Anne’s Bio:

Anne Muccino lives in the Kansas City area with her husband and two sons—Daniel and Jack. She is currently pursuing her BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing while drafting her second novel. Anne is a member of several writing groups and is the Writing Group Coordinator for The Writers Place in Kansas City, Missouri, www.writersplace.org.

A Preponderance of Hope

By Anne Muccino

 

The sky sat watermark gray in early June the day the lawyers came to take the farm. Mama and Pa stood out in the fields, grateful that the wind blew hard and made them squint; it masked the ache straining their faces. Pa refused to invite them into the house, calling them shysters and making them stand rooted to the ground saying he wanted them to feel the strength of the earth they came to steal.

I ran to tell Birdy. Mama said not to tell him until the very last. Until we knew for certain all hope was gone. So when she saw where I was headed, she nodded. I ran through the fields, disappearing from sight as the stalks of wheat cocooned me and followed the wearied footpath leading to the barn. I heard the pigeons cooing as I neared, the throaty gurgle they sang to each other and to him, and slipped in through the first floor window calling his name loudly. He answered like he always did.  

“Come.”

Birdy showed up at the farm three years ago, two weeks after winter’s thaw made peace with the coming spring. How he got there was a mystery. When Pa headed out to rig the dried up well, he found him in the upper level of the collapsed barn, birdcages littering the floor. That’s how he got his name. Pa tried to roust him, but Birdy started making this “whoop whooping” sound and covered his ears with his hands every time Pa spoke. 

Mama said times were hard for everybody and weren’t we Christians and finally, what would Jesus do? Besides, she said, there was nothing saving about that barn. After the rains of ‘79, the soggy ground underneath gave way and it toppled on its side. It must have fallen in the night, because we just woke up one morning and it was broke. Pa didn’t like the idea of a squatter and he told Mama that. But in the end he let him stay.

I climbed the ladder leading to the second floor where Birdy sat holding a pigeon in his hand. The other pigeons were loose on the tops of the cages, twelve in all. The one he held was named Geselda.

“Look here liebchen,” he said pointing to the bird. “See how her eyes close when I give a gentle pressure? Do you see? He trusts me, ja?”

I nodded.

“You come here and pet her, ja? Come.”

I walked the few feet towards him, towards the white bearded man my grandfather’s age whose blue eyes hid behind round-glassed spectacles. A thin wool cap covered his balding head and he wore a drab knee length robe, day in and out, even in the weight of summer. He kept a brown scarf bundled around his neck which he used to clean his spectacles and sometimes to dab his eyes. Birdy’s right hand held a charcoal pencil that he used to draw the pigeons in his notebook. Mama bought him a new notebook when he ran out of paper and began drawing on the barn walls. He dabbed his eyes with the scarf when we gave it to him.

“Lawyers are here to take the farm,” I said, petting Geselda on her back.

Birdy said nothing, but Geselda started to struggle in his hand.

“They say we must leave here.”

“Leave?” he said, barely above a whisper.

I nodded. Birdy stood and with great gentleness placed Geselda in the doorless birdcage. She climbed out immediately and perched on top. I once asked him why the birdcages didn’t have doors. “Because it would be too much a cage, a stalag,” he said. “It is very bad, eine sunde, to cage one who has the gift of flight.”  

He moved towards the window and I followed him. We stood there in silence watching Mama and Pa in the fields below talk with the city dressed strangers.

“Mama says there is no hope.”

I reached for Birdy’s hand and he let me hold it, forgetting the blueness of the tattooed numbers on his wrist. He looked down at me and smiled. “There is always hope liebchen,” he said. “It is the little bird that beats inside your soul making its way out at all costs; the one that sings in your heart until your heart memorizes the words. It is okay we look ahead, not behind, ja? The little bird knows the way.”

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