CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY came gabbling toward her. She stepped back outside and closed the door. She lay the bird down on the block with its feet trailing over the edge. The head lay calmly looking out over the garden. She lifted the hatchet and brought it down hard. Clean, the head falling dimly at the foot of the block and the blood spraying only the side of the hatchet that faced the body. In the garage a rooster crowed. She left the hatchet stuck in the wood and dropped the carcass onto the ground. She planted one boot on the gaudy scaled legs and grabbed the tail feathers that had only lately begun to arch and pulled with her yellow gloves. The softness of the feathers felt like nothing through the rubber. She felt only the spine of each quill and crushed with her fingers till the fist of each glove was crammed with spines and then yanked. They came away easily and the pale, rough flesh beneath sprang up in patches and then sheets. She saw his bones, the plumpness of his tail, and the thinly covered ribs. She flipped the bird over and plucked hastily at the wing pinions, baring the pimpled skin on its bone. The small, soft feathers beneath the wings, and inside the thighs kept slipping from her fingers and she nearly took off a glove to grip them firmly until she discovered how to grip with just the tips of her rubber fingers. “ Have to pluck them immediately or it gets harder, a muscle spasm in death tightens the flesh’s hold on the feathers. . . . Now where did I hear that? First-year Humanities.” She smirked. Her gloves worked slowly now, picking at small tufts and individual quills. She glanced around and saw the head lying next to the wood block. Its eye closed. Its beak closed. The small feathers only slightly rumpled. “Why didn’t it flop around?” She stopped pulling and stared at the relaxes white form. It lolled. Its limbs lay at open angles. The hard yellow feet with their talons half curled like the fist of a sleeping child. The second bird she picked up smoothly just as it lifted its head from the water dish to let a swallow ripple down its throat. It gurgled as she picked it up and turned its yellow eye and jabbed hard and quick at her wrist. She pulled away and nearly dropped him but caught a leg with that hand and trotted out quickly. He squawked when she flopped him down on the stump, and tried to turn his head as she lifted the hatchet. When the head fell, the body wrenched itself away and the wings flapped viciously, stirring the dust and twisting the squirt of blood so that it spiraled over the ground. The feathers didn’t come off that one so easily. Her right hand was on the doorknob. She had forgotten her hatchet . . . The third one seemed to know her and chuckled all the way to the stump. The body fell off onto its feet and stood jigging anxiously against the block as though trying to climb back up. She learned to grab them by the legs just below the joint and carry them out squawking and fluttering. It seemed less deceptive than cradling them in her hands, and she could swing them down hard onto the block, which seemed to stun them a little, quiet them so they didn’t wriggle as she struck. A few times it took more than one blow, and the sweat broke out on her face as she lifted the hatchet the second time. She plucked each one immediately and slung it onto the growing pile. The yellow legs poked out in thin tangles. There weren’t many left in the garage, but they were very noisy. She could hear them screeching and blundering against the walls. “ They must smell the blood,” she thought. Each time she went in now they shrieked louder and took flight; the beating dusty bodies fluttered clumsily past her head and fell hard against a wall or the perch. The water dish had spilled, the food tray had fallen over. None of the birds was scratching. They ran with their wings spread or huddled in the shadows beneath the perch. She didn’t run. She strode through the straw, changing direction only when there were no birds left in front of her. The air seemed black and full of floating dust and pale small feathers. “Mama!” came the voice. She closed her gloved fingers on the leg of a frantic bird and whirled away to the door. The child was out there. She stood in her scuffed school shoes, a piece of paper in her hand. “ Abby, go back to the house!” The woman’s voice sounded like blood in her ears. The child’s face white, a mouth opening without a shape, her hand lifting the paper towards her mother without noticing. The woman saw the ritual school painting with the sun a yellow spider in the crayoned sky. “ Go to your room and stay there!” she shouted. “ You’re killing them!” The child’s shriek in the same register, seemingly produced by the same instrument as the birds. She turned and ran. The painting clutched at one corner flapping and flapping. The young rooster dangling from the woman’s hand twisted up, beating its wings, and drove its hard beak into the flesh above her knee. “ Yah!” she cried, and jerked the bird away from her, lifted and swung it down hard on the block. Its mouth opened and the yellow eye glared up at her, she lifted the hatchet and the bird began a shriek. The sound stopped when the blade struck, but the eye glared on and the beak clicked open and shut, a pointed red tongue sliding and the blood streaming from the gashed neck. “ You f il th y beast! F ilthy creature!” She brought the hatchet down. • • • She was plucking the last bird. The sun had gone. The wind had come up and was blowing the feathers across the vegetable garden. She could see the drifting flicks of white in the corners of her eyes. The wind made the plucking easier. She had only to open her fist and it was empty again, freed of the task of dropping the feathers once she had taken them from the flesh. She heard the front door close. The light went on in the kitchen. She yanked at the stiff quills at the tips of the wings. Her gloves were too wet to hold on the down of the legs. She scraped her nails at the stringy white. “ What are you doing?” The kitchen door opened wider and her husband’s dark form stood in the spilling light. “ What in hell are you doing?” His voice was harsh. She let fall the yellow leg and dropped her hands. She felt suddenly empty, sucked inside out. This is what the match feels when you snuff it, she thought. The fancy tugged a soft laugh out of her. Feathers were blowing in drifts away from the light. She stood up slowly and felt a great pain in all her muscles. Tiredness. The dark form came out of the doorway toward her. “ Abby’s crying. She won’t come out from under her bed. What did you do?” She started past him, toward the house. “ I wasn’t finished when she came home. She saw it. I had to finish so I sent her in.” His hand closed on her arm. “ You’re all bloody.” “ I’ll explain to her. So she won’t be frightened.” She felt herself lifted slightly and shaken. Pressure on her arms. “ Explain what? What is this? All this?” His voice in a creaking whisper. “ What did you do to them?” A small white feather lifted against his ear and paused in his hair. She could see other feathers sailing against the shadow of the house. “ I slaughtered the roosters.” “ I thought . . . ” He let her go and walked past her. She saw him go to the chopping block and stop. Then he moved to the door of the garage and opened it so the light fell onto the block. The pile of white and yellow shone dully nearby. He stepped to the block and bent to peer at the sprawled heads. The feathers scuttered away from the light and crept across the lawn. There were feathers stuck in the cabbages. She watched him, anxious to hear what he would say, to see what he would do. “ I thought you were going to sell them, or take them to the packers. Have them wrapped for the freezer,” he said. She hugged herself. Laughter willing itself out with the words. “Mr. Jarvis wouldn’t buy them. And, you know, they have to be killed before they can be wrapped up. Did you ever think of that? I did.” She stood her head, laughing at herself. He, moved away from the block and looked at her. She saw the angle of his shadowed head bent on her. She turned away from the light. “Why aren’t you dressed?” For a moment she thought of dancing wildly in the feathers to frighten him. She fingered the skirt of her nightgown where it came through the robe’s opening. “ I started this morning before I changed. The plucking takes a long time. I’ve been at ii all day. If you’ll put them in the trunk of the car I ’ll drive them down to Mr. Jarvis in the morning. I’ll pay him extra to singe them. I ’ll make pancakes for supper.” She went into th? house. The kitchen seemed cold aid empty. She left the boots at the door and walked silently past her daughter’s door to the bathroom. The mirrors looked at her. She looked ctlmly into them. The blood was caked as thick as mud on her gloves. It cracked to dust at the knuckles when she bent her fingers. The robe was streaked with it, her face, a blot in her hair at the side. A faint shade of pink seemed to have been thrown over her during the day. As she looked close she saw the millions of tiny drops of blood stuck to the hairs of her arms and the nap of her garments. The feathers hung everywhere, the small, soft, spineless feathers known as down. She stripped off her gloves and threw them into the sink. She stretched her clean, soft hands beneath the white light and smiled, admiring their strength. Yes, Portland, there is an alternative THE 915 S.W. Ninth GREAT Portland, Or. 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