A Small Ruffle of Feathers
Across the back acre, we looked for the graves. Nothing had been buried out there in years. The boxwoods were gone, the garden abandoned. Now my sister wanted to know, because someone had to cut the grass. Keep It Simple Stupid, I told her. Honeysuckle had choked the fence. A slow stranglehold. I remember when the fence wasn’t there, and you could see where the road went. The previous autumn, my father had taken his last lawn mower ride, the final brightness of a light bulb before it died. Before the hospice bed arrived.
Across the back acre, in a stand of scrubby pine trees, we plotted a pet cemetery with slate grave markers. My father engraved the first couple with a router. Our dog, my cat. Later slates were just marked with Sharpie. One afternoon, my father sat on the deck, and said his stomach hurt. Then, the cemetery became overgrown, hidden under pine needles and weeds. I found a discarded liquor bottle poking from the overgrowth. Further out, a farmer put up a fence. Keeping something out, or holding us in?
Across the back acre, in the adjoining farm field, I found a sinkhole, perhaps an old privy or well. I might uncover treasure, reveal a secret. Early the next morning, I bent over a shovel, until I had to kneel, probing with smaller tools. I tore into the hole and cut my finger on a shard of glass. Blood seeped into the dirt. I dug deeper but revealed nothing. Only a wish that my father had joined me. Long after the sun had risen, he never came out to say good morning.
Across the back acre, my mother dug up an arrowhead. She placed it by the kitchen sink, then disappeared back into her garden, leaving my sister and me to our bikes. I had a ten-speed with skinny tires. Orange, the color of caution. My sister was just learning to cycle. Our father kept the bikes tuned and lubricated, a squirt of oil to keep things moving smoothly. When I fetched the oil tin from the shed, I saw beer cans perched like aluminum animals. “Dead soldiers,” my father joked.
Across the back acre, I once shot a bird with my BB gun. I hadn’t expected to hit it. The body fell, nearly pristine, with only a small ruffle of feathers. No one was home. My father had gone for supplies. He was attempting to restore a wrecked sailboat, but it was never seaworthy, just a skeleton. I stole a bottle of beer from the garage and drank it fast. Then I buried the bird in a shallow grave near the boxwoods, catching my breath on their rich deathly scent.
Since 2020, Steve Saulsbury’s flash fiction has appeared in many journals, in print and online. His award-winning story, “Driftwood Days,” was published in Beach Secrets (Cat and Mouse Press, 2021), and more recently, “Proving Ground,” was included in the Live and Learn anthology (The Writers’ Journal, 2024). He lives on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
