From a shallow ridge in the land piled with brush down to the water, Oliver came trotting up, and dropped a body on the doorstep. The body looked just as it had been when it was alive, only limp, rigid, sideways; mouth still open, as if mid-scream. The eyes were not yet glassy--still an empty taxidermy-black--and what heat was left was only now leaving. Tiny spots of blood were visible on Oliver’s teeth as he panted.
Then the girl inside the house, flicking the last of the detergent water from her fingers, looked up and shrieked. She quickly glanced at the body, appearing nothing short of a leather glove, then back at her dog, still beating his faded golden tail on the doormat. She understood it was part of life out here: Livestock, game. But the bird was so small.
The crows held a funeral for their fallen sister. Dressed in black, they arrived one by one, following the distressed call of a passer-by. Under a gumtree the child lay motionless, the vigil darkening the tree’s shadow. Nobody stayed for long. There were no candles or veils.
After the ordeal, all that stood for evidence of the crowd were a growing litter of sticks and a candy wrapper. Tokens? To say, You have died, I see that you have died. They say crows notice their dead to prevent death from finding them too. That black body could’ve been my black body. Mine. Yours.
Driving across the field to the very edge of the gum forest, the girl from the house looked deeper into the woods and decided to stay put. She unwrapped the bird from the worn tablecloth and bent down. She didn’t have the guts to bury it.
Sitting in the car, she took one last look at the small animal under the gumtree, and thought of what was underneath those oil-black feathers. Tender meat. Tender flesh. Yellow flowers whirred by as the girl circled back to her house. She hadn’t made it very far when she finally heard it, and shivered in the driver’s seat: the croaky wail of a mourning stranger.