Blackbird House Read Free Page B

returned.   It was some time before she recognized it, because the bird had turned entirely white.   It sat in a branch of the big oak, where it could have easily been mistaken for a wisp of a cloud.   It looked like something Coral could blink away, but it wouldn’t disappear.   First the bird was on her roof, then it was at her window, and then, one morning, the white blackbird tapped at the door, and that was how she knew they were gone.
    In an instant she knew everything she had hoped for was impossible. She cut off all her hair, and she tore the clothes she wore with a carving knife.   She threw away her frying pan and her kettle, her spices and her liberty tea, all tossed into the pond.   She might have starved to death if Hannah Crosby hadn’t seen that bird circling over the property, like a vulture or a ghost.   The doctor was called in; some sassafras tea and bed rest were recommended.   Hannah, to her credit, suggested that Coral come back and live in the lodging rooms the family had occupied before John built the house.   But she could tell, with one harsh look from Coral, the answer was no.
    In another town, a widow’s vandu might be suggested, and a year of Coral’s labor put up for auction so that she could met her expenses, but this was not the sort of place where people were sold to the highest bidder.   The Hawkes family brought over an old cow that was still a good milker, and Hannah Crosby was happy to oversee the garden to ensure there’d be a decent crop of turnips, if nothing else.
    By the end of the summer, Coral Hadley was selling her turnips by the side of the road, set out in crates, trusting folks’ honesty.   The turnips were particularly large; one alone could last a week.   People said they were so sweet, a single bite could bring a man to tears.   Buyers tended to leave more money in the cash box than they needed to.
    Even the British soldiers took three boxes of turnips along with them
    for their voyage home, and they left Coral
    Hadley eight shillings per box, far more than they were worth.
    Seven years after the May gale, the white blackbird could still be spied.   It was said Coral Hadley had tried to chase it off; she’d fired a musket at it, she’d thrown a bucket of ashes in its direction, but it wouldn’t go away.   Even after all these years, people remembered her suffering.   Perhaps her neighbors thought it was luck to help the luckless: some of the men put up a fence around Coral’s garden, and another around the barn.   One spring a pair of sheep was left in her field.   Another May, a dusty-gray horse that looked very much like one that belonged the Maguire family was tied up to the post outside the house.   People took to leaving out food for the crow as well, crumb cakes and molasses bread, for such gifts were said to be good luck.   Hannah Crosby, who so feared birds, left morsels on a stump in the center of the meadow and swore the blackbird had once eaten from the palm of her hand.
    One summer day, Coral Hadley went out early to feed the sheep, and the cow, and the horse she had named Charger, and there was a man in her yard.   Each spring she had planted sweet peas; now they were everywhere, knee high, blossoming, purple and white and pink.   Coral knew she wasn’t the person she used to be: her teeth were falling out, ground down by nightmares; her hair had turned white.   People in town said she was hurrying her old age, rushing forward to meet her husband, John, and her children in the hereafter, but really she was rushing toward this moment, this instant, this very breath.
    III.
    The May gale had surprised them, as it had surprised everyone else who was fishing in the Middle Banks.   One moment there’d been a sea of glass, the next a sea of mountains.   They did the best any crew might have done; even Isaac managed as well as could be expected as they tried to drive leeward.   But in the force of the storm, the sloop broke apart, and