Homestead

Abstract

her eyes. The night wind came to the mountain and jelled the blood on her feathers. When the trees along the mountain were no more than outlines before his eyes, the small hen died. He broke a stob from a tree and started gouging out a grave for her. He heard a rustle behind him and turned to watch a single black biddy scurry from the tuft of grass and burrow under the dead hen for warmth and protection. Isaac swallowed. If I can catch it, he thought, I might keep it. And then he thought of the promise he had made to the hen-a promise that he would not touch her brood. But as he dug, the want to keep grew strong. When he lifted the hen to carry her to her grave he did not have to make that decision. The biddy disappeared in a blur and in darkness he knew that he would never find it. Darkness had stolen away his knowing which would have won, the want or the promise. He buried the little hen on the mountain and placed a flat rock over her grave to keep varmints from digging her up. He broke the stob and made a crude cross, pushing it into the hard earth. Retrieving his bucket of huckleberries, he came again to the grave of the black hen and stood staring. Wondering why it was that so many things he had tried to help along the mountain had had to die. Small birds that had fallen from their nests, young rabbits caught in storms, and once a small hairless opossum that had fallen from the pouch of its mother and that he had tried to keep alive by feeding it milk through a straw. He remembered how his mother had said that even his helping often left human scent and caused whatever it was to be an outcast among its own kind, and maybe caused death. He remembered her saying that it had been written that for all things living there was a time for dying, and while he did not understand, this was the only answer he had.