“Where’s the boy child?”
“Yonder in the catch.”
She glanced over the rise, the blue ran darker in the sky over the catch, overhead it was pale as hand me down denim. It made her spark a little to call him boy child, if his mom noticed she didn’t let on. She walked a pace or two towards the rise, stopped, shot a worried look back up at the darkening blue.
“Stay for supper Billi?”
“Yes’m, thank’m.”
“Good. Let me wash up you can come pick mustard greens with me.”
“Yes’m.” Billi had her back to her.
“C’mon, plenty of soap and water.”
“Yes’m.”
The garden was as far from the catch as the small plot went. Like most of the women in the valley she didn’t talk about being afraid of the catch. In the valley no one talked about being afraid they kept tight lipped and still. Billi didn’t know if there was some time or place or age where the women did talk about it, she hadn’t come on her first season yet. She knew her daddy went to the catch, not as often as he used to, but he didn’t go with any more care than he went anywhere, and the boy child spent most of his summer days between the morning chores and the evening chores down in the catch.
Billi knew why she was afraid. The bird man he hunted the catch. No one ever talked about him; if they did they might call him something else. He didn’t look like a bird or a man; he was whip skinny like a reed or a heron but shaped like a man, an awkward man carved out of something hard. His head was all mouth too, not beak, an open mouth, wet and full of teeth like a wound. The one time she’d seen him clear, he chattered his teeth at her like he was talking without sound, just this rhythmic ticking, and when the teeth come together there wasn’t a head, there was just air, dark blue air, when he opened it was just teeth and an absence of air.
“Greens are young yet, I like em that way, a bit bitter,” the boy’s mom said handing Billi soap over the bucket.
“Me too.” Billi felt a sudden chill. Why wasn’t the boy afraid? Why wasn’t her daddy afraid? Did they know the bird man? Did they like the bird man? Both of them’d come back from an afternoon at the catch, likely as not, with an empty bucket and a dry pole.
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