The familiar smell of gunpowder washes under the cloudy sky and over the field. It twists, quick in this stilled moment, around myself and my daughter Sara. Feathers fall in a shimmering cloud of blue, white, and yellow against the overcast sky. Sara’s hands cover her ears, her schoolbus still pulling away from our front drive. Her eyes are clamped shut as she tries to hide from the violent sounds of the gunshot and her scream. A solitary hailstone of hollow bone and birdflesh plummets to the ground in a sickening plop. She runs towards me again, but stumbles and trips over the empty white mesh cage leaning in the soft earth. As she falls, arms flapping, pink book bag arcing to the ground, I know she sees it all: The cloud of feathers, the smoking gun, and her father. Me.
Her impact on the dirt, marshy from the late fall rains, is a louder echo of the sick plop of the bird’s carcass. I curse myself for forgetting stupid teacher inservice half-days. I reach for her, mumbling apologies, but she pushes me away. She scrambles up, and her hand streaks cold mud across her face, clearing her tears away. Is the smeared mud across her narrowed eyes accident or warpaint? She turns and grabs her book bag, skinny legs pounding across the damp field, then booming hollow up the wood porch stairs. Perhaps she sobs, but it is impossible for me to hear at this distance or over the echo of the slammed kitchen door.
I cannot run. I start to walk, feeling the dead November grass scratch against my jeans. Each step squelches muck as I hunt for the dead bird. For a brief moment I wish that the dog was here to help. Then I imagine it, see the image of a sad canine face with the bird in its mouth, and I have to stop for a moment. I wipe the back of my hand across my forehead. When I look up, I see the bird’s carcass.
The bulge under the bird’s left wing is more obvious, now that most of its feathers are still falling from the sky. It is a hard lump, larger than even yesterday, even larger than it was the day before. It is like the little lumps that lined the edges of my father’s sternum just before his diagnosis. The lumps had been small before the months of useless chemo, before his own cells turned him into a walking skeleton of pain. Before the last wasted hours of blurred consciousness and insufficient painkillers. He had faced enemy soldiers and criminals during his life. He was no stranger to fear or sudden death, but… His muscles faded. Eventually, he was imprisoned by the weight of his own bones. At the end, he had looked past me, past the walls of the hospital room he’d grown to hate. When death came, my father was staring out the window towards the clear sky.
I hold the dead parrot in my hands. A breeze, tasting of a snow soon to come, swirls a cool path along my cheek as I commit the the last few minutes to memory. I vow to replay this again and again in a rosary of remembrance:
It took the bird ten minutes to leave the cage. It had rarely gone outside the cage during its life. It had only been outside during occasional traumatic visits to the vet. Visits like the last with the whispered secret diagnosis while Sara was out of the room. The vet, in her lab coat and sterile environment, offered vials and injections, shots and radiation. The parrot had floundered across the floor while we talked. It scrabbled towards the full-length window, staring towards my truck in the parking lot. No treatment, I decided. Not this time.
Here, in the field, the bird had poked its head out, then in, then out again, slowly convincing itself that the open door was real, that half-remembered species memory of bitter cold and the risk of feral cats was low enough to make it worth stepping through. It had finally burst forth, wings tasting their first real freedom in brilliant neon blues and green. I had not realized the richness of its colors before. Our little loser bird, lit in a stray beam of sunlight, was suddenly a glorious rejoicing thing. It gained altitude, rising up against the sky. Sara shouting, seeing, knowing what would come. I smelled the oil on my rifle, the smell of the powder after I fired. The bird’s flight never wavered, and my shot was good. The bird would not know the slow agony of cold or starvation. It would not know the terror of a hawk’s cry or cat’s claw. It would not know the slow despair of failed treatments and decaying flesh. It, unlike my daughter, only knew this moment, the freedom of the air, the stretch of wings, the wind holding it up. The bird’s head, drunk on a taste of freedom, had evaporated at the bullet’s impact.
I shake my head softly, returning from memory. I carry the bird’s body back, laying it on the old pillowcase I had wrapped around the cage on the journey out. I leave the cage, holding the wrapped bundle in one arm, rifle in the other, and head back towards the house. A final neon blue-green feather falls to the grass by the cage, and I wonder if Sara will ever talk to me again.
Steven Saus injects people with radioactivity as his day job, but only to serve the forces of good. His work has appeared in the anthologies Hungry for Your Love and Timeshares, and several magazines online and off. He blogs at http://ideatrash.net.
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32 Responses to “PRECIPITATION • by Steven Saus”
Comments
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July 30th, 2010 at 5:10 am
So incredibly rich, so textured – what an amazing piece of work!
July 30th, 2010 at 5:45 am
Masterfully written. Have my eyes read fiction before this?
July 30th, 2010 at 6:14 am
At first I wasn’t a fan but it hit me with the realization that it was a parrot and therefore a pet that I began loving this story. By the end there was little choice but to give it five stars. Excellent.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:05 am
Bitter-sweet.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:13 am
Painfully beautiful. Five stars.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:16 am
Makes me want to burn everything I’ve ever written. Five big stars.
July 30th, 2010 at 8:42 am
This was an extraordinarily remarkable piece of writing. The depth of emotion and the descriptive narrative are worthy of five stars and then some. This ranks among the best I have seen at EDF.
-BRAVO-
July 30th, 2010 at 8:49 am
It’s a beautiful piece that comes together nicely in the end. Surprise, shock, compassion, love, that moment of joy when presence is achieved. Spectacular feathers indeed.
July 30th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Flaws in the storyline !!!!
Shoot the head off of a bird in flight ??
NOT LIKELY !!!!
Feathers drifting down ?
If a shotgun was used …yes .
A rifle…….not a chance.
Or if the feathers were that loose the Parrot would not have been able to fly …..period.
Now if a laser gun / sci fi had been used,
it would have given more credence to the story.
On the whole…a well written tale .
Only 3 stars ….because of the factual discrepencies.
July 30th, 2010 at 9:53 am
Love, death, mercy killing, father-daughter relationships, and empathy for animal suffering all in one beautiful, emotional piece – wow! The image of the bird peeking its head out of the cage, testing the reality of the freedom before him then getting shot mid-flight is haunting. It will stay with me for a long time.Five stars.
July 30th, 2010 at 10:07 am
A fine piece of work, written with great detail and real feeling.
July 30th, 2010 at 10:07 am
That first paragraph was one heck of a struggle and a bit confusing.
But after that…..Wow!
July 30th, 2010 at 10:51 am
Wow. One of the best I’ve read here.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:01 am
I keep coming back and reading this story again and again. I don’t know why; I guess I must enjoy weeping like a tot. It’s just so incredibly moving.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:46 am
This one gets five stars from me. But for the difficulty of the first paragraph, a perfect read.
July 30th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Lovely story.
July 30th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
I had a horrible time following that first paragraph. Very bad planning on Dad’s part. Have to agree with Vondrakker about the feathers/ rifle/shotgun distraction. I found it a little hard to believe too. Bet he’s going to have a little visit from local law enforcement about firing around a school bus full of kids. Now days that would get you some serious trouble.
Anyway, a good story idea.
July 31st, 2010 at 12:44 am
I thought I’d wait and see if anyone made a reference to the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. Surprisingly, nobody has (not counting this meta reference).
July 31st, 2010 at 3:24 am
I’d have called it ‘Fall out’ rather than Precipitation, but that’s just me. Nice story.
July 31st, 2010 at 8:59 am
After sleeping on this overnight, I thought I’d offer this observation.
I also took note of the unlikeliness of this remarkable display of shooting skill. It was purely a one in a million shot. I took it as divine intervention. Considering the motives of the father were so pure and in the process he was sacrificing his daughters love, his aim was true. The other 999,000 times he would miss.
Even a blind squirrel can occasionally find a nut.
August 1st, 2010 at 7:34 am
Mickey, insightful comment about the shooting skill portrayed in the story.
It seems some folks (not you, my friend) who comment here want to read stories that are even more accurate and fact filled than newspaper articles. But, I remember that what we read here are fiction stories submitted to a site called Everyday Fiction. There’s an awful lot of wiggle-room in fiction writing; that’s what makes fiction fantastic.
August 1st, 2010 at 9:28 am
Sorry Brenda, but I respectfully disagree.
- A great key to holding the readers’ suspension of disbelief in fiction is to not write things that the reader finds completely ridiculous. The problem every writer faces is that each reader will have a different depth of experience. A writer has to generally write to what an average reader can comprehend without insulting the intelligence of readers who might have a more in-depth knowledge of the subject.
If you have an MD tell a character:
‘Ya got some kinda pinched nerve in there.’
No one will believe it’s an MD.
If you write:
‘The radiograph demonstrates a rotation of the lateral aspect of the zygopopheseal joint superior to the T-6 vertebra. The foramen seems to be pressing upon the medial branch of the primary dorsal rami.’
Then no one wants to wade through the actual medical jargon to read your story.
- Anne Oakley could shoot flying birds with a rifle, that’s why they put her in Wild Bill’s show. Because no one would believe it without seeing it. Those of us who’ve shot for 35+ years use a shotgun and can still miss. That’s why it’s a sport. So to say someone shot a flying bird with a rifle (when that someone isn’t Anne Oakley) immediately makes any of the hundred million or so shooters who might read the story mentally stop and argue how impossible the act would be. That’s not a thing a writer wants readers dwelling upon to take away from their story. It’s a good tidbit for non-shooting writers to put into their box of facts.
- Without suspension of disbelief, no one enjoys fiction. We all have to write fiction to be plausible in its own universe. Readers want to be lost in the story not irritated at details. This forum allows an immediate feedback from readers and information about style, characters, and physical details are all useful to anyone who writes.
August 1st, 2010 at 9:41 am
Well said Rob !!
August 1st, 2010 at 11:28 am
Rob, thank you for your comments. I agree with you on almost everything.
What I do not agree with is an idea that there is your way or my way. There is a multitude of preferences regarding reading, enjoying, and writing of fiction. What one person finds completely ridiculous, another person may find perfectly plausible, and vice versa. One way is no more right or wrong than the other. The person who rips a story apart is not superior to a person who buys the story hook, line and sinker. The reader who buys the story completely is not ill-informed or gullible or inferior.
People, in order to make sense of the story, simply make accomodations to their thinking in different ways and to different degrees. This happens during the ‘suspension of disbelief’ you mentioned. Although, when I first heard of this in 1964 as a eighth grader, it was referred to and taught as ‘The Willing Suspension of Disbelief’. The word ‘willing’ is missing in both of your references but I am thinking that we are discussing the same theory, however.
When I find I can no longer buy into a story, it is generally because there is an idea in the story that is so extremely bizzare that I am no longer ‘willing to suspend my disbelief’. So you see, Rob, we actually agree on quite a lot, except for the part about ‘willing’.
August 1st, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Factual accuracy vs. suspension of disbelief is a fascinating topic; I’ve created a forum discussion for anyone who wants to dig into it further: http://www.everydayfiction.com/forums/index.php/board,10.0.html
August 1st, 2010 at 6:39 pm
- Thanks vondrakker
- Brenda, I certainly hope I don’t come across as thinking folks have to say something ‘My way’. How boring would that be? I also know there are readers who don’t give a fig about utilizing the wrong tool in a tale.
- However, gun owners are a large portion of the population which means such mistakes irritate a group that ‘could’ become part of an author’s fan base. Authors also tend to not be gun experts (Judging by what I’ve read in fiction). I would be remiss in not at least trying to help an author avoid alienating a potentially large group of customers.
August 1st, 2010 at 7:06 pm
Ahmen to that!!
August 1st, 2010 at 10:02 pm
I was a “small arms specialist” in the military and recognized the improbability of the shot immediately. However, because of the power of the story, I was willing to consider alternate reasons for forces of luck and destiny to align momentarily for the unlikely to become the possible.
If I start constraining my views based on possibilities and realities, I am confining myself to a small box and will miss the intent to entertain through the fantastic nature of fiction.
In the case of this shot. Yes, it was unlikely to the Nth degree. A one in a million chance is still a chance. That’s why I still play the lottery.
August 1st, 2010 at 10:04 pm
The writer should be proud. It’s three days later and we are still discussing his story.
August 2nd, 2010 at 1:24 pm
OK here’s the thing….for my thinking!!
Fiction is fiction but it should be plausible
not totally improbable or impossible.
If one goes into improbabilities
Then , shouldn’t they step right out into a
paralell universe of thought ??
The improbability here is like killing a Squirrel at a thousand yards with a sling shot. I would have invoked the use of a laser telescopic sigt to make this
a bit more believable….Then of course we open up the other can of worms / feathers drifting down.
Mickey is right…the author should be proud ?? that this piece is so controversial and has sparked so much dialogue.
August 5th, 2010 at 8:12 am
I’ve been reading stories here for about a year now and this is the first one that I’ve commented on, this one deserves quite a bit of praise!
The first paragraph was indeed a difficult read but the rest of the story made up for it.
August 11th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
loved it. would have loved a little dialogue from sara, but it was very well done.