The Prettiest Feathers Read Online Free

folding knife on the last day of school as I walked along the side of the road toward the bus stop. It was lying near a torn bag and some broken bottles, the roadside debris from somebody’s drunk the night before. The morningsun reflected up from the fragments of green and clear glass, a sharpness of light almost cutting into my eyes, attracting my attention, begging that I see the flat brown handle resting in its bed of glitter. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, afraid to look at it, my heart racing. I kept it in my pocket all of that day through school, knowing that there was something magical about finding the knife, and realizing that if anyone knew I had it, it would be taken away from me.
    It was only when I was up at my town that afternoon that I took the knife out of my pocket, ran my finger along the wooden handle, examined both sides and each end of it, then carefully, lovingly, exposed the single, four-inch blade.
    The knife would be useful in my work on the town, in making things fit together the way they were supposed to, or carving out a door here, a window there. It would allow me to make things go more smoothly. And, for the first time, it provided me with a sense of power, of control—a feeling that there was nothing I couldn’t do.
    On the second of my mother’s visits to the town, she said that she admired my work, that she thought it might be a nice place to live. “But,” she wanted to know, “where are the people?”
    I got up from my knees and stood gazing down at my world. “People would just mess things up,” I said. “There wouldn’t be any … order.”
    Eventually I placed a few cars and trucks on the main street of the town, evidence that it was inhabited, but I would do no more as far as people were concerned.
    On Sundays I lost half the day because of the family’s attendance at church. In the early morning I was sent to Bible class, where an intense young man read passages and talked about the paradise that would be there for all of us who accepted Jesus as our personal savior. After class I would join the family upstairs for the services.
    There wasn’t any one minister. The men took turns standing up at the front and talking about the right way to live a spiritual life in a world that was afflicted with sin. Afterone talk about sin being in every home because it was coming through the TV set, my stepfather unplugged ours and put it in the attic. But when it was in the newspaper that the intense young reader of Bible passages was going to jail for committing lewd and lascivious acts on his young charges, my stepfather disconnected the family from the church and brought the TV back down to its old place in the parlor.
    I wanted to know what those two words—
lewd
and
lascivious
—meant. On the day of my mother’s third visit to my town, I wanted to ask her about them. There was mystery and power attached to them, and I knew that she could explain—but there were so many things she hadn’t explained, ever. And there were all those times she changed things around so that they seemed to mean something different from what they really meant.
    She was distracted that day—preoccupied—so I didn’t ask her about the words. Her mind seemed to be filled up with something. She didn’t say much—just sat on a stump and gazed off at the mountains in the distance.
    “What kind of bird is that?” she asked.
    I listened to the bird’s deep, throaty, owl-like phrases coming from the brush. She knew I would have an answer for her. I roamed the woods, climbed into the foothills, absorbed every sound and smell and track of an animal—then read voraciously until I knew all the vibrations of the world in the wild.
    “Mourning dove,” I said.
    “It doesn’t sound sad, exactly. Just thoughtful.”
    My town was in danger of becoming a city. The buildings were crowding in upon one another, growing taller, creating an architectural congestion that I wouldn’t wish on rats. I knew I