Grackles
by K. Ferngall It has now been revealed to me that the tale to which my people lay claim is, in reality, three tales. Of one we can hold no say, and of the other we have spoken no truth. I now must know the third. I will begin with the first. Pictured: it is a childhood Christmas evening. The room is small, cluttered with simple décor, a holiday feast of one sort or another lies unbussed on a hand-me-down table. The radiator hisses as the boiler struggles to keep pace with the winter torrent that awaits travelers outside. The adults, being properly drunk, sit or lean about in their fashions as my cousins and I kneel by her chair and ask her to tell it again. “Tell what again?” she asks between puffs of a cigarette. She does not wait for a response. A chuckle. “It was ’round about the summer of 1818,” she begins. “Warm summer, drier ’n the deserts of hell.” It happened in the village of my youth, some hundred years prior in the time of my great-grandparents. They were the original ...
