It’ll happen slowly at first. He’ll come home a little early, make the turn onto their block, and he’ll see her, his wife, standing on the grass, barefoot, back turned towards the street, staring at the tree full of chirping birds. He may get out of his car, point to one and say, “honey, look at those crows!” And all his wife’ll do is let out a wistful little sigh and gently correct him that the visitors have none of the personality quirks of a Corvus or a Covus corax, and isn’t even a Corvid at all. The tree, she’ll tell him, is full of grackles. The most interesting thing about a grackle (Quiscalus quiscula), she’ll say, is that it’s not a crow. Grackles are black, long-tailfeathered bird that puff and chirrup and plead with empty yellow doll eyes, but that’s all. There’s nothing else to them really. No eerie calls, no prodigious memory, no propensity for spooky gifts. They just aren’t crows.
“I should know,” she’ll finish, “they’ve been stalking me all week.”
This might confuse him. He may ask for clarity. He could even get an answer, which will not help at all.
“They’ve been swarming the house after you go to work. Ever since I got my tattoo.”
Now, this will really confuse him. “Tattoo?” He’ll say, “What tattoo?”
And his wife will pull down the neckline of her shirt, which is an ancient solid-pink Taking Back Sunday souvenir from a concert they both attended a million years ago, so thin from wash cycles and time that the fabric is little more than gossamer, to reveal a neat little black bird nesting below her left collarbone. For a moment, perhaps from some trick of the setting sun, he’ll imagine the bird is perched in her ribcage, nesting right where her heart should be. “I wanted a raven,” she’ll say as she touches the bird’s feathers, thick and patterned over a round little avian body, “but now that everything is healed up, I think I may have ended up with a Grackle.”
This will surprise him for a few reasons. Money has been tight lately. Ever since she got laid off, his wife’s been home a lot, staying on the couch in pajamas, comfortable, but bored and discouraged by the trickle of job rejections from the handful of firms in her specialized field. More importantly, both of them have gone this long without getting a tattoo, and to his knowledge, inked flesh is an itch that both of them never felt the need to scratch. But more importantly, why a grackle?
“When did you get this?”
“Two weeks ago.” Her smile will disappear, replaced with concern, “are you OK?”
He probably isn’t. He’ll feel like he would have noticed a tattoo, or the bandage, or the prep talk for a tattoo, or the agonizing over what to get, or just anything really. But there the fucker is, nestled on her lightly pinkened skin, plain as day; plump, befuddled, and if he’s allowing himself to be mean, a little stupid looking.
As the cruel thought flutters through his head, the tree of birds will emit a cloud of syncopated squawks and fly off in a huff, the grass beneath them smeared white with shit.
“Hm,” they’ll both say.
So, without a clear alternative, things will continue. He can’t, or won’t, call out of work for mysterious tattoos, odd birds, or, God forbid, extended memory lapse, so he will have little choice but to carry on. He can’t even say for sure if anything is actually happening, good or bad. And considering that he didn’t even call out of work after his wife’s car accident last year, when her Camry hydroplaned into a divider while making that tricky exit over by the parkway, and her back was wrenched by the selt belt so badly she had to quit her job because sitting, let alone standing or walking, was causing such blinding agony that all she could do lay in their bedroom with the lights off and scream-cry through marathons of Bones, why would he start taking time off now? He’ll leave the house to the sight of a grackle or two sitting in the tree on his front lawn, and return to a swarm of a few dozen. He can joke with his wife that if a group of crows is called a murder, are a flock of grackles an embezzlement? She will laugh at this once, just once, then return to silently watching the birds chuff through the limbs of their tree. “A Plague,” he’ll catch her whispering, “they’re called a Plague of Grackles.”
He’ll always be suspicious of these birds, no matter how dopey they seem. Their opalescant black wings shimmer with shades of green and blue with irises that have the limitless vacuity of a chicken’s. Their bodies tend to stretch when they’re curious, and inflate when they’re confused, which is often, and their calls are more akin to a guffaw than a song. Utterly ridiculous. He’ll try to keep an eye out for some sort of explanation for their congregation, but nothing in his house is different from the version that exists in his memory. Their prom photos, his stacks of comic books, a fraternity sweatshirt (the business one, obviously), her grad school diploma in an unopened envelope in the closet, unused parenting books, and plenty of dirty dishes, will all remain untouched. The only new thing in their lives will be, of course, his wife’s tattoo. And her shifting behavior towards these odd creatures, which, let’s be honest, will definitely give him the heebee-jeebees.
One day, he’ll come home to find her back on the lawn, and he’ll notice two grackles perched on his wife, one on her shoulder, one on her outstretched finger. He’ll think, for a moment, that she looks like a cross between Odin and Snow White. And what’s more, she seems to be telling them something. The damn grackles will scatter into the neighbors trees as he gets close, but the image of his wife’s lips twisting out a whisper for the vacantly bobbing little bird will stay burned into his corneas until sunrise.
After a month, he’ll come home and see that she has gotten a haircut. And boy, what a haircut. Her hair, usually long and sandy and blonde, has been sculpted into something that looks like half a bob, partially shaved, and dyed the color of the ocean at night, something black and somehow also purple. She’ll be all smiles and say “how was work,” but he won’t be able to find the words. He’ll have no way to express his shock and or give compliments without coming off fake, so he’ll have to settle for slack-jawed awe.
At this moment, maybe even while she’s basking in his shock, she’ll peck her fingernails, painted a grayish black, across a frying pan, which will seemingly summon a dozen grackles to the window, staring blankly into the kitchen.
“Your friends seem to like your new look.” he’ll say, hesitantly.
“Do they?” She’ll turn with a hair flip to look at the Plague, “they’ve been very good today, I was wondering why.”
Unnerved, he’ll go to close the blinds to have his dinner in peace, only to suddenly realize that the screen has been removed and the window is wide open, meaning that there’s nothing separating him from the little beasts. Quietly, he’ll wave his hands and close the window, as the grackles remain stationary and unimpressed. When they are both washing up for bed that he notices she has a black feather in her hair.
Perhaps he will be surprised how little this new person reminds him of his wife. Overall, he’ll think, the changes are not that drastic. Who amongst us hasn’t gotten a wacky haircut, he’ll think, just to shake things up. She is, all things considered, still very similar. She likes many of the same things, though he’ll struggle to think of concrete examples, and her behavior is a bit strange but not completely different. She had always been a bit dreamy, drifting off to somewhere else while he was stuck with the day to day task of being earthbound, but by now, he was used to feeling like he was having both sides of every conversation. He’ll tally up the changes in his mind the way his job forced him to read quarterly reports, until he realizes that the new clothes and odd hair, not to mention the tattoo, all point to the same conclusion: that he was quietly always framing his wife as all the things she was not and wouldn’t do. A portrait made of negative space. And when those margins start to shift, he’ll finally begin to understand how little he knew her at all.
These are not thoughts that make him happy, especially when these little epiphanies begin to roost around his brain in the middle of the night. He’ll turn to her, while she is curled up on the other side of the bed, arm draped over her face, chest fluttering slightly beneath a baggy set of flannel pajamas, and decide against waking her up. Whatever answer he thinks will give him comfort suddenly seems less likely than the possible answer that was keeping him awake.
He’ll come home one day a little later than usual to find Her waiting in the tree, surrounded by grackles. Her fingers will have turned black, her eyes a furious yellow, and she’ll be wrapped in what appears to be a cloak made of dark feathers, but, after he exits the car and locks the door (for some reason), the cloak will spring to life and reveal a shroud somehow made of living birds, and that, yes, she is naked underneath. He’ll get a glimpse of the tattooed grackle, which has somehow gotten bigger and covered her left breast and heart with an iridescent wing. He’ll realize that this is the first time he’s seen her flesh since that first afternoon, and he’ll suddenly feel his face redden as an emotion he can’t quite place fills his head and makes his ears begin to drum. An ache deep in his gut accompanies the realization that even he must admit there’s something right in what he sees. Eventually, he learns to savor that ache, lying in a hotel bed, alone, turning the moment over and over and over like he’s running his tongue over a terrible sore on his gums, tasting the rotten sweetness of decay and pain.
He’ll approach the tree, staring up at her. I’m not totally sure how he’ll feel in this moment, but he’ll ask. “Are you leaving?”
She’ll appear to have a smile, though maybe that’s just the frozen angles of her face. The Grackle will tilt her head, “Probably.”
He can take a minute to digest this, but no more. He looks at their house, which has another few months on the current lease. The evening air is cool and smells slightly of sea brine. He wonders what grackles eat, or if they migrate, or how long a grackle can live out in the world. He will suddenly acquire a bone deep exhaustion that will stay with him through his final breath. Never before will he have felt so old so quickly. “Can I convince you to stay?”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try,” she’ll say as a grackle lands on his shoulder, a gesture he finds creepy but also sort of kind, “the only thing you’ll keep me from is missing you too much.”
“I don’t understand,” he’ll say with pleading eyes.
And when he reaches this moment, what he does next is anyone’s guess. The sun is and always will be setting soon, there is not as much life left as he thinks. The sprinklers will go off, spooking some the birds, gently spraying him with sharp cold water as he stares deeply into the unknowable golden ring of the Grackle’s eye. Neither of them blink.
The Grackle offers no answer as she begins her flight. Unlike the crow, who can be cruelly altered to parrot human speech, the only language a Grackle knows is her own.
Adam Camiolo (@upandadamagain) is a writer, and occasional firefighter, who lives in New York. His work has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, World Literature Today, Five South, and others.
Image: orilliamatters.com
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Heavy Feather Review 