Brown-bird

Brown-bird

A little brown bird hopped onto a fence, and bounced along each pointed picket until it reached the fence’s end. There she darted into a tangle of shrub, nipping away at fruit flies and gnats in her routine acrobatic flurry. After breakfast, the brown bird chirped from a branch jutting through the top of the bushes and sung the sun out from behind the clouds. Her song took to the air and frolicked as it circled the beehive, whirled through the badger’s burrow and climbed with the ivy slithering up the elder oak. She heralded the warmth, and she heralded the breeze.

The brown bird’s song fell away to listen out for the echo of another brown bird. All that was heard was the distant coo of a dove. Not today. Her toes clutched the branch tighter and she repositioned her wings, ruffling tufts of feather. She cheeped a few times more and waited. There was only the low buzz of bees, the scuttle of a badger, and the rustling of the oak leaves. Another last chirp and final pause as the wind picked up.

And then she heard it; a faint twittering had leapt from some cottage garden and danced its way into the ear of this brown bird. She zipped off in the direction of the reply.

High, dipping then climbing, she had flitted over Mrs Brimbottle’s cherry trees to see a window produce a crack, a brick patio hurtle upwards to meet her, and picture frames beaming down at her twitching claw.

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Willa was the first to find her and to no avail, called for Fitch. So she knelt down by the bird’s side, hands in lap, watching its heavy eyelids and sinking breast as it laboured over every intake.

“Though you may die bird, neither fox nor ferret shall toy with you.”

Willa scooped her up slowly, concerned that her weather-beaten hands would discomfort the bird. Today she’d gone to Old Merck’s to help him on the field since Fitch wouldn’t dare toughen his alabaster palms, leaving hers even more calloused and brittle. A useless sod Fitch was, she thought, of course a self-proclaimed ‘man of the house’, but in actuality he did little but make what money he could from passing off rundown vehicles for new ones over in town. Around home, you were lucky if you could coax him into sealing an envelope.

Willa persisted. “Fitch!”

A grumble came from inside and she could make out his broad shoulders rising from their late father’s armchair. The chair creaked and groaned more than he, not of relief but as if Fitch belonged in its seat and his detachment ached the old armchair. She expected him to meet her out back, instead Fitch walked away from the chair and into the kitchen, slamming the door on the way.

Upset, Willa took a deep breath and looked down at the feathered ball in her cupped hands. What to do with this tiny bird? A finch, it was. Dusky down, with a sharp black bill and feet, specks of gold littered around her lower wing which was now heavy and loose. For the moment being, Willa decided to slip her onto the wooden cabinet by the window to go and speak with Fitch. She gently brushed her fingertips along the brown-bird’s nape, whispered a prayer, and made her way down the hall to the kitchen.

“What is it?” Fitch had started dicing the potatoes for tea and kept his gaze to the knife.

“A little b-“

“Yeah I heard it,” he cut in.

“Well-“, Willa was standing in the doorway of the kitchen holding the broken door ajar. It was heavy but she knew how once it closed, it took too much yanking and jerking to reopen to risk being stuck if Fitch’s temper flared.

“Well you have to bury it.”

“No, but Fitch, she’s alive.” Willa smiled at this. “She’s still breathing.”

“She?” he laughed. “You’re not thinkin’ about keepin’ it alive?”

“She’s not dead.”

“Willa, put it out of its misery.” This was no suggestion from Fitch; when he said something was to be done, it was done. This simple household absolutism worked for the most part of the siblings’ sheltered lives so what followed took not only him aback, but his sister too.

“No,” she declared. Her push on the door grew stronger.

Fitch stopped dicing, put the knife down and turned. “Excuse me?”

“What reason do we have to kill a bird that has every chance of surviving?” Willa stepped forward. “Take this, everyone thought Macy Lee’s prize chook was a goner after it got caught under the tractor, and look what happened there! Next day, Macy Lee was carving its little gravestone when next thing you know, that hen had cocked its head, and up it was, good as new.”
While Willa had been trying to persuade Fitch into keeping the bird after the miracle of Macy Lee’s hen, she had not realised the old door had fastened shut behind her.

“Fitch,” she continued. “I just don’t think you’ve been granted whatever authority you feel this is to decide the fate of a little bird”.

Fitch strode forward and looked down at his little sister. He paused before he hit her. She was so delicate, a girl of much grace. At seventeen, she was intelligent yet still sustained that childish charm: flittin’ around the house, cartwheelin’ through the orchards, a dainty soul was what mother used to say she had. Mother had always preferred her. But Willa was green, her greatest concerns revolved around forest animals and picking wildberries. She was no dainty soul; she was the naïve runt of the litter. How could she, at her age, still believe she could be the saviour of every little broken toy? Fitch would once again reprimand her, and then he would kill the bird.

Fitch struck Willa. He slapped her across the face, hesitated, she inhaled jerkily, and he hit her a second time. This all ensued quite slowly for Willa, feeling his hot clammy palm drag along her cheek, watching a thick vein pulsating through his marble forehead. She ground her teeth back and forth knowing there was more to come, but she did not cry.

He gripped her bony shoulders and thumped her into the corner between the wall and closed door. “Dare question my authority again girl, and I’ll send you flying into the window. I shouldn’t have had to do this but you left me no choice. Do not challenge nature, do not challenge me, birds die every day.”