Bird by Noy Holland

again.”
    Mickey wouldn’t move and then he got to moving. Bird went west with him and south, a long way around, and when they came back around to Brooklyn, Mickey looked south again. He wanted out, skip the gray.
    We’re soon over, said the note.
    He said he was going alone. He went with Suzie.
    Suzie spelled him driving south; it was winter. He had bought a car that mostly worked. His radio worked and the windows, all but one. He liked to drive in the heat with the windows down.
    He would want a little place, Suzie guessed. Something. A week in a clean soft bed.
    But he didn’t. He had his car he thought to sleep in. He found a boat sloshed up from a hurricane he could tack a lean-to on.
    â€œSo I’m home,” Suzie called Bird.
    It was sleeting. Suzie needed a ride from the bus stop, she had tossed out her winter coat.
    â€œThat was useful,” Bird told her, digging. “You didn’t like the sun?”
    Sun and wind and shadow. A boy on a swing. The grasses golden.
    But the days went gray in Denver and cold and they were grounded now, evened out, and Bird’s jaw had begun to stiffen. She couldn’t talk much; she didn’t want to.
    The Drive Away clerk went north again—the forecast for old Cheyenne was windy, windy and blue.
    They’d go south. South for the heat and sunshine: Nogales, Cuernavaca, La Paz. Eat peyote and sweat with the Mexicans, clear the cobwebs out.
    Bird had an aunt in Albuquerque—they could stay a little while with her. She would float them a loan if they asked right and pulled her weeds in the back lot and heated her enchiladas. They’d plant hollyhocks. They would walk her dogs and pick up after them and Bird’s aunt would lend them a car for a day, so Bird could show Mickey around. That’s the room I shared with my sisters, Mickey. There’s the tree house. The ditch where we swam. We had horses. Here’s where my rabbit is buried.
    â€œHoppy?” Mickey said. “Say you’re kidding.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI’m making the rounds with a lunkhead who named her rabbit Hoppy? Not even Hopsalong? Not Floppy?”
    He was kidding, but then he wasn’t. They were in a pancake joint and he was loud.
    â€œSo what?” Bird asked.
    â€œSo what?” Mickey asked. “We nearly married. We made a baby almost. Remember? What did you think to call her?”
    â€œMickey, stop,” Bird said, “please.”
    But he was started.
    â€œYou think it doesn’t matter, what you name a thing?Crazy Horse was Curly. When Crazy Horse became Crazy Horse, his father took the name Worm. You think that doesn’t matter?”
    He jabbed a waffle with his fork and went at the rim.
    â€œI had an aunt named Alice, my mother’s sister, I could talk to like I never talked to Mother. She had a freckle behind her ear I loved. All over, she had them all over, but that was the one I loved. She liked white food—asparagus, raspberries, cream. It was tenderer, she said, white asparagus. It made your mind clear. White food purified your thoughts. She had no children. Her skin was so white it was blue. She jumped horses. She got her foot hung up in the stirrup one day and was dragged across a field and trampled. Her skull was split. I wanted to see her. I wanted to see what her mind looked like—how clear it was, how true. Auntie Alice. My mother gave me a little pouch of her ashes. I was kid. I wet my finger and dipped it in there. White food. I ate it one flake at a time.”
    He dumped sugar on the table he was flicking at Bird.
    â€œWe ought to have taken what was left of her, Bird. We kept a tissue, Bird, a piece of the bloody bedsheet. Shame on me. Shame on us. We don’t think right. Everything was there.”
    He took a breath but he wasn’t finished. He took her hands in his hands. The day was darkening. It was going to get darker still.
    â€œBird? I’m the one who named