After we’d hung up I put on a clean mask and went out the glass door, into the garden. The heat shot through my body to my head, roaring in my ears, smarting on my skin. I could feel the hot gravel through the soles of my flip-flops, the rubber softening and sticking with every step. I unrolled the garden hose—that, too, soft and hot—and turned on the water. I let it run for a long time, until it had cooled to lukewarm and eventually to cold. Then I pulled the hose over the gravel and through the smoke toward the pond. I could hardly keep my eyes open. Somewhere, I thought, I had a pair of pale-blue goggles—it was time I looked for them. I hunkered down. Only a puddle of hot water was left at the bottom of the pond. The fish lay still on the black plastic lining, shimmering gold beneath the smoke, their eyes a murky pale blue. One of them had burst and was oozing innards, all a blur through my watering eyes. It was only now, from this crouched position, that I noticed the birds, the starlings. Soft dead bodies on the hot gravel around the edge of the pond. Fifteen, twenty, thirty—hard to say. I imagined them covering the garden to the fence, strewn across the field to the forest. Hundreds of them, their feathers ruffled in the wind. At some point I’d have to gather them up. I pictured myself with the shovel, scooping up the little corpses and dumping them in a blue garbage bag. I watered the tree, aiming the jet of water at the trunk and branches for minutes at a time. Maybe it would survive.
No comments:
Post a Comment