The Peacock

My wife and I fought over babies the evening I found it. I took a walk with the dog and at the blind bend I saw it. The peacock, dead. Its eyes open and dark, and no maggots or flies crawled on the body. No blood trailed on the asphalt. It was a dead peacock. The tail had to have been four feet long. A hundred dead blue eyes fanned out. The blue body and sleepy beak. I looked around at all the quiet houses and there was no air in the street. Dusk was breaking into a hot night and the locusts screamed. It was only the dog, the peacock, the night, and me.

I first learned of peacocks as a boy. I was with my grandfather. He drove me up to the cabin in the Ouachita’s to work fence. We worked all day and sweat through our shirts. Bugs walked around our backs. I jumped in the Kiamichi River a hundred times.

“A new neighbor moved in down the road,” my grandfather told me.

After supper we walked the road and found him. He was a crazed old man named Benny. His fingernails were so long, I thought they’d snap.. When he swung the gate, he had a baby tiger on leash. It knew how to sit and shake. I imagined it would make a hell of a hound. I rolled around with it, and it smelled like every dog I’d ever smelled. It was gentle with its mouth and big paws.

Benny also had a peacock. It was on the roof. He tried to get it to come down. Yelling at the bird while smoking a Winston. He shook his head and laughed.

“She can be a real bitch.”

The peacock walked the roof like it knew it was God’s prettiest creation. A flamboyant angel lost in purgatory. I asked Benny if he ever ate a peacock, he told me,

“Hell no, son.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just watched the peacock prance across the shingles.

I stopped at our front door and held the dog. My back was wet, and I felt the gnats drink all the air. A moth kept running into the front light. I watched it bounce back and forth, and when I went inside, I turned off the light. My wife was in her chair.

“There’s a dead peacock in the road,” I said.

“A peacock?” she answered.

“Dead as night. Must have been hit.”

“Where did it come from?”

I didn’t know.

“I think I’ll make a dream catcher from its feathers, like Grandmother,” I said. She kissed my head and walked into the bedroom.

The next morning was a Sunday. I poured myself some black coffee and a shot of bourbon to wake my spine and nose. The dog and I took another walk. The road shimmered in the humid morning. The peacock was flatter. Tires had bitten flesh. Flies grouped over its head. Its eyes were muddy. Its beak opened to a pale tongue. I looked at the feathers some more. They were eyes. Mad ones. I began to pluck a bundle from the tail for a dream catcher of my own. I yanked hard on them, and the bird shifted. I felt like a thief.

On the walk home, I watched the feathers catch wind in my hand. I thought of my grandmother’s dream catchers. She had terrible nightmares of dogs and lighting after my grandfather died. She visited her church friend on the reservation. Together they made a dreamcatcher.

“They’re a spiderweb to protect Earth’s children,” she’d say.

At night, she dreamt of warmth and Grandfather. She told me she walked with him in her sleep. They’d pick apples or eat black walnut cake at the old Wichita house. My grandfather reassured her they would be together again in the afterlife. She felt happy knowing death was not the end and everything waited for her on that other side. For me, it made ghosts seem more real.

My wife was in the backyard doing yoga when the dog and I got back. I watched her and remembered the youthful fire. Barns, libraries, cars, bars—anywhere where we could put our hands on each other. But she wanted a baby. Mad with love she was for one. I’d see her daydream of them. Of little fingers and heads being breast fed. She wanted to give life. I was scared to give it. I handed her a feather and kissed her hard. The cottonwoods and poplar trees covered us with shade. My back itched with grass.

I lay naked under the sun and smoked, waving a feather in and out the sun. The shadow on me must have looked glorious. On Sundays, out there, I used to feel like a demi-God.

I remember I watched her cook eggs naked through the feather. I remember how her legs looked golden through the fine hairs. Her face made simple with pleasure. I had fears in that moment she may not make me eggs again.

“Do we have hydrogen peroxide?” I asked.

“Yes, under the sink in the bathroom.”

I grabbed the hydrogen peroxide and poured it into a bowl. I grabbed a beer and got scolded. It was ten in the morning, but it was Sunday. Nothing happens on Sundays. I put all the feathers in the bowl and watched the bubbles eat hell. I smelled eggs and bacon and tasted the beer.

We ate together and the yolk dripped on the plates of toast. That was the first time I looked at yolk like a runny life. She said she had to go see her mother and help with her garden. She asked me if I wanted to come, and I told her I had plans for my feathers. She shrugged and took my plate.

I’d seen Grandmother weave yarn around molded poplar branches hundreds of times. She’d smoke and weave on the porch, watched over by a faraway hill. The hill knew one day it would swallow her. I miss days like that. The white heat of June. The aroma of locust and diesel and hose water between fingers. Days when sandwiches tasted better. I’d brush-hog the fields and watch rabbits dart from bushes. Chickadee birds sang. From the field I watched her tiny body weave and weave and smoke and smoke. At night I’d watch the hill turn black.

I went out back and cut twigs off a poplar and rubbed the leaves on my hands. I made a circle with the twigs and overlapped the ends and tied them down with yarn. I sipped beer and smoked and weaved webs inside the circle. I pictured myself a spider, weaving a web to trap evil from Earth’s children. I grabbed some of the clean, damp feathers and wrapped knots around their ends, hanging them off the circle. I stepped. It was done. My first dream catcher.

The bedroom had sun beams running through the windows, illuminating the dust. I took a nail and a hammer and shifted my fist along the wall behind the bed. I found a strut and hit the nail in far enough to hang the catcher. I sat in the middle of the room and watched it sway. It looked more alive than I liked, I felt taunted. The feathers eyed me madly. I had this urge, this ache for the peacock.

A father and his little boy stood over the bird when I returned. I was jealous when I saw them standing by my bird.

“What y’all doing?” I asked.

The boy bent down and petted my dog.

“Thing’s dead,” the father said, “Know how long it’s been here?”

“A day. I was going to bury it myself if the county hadn’t taken it by now,” I lied.

“Like it fell out of the sky,” the father said.

Rubber had beaten its eyes out. Flies had made it their cathedral. Its belly was open, and the stink reached the air. The boy tried to pluck some feathers, but the father hit his hands.

“You’ll get bird flu,” he said.

They both walked away without saying anything. I grabbed the peacock by the tail and dragged it home. I wanted no one else to have it. I’d keep it forever in the dirt I thought. In the shade.

I threw the bird between the trees, out of sight, and dug a hole. The bird was longer than the hole, so I dug some more. I kept apologizing to the bird, how it would be stuffed in and cramped with soil. The feathers began coming off like scales. Their color seemed less bright, and the smell seemed like it would be on my skin forever. After I threw the last heaps of dirt over the grave, I prayed. My first prayer since I was a boy.

The evening I buried the peacock, my wife cooked rabbit and radishes. The meat was good, stretchy. I never thought I’d taste Peter Cottontail. We drank white wine and spoke little. My dog rolled around the grass outside and I knew my bird was safe.

“I saw the dreamcatcher,” she said. “Looks better than I thought. Like your grandmother’s.”

I smiled, staring past her at the dirt lump between the trees.

“I buried the peacock,” I said.

“Where?”

I pointed with my fork. She saw the mound but said nothing. I watched her chew. Then she smiled.

“It’ll feed our soil.” She said, then winked at me and took my empty plate inside.

The hot night had begun as I sat alone at the table outside. The locusts burned loud as tears and my dog howled with the thousands. Clouds rolled above the trees. I smelled summer’s rain. I was happy to know my bird was buried and there was rabbit in my belly.

We watched a movie after dinner, but I was somewhere else entirely. I watched her watch the movie. I knew inside her head were babies and a deep sadness. We tried in bed after the movie. I watched her watch the feathers swaying from the catcher. Between the rain drops on the window I heard a baby cry. She cried when I had to stop. I felt her lungs expanding on the mattress. The rain picked up and the lights went out. Rain, rain, rain drowning a thousand locusts.

_____

Ben Clarence Tjaden lives in Savannah, Georgia.