One Stone

leena ahmad

“I thought we weren’t meant to work on Sunday,” Beau says. “I thought it was a sin.”

“You’re an idiot,” I say, and Beau looks at me like he’s never heard that word before.

“He’s being a good Christian, Nash.” My father gives Beau a grin, turning around, and Beau beams from the backseat. “Now we shouldn’t work, Beau, but this isn’t so much work as it is a favor for Mr. Kraser, get it?” Beau nods. “We ain’t getting paid for none of this.”

We stop near the middle of the field. The morning dew clings to the tall grass and the sun trudges its way to the middle of the sky. I unload the decoys from the back of the truck while my father loads his gun. He laughs when Beau grabs at it, and tells him to help me. I don’t need help, but I let him stand around anyway while I set up the birds.

“What are those?” Beau says.

“None of your business.”

“That’s not true. Dad let me come so this is all my bizz-niss.”

“I don’t know why he did. I was a lot older than six on my first trip. Now go away.”

He huffs, and I can see his breath in the February chill. The sun hits his huge glasses and the reflection shines onto the plastic in my hand. He starts to walk away, and I suddenly remember he is my little brother.

“Alright, alright, Beau! Come here. I’ll let you help.”

He grins and runs back the two tiny steps he’d taken. I hold up the plastic bird in my hand.

“These are decoys. You set ‘em up so the crows think it’s safe to be here.”

“Is it not safe to be here?”

“No, you idiot. We’re hunting them.” I shove a decoy into his chubby hands. He looks at it for a second, and his glasses slip lower on his nose, fogging. He pushes them back and runs to my father, decoy in tow.

“Look what I have!” He waves it in the air and I watch my father set the gun down to lift Beau over his head.

“Look at that. You’re gonna take my job pretty soon,” he says, and Beau laughs. Against the white sky and line of pine, he and my father camouflage into one. A rich caw shakes the leaves above us.

“Hear that, Beau?” my father says. “That’s why we do it. Even just the one could take down a whole crop.”

Beau nods. He cranes his neck, failing to catch sight of it.

“You gotta hide if you wanna see one, Beau,” I say, and hold out my hand for him to take. My father smiles at me with all his teeth, and I suddenly feel the urge to shoot something down just so the three of us can eat it at the dinner table, feathers and all.

We push near the outskirts of the thicket. I hold a rifle I’ve never been allowed to load before this trip, and my brother holds my hand. The one we are looking for is female, and has terrorized Mr. Kraser’s crop for days. It eats the kernels and picks at the seedlings within hours. Mr. Kraser had apparently tried to shoot it himself, but he’s too old and too slow. My father is young and hulking, he is quick and clever and I can see now why Mr. Kraser needs his help so badly, as the sun halos his face. My father’s a champion of the trees and the birds and all the things that move.

The sun rises higher and the watcher crow comes to inspect the area. It spots the decoys on the ground and spins around, gliding back to wherever the birds speak to tell them the land is clear. I turn around and see Beau had never set his decoy anywhere and is clutching it tightly, like a toy. My father straightens his rifle. We wait some more.

I know the one we are waiting for is different. I’ve heard it sometimes, behind stained glass on Sunday mornings. Most of the crows in this town have a loud and guttural cackle, but this one interrupts the quiet of church with a rattle, always shaking me out of prayer—even my father can’t recreate a call like that. I hear it again now, in the leaves. Something shoots in front of us, a bullet in the wind, and before we can look in the direction it flew it circles back again just as fast. My father fires into the air, but I can already tell he hasn’t hit the right one. He tells us to stay behind as he moves forward.

Beau tugs at my sleeve, “I know her.”

“Know who?” I whisper back.

“Her. The bird.”

I look at him. “The one that went by now?”

“Yes. She sings by the church. She prays.”

I hear the rattle again. “You call that praying?”

“She’s got children. Little things. I know so.”

“We’re about to kill it, Beau.” And I instantly know it’s the wrong thing to say. My father would give him a lesson on the circle of life, about cycles and God. Beau’s eyes go wide.

“You can’t! You can’t! Dad wouldn’t!”

“What do you think our job is, Beau!”

He shakes his head. “He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.”

I look away. My brother doesn’t realize yet, but my father is righteousness embodied. He fights every day and rises to every challenge this worldly town throws at him. Every morning I wake with the certainty that divinity sits at our breakfast table, cleaning the barrel of his gun. My brother knows nothing of good, decent living. But he will soon.

My father adjusts his rifle, pointing it lower to the ground as the crow swoops nearer to the grass, back and forth. If my father was the type of man who could be put down, I’d say it was taunting him. I hold my breath so it doesn’t fog the air and block my view of him firing again. When it misses he curses, the words sounding foreign from his mouth. He doesn’t look back as he moves closer. Another shot rips through the Sunday quiet, and I turn to Beau to make sure he isn’t scared. The grass next to me is bare, save for the glasses on the ground. My breath quickens.

“Beau?” I call. “Beau!”

My father has become a dot in the distance and I stand, mud coating my knees. If my brother answers, I can’t hear it over the crack of the rifle anyway. The sticks crunch beneath me. I start running.

I don’t know if I’m going the wrong way, but I must be, because the distance between me and my father is somehow widening. I’m yelling something, I don’t know if it’s to Beau or my father, but I’m yelling. I feel the wind pummel me and suddenly the forest is not grand anymore, just incredibly colossal. I’m screaming, the wind is screaming, I think the crows caught in the crossfire are screaming, and my father’s rifle screams just before he does, too. Beau doesn’t scream, not when he loses me in the trees, not when the plastic life in his hands falls somewhere behind him. He doesn’t scream when he can’t see above the wheat grass, and the only thing he lets out when the bullet rips through him is a tiny, tiny sigh. So quick he doesn’t get the chance to be afraid. Behind him, the crow lays in the dirt with white tingeing the tips of her wings, making her look like a dove corrupted. The sun, uninterrupted in the middle of the sky, hits the feathers spread beneath her in iridescence. If you had seen them both go down, you’d think they were kneeling.

Leena Ahmad is a junior at Carl Sandburg High School in Orland Park, IL. She was a YoungArts winner in screenwriting and has received a regional Silver Key in the Scholastic Art & Writing awards. Her favorite poet is Gwendolyn Brooks, and she enjoys Palestinian literature.