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That Year
I learned to kill from Mother. On a hill up from our trailer where a wide tree stump came
out of the ground like an evergreen coffee table. She’d bring two of them from the barn,
clutching the chickens by the throat. Her face was a calm, black piece of water.
The birds flapped and fought.
She laid the first one’s neck across the wood. The blade made a sucking sound as it swooped.
Mother stepped away in time. Wine-red rained up like a spastic fountain. She gave the bird
a swift kick and it flopped herky-jerky, headless down the hill, eventually hitting the
fence and bumping against it like a battery-operated toy.
She set up the next bird, looked me in the eye, handed me the knife and said, “Your turn.”
We ate the birds that night and the next.
On the way to school, the noisy din in the bus didn’t bother me. I stared out a window,
at the trees and crows on the branches. I thought about the word flight, how it tasted bitter in my mouth.
Innocent
Mornings are hardest. The light reminds you, so we keep the drapes drawn, duct-taped down the seams to be certain.
You are silent or you say the same things. You ask when the memory will go away.
The therapist said never, but there’ll be a fading.
You’d wanted to see him punished. We did it the right way, and still they called him innocent.
I know where he lives: Apartment 20C.
I’ve never fired a gun, but I figure I can afford to miss once or twice. The chamber holds quite a few bullets.
Len Kuntz has 200 stories in lit journals such as Necessary Fiction, Juked, Pank and Elimae.
Email: Len Kuntz
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