Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht

invited you all out here so you could each take a dump in our compost pile.” A whoop came from the porch as someone turned up Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” on the stereo.
    â€œYou should put up a fence to keep out armadillos. They like to eat roots.”
    â€œI found an old book in the ranch house that claims armadillos taste like sea turtles,” said Harry, eyebrow raised.
    â€œLet’s trust the literature.”
    Alyce had known Steven for as long as she’d known her husband. Steven had been Harry’s roommate freshman year and later lived with all of them at Dryden House, the dumpy, ramshackle clapboard perennially rented to upperclassmen on one of the muddled but tree-lined streets bordering Marsh College. After graduation, Steven had been recruited into the vast and ambiguous Dallas consulting industry, the lucrative late-1990s catchall for aimless humanities majors with good grades, but he was laid off after the tech bubble. He’d used his small savings to buy a piece of land near the Austin airport that he named Heavy Metal Farm. Now he raised chickens and grew heirloom tomatoes and other organics (“consulting for the soul”) to sell at the farmers’ markets, which had become popular since locavores had infested the city. But with the recession, even the fat of the land had gone anorexic. The last time they’d spoken, he’d told Alyce he wasn’t sure the farm would last through next year.
    Steven turned to her. “Snow White, why are you wearing a jacket? It’s scorching,” he said. Hair black as ebony, skin white as snow, lips red as blood. Barely five feet tall, Alyce kept her black hair tied in a ponytail these days; she hated the way blue veins had begun to show, a vampiric map, betrayed by her translucent skin.
    Alyce looked down at the worn leather blazer she wore over a T-shirt and mismatched cotton pants. “It’s part of my ensemble.” But really she imagined the sting of the sun like a whip.
    â€œMy woman runs cold,” said Harry, coming to her rescue as usual. “Her internal thermometer is one of our age’s great scientific mysteries.”
    Beers were wrenched out of ice. Silverware clattered. Peoplehugged Flannery and complimented Alyce and Harry on the food, though Harry had done it all—prepping the house, manning the grill, breaking up fights between the kids—because she was so exhausted. Flannery leaned into Alyce’s ear at one point, asking, “Everything okay?” Flannery’s homecoming was the only reason Alyce didn’t feign illness and just disappear back inside the house.
    Alyce tensed, willing herself to act normal and say something, anything. “Steven, aren’t you going to tell everyone the real news?” she asked, because she’d been surprised when Lou called her out of the blue two weeks ago, wondering if she had time to make a wedding shawl (“Silk?” “No,” Lou had said, “White chenille with eyelash lace. You know. Like yours. Well, not exactly like yours.”).
    Now Alyce sat still, the attention of her friends successfully deflected.
    â€œYeah, sure,” said Steven, looking at Lou, who absentmindedly picked globs of paint from her cutoff jeans. “I’m in the market for some groomsmen and was wondering if you all knew any good ones.”
    Soon, everyone huddled around the table, giving their congratulations, jockeying for information. “When? Why now? Is Maya excited?” Steven and Lou had been living together for years. Their daughter, Maya, was almost four years old.
    â€œInstead of groomsmen,” said Lou, turning her head so that one long feather earring brushed her right shoulder, “I was thinking of having y’all come down the aisle with Steven in a dancing procession. You know, like the Baraat in Indian weddings?”
    â€œWith the Cherokee Nation smoke-signaling Pachelbel’s