The Weight of Feathers Read Online Free Page B

with a lemon tree that blossomed every May—until the Palomas took them.
    But none of that was anybody else’s business, so Cluck just told the girl, “No, they don’t work at the plant.”
    The girl pointed at Cluck’s left hand. “You should get that looked at.”
    That was a new one. Strangers usually assumed it was a deformity, that he came this way, his fingers balled into a fist at birth and never fully opening. His hand had been that way for years, the ring finger and pinkie stuck curled under like talons, the third finger always bent. He could only straighten his thumb and forefinger, only had full range of motion in those two. Even if he could spread out his whole hand, his fingers wouldn’t match. The third, ring, and pinkie would never get as big as the ones on his right hand, the growth plates cracked and knocked out of place years ago.
    “Too late,” he told the girl.
    Then came the few awkward seconds that made her hunch her shoulders as though she were tall. Her ear almost brushed her jean jacket. She looked caught, like strangers when he noticed them staring.
    “Let’s get you some ice,” she said.
    Her guilt made him wince.
    “You don’t have to do that,” he said.
    But she waved him into the liquor store, slid quarters into the ice machine, and filled a plastic sack. The light from the refrigerator case shined through the soda bottles, casting bands of color on the linoleum. Stewart’s Lime, Cheerwine, Blue Vanilla Frostie, all bright with dyes his grandfather said were no better than the chemicals the plant mixed up a hundred thousand gallons at a time.
    The girl pulled the scarf off her hair. Her messy bun came undone, her hair falling down her back. She plunged her hand into the ice and wrapped a fistful in the sheer fabric. The water darkened the flower pattern, turning the white space between the roses gray.
    She held it to his temple. “That’s gonna be blue by tomorrow morning.”
    Cold water dripped down his cheek. “Don’t worry. They look good on me.”
    She switched hands and shook out her fingers. “This happens a lot?”
    “Must be my sparkling personality.”
    She put his hand on the scarf. “Could be the way you’re dressed.”
    “Eye-catching, isn’t it?” Cluck had the same thing on he wore most days. Collared shirt, sleeves rolled up from working on the wings. Vest and trousers. “Fetching, you might say?”
    The girl filled her arms on the way to the counter. Soda bottles, caramel corn, praline cashews from a farm one county over.
    The man at the counter jerked his newspaper to straighten it. “More popcorn, eh?”
    The girl flicked him off. The man chuckled, an almost-friend laugh. Almendro was so small nobody bothered to renumber the town sign after the census a few years ago. The man probably knew the girl’s mother and all her sisters if she had any. She’d probably been coming in to buy sour worms and neon sodas since she was in grade school.
    They probably did this every week, the man’s teasing, her middle finger, his laugh.
    “You want anything?” the girl asked Cluck.
    Cluck wondered how someone her size ate all that. “You don’t mess around, do you?”
    Her hand paused halfway to a bag of peach rings. “Excuse me?”
    He braced to talk himself out. He forgot girls didn’t need to be heavy to feel heavy. Last summer, half his cousins lived on honey and chili powder, a diet they read about in a magazine. Eugenie planned on doing it again this year before they got to Stanislaus County, where she had a park ranger who thought he was her boyfriend.
    “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “Here.” He tried to take the bags and bottles. “Let me buy. Least I can do.”
    She dropped everything on the counter, bag of ice and all, and walked out. The bell on the door jingled and knocked the glass.
    Cluck followed her out. “I can do this all night.”
    She stopped and turned around, arms crossed tight. The wind fluffed up her skirt, like the