at once, that Tammy had the ability to tolerate an enormous amount of pain before she let anyone know.
All right, well, I can’t make you do nothing, she said then, quietly—nobody can make you do nothing.
The window behind me sent down a square of yellow light at my feet. Shadows flicked through it sometimes, or it sat still and flat. The voice of a television; infinite purring insects; a light bulb hissed. A car drove up and parked some distance from the house. Headlights on then off. Two doors opened, shut. The sound of feet carrying themselves through loose stones. Roger and Nelson emerged from the darkness and up the stairs.
Nice night, Roger said, as Nelson walked straight into the house without a word left behind him. Well, I guess someone’s in a hurry.
A rocking chair creaked as Roger lowered himself into it.
Did you have a nice day with Tammy?
I nodded. Roger rocked in his chair, half-lit, half in darkness, tapping his foot in an unsteady rhythm for a while.
Well. I heard how it went with Dr. Winslow, so I guess I’m probably not your favorite person right now for setting that up …
His fingers were tangled together, prone on his lap. Inside the house I could hear Tammy asking questions that Nelson blunted with one-word replies.
I usually don’t like to be too personal, Roger said, not to project too much onto someone, but it’s difficult for me not to—see something of myself in … your being here. You know, it’s probably no surprise, but I’m sort of a little bit different from most people here. I’m not like Steven, for instance, not like Hal. It’s not a secret really. I don’t know what people might say about me when I’m not around. Maybe it’s nice, maybe it’s not so nice. But no one acts ugly to me. Not to my face. They let me alone. I do my work and it all suits me fine. Of course people do talk a lot—they probably gossip, I don’t know—but if they do, it’s just behind closed doors. Only then. They’re polite like that.
Moths fluttered toward and away from the light and we watched them. A few times Roger turned his shoulders somewhat toward me, but his eyes were fixed upward, on the light, away.
I’m not saying that you’re like me, but if you’re being so quiet because you’re afraid that you’re too different from other people, then I don’t think you have anything to be worried about. It’s probably not as bad here as you might expect.