Look out!

BLUE BLACKBIRDS

 

Ma is making her great beef stew. I can smell it from my loft in our big house. Pop gave me my choice of sleep space when we first decided to leave the busy city, ten years ago. He sorta made up his mind in a hurry to be a farmer, till the soil, for ever and ever. He paid cash and dug right into the rich healthy soil. Mr. McCall, the real estate man,  had sold us all on the move and things and life got better than ever. In just one season we had tall green sugar corn that had us singing, laughing, that it was as high as an elephant's eye. Ma corrected us, 'as high as a baby elephant's eye.' There was plenty of corn to shuck, boil, eat and sell.

 

Together we made a huge strawberry patch that thrived well before summer was done and have juicy pies all summer with a few left over in the freezer. Peach trees, Pop and I labored and got forty eight planted in two weeks. In four weeks the delicate limbs were sprouting leaves, then the tiniest of peaches. Mom and I believed Pop had his calling from god and god gave him a special blessing.

 

What a breakfast we had this morning! Mom bought a big bag of fresh oranges at the super market, squeezed each into my grandma's big tin pitcher. That gave Pop the idea of having orange orchards but that would have to wait until we moved to Florida, which we had no idea of doing. Anyhow, Mom made pancakes for us, almost as thin as french crepes. Maple syrup from Maine drowned them. Purple blueberries swam around. We three talked, told stories, exaggerated, had a perfect morning.

 

Pop went outside to read the paper, smoke his meerschaum and then walk a mile or two. He came back, looking a bit worn out, and relaxed on the screened in porch. I always have things to do and rush to the loft to read science fiction stories, I hear the screen door open and close. Something is bothering Pop. I wait–give him a chance to tell us what is wrong. He taps the dregs of his pipe on his shoe, stares at the blue sky. I look slowly, carefully, see only the blue and a few feathery white clouds. He comes inside, to the kitchen table. Ma is rolling pastry dough fo the Christmas treats she gives to kids and the church Christmas time. She freezes balls of it so the hard work is done in advance.

 

The only sound in the room is her rolling pin going back and forth and her breathing that is a bit harder than usual. Pop's silence creates a strange eeriness in the room. 'What's wrong, Pop?' I ask. He doesn't answer but rises, opens the window as far as it will go and leans out to scan the sky. For a second I see his eyes close. He opens them. With desperation he points, 'Look, look, don't you see that thin black line on the horizon?' We see a line that enlarges even as he speaks. It moves quickly. The sky is black in all directions. Pop slams the window shut and tells us to go with him to the cellar. He drags Ma. I refuse to go.

 

A noise, a loud, loud noise, flies above our house. The cawing and cackling is deafening. Thousands of black birds, ravens or crows, I can't tell which, have turned our sunny day into midnite. As fast as they appeared, that's how quickly they were gone.

 

Our strawberries are speckled with white stuff. The peach trees are laden down with it. Pop, Mom and I will have a lot of watering to do to clean up. We go on the porch and are grateful those dirty birds have left.

 

As the sky lightens, its blueness dazzles us. Flocks of blue birds fly and chirp away. They sound like music. I re-set the water timer to start at once. Ma goes back to rolling her dough and Pop gets the phone book and starts looking for a list of agents who can sell our house. He wants to move to Florida.