The Weight of Feathers Read Online Free Page A

Cluck always rubbed somebody the wrong way. If it wasn’t his clothes, it was his left hand. These three hadn’t noticed it yet. Too dark. The light from the liquor store barely reached them. The ring of red-orange stopped just short of the ground where Cluck braced his hands.
    A shadow broke the neon. The shape of a girl, hands on her hips. She set her shoe down a few inches from the fallen cornflower.
    Cluck looked up. The red-orange caught one side of her face and body. It lit up the hem of her skirt and one sleeve of her jean jacket. It brightened her lipstick to the color of pincushion plants, and streaked her hair. Black or brown, he couldn’t tell. She had on a thin scarf tied like a headband, the tails of the bow trailing on her shoulder.
    She cleared her throat.
    All three of them looked up. The bigger one dropped Cluck’s collar.
    The girl tilted her head toward the road. The three of them backed away, like Cluck was something they’d been caught breaking.
    “You gonna say anything?” the youngest one asked as he passed her.
    “Still thinking about it,” she said.
    She held out her hand to Cluck. He hesitated. She wasn’t as little as Eugenie or Georgette, but he was still more likely to pull her down than she was to get him on his feet.
    The muscles in his left hand twitched. He kept it still. He never could talk his body into believing it was right-handed.
    She grabbed him just above his elbow and pulled him to standing. The force of her surprised him, her small hands stronger than he expected. He stumbled, stopping himself from falling forward.
    “You got an arm on you,” he said. “Well, two of them.”
    “I do a lot of swimming.”
    “Around here?” He brushed off his hands on the front of his pants. “I don’t recommend it. Not with the colanders.”
    She stared at him, her lips a little parted.
    He picked up his collar, dusted it off. “The roots of the trees growing in the river tangle together, form these big strainers.”
    “I know what a colander is,” she said.
    “Of course you do.” Anyone who lived around here did. He buttoned his collar back on his shirt. “Do you always have that effect on men?”
    “I know their mother.”
    He blew the dirt off the cornflower and pinned it back onto his vest. “Same sewing circle?”
    “Something like that,” she said. “You could’ve fought back, you know.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “You take out the biggest one first. Do you have any brothers?”
    “Just one.” He folded his collar down. “He’s the biggest alright.”
    He straightened up, collar and cornflower and the rest of him all put back in place. He had about six or seven inches on this girl, her body small but not willowy. There was enough on her that she seemed soft instead of fragile like the thinnest and shortest of his cousins.
    He wished he hadn’t noticed. Noticing came with the thought of touching her, and a sureness that she would not break under his hands.
    “What’s your name?” Cluck asked.
    “None of your business,” she said.
    “How’s that look frosted on a birthday cake?”
    She laughed, but didn’t want to. The corners of her eyes fought it.
    “What are you doing out here?” he asked.
    “You first.”
    “My family needed milk.”
    “You couldn’t have gotten it in the morning?”
    “They get up early.”
    “First shift at the plant?” she asked.
    The plant . Two words, and Cluck’s tongue tasted dry and bitter as the charcoal off burnt toast. The plant, where his grandfather once worked as a safety engineer, making sure everything ran clean. He oversaw the safety measures, implemented new ones. That was before the plant let him go, all because of what the Palomas did.
    Now his grandfather traveled with the rest of the family, the life he’d never wanted. He’d gone to school to get away from it. All he’d wanted was to work, use what he’d learned, live in a house that was his. He’d had these things—the position at the plant, the house