Free Winter Birds by Jim Grimsley Page A

shell-pink and scrubbed, smiling a smile so fragile it seemed ready to dissolve in an instant, like frost in a blast of warm air. In her eyes is a look of waiting. Even after a year in this house, when you might have looked forward to another summer of this peace, you watched Papa carefully for signs of a change.
    By then it had been more than a year since you saw Papa drunk. Amy Kay forgave him and sat on his lap in the evenings, telling him about her friends at school. Duck remembered nothing of the other houses and couldn’t help it if he thought it fine to have a Papa to push him in the rope swing outside, suspended from the sycamore branch. Grove laughed in Papa’s face and stuck small fingers in Papa’s eyes, not caring about what had happened before he was born. Only you and Allen, in the middle, still held yourselves stiff when Papa touched you, never laughing around him, never feeling easy. Something would happen to change him back. Even Amy said that, though as far as she was concerned it didn’t do a bit of good to worry about it while Papa was so much fun.
    You never knew what happened to end the quiet time until many years later, when Mama told you a story about something that happened while the family lived in the Light House. Mama could tell a story richly and deeply when she wanted to, losing herself in the telling, so that all you saw in her face was the reflection of that morning years ago when a photographer stopped in front of the Light House, asking to take Mama’s picture half anhour before Papa was due home for lunch.
    The photographer drove a convertible sports car with square white patches on the canvas hood. Mama thought the patches looked funny when the man parked the car at the side of the road. When he got out of his car there were more patches on the elbows of the photographer’s jacket—black oval patches that Mama said were there for decoration, not for covering up holes. How odd, Mama thought, that a man would put patches on his clothes because he liked the way they looked. When the photographer lifted his camera out of the car, Mama drew back from the window, thinking it was a gun. The photographer watched the house from across the road, testing the weight of the camera in his hand. He flipped a match from his finger. When she saw how he stared at the house she backed further from the window, and held the curtains closed with her hand.
    The photographer walked across the road as casually as if it were his own kitchen floor, caressing the camera with both hands. At first he took pictures of the house and the trees, now and then bending one knee to the ground, or turning the camera sideways, or doing both at once. She didn’t think he would come to the house, until he straightened in a particularly self-conscious way, eyeing the porch. When he stepped forward a small sense of panic overcame her. She was alone, except for Allen, Duck and Grove, who were taking naps upstairs. You and Amy were in school. Heart beating, she ran to the door, listening for his footsteps on the porch—light and sharp, notlike Papa’s heavy, measured tread. She didn’t know why it seemed so important that he was coming to the door, except she remembered the foreign sound of his car, stopping beside her mailbox, and she remembered the dark camera and the patches for decoration on his elbows.
    She opened the door only after he knocked the second time. He made an impatient humming sound that she could hear through the door. When she opened it he stopped the noise immediately, as if he hadn’t really expected anyone to be home. An instant later—long enough to make it seem artificial—he smiled. “Good afternoon. I’ve been taking some pictures of your home and thought I’d see if anyone was here. You have a very interesting home.”
    â€œWe rent it from the people up the road,” Mama said.
    He smiled, eyeing her thoroughly, up and down. The look