See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

Author:Sarah Schmidt
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781472240842
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2017-05-01T18:30:00+00:00

TEN

BENJAMIN

4 August 1892

THE SUN HIT me like a cannon. The pigeons danced on the roof. Time passed and the barn door opened. There was movement below, a woman trilling like a bird, saying, ‘Morning, sweet ones.’ It was Lizzie. Then she screamed.

‘My birds!’

I lifted onto hands and knees, was a secret crawling to the top of the stairs. I looked down, saw her hands in a deep waste drum. She screamed again, pulled out a dead pigeon, wings tipped and stiff, without a head, like all dead things. She pulled out another and another, let them pile at her feet and yelled, ‘I hate him! I hate him!’ Lizzie held the birds against her chest, made them listen to her heart. The sun cracked across the barn, the breathing of wood. I remembered Papa: moving through the house, bare feet slapping the floor until he stopped at my bedroom. ‘Boy. Boy.’

‘Yes, Papa?’

‘Open.’

I opened the door. The smell of musk and burnt tobacco, of old mud. Papa smiled a browned tooth. ‘Get your coat.’

I got my coat and followed him out. We moved quickly. ‘Where are we going?’ My feet marched like rats.

‘You’re going to hold some things down for me.’

We reached the family chicken coop. ‘You hand them to me while I take to the axe.’

Papa stormed the chickens. I was holding the birds upside down, their scaly legs rubbing the inside of my wrist like an itch.

‘Give,’ Papa said.

I handed a chicken, watched it writhe, watched its eyes bulge. When the axe fell, the chicken was thrown into the air, blood dropped on my skin, its head oddly animated on the chopping block. I picked up another, tried to hold it steady as it squabbed with fear.

‘I can’t hold them. They’re too flighty.’

I handed a chicken. Then another. A chicken, a chicken.

When it was all over, I was told, ‘Collect them heads and take them to your mama.’

The heads had stacked on the ground like kindling. I was afraid to touch them. One of the heads moved, eye blinking and beak gasping. ‘Papa, it’s still alive.’

‘It’s all nerves.’

I slowly picked the heads off the ground and placed them in a bucket. Blood stench. I was covered in it.

Outside the barn Andrew’s bellow voice called, ‘Lizzie! Lizzie, come here.’ Lizzie turned and I receded from the stairs. Andrew stood at the door, his shadow filling the open space.

‘Get away from me,’ Lizzie said.

Andrew sighed. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t find them before I . . .’

‘You killed them!’ Lizzie threw a pigeon at Andrew. The bird hit him in the abdomen, slumped to the ground. A wing snapped.

Andrew stepped inside the barn, slapped Lizzie across the face. ‘Stop this nonsense.’

Lizzie sobbed, stamped her feet, wooden toy soldier sound, and said, ‘Why?’

‘They are vermin, Lizzie.’

‘They’re my pets. I cared for them.’

‘They were bringing disease into the house.’

Lizzie bent down, picked up the bird and held it. ‘Why did you have to be so cruel? You could’ve just let them fly away.’

‘You know they wouldn’t.

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