The Crane Husband

by Kelly Barnhill

“It’s a sad fact about true love,” my mother told me once. “The sheep love me without ceasing, and that is why I am able to cause them pain—love is the path of least resistance, you see? It’s a lot more work to cause harm to someone who mistrusts you, or fears you. Or hates you. Love opens the city gates wide, and allows all manner of horrors right inside. This is why they don’t flinch when I come at them with something unpleasant.”

You’ll learn that you’re safest around the people you mistrust and dislike. Your guard is up, you see? The more you love someone, the more dangerous to you they become. The more you love someone, the more willing you are to show them your throat.”

A crane is a predator just like any other predator—sneaky, and opportunistic. Not one of them would have the patience for weaving, or for beauty for its own sake. A crane would make someone else do it for him. A mouse maybe. Or a beautiful spider. He’d work it nearly to death, and then he’d eat it.”

(I was nothing like my mother. I was everything like my mother. Both at the same time.)

I live in the middle of the city, but it’s strange how many sounds remind me of the farmhouse. The voices of drunks stumbling out of the bar at night is eerily similar to the bellows of our sheep. The hum of traffic on the interstate is a dead ringer for the sound of drones. Every time an old beater starts up I rush to the window to look for the plows. And every time I hear the hiss of the electric wires running through the alley outside my apartment, I could swear I was hearing the sound that the corn makes as it grows. Maybe we never actually run away. Maybe everywhere’s the same.

I could make it beautiful. I could make everything beautiful. Art could change your life. Art could give you wings. And you could fly away. Don’t you want to fly away?