The Almanac Branch by Bradford Morrow Page B

brilliant green watercress that floated in the sink. She sighed a deep-throated sigh and it surprised her; that was the same tone she heard herself make whenever she was losing her cool (like when she made us turn off the box); then, one by one at first and soon in an armload she gathered the woodcocks and stuffed them into the trash compactor that Ernest had installed, and once they were all in the compactor—they filled it to the edge of the plastic liner—she pushed the drawer back into the counter, locked it, and pressed the black, rectangular button and listened to the birds being crushed together inside, their tainted skin and beaks and bones gliding into a single pulp. She pulled the compactor drawer out, lifted the remains, carried with some difficulty the bundle across the kitchen, and deposited them outside in the can.
    Another low groan as she looked at her hands, which were wetted with thin blood. Across the floor ran a feathery pink line of the same blood. She would have to go after that in the morning. There was no time to get out the mop and pail. She washed her hands then remembered how sticky blood could be when it dried, and how the flies would be attracted so she thought better of it and told me to take a linen hand towel—knowing how wrong it was to use such a fine piece of fabric, but what else could she do, there simply wasn’t the time to mop—and I dropped the linen on the tail end of the trail of red. “Women should endeavor to cultivate that tact and forbearance without which no man can hope to succeed in his career,” the venerable Mrs. Beeton observed. And I, who attempted to follow some avenue toward my father’s success by skating the rag under my hands along that bloody browning-pink line which crossed the kitchen floor, wonder now what kind of life Mrs. Beeton must have had, what kind of father, what kind of mother. Would she have been able to see a flare man in a tree in England? Would the tact she spoke of have extended to getting down on the linoleum and on all fours wiping up woodcock juice? Her answer, of course, would be that she wouldn’t have spilled the blood in the first place.
    And Djuna read again from Household Management , “Accidents, of course, will happen (though but rarely with proper precautions)”—what a scolding old bitch she was this Mrs. Beeton—“… fires will not always burn, nor ovens bake as they should …the gas supply may be deficient; but if the joint, or whatever it may be, cannot be done to time, do not send it up only partially cooked, but ask for a little grace …”
    For what? We laughed together, Djuna first, then I, and it seemed so funny to us (even though it wasn’t terribly) that I had to run to another room and stamp my feet hard in order to stop. I looked out the window, to see that there were shadows cast by headlights from the side driveway. One of the guests was arriving, the headlights of a car reflected off the trees and trellises near the kitchen’s windows. Djuna had dropped Mrs. Beeton to the floor where the veneer of fowl blood—I hadn’t been very thorough in my clean-up—had already begun to dry into patterns; oh, indeed, we could already hear the flies pinging against the screen. She went to the wall phone and dialed the number in a kind of haze of defeat mixed with efficiency. Ernest was going to bring over some whitebait. Faw might wonder where his woodcock had gone off to, but the evening would not be lost.
    Berg came down into the kitchen, uncomfortable in his tie and blazer, but rather superior for his social apotheosis.
    â€œI see you’ve got your shirt on with buttons forward, Berg,” Djuna noted. “Isn’t that against your principles?”
    â€œSometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t
    â€œFaw had to tie his tie for him,” I added, recognizing this as one of the few moments in my life when the tables were turned, and