The River Beyond the World by Janet Peery

Author:Janet Peery
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781250083791
Publisher: Picador
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

2

may

When Antonia looked back, it seemed as though the months had passed like the flocks of swallows that now flew over the Valley. You looked up to see them, specks on the horizon that grew larger until the low-flying clusters, violet tails iridescent against the sky, were so close overhead you could hear their shrill, clipped flight calls, dee-chip. Their shadows fell across you as you stared up at them, dappled you with moving shade, and then were gone.

She had been on her way across the yard to the tractor tire, but now she stopped walking. Above her, toward the outer reaches of a branch, a swallow moved in a side-to-side fashion along the tip of the limb, flicking his tuxedo tail. She held her breath, careful to make no sudden movements. The bird cocked his head, seeming to appraise her. He didn’t fly away. Antonia began to breathe. She had been on her way to the jungle to think, but at this moment, she couldn’t move.

As long as the bird stayed, time would stand still. She could stand this way forever, she thought, through days and nights and weeks and months, a statue-Tonia on the carpet grass of Madama’s back lawn, unmoving. She let her gaze go distant, taking in the field beyond the jungle, the burn pile smoldering in its packed-earth pit, the silver glint of the trailers in their rows beyond the field, the spindly palms along the far road with their fringed topknots like the crests of prehistoric birds.

The afternoon was quiet, only a slight breeze that did no more than flutter the leaves, the lazy drone of a wasp somewhere behind her. Her mother was napping in the little house after the morning’s work; soon she would wake up and begin to bathe and dress for church. From the direction of the little house, she heard one chachalaca startle the air with its buzz saw call, its warning then taken up by the rest of the flock roosting on the power line like a row of black, scruff-feathered priests, their din rising to a raucous cackle, their message: something out of order in the world.

From the machine shed came the sound of Pompilo trundling the lawn mower down the planks of the ramp, the cough and sputter of the engine as he yanked at the rope start, then the steady growl as the engine caught. When she glanced up, the swallow was gone. She went through the jungle and sat on the rim of the tire.

When you started showing you quit school and stayed home. Boys laughed when you walked downtown. They smirked and sneered and looked you all over with eyes like metal. They wrote your name on walls. Some fought over who had done it. When Rose Figueroa quit school, stupid Felix Cruz offered her five dollars if she would promise to tell people the baby was his. His cousin Fonso, who had really done it, had cut Felix, cut his face, taking a slice of his ear.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.