Willa's Grove by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-01-13T17:35:06+00:00

***

After an hour and a half of driving in the old Ford, Jane and Bliss stuffed in the back seats because they all said that the rental wasn’t “Montana enough,” they stood on the shores of Freezeout Lake in that exact forward roar of birds.

“Well I never!” shouted Bliss.

“They call this a swirl,” shouted Willa.

“It’s like they’re bringing down the clouds with them!” screamed Jane. “And spinning them all around us! Like cotton candy!”

“Clouds with black edges,” yelled Harriet. “But no rain.”

And for the next half hour, Willa didn’t think of Jack or the boys or the auction or money or packing up her house or where she was going next. It was the mind-stopping, migrational, perfect pandemonium she remembered and had grown to count on for the So Now What that each spring demanded, whether you were ready for it or not. This year, it had waited for her to come to it.

Some of the geese flew around the lake in undulating S’s, practicing their flight patterns. Hordes of them landed and splashed and skimmed. They quieted for a beat or two, then lifted and swirled again around them.

Willa had brought her binoculars as usual, but for some reason could not lift them to her eyes.

Jane was turning in slow circles with her mouth open and her head to the sky, like she was in a snow globe.

“Here,” she hollered to Jane. “Take these. Try to follow one bird.”

Jane pressed the binoculars to her eyes with such intensity that Willa laughed out loud, muted by the roaring geese. “One bird,” Jane shouted above the din. “One bird!” She walked along the lakeshore in one direction, then in another.

Willa watched Jane the way she’d watched her boys play this game. The three of them had spent many homeschool mornings this way, each of them following one bird. She’d forgotten it until now. Could you follow a bird in a city and not hit up against a building or someone else’s property?

“Damn it. I lost it!” shouted Jane, casting the binoculars skyward to choose another. Then she walked the other direction, pointing them straight to the sky, and then down to the lake. “Damn. Lost that one too.” Pretty soon Jane was around the bend, out of sight.

Willa turned to say something to Bliss and Harriet about Jane’s adventure, but they were out of sight too. She was glad then to be alone with the birds.

Willa sat in the sand with her legs crossed and her head to the sky, dizzied by the frenetic orchestra of the geese. She looked out at a peninsula, and pictured herself standing there, just last year, with Jack and the boys. At the time, she’d imagined it might be the last migration they’d all experience together for the next four years. She didn’t know it would be the last in their history.

She pictured them there. It was dawn, and they’d camped out the night before. She’d woken them just before sunrise to go out on

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