Joyce Carol Oates - Little Bird Of Heaven

THE YEARNING IN MY HEART! This was a long time

REPROACH LIKE AN ARROW leaping from the bow, aimed at

HE WOULD SAY I am innocent you know that dont

HEY SORRY BABE, fuckin sorry sweetheart you got in my

ITS OVER.

KRISTA. CLIMB IN.

WELL, SAY! Thought it was you.

TWO YEARS, seven months later on a snow-glaring Sunday morning

DADDY, we could not ask.

YOUR FATHER WILL be staying with your uncle Earl for

BUT I CAN LOVE YOU BEST, Daddy! I can forgive

THE TROUBLE corroding our lives like deep pockets of rust

FOUR YEARS LATER my fathers chiding words echoed in my

349 WEST FERRY STREET. Where Zoe Kruller was found.

EDWARD DIEHL? We need to speak with you.

SEARCH WARRANT, MAAM. We need to come inside these premises.

I THINK THAT I should say bluntly This was the

AARON KRULLERS beat-up mountain bike.

THAT WOMAN! Has she no shame.

THAT LOSER. You heard?

NEVER RETURNED TO 349 West Ferry Street except in memory,

DIDNT SEE WHO IT was whod hurt me. Never knew

But this wasnt right. Probably not. This was an exaggeration.

DEEP-THROATED CAME THE GROWL, caressing and scary like the scrape

TWO-INCH GLOATING HEADLINES in the Sparta Journal

ITS A SNOW-BLINDING SUNDAY morning slowly hes pushing open the

THE WOMAN TURNED TO HIM, at his touch she turned

THAT NIGHT. Only afterward would he think of it as

ON THE DAZZLING-LIT STAGE at the park there was Zoe

MOM? HEY MOM

HE WAS ELEVEN. Hed been kept back in fifth grade.

THOSE YEARS. Krull grew.

SIX YEARS AT MINIMUM WAGE, treated like shit by prune-faced

MOVING IN SOME OTHER DIRECTION. Have to let me go.

MUSTVE BEEN THE WEEK following Easter there came an unfamiliar

WAKING HE HAD NOT KNOWN what day this was.

HERE ON EARTH to love one another.

DELRAY WAS SAYING hed made some mistakes in his life.

DIEHL, B. ONE OF a dozen names of Sparta High

AND THE GIRL. Ben Diehls younger sister.

MRS. HARE his remedial English teacher encouraged him. Returning Aaron Krullers

THE GIRL. Eddy Diehls daughter.

DRIVING TO BOONEVILLE to haul a wrecked Dodge Colt out

MID-AFTERNOON OF THE DAY following the night hed been summoned

KRULL? OPEN UP.

THESE WEEKS LATER, Delray was still missing.

O.K.! I AM COMING.

ON THIS DAY I saw him: Aaron.

WANT TO MAKE a blessing. Before I die. I want

T HE YEARNING IN MY HEART ! This was a long time ago.

Cant go inside with you, Krista. But I promise: I wont drive away until youre safe indoors.

That November evening at dusk we were driving along the riverthe Black River, in southern Herkimer County, New Yorkwest and slightly south of the city of Sparta, in this long-ago time swathed in mist and smelling of a slightly metallic damp: the river, the rain.

There are those of usdaughtersforever daughters, at any agefor whom the smellslikely to be twin, twinedof tobacco smoke and alcohol are not unpleasant but highly attractive, seductive.

Driving along the river, bringing me home. This man who was my father Edward Diehlwhod been Eddy Diehl and a name of some notoriety in Sparta, in those yearsEddy Diehl who would be my father until the night his body was to be riddled with eighteen bullets fired within ten seconds by an improvised firing squad of local law enforcement officers.

Daddys hoarse voice, always slightly teasing. And you love being teased if youre a daughter, you know it is a sign of love.

Just say we got held up, Puss. No need to elaborate.

I laughed. Anything Daddy said, I was likely to laugh and say Sure.

Always you had to respond quickly to a remark of Daddys, even if it wasnt a question. If you failed to respond Daddy would look sharply at you, not frowning but not smiling either. A nudge in the ribs Eh? Right?

Of course Daddy was bringing me home just a little late, carelessly late. So that there was no mistaking that Id been brought home and hadnt taken the school bus.

Careless, that was Eddy Diehls way. It was never Eddy Diehls intention.

Daddy was bringing me home on that November evening not long before his death-by-firing-squad to a house from which hed been banished by my mother and the circumstances of his banishment had been humiliating to him. This was a two-storey white clapboard house of no special distinction but it was precious to my father, or had been: a house Daddy had partly built, with his hands; a house whose roofing and painting hed overseen; a house like others on the river road, paint beginning to peel on its northern, exposed side, shutters and trim in need of repair; a house from which several years before Edward Diehl had been banished by an injunction issued by the Herkimer County Criminal Court, Family Services Division. (Neither my brother nor I had seen this document though we knew that it existed, hidden away somewhere in our mothers legal files. )

Our mother kept such documents from us out of a fearit was an unreasonable fear, but typical of herthat one of us, presumably me, might take the injunction and tear it into pieces.

I wasnt that kind of daughter. I think that I wasnt. Clinging to a mans careless promise Wont drive away until youre safely indoors, Puss.

From what dangers might I be safe, by this action of my fathers, Daddy did not say.

I was very moved, Daddy called me Puss. This was my little-girl name I had not heard in some time. Though I was no longer a little girl, Daddy must know.

Having sighted him once, seeing me. Two years ago when Id been in eighth grade. Thirteen years old and shorter by an inch or two than I was at fifteen, not an adolescent girl exactly though no longer what youd call a little girl , yes but clearly a child, young for her age. And crossing a street downtown, several blocks from school, with two other eighth-grade girls. And squealing, and giggling, and running, as a tow truck bore menacingly upon us, the (male, young) driver teasing us by driving fast and (recklessly) close to cause a small tidal wave of gutter water to splash onto our bare legs, and once on the sidewalk, safe but laughing, breathless, in the aftermath of a frisson of terror by chance I saw a man about to climb into a car parked at the curb, and how intently this man was staring at us, at our wetted legs and clothes, seeing this manwith thick rust-colored hair, in profilefleetingly, for I didnt pause in running, none of us didI thought Is that Daddy? That man ?

Later, I would think no. Not Daddy. The car hed been climbing into hadnt looked familiarId thought.

Of course, I hadnt looked back. Stared-at in the street by an adult man, at age thirteen you dont look back.

That day, two years before, thered been rain. So frequently in Sparta there was rain. From Lake Ontario to the north and westfrom the Great Lakes, beyond(which I knew only from maps, and loved to contemplate: these lakes like exquisite cloud-formations linked one to the other and so beautifully named Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, Superior where our father had promised Ben and me hed take us sometime, on a yacht trip)always a sky out of which rain-clouds, massive gray-black thunderheads, might emerge as if by malevolent magic.