The Night Singers by Valerie Miner Read Free Book Online Page A

and mottled his fingers looked—I hated the aridness of Minnesota winters. Mom used to exclaim about his beautiful hands, those piano fingers.
    â€œIt looks like a painting, a sculpture,” I noted, wondering at our furtiveness.
    â€œI thought about going out and moving it, burying it or something,” Dad mused, “but the snow is so pure. I didn’t want to leave boot tracks.”
    â€œRight,” I nodded. “This is fine. A decent resting-place. Besides, it’s so beautiful, like a work of art.”
    Mom’s voice from across the room. “Are you talking about the bird?”
    We each turned to her.
    â€œThe bird in the snow?”
    I shook myself from a reverie of gratitude for the recovery of this plump, gregarious, sixty-five year old woman who had been the centre of each of our lives. “Yes, Mom, the bird.”
    She rose with one crutch and, leaning on my brother, hobbled toward us, stopping three feet back from the glass. “No sense getting a chill,” she said. “Can you see it, Robby?”
    He nodded, straining for a closer view, but was held back by supporting Mom.
    â€œWhat do you think it is?” she asked anxiously. “An owl?”
    Stupidly hurt by her question to him—for Dad and I had always been the birders—I began, “No, Mom, it’s a hawk …”
    Robert confirmed, “Owls don’t have tails like that.”
    I peered out toward the end of the garden for the deer. It was one of those brilliantly sunny sub-zero February days when the snow squeaked beneath your feet as you walked. Never got quite this dry-ice cold in Vermont and I was filled with a longing for the home and family, which surrounded me.
    â€œWe’ll leave her that way until Spring,” Mom said gently. “Or until nature claims her in some other way.”
    All of us watched silently by the glass door. I don’t know what the others saw, but I noticed the naked gingko, a tall, thin maple and the browning lips of a juniper bush down by the stone bench. My gaze continued all the way to the frozen lake across the road. I looked everywhere, yet couldn’t spot the deer.

Fire at the Farm
    Prill glances thoughtfully at the dusky leaves of her sturdy tree. This year, she resolves, she’ll pick the olives, preserve them in pungent brine. Already she can taste the chewy flesh, lush with garlic and salty oil. Grandpa always said olives were the best defence against disease, that they infuse you with a taste for the good life.
    Her family has lived the good life in their farmhouse for over a century. She tries to maintain tradition in a shifting world. This is hard when the world growing up and around your home is in San Francisco . She loves looking out at the ancient olive tree which Great Grandpa Leo brought from Abruzzi.
    Prill continues working on the wool and silk tapestry, the last in her series for next month’s exhibit. She’s had to postpone the opening twice because of that dreadful real estate ordeal three months ago. Daily, now, she resolves to forget the pointless, tragic violence. All that is over , she ruminates as she checks the tree again and carries on weaving, finito . Green silk swims nimbly through the creamy wool. No agricops at the border when Leo arrived; he brought slips and clippings and seeds to San Francisco where he intended to be a cowboy farmer in that Mediterranean climate on the other side of the world. Leo knew what he wanted and got it—a family prerogative passed down in the best sense to Prill. Over the generations, his farm was divided again and again until she inherited the farmhouse on a small plot. Her favourite cousin, Fred, got the adjacent lot, with the olive tree.
    Prill lives simply, her days not unmarked by joy or grief. Joy in the person of her son Tony, a dark, handsome young man who dredged up all the Italian genes from his father and her great grandparents. Prill’s side of the