Michael Malone - Weebly

illusion, before Beanie could catch it in her sweater to
set it free. "I'll do it, if you'll just hold the door open!"
Beanie had yelled, for Abernathy had backed
away, nauseated by the bird's terrible frenzy. Into the
new world, padded with papers, muffled by machinery,
Life's old facts rarely come to stun us. That a wounded
jay should chance to fly in through an open screen was
a freak of nature, an unwanted intrusion by the old
world on the new. "It's not going to hurt you. It's
frightened to death," Beanie had yelled. "I know that, I
know," he had hissed at her.
Cats killed birds. Cats were killed. With the flat of
his shovel, Abernathy smoothed the dirt over the small
mound packed above Miss Lattice's pet. He tried to
replace the clods of grass carefully. A blister had
already raised on his thumb, and sucking on it, he tore
off a piece of skin. It tasted of dirt and grass.
When he returned the shovel to the garage, he
noticed a folded piece of paper taped to the side of the
door. Without thinking, he went over and read it. There
was one typed sentence: "Since you won't shut that
damn thing up, somebody has to. Serves you right."