One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

by Olivia Hawker

No girl likes to realize that her father will die someday. Much less does she like to know that grief could be enough to kill him.

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

Horses were easier to understand than folks ever were.

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.

She was stronger than the Wyoming range, and what was more powerful than that?

Silence was her way—silence and the stony, hard-angled face that she never washed with tears.

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

She must show her daughter that she was not alone—not even here, where God had made nothing but loneliness.

She wouldn’t leave everything to the girl. She would do this one thing right, if nothing else.

“Beulah is peculiar, but she’s a good girl.” And better than I deserve.

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.

What could God have in store next? She shuddered to think of the possibilities.

Sorry my pa killed your pa, I said.

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

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.

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.

As if a woman’s anger was of no consequence, or as if the girl thought Nettie Mae would forget all about it and let go of her rage with time.

They were generous things, those apple trees—peaceful and serene, sheltering, as the man who had planted them never had been.

They know nothing of words, and speech is wasted on the dumb. Kindness is wasted. The way to run a farm is to move with authority; see how that damn horse shies away from me when it sees me coming? That’s all you need to know, son: how to walk with purpose, how to hold yourself and move as if you mean to be obeyed. That’s what a man does. He doesn’t fawn over his horse like he’s in love with it, nor coddle his sheep in the fold.

My children are dead, too, she told the ram, but without words, for no animal understood words; no animal cared.

The man had been a distraction; a novelty, nothing more.

Nothing else to be done but move on.”

There was nothing to fear in the sprouting. Seeds don’t always breed true; sometimes they bring up a better crop than the one that came before.

He seemed to say, I’m a man, and I should be living still. No, I said. That’s not the way of things. None of us lives forever. We don’t get to choose when our time comes.

All these years, my husband remained a stranger to me, for I had thought him too gentle and Christian to do murder.

There were two families, two farms, but the lines drawn between them were dissolving now, just as the trout in the shallows dissolved the boundary between light and shadow, between water and fish. There was but one land, one reality, and everything that moved beneath the boundless sky shared itself with its neighbors.

My good, kindly ma—you wanted her to love you, too. You wanted her to give and give of herself for your gratification, because you thought you deserved everything, all the time and attention and tenderness of everyone within your sight. But now here you are, caught like a pebble under the ground. Now you see you’re as small and insignificant as any other man. Now you see how ordinary you always were.

There was no reason to grieve, no reason to rail. The sun rose farther to the south each day. The year, like life, carried on.

Death comes when it comes. You can’t do a thing to change it, once the great and final decision has been made.

Men didn’t feel fear, or pain, or sorrow. Men did not regret.

She knew that she would die someday, that mankind itself wouldn’t last forever. She feared and hated the greatest truth, the greatest beauty Nature had to offer.

As Clyde turned, as he carried the lamb around to face the endless sweep of the prairie, the two heads lifted from within the bundle, and all three eyes opened wide in wonder. The lamb saw all of the world.

The past held no warmth for Nettie Mae. The present was cold, winter bitter, but she took comfort in the persistence of snowfall. Snow reshaped the world. It suppressed memory, drawing everything that mattered here and now into a tight and immediate circle. Far beyond the fields, obscured by a shroud of white, the snow was mounding over a riverside grave, softening the curve of the soil, pressing memory down beneath the mute silence of the season.

There are some seeds that refuse to grow until they’ve been tempered.

Change was coming for me—for all of us, perhaps—a shift like the turning of the seasons, wise and inevitable, a change to remake a world we’d only thought we knew. I was unafraid; I welcomed the rolling of the wheel.

My ma reminds me of a bird, you know. A blackbird. They love society; they never go anywhere but in a flock.

If I knew what words I ought to say, I doubt I’ve got courage enough to speak them.

Maybe, Clyde thought, there was no need to tell Beulah how he felt about her, after all. Maybe she already understood.

When he kissed me, all the frogs on the riverbank began to sing.

If I were as brave as Nettie Mae, I could do this without fear.

You presume too much, Cora told herself, in thinking Nettie Mae will wish to remember you at all.

It can’t have disappeared entirely. There must be some remains, something left for me to see.

It’s my choice to make, for this ain’t your world anymore. The world has passed to me—and to Beulah. We’ll make of it what we choose.

“I’ll marry you someday.” Clyde laughed—a choking, bitter sound, for what chance had they now of marrying? “I never asked you.” “You will someday,” Beulah said. “So I’m telling you now: my answer is yes.”

A tree may fall, but if even one root remains in the soil, it will live.

God is said to be great, the worm told me, so great you cannot see Him. But God is small, with hands like threads, and they reach for you everywhere you go. The hands touch everything—even you, even me. What falls never falls; what grows has grown a thousand times, and will live a thousand times more. Wherever hand touches hand, the Oneness comes to stay. Once God has made a thing whole, it cannot be broken again.

Haven’t I prayed for a chance to begin again—a chance to let go of my old pain and start anew without hate?

I have woken the land myself, she would write. I have kept your land alive, my dearest—our land, still living, as I hope our love still lives. I wait for your return, if you wish to have me, if you haven’t decided to cast me from your heart.

“The world has passed to us now,” Beulah said. “To Clyde and to me. We’ll make of it what we choose.”