Free Winter Birds by Jim Grimsley

crib. He passed blood into his diapers and his side swelled stiff as a melon. A few months later he almost died again when for no reason, after no fall, his knee swelled to twice its normal size, bending his leg back double.
    At each accident Mama and Papa drove him to Mars Hill, where the doctors hovered over him with their needles and their bags of plasma.
    At home, Mama walked from room to room, listless, watching Grove sleep, touching him carefully and turning away from the rest of you, studying the road beyond the window glass.
    Papa came home drunk nearly every day. He sat in his chair by the same window where Mama watched the road. By then he had managed to buy a used television for the family, and he watched the blue images drift across the screen till he felt like sleeping. For a long time after Grove was born, Papa rested when he drank. He would answer any question Mama asked him in a flat voice, looking at her but showing no sign of feeling. If not addressed, hekept perfectly silent.
    One night he brought a bottle into the house and dared Mama to get drunk with him.
    Mama turned from the bottle to Grove and back to the bottle. It was summer and hot. Her face was beaded with sweat from climbing stairs. She was afraid he would fight with her if she said no. The bottle had a crow on the label, a grinning black crow sitting on the kitchen table, the naked light bulb suspended over it on a thick black cord. Mama watched the bottle for a long time, and you watched her. At last she poured the liquor into a jelly glass.
    They fought again that night, the first real argument since the night in the Blood House, a fight like a storm passing through the house. To you it seemed uglier than any before it, because Papa hadn’t yelled this way in such a long time, and because Mama was drunk too, and seemed like him.
    In the morning both were sorry in a way you had never seen them sorry before. For the first time they became afraid of the bitterness that had taken root so deep between them. Mama held you children in her arms all at the same time, and apologized to you as seriously as if you were all adults. She swore she would never drink like that again. Of all the children only you and Amy Kay understood why she was upset. You watched each other carefully as she spoke.
    Papa never said he was sorry for anything. But after that day he stopped drinking and a long calm time began.At night Papa parked his truck in the wide cool shade under the sycamores, and stepped from the truck smiling. Mama met him at the door and talked to him tenderly as she pulled off his shoes. She washed his feet to cool them and led him by the hand to the supper table. Together they tended Grove and watched him grow plump and strong against his blood, till his strength became like a sign between them. For a long time he had no bleeding at all. Neither did you.
    You started school. In the morning you waited beside the mailbox for the orange school bus to take you to Potter’s Lake, where you sat in the old school building watching breezes stir cobwebs in the corners. Teachers told you about numbers and alphabets. You memorized.
    Duck cut his teeth and wore out his first pair of shoes. When he could walk Allen took him everywhere, teaching him about things like mud puddles and dandelions and stepping on bees without getting stung. Grove, now a year old, learned to make elaborate gurgling noises. Papa said he was singing. Papa liked to hold Grove in his lap in the evenings. Mama watched them with a smile and some tension eased in her face, making her look younger than before. She said Grove would probably start talking early and never stop, like the rest of you. She said that whatever bad people might think about her and Papa, they’d had five smart younguns, and she meant to see you all in college one day, all doctors and lawyers in fine big houses.
    A picture of Amy Kay from that time survives in yourpiles of letters and papers, her face small,