One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

by Olivia Hawker

the smell takes ahold of you and calls to your heart, and it makes you think of all the good things that have passed and all the good things yet to come, so you close your eyes to shut out everything else that’s real, everything that’s drab or sorrowful, all the things that hurt you like the thorns.

I was scared all at once for them—afraid one of them should fall, like they were fragile, breakable things.

I would have cried, too, if I’d had the lee, for I already felt the badness of it all, the distance between my mother and father opening wider like a crack in the earth. You’ll fall into that cold, damp darkness if you aren’t careful where to set your feet.

I wasn’t afraid. I haven’t found anything yet in this life that’s worth being afraid of.

People—men especially—hid their thoughts and their hearts behind thick, stoic walls, a dense blank-white nothingness, a silent room, a distant stare. Men hid what they couldn’t control till the burden of that featureless mask grew too much to bear, and then they threw it off and broke it with a shout or a swinging fist. Or a rifle shot at the riverside. Then they picked up the pieces of their unreadable disguise and fitted them back together and donned the mask again.

Her face must have been beautiful once, before this life stole all the color from it and the prairie winds stripped her down to dry skin and sharp bones.

The stillness of the body struck Clyde with a terrible significance; that stillness was more frightening than any thought of wolves.

This was never the way life was meant to be—a son so young, not really a man, burying his own father.

Clyde could hear the rustle of the coyotes moving in again, searching for the death that had drawn them. But they would find nothing tonight. Substance was gone and buried now. Only his son remained.

She heard only silence, even when the wind moaned down the chimney, and somewhere below and behind that silence, the voice of guilt scolding her, mocking her, filling her heart with the weight of blame and loss.

Nothing. Substance had meant nothing to Cora; she had known it all along. He was only a change, a different face, different hands after almost fifteen years of marriage and eight years of the cruel prairie.

Astonishment over what she had done consumed her, and all that was left was a skeleton of grief, dry and brittle, rattling with blame.

For her sake, I must wake up and face the truth of what I’ve done.

a mother's conscience …

This was what came of being foolish, of having a fool’s heart. This was the price you paid for giving in to a man you didn’t even love.

It was Nettie Mae who staked a claim on sorrow, but weeping never did a bit of good. Cora had even stolen Nettie Mae’s tears. What could God have in store next? She shuddered to think of the possibilities.

Now, in the final heat of autumn, when even the small, secret flush of green had been sapped from the joints of grass stems, now was the time for a seed to drop to the earth’s bed and sleep through the snows and sorrows of winter. And the seed will put down roots, even in the shadow of the plant that made it. Even while the old stalks, exhausted of their green power, bow before the sickle and fall.

Every seed puts down roots in its own time and grows to its greenest power.

That was the way it had to be—the two of us joined together in our work, doing what our mothers couldn’t bring themselves to do. For there were too many small lives now that depended on us alone. My brothers and my little sister; the sheep and cattle, the horses, the hens. Even the seeds relied on us. It was our work to gather and put by. It was we who would plant when the time came, and we who would tend the crops as they grew.

The seasons don’t cease to change because we haven’t the time to plant or tend or harvest, because grief like a hailstorm comes up sudden and frightens us with its noise. Once the storm rolls on, the fields remain, and life goes on, whatever we prefer.

What needs doing can’t be stopped.

There was no time to mourn for his father—no time for contemplation, nor even for anger. There was time only to sharpen his shears and set to work. What needs doing cannot be stopped.

If I am ever a father someday, I won’t be a father like you.

As if a woman’s anger was of no consequence,

The girl seemed so content, Clyde almost caught himself believing that everything had already sorted itself, just as it ought to have done from the very start of the year, from the start of his life.

The peace that comes with acceptance & fearless resignation.

Hungry, she watched as Cora grasped weakly at a life that slipped farther from her hands with each passing minute.

She could smell afternoon coming. The oaten heaviness of the air, the thick-porridge density of it, the way its odor of dryness and limpness sank down among fresher scents of green and dew and lay there, immobile as a dead thing. The insects had already begun to drone in the pasture, a long, unbroken hum of weary resignation.

superb prose

Neither heat nor pressure had ever driven the boy forward. Whatever powered the engine of his soul, it wasn’t hatred. Perhaps that was sign enough that Clyde had evaded his father’s foulness. Perhaps Nettie Mae could rest assured that her son would be nothing like his father when he came into his own.

Something about their exchange must have excited her. She had made herself the prey, had reveled in the hunt, and even Substance’s flat, dark predatory stare had thrilled her, for it had seemed to Cora that when she surrendered to Substance’s passions, she could tame—for a short time, at least—that which was untamable. The wolves, the bears in the foothills. The flash floods and the river surging beyond its bank. Any of a hundred perils waited on the prairie or up among the hills; any of them might claim Cora or her children in an instant. Substance, at least, Cora could predict and control.

Substance Webber refused to do what other spirits did. He would not be dissolved. He would permit no other life to touch him, to take him, to use him. He didn’t yet know that we can’t remain whole forever, but he would learn the truth soon enough. No one escapes the great unraveling; no thread is unspooled and escapes the weaver’s hand.

If Clyde could be saved, it would be by Nettie Mae’s strength alone. She would only give in to fear and weep and tear at her hair and shake her powerless fists at the blank gray Heavens if Clyde were lost. Then they all would be lost, every child she had borne, every person she had loved. Only then—when no one was left to rely on her cold and stoic presence—would Nettie Mae surrender to fear.

Perhaps that’s why he turned so brutal, she mused almost lightly, for the pain of the long ride and worry for her son had eclipsed all fear of Substance. What was there to fear in a memory? Perhaps he thought he could beat the coldness out of me—break the stone of my determination with his fists.

She would fall for certain; she had never been strong enough to hold herself upright against the agonies of life. That had been Substance’s duty.

You did this. To yourself, to your children. It’s your doing, all yours, and now God will see to it that you suffer for your sins.

The rifle was heavier than she’d expected, too; the weight weakened her arms and made the muscles of her back clench until they ached. Perhaps it was the burden of guilt she felt more than the burden of steel and wood.

They’re helpless things, Clyde protested. Shouldn’t we give them a chance to survive, if it’s in our power to do it?

As in life… It is our duty to support the ones less fortunate at early stages in life…

You do not pamper sheep; a man does not coddle his flock. You let God take what He wishes to take, and you shut your ears to the crying of the ewes when they stand over the lifeless bodies of their lambs.

To be weak is to be womanish. To be like a woman is to be unlike a man.

The final refrain in a litany of sorrow.

You were afraid for them, Substance—afraid you would lose them both and be left with nothing, no family at all. So you hardened yourself and hoped the fear couldn’t touch you. But once you’ve turned yourself to stone, love can’t reach you, either.

If his strength—his very worth as a man—remained a matter of question, at least no one could say that his reputation as a horseman had suffered from the fever.

Men and women alike struggled through life, struggled for life. Wasn’t the fight life itself? The force you needed, the sudden bearing down, to sink a plow into hard soil. The sweat and the strain as you held a ewe for shearing.

“A wronged mother and a wronged daughter.

only a person made in the worst kind of sin would think to inflict such a shame upon others.

Ah, Nettie - so judgmental - “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone”

Better to go to your grave untouched by sin than to die tangled in a web of corruption,

Debatable 😉

I didn’t like the sensation of guilt. It crawled like a chigger under the skin, an itch that could never be satisfied.

The first thing the Bible taught was to fear God, and once a body feared God, the remainder of proper human cautions flowed down like water. Nothing could preserve a soul from fear or sin but the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

“You don’t open a Bible to search for names. You read it to learn God’s word.”

“But why? Everything dies, sooner or later, as a matter of course. Why would God decide that a matter of course is unholy?”

human voices to drown out the hungry wind.

Cora and her efforts to stop the disturbing mental noise at all costs.

I guess that’s the privilege of the young. Age roots a person, grounds a body to its habits.