Free The Almanac Branch by Bradford Morrow

it doesn’t matter you can’t tell the difference, tell them the copy.”
    â€œWell, you know you start with the advertising materials and build backwards to the product itself, of course. That’s the only way to assure profitability. And so we’ve been working on the copy, which goes something like this, goes, The pulsing heart of their sensuous, mysterious souls to each and every man with every sinewy shudder … lift their geisha skirts and squirm under—”
    â€œThose aren’t called skirts, they’re kimonos.” My father didn’t sound pleased with any of this talk; in his voice there was not only discomfort but (was it possible?) fear.
    â€œIt’s true that a copper pan’ll heat faster than steel—”
    â€œâ€”while silver chains and the emperor’s handcuffs clink, they drop their silken stockings, these angels of passion trained in the mysterious ways of the East, where a man’s satisfaction comes above all, in the tradition of a thousand suns.”
    â€œVery poetical.” And yes, I could hear Faw’s fear through the sarcasm, though I doubt any of the others could.
    â€œThe lead female character’s name is going to be Jade. You like?”
    â€œâ€”and here it was something the whatevereth?” and they were putting on their coats and saying goodnight and Berg was sent up to bed, I think, “if the real thing is your cup of hemlock, is how the bit will run it’s a little rough still but, if you want to see it all and touch it all, if wet and deep and up and down and in and out’s your thing, you’ll never know how good it is until you see the most steamy seduction scene ever filmed …” such laughter, as I myself began to sleep on the floor, and—
    Faw had never spanked me before, he did it so gently that although I cried and though it hurt I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. My cheeks showed the marks of the heat register the next morning, and I didn’t come down because I didn’t want to embarrass him. I’d burned my face through my own persistence, but didn’t want his guests to think that it was his fault in any way. They must have heard him spank me, must have heard me cry. I was ashamed.
    When I woke, Faw was sitting in his reading chair beside my bed. “Grace,” he said, “I have something I want to tell you.”
    What was he going to say? I was sure he was about to tell me that I was going to be sent away somewhere.
    â€œIt’s difficult to be a parent. You’re too young maybe to understand that now, but someday you may understand. What I want you to know is that I’m not happy with what I did last night, and I want you to forgive your old Faw, all right?”
    His eyes were dark and tired. Of course I forgave him. I made up my mind that night to doubt everything I had heard; a dream was what I assured myself it was for years, rather than my first insight into what peculiar and possibly grotesque outposts Geiger ranged in search of its ascendancy.
    The osprey, an eaglish bird, was disesteemed by fishermen, who took it upon themselves to trap and hunt and poison it wherever it was found on the island. The osprey’s skill at fishing was well-known to its human counterparts, who viewed it as a competitive nuisance; and because the ospreys are given to cyclical behavior and return to the same nest every spring, it was quite easy for the fishermen to trap and kill them. It was a slaughter. What traps didn’t get them, what buckshot failed to down them, hard pesticides that were insinuated into the food chain did. Once large, the population of course had been all but eradicated on the island. And even though we were too young to know about these particular wars, and who was winning, who losing, at the time, the osprey nest that was perched atop the utility pole, which leaned away from the sea winds down at the farthest edge of our orchard,