#hrrgk

and that they were  --  the crows charley’d raised with him, by hand:  flappin’ them stubby little wings, wind catching under flight feathers only half-grown-in.  

mama bird had laid her eggs at a real odd time of year, she had.  mid-winter, not even late winter  --  and by the time the hills was turning brown from the heat again, them babies’d hatched.  there were four, and now two were left.  one’d gone to a red hawk.  the other’d gone from the sun, and from being a runt, and from his siblings taking just about anything he’d get in his mouth right back out of it.

they’d tried to save the runt, but his eyes’d been too milky by the time they got to him, and dulu couldn’t stand to see him suffer.

loss makes charley and dulu love what life lets them keep that much more intensely.  they cannot beat nature, and they do not try, but when the heavier sister steals the breeze in her breast and almost, almost lifts off into the air, dulu places his hand on the center of charley’s back.  watches her clamber back on into the nest when she gets scared, only to flap and flap and flap again.  his thumb rubs on charley’s shoulderblade through his sweaty white shirt.  the leaves are orange.