JUNE 2, 1956
Woods,
Dawn. A blue jay screeches from the pines, a hermit thrush calls from behind a brush pile. My favorite songbird: it lurks in the understory, rarely seen, but sings the most beautiful of songs: spiraling flutelike melodies. Dangerously melancholy.
“Hermit thrush, Otie,” I say. “Our state bird,” walking downhill to milk the cows.
Four mornings a week I go to the barn at dawn to milk, clean the stalls, feed the newborn calves. My sister gives me cash at the start of every month. An envelope, thin with it.
“Thank you, Hazel,” I say, hugging her. Her body retreats, but I hold on anyway. All bone and ropey muscle. Oh that they could become a cup—capable of holding, those bones! But she pulls away, my industrious, capable sister.
Lex does not work on the days I work; we take turns. But this morning there is a voice, tinged with brass, smoky like leather, from the back of the barn. Singing Elvis’s “That’s All Right.” I gather a clean bucket hanging from the nail on the milk room wall and walk in the opposite direction of that singing.
I go toward Fran, a too-old Guernsey, pull up my stool, put my hands on her teats, and let the grass-rich milk spurt into the metal bucket. “Good girl,” I whisper, putting my head against her side. I love these cows who keep on birthing, year after year. Every birth a loss. Milk sweetened with that grief.
I can hear him singing still. The barn plays tricks on sound, sends it in wrong directions.
The voice grows quiet. I think he’s gone. But when I look up, Lex is standing above me, smiling in the morning light.
I duck my head, turn back to the bucket.
“Didn’t realize it was your morning,” he says quietly. “Must have lost track of the day.”
“Or me,” I say, rising, turning, heading for the milk room door.
“I don’t mind the company,” he says, following.
I pour the milk into the tank. Catch his eyes quickly. Leave by the back door and start walking.
Back at the cabin I pack a bag containing a knife and water, let Otie climb onto my shoulder.
We go west, over the top of the ridge, through the low-hanging arms of the tallest trees, up and over boulders.
Bear scat. Three-legged-coyote scat. Scrapings on beech bark from a bull moose, in heat and pining.
We cross Round Mountain to find Adele. She meets us on the porch, and I tell her I am afraid of my own body. Of what it wants. Adele puts a splash of rum into my smoky hemlock tea. Says, “Drink, Lena.”
I do. She says, “It’s hard to run away from oneself.”
She steps off the porch and picks up her maul and starts splitting the ash logs piled up in the backyard.
I help her. I bring the unsplit logs to her, stack the pieces that shatter out from under the maul in neat piles near the door.
Otie watches us, clucking and hopping from log to log.
When the wood is stacked I lie back on the grass and spread my arms. My arms become the arms of a spider. My arms become a web. A yellow warbler calls out from the branches of a hemlock. A song sparrow from the other side of the road. I smile. Feel minuscule, evaporated.
“You’re all right, Lena,” Adele says, chuckling.
And then hunger strikes. “Climb on, Otie-O,” I say to the bird, pointing to my shoulder, and he does, and we set off again, waving to Adele, walking over stone wall, over ledge, over stream and log, toward home.