Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,17

just waiting for that moment when I would fall asleep. I lay as still as possible and listened to the waves against our island rock. It was like we were part of some cycle of nature, meant to crash up against things forever.

Eventually, I fell asleep.

In the morning, I could hear Cunningham racing down the stairs. Tiny screaming. Voices coming in from outside. DeShawn and me flew out of bed at the same time, put on our jeans and boots, and ran downstairs. Ryan, Kevin, and Bobby came stumbling out of bed behind us.

Opening the door, I heard it. Like so many little creatures, Pukwudgies maybe, sobbing or laughing—I couldn’t tell which—in the wind. I looked around for them, but I didn’t see anything. DeShawn pointed to the chicken coop.

Cunningham, Da Cunha, and Stubby just stood and stared. Tiny was on his knees, inside the coop. No one was saying a word.

The chickens, which were usually running all over the place by the morning, crowing and cock-a-doodle-dooing, were trying to stand on their little chicken legs, but as soon as they got halfway up, they fell over. Someone or something had come in the middle of the night and broken all their legs, just snapped them like twigs. The chickens kept trying to stand, flopping over, and crying out. Lying there, dying, but wanting to live.

At least twenty pairs of beady little eyes looked up at us for help, looked at us for nothing cause there was nothing we could do but put them out of their misery.

Tiny was running his fingers through the dirt, tears streaming down his face. Even Bobby looked like someone had just punched him in the gut.

Freddie was the last person to come out of the house. He strolled up to the chicken yard and didn’t even try not to laugh.

Tiny picked up one of the littlest birds. I couldn’t tell if it was the same chicken Bobby had hypnotized. They had all grown some in the past couple of weeks and most of them had looked the same to me anyway. But Tiny held that chicken close to him and rocked it like it was a baby he was going to do everything in his power to try and save.

Sometimes I wish I could have cried like Tiny did. After Chad and me hit that car, I didn’t even realize there were tears streaming down my cheeks. There were sirens and lights. Cops and paramedics sawing through car doors with their Jaws of Life.

The last thing I remember was Chad sitting there, patting the dashboard of the Mustang and saying, “Guess we’re gonna have to take this one out and shoot it.”

The next day we all watched the fog swallow Second Chance whole. Freddie was onboard, being shipped out to “Plymouth Rock”—Plymouth County Correctional Facility, as it reads on the books, where all the child murderers go.

Tiny was different after that. I guess DeShawn and me changed too. We helped Tiny dig a grave and bury all the chickens. Cunningham showed us some books in the school library where we read up on Indian funerary mounds. We gathered up some rocks and soil and covered the birds’ grave the Wampanoag way.

Tiny, DeShawn, and me never talked about the chickens or how we became friends, if that’s what we really were. We didn’t talk about much. But we did our chores or whatever, and never said anything, which was like saying a lot because it wasn’t like being with someone you can talk to but don’t. It was pretty much all right.

ARDENT

BY DANA CAMERON

Eastham

Having reached a despairing state, Anna Hoyt, as a last resort, found herself in church.

Her legs betrayed her, and she sat down heavily, the roll of winter seas having taught her a different way of walking in the weeks during the passage from London. At least the salt air in the meetinghouse was mingled with fresh, without the closeness of shipboard life. The hard plank seat of the pew was welcome because it did not move, the silence of the church a blessing after the unceasing roar of wind and waves.

She was no more than hours away by sail from Boston across Massachusetts Bay, in the town of Eastham. She longed to see her tavern, the Queen’s Arms, and had sacrificed much to preserve her livelihood there. Her trip to London had opened her eyes to the restrictions of rank and sex, the power of learning, and the astonishing ease with which