How Papa fell in love with shoebills I do not know. It’s a damn curse on him and on us that he did. They are vile creatures, shoebills. Nothing human or humane about them. They have stone beaks and stick legs and wings bigger than the rest of their being.
We live in Texas. There are no shoebills in Texas. Papa says the cranes we see standing in the river current are close relatives, but not as stunning, not as angelic as his beloved shoebills. Papa is an Englishman. My brother and sister and I aren’t. I don’t know what we are. We got funny accents all twisted up from mimicking the voices of our peers at the schoolhouse. They say we sound limp-wristed. Well, how would we sound otherwise?
My name is Phillip. My sister’s name is Victoria. My brother, Maximillian. We all came out at once, which is how Mama came to pass, Papa says. He was working for the mining company. He had an estate near a swamp in Rhodesia, and he was an engineer. Made Mama pregnant, and he hoped to move us back to the Little Island in the Atlantic once he’d climbed the ranks of the company, so he could have a quiet office in London rather than a foreman’s stead in the humid taint of the Mineral Continent.
I have a memory of being very little in a wicker basket with my brother and sister. We are feeble and supine. We are burning beneath the sun, and Papa is crazed and wide-eyed by the swamp’s edge, sneaking behind a shoebill. It is colored gunmetal and has a beak the size of a washtub. Papa drops his britches and falls to his knees in the reeds. The shoebill turns its big awful head and snaps at his nose. I think this is why Papa’s nose is hooked now, for the shoebill flayed it in two.
Papa calls us into his study. We are covered in sweat from having played with the hoop all morning in the yard. We go into Papa’s study. The walls are covered in bookshelves, and there is a rosewood desk near the windows with a velvet-shaded lamp set on the corner. There are harrowing aspects about this place. The windows curtained. The dust thick on every surface. The tintype of Mama in the casket. But the most awful accoutrement is without a doubt the shoebill taxidermy arranged in the center of the room. Papa fixed the bodies of the shoebills, shoebills he killed, so that they are dressed as gentlemen and gentleladies, locked into some strange, ritualistic dance.
I have good news, says Papa. We shudder in our padded chairs. When Papa says he’s got good news, it always means the opposite.
Are we going to town? says Victoria.
Papa shakes his head, no.
Have you any sweet bread? says Maximillian.
Papa chortles. Of a sort, he says.
A ball to kick for play? I say.
Fine guesses, all around, says Papa.
He removes a ledger from his desk. He points to a column labeled “Expenditures.” We are burning through my savings, says Papa. And I haven’t the income to account for the losses. You see, your papa has been quite unemployed since we made the move on the boat. Do you remember the move on the boat?
We say that we do. How could we forget? The boat smelled of salty mildew, and we had the vomits the entire journey.
How is this good news? says Victoria.
Are we going to be completely poor, rather than only partially poor? says Maximillian.
We are going to be fine, says Papa. Me and one other. That’s the good news. For only one of you shall remain, once the trials are completed.
He stands and walks over to his shoebill taxidermy. He bends down and brushes the beak of a shoebill wearing a miniature bowler. One of you is extraordinary, says Papa. Just like a shoebill. All shoebills are extraordinary because only the finest shoebill chick is allowed to live by its parentage. Only the finest shoebills are allowed food, water, and a proper raising. It’s left to the chicks to compete for this honor, the honor of living.
We do not know what to say. We think he is joking.
Tomorrow, when you arise from bed, the trials will begin. Say your prayers. You’ll need God. Pray for strength of body and mind. Both will need sharpening if you are to survive.
◆
In the bed in our room we share beside Papa’s, we discuss possible protest methods. If we all refuse to compete in Papa’s silly game, then perhaps the game will lose its effectiveness. Perhaps Papa will realize the lunacy of his methods. We hug each other and pray that God will deliver us from sin, from Papa too. Then we spoon together beneath the sheets, all three of us, sweating the whole night through.
In the morning, when we awake for breakfast, Papa isn’t home. There is a paltry meal set on the supper table, only enough food for one of us. There is one plate on the table. I search the cabinets, looking for two more. The plates are all gone. Papa did something with them.
We fix one plate and then discuss what we should do. Should we share the meal? It would seem silly to. There is but two strips of bacon and a single fried egg. A sliver of corn pone to mop up the yoke.
We’d all be hungry if we shared, says Maximillian.
It’d be better if one of us was full, and two were hungry, says Victoria.
I posit that it would be gentlemanly of Maximillian and me if we allowed Victoria to have the first meal. If this continues, I say. Then we can rotate meals. Victoria gets breakfast. Maximillian, dinner. And I will take supper.
Maximillian and Victoria both agree this is a fair offer. Maximillian and I sit at the table and watch Victoria eat. She eats slowly, coyly, relishing every bite. When she is finished, Papa enters the kitchen holding his brass telescope. He’s been watching us with it through the window. He’s been sitting in the pasture watching us from afar like our very own God.
Bravo, bravo, says Papa, patting Victoria on the back. You have won the first trial. You have fed yourself. The others are on the thin path of starvation.
He removes a notebook from his jacket pocket and scribbles inside it with a pencil. He twists his moustache, then returns the notebook to his jacket.
We’re not playing your game, I say. We have decided to share meals. None of us will starve.
‘Meals,’ plural? says Papa. I’m afraid I do not know what you mean.
Maximillian explains our plan.
Papa chortles. It’s a fine idea in theory. But there shall only be one meal provided per day. You may hunt for further sustenance, if you wish. But I haven’t the supply to feed all of you once a day, much less three.
This is an outrage, I say.
As it always will be with God’s creative plan, says Papa.
◆
At night when we sleep, I hear the shoebills clacking their beaks in Papa’s study and Papa singing songs from his youth. We can smell cigar smoke ribboning beneath our door. Papa is having a party with his lifeless shoebill connections, no doubt providing them daily updates and progress reports.
In the morning, he is gone again, and the supper table is set the same as the day previous. Maximillian gets to eat this time. I feel foggy and lustful as I watch him swallow a sliver of bacon whole.
Papa stays gone the rest of the day, and we ransack the kitchen looking for food. It’s all gone. Papa’s hidden it somewhere. We walk around our property looking for Papa, but we are weak, and the walking makes us dizzy. We decide to sleep and rest as much as we can, save our energy.
Surely, this can’t continue. Surely, Papa is having an episode. Surely, he will awake from this mania.
Another morning. I take the meal. My belly hurts after I’m through. I am bloated. It feels as if I’ve eaten an entire capon. But all there was for breakfast was a half slice of bacon and a single egg. Papa is making our meals progressively smaller. I think it would be smart for us to stay up in the night so that we can catch Papa in the morning when he prepares our meal. I suggest that we could kill him and eat him.
Maximillian smiles.
Victoria laughs disturbingly.
It’s only a joke.
We sleep more. We grow thin and mean. We giggle often. Our lives are an absolute hilarity, we realize. There’s nothing wholesome or vital about any of this. We pretend our mama is still living. She will come for us, and she will make us whole again. She loves us more than Papa, but she’s been busy arranging a crystalline home for us in a far country. She will return when we are weak and dying.
Papa knocks on our door. We shudder. Afternoon, my fine chaps, he says. I have a subtlety to share with you.
Maximillian falls out of bed and reaches for the doorknob.
Don’t answer it, I say.
He’s got a gift, says Maximillian, desperately.
He’s not to be trusted, I say.
Maximillian looks like he’ll cry. We cannot continue this way, he says. He opens the door.
Papa wears a cavalier hat, and his face is covered in a weeklong beard. His eyes are dilated. I can smell his breath from bed. He’s been drinking.
Come along, will you? he says. I can tell you’re hungry. In the yard, a gift for you all. I had to pay a pretty penny for the transport.
Maximillian darts out the door. Good boy, says Papa, smiling awful at Victoria and me.
We grimace at each other, then follow Maximillian in the yard.
The hills are shaky and wobbling on the horizon. I can smell cedar oil and hear the cicadas. There is a shoebill in the yard, pecking at a platter with a domed cover. For the life of me, I do not know how a shoebill has found its way to Texas alive.
Papa walks out the house. He takes a sip from a flask he carries. Say hello to your new brother, says Papa. A new contestant in the game, as it were. He’s an immigrant from our former home. A living vestige of halcyon days. I’ve named him Achilles, for he is ruthless and swift to kill. Aren’t you, Achilles?
Achilles snaps his beak at Papa.
Papa strokes Achilles’ beak, then removes the dome off the platter. There is an immense pile of roasted bass sitting on the platter, covered in some sort of sweet molasses sauce. Achilles gulps a quarter of the fish and tilts his beak skyward as he swallows.
We all set to diving about the platter, ripping at the fish flesh. Achilles cuts us with his beak. Victoria starts crying. She’s been nudged away from the fish. Achilles is being particularly vile towards her. But Maximillian and I are having a grand time shoving our faces full of flaky fish and bones. Our faces are covered in grease.
When we finish, Papa puts the dome back on the platter and enters the house. Achilles tries to flap way, but his wings have been clipped. He groans. Victoria has a laceration across the breast of her dress. She is wailing.
You are both awful brothers, she says.
We can’t argue with her. It appears we’ve both been rather awful, rather awful indeed. But our bellies are full, and we feel a pleasant prick in our loins. Our eyes are wide, and heads buzzing. We are winning.
This is no place for a lady, says Victoria. I am a lady. Mama named me after the queen.
She walks towards the horizon, and she keeps walking. Maximillian and I follow her till we get to the edge of the pasture. We beg her not to leave. She says she hasn’t any other choice.
We run home and find Papa reading Dickens and smoking a cigar in a rocker near the hearth. We tell him Victoria ran away. Achilles is perched on his shoulder, looking at the book pages. Achilles is reading too, his head sidewise, his eyes beady and blue.
It’s for the best, says Papa. Likely, she’ll be fine. Unless the Comanche capture her. But even then, she’d be fine. I hadn’t the money to provide a dowry for a suitable suitor anyway. A man of leisure wouldn’t have her, what with her being poor.
She wouldn’t be poor if you found work again. Moved us away from this terrible place, says Maximillian, stomping his foot.
Papa slams his book shut. He places it on his knee. He removes his spectacles. What good would that do, growing up rich? There’d be no learning. What I’m doing here is providing my sweet children a chance to grow up wild and mean, so that they may be prepared when they’re older for a world equally callous. I am a good father.
Ridiculous, I say. You’re starving us.
No, I’m not, says Papa. Both of you have eaten.
◆
The next day we awaken blindfolded and bouncing in the back of the hack wagon. Our hands are fixed together with hemp cordage. Papa is singing Anglican hymns on the bench seat of the wagon. Our pony, Atwood, wheezes as she pulls us down the road.
I hear water churning nearby. Papa hops in the back of the wagon and removes our blindfolds. The sun burns our eyes. It is hot, and it is summertime. It’s always been hot, everywhere we’ve lived. Papa says the Little Island in the Atlantic is much more temperate. I wish we could go there. Perhaps that’s where Mama resides.
You’ve kidnapped us, says Maximillian.
How can I kidnap a child that is already mine? says Papa. Achilles barks. He’s perched on the bench seat. He does not have on a blindfold.
Papa lumps us to the water’s edge on sharp gravel bank and sets us on our asses. Then, like a lecturer at a university, he paces before us, telling us about the eating habits of the shoebill. Shoebills eat lungfish primarily in their home habitat. Isn’t that right, Achilles? But in the absence of their preferred food source, they are open to eating whatever chordate they can get their beaks on.
Achilles, knee-deep in the water, focuses his eyes on the moving current. He plunges his head into the water, half his body, and porpoises having a sunfish impaled on his beak.
You see? says Papa. Achilles doesn’t bemoan the fact he’s no longer home. He’s no longer familiar. He simply gets on getting on, as the locals might say. That’s because he’s the finest of his kin. That’s because he only worries how to survive.
He’s a fish out of water, you could say, says Papa. He carries Maximillian to the water and drops him in the river. Maximillian’s head disappears below the river’s surface. Papa comes for me next.
Sort of like hogtied children in the water, says Papa, laughing at what he perceives to be a witty notion. He tosses me in the water like a limp stone.
I try to swim, but it is difficult. I kick my legs like a cetacean’s tailfin. It’s partially effective. My head juts out the water. I can see Achilles strutting on the river bank. I kick landward, swallowing water. My lungs burn hot. I inch onto the bank like a caterpillar and blink my eyes. They thrum with silt from the river. I can hear Maximillian coughing.
Papa cuts my bonds. I sit up, seeing Maximillian floating limp in the current. It appears you’ve won, says Papa, wryly. Unbound, I jump into the water and pull Maximillian ashore.
Maximillian is very blue, and I think he’s very dead. I press his chest, breathe life into his mouth. He coughs. Water spurts out his nose and lips like a geyser. He cries.
Achilles, startled by the resurrection of Maximillian, flutters over to him and slaps him in the face with his beak. Maximillian, angry, grabs Achilles by the neck. He would’ve rung that bird’s neck, had Papa not unsheathed a flintlock from his coat pocket.
Unhand that beautiful bird, says Papa.
Maximillian frowns at Papa. He lifts Achilles up by the neck. Achilles moans, choking. Papa fires his single shot into the dirt, scaring Maximillian. Maximillian drops the bird, and Papa gives him a good whipping.
You are never to bring harm upon Achilles, says Papa on the ride home. Either of you. If you kill that bird, I’ll kill you. It’s not that I don’t love you both. You must understand, I love both of you very much. But I’d rather my own life be lost, then the life of Achilles. He is but an innocent. He is sublime.
◆
Maximillian is despondent. His eyes are distant. He tells me he had a vision in his time of dying. I ask him what he saw. He shakes his head side to side.
Please, I say, sitting up in bed. It’ll free you from the pain, the telling.
Staring out the window at the moonlit sky, Maximillian opens his mouth wide. Words come out, but his lips don’t move. I saw Mama’s fleshless body floating in a black swamp. Perched atop her, as if she was a lily pad, was a shoebill the size of a man, with a face the same as Papa’s. Papa had a beak with crusted carrion along the sharpened edge. He heard me shudder, and then he came for me. He knows I’m weak. He knows you’re stronger than me. He’s going to kill me.
Bollocks, I say. He’s not going to kill you.
But he’ll try, says Maximillian. That’s what he was doing today. Trying to kill one of us. And who knows what happened to Victoria? Probably assaulted by a coyote, if she hasn’t starved already or taken sick.
I tell him I won’t let Papa kill him. I tell him I’ll die before I allow Maximillian to suffer again. Maximillian kisses me on the forehead. It would be unkind for me to allow my mediocrity to be your undoing, he says. No. I will leave and you will be fed.
Where will you go? I say.
England, says Maximillian. I’m returning to our roots. Perhaps, I can garner the sympathy of some well-to-do couple when I get there, like in Dickens. Then, when I’m a rich man, I will return.
He opens the window and hobbles into the night.
Now I am alone.
◆
Papa suspects I killed Maximillian. He tells me so at supper the night following Maximillian’s escape. He prepares a grand meal for the two of us, for Achilles too. I tell him I didn’t kill Maximillian. That Maximillian ran away, like Victoria before him, and that I’ll run away too if he continues acting a fiend.
Fratricide is a painful crime, says Papa. I would understand if you didn’t want to admit what you’ve done. Did Cain not lie to the Lord, after he killed Abel? Where did you dispose of the body? Hopefully not in the river. A rotting body in the current can spoil the water.
He carves a glazed ham he roasted. He slaps several thick cutlets of meat onto my plate. The ham looks like scorched flesh and spoils my appetite. Papa notices my indifference. He has half a slice of cake crammed in his mouth. Eat. Eat, good son, he says. You need the sustenance. For you are strong. You are the strongest.
I toss my plate onto the floor. Achilles, hunched over a bowl of chicken innards, hops over to the spilled ham. He’ll eat anything.
A protest, says Papa. You are displeased with your papa. It’s only natural, I suppose. You’ll understand one day, I pray. Yes, I do pray. When you have children of your own, you’ll thank me.
◆
Papa doesn’t disappear anymore. I play with Achilles during the daytime. He’s not so bad, any longer. We develop a strange kinship with one another.
In the evenings Papa reads to us. Achilles’ favorite story is Oliver Twist. He bats his wings so long as Papa keeps up the telling of it. And when Papa is finished, Achilles groans mournfully. I can’t tell why Achilles enjoys Dickens so. His tragedies are rather bland, milquetoast, if you ask me. There are far crueler depravities that can befall man or a child than those wrought by Dickens, if you ask me.
In a month’s time, I almost forget my siblings. Things are normalizing. It is near fall and still painfully hot outside. The wagons move west in endless waves. At first, we think it is an aberration. A flight without reason. We should know better. Our own movements have always been inspired by tragedy.
One day, a godly gentleman with a white beard knocks on our door. Behind him in our yard is a wagon with a gaunt-faced family sitting in the back. The gentleman asks Papa which way it is to Fort Concho.
Papa points toward Tea Cup Mountain. What motivates your travels? Gold, silver? A new religion? asks Papa, gesturing towards the wagon train moving past our house.
Salvation, says the gentleman. This is a country riddled by outlaws. Wild youth damned by their kin. They’re everywhere, acting like devils, reigning in the terror. They’ll be coming for you too. I lost two chillren to the cretin swine responsible for the violating. Best they died before they could become devils theirselves. It’d be wise of you to move on down the line yeeself. I see you have a child. This ain’t no place for chillren anymore.
Nonsense, says Papa. We are a strong people. We have crafted our character, so that it resembles the hardiness of a shoebill. Haven’t we, Phillip?
I nod my head, yes.
Be warned, man, says the gentleman. They say he can see inside your head. They say he is immortal.
Who’s he? says Papa.
He is the pale horse, pale rider, says the gentleman. And woe be to he who stands in his way.
Papa slams the door.
◆
Over the next several weeks, we find Atwood impaled upon a sharpened mesquite post. Someone lights a fire in the cedar brake. It burns to a blackened crisp. Papa keeps me and Achilles inside. He says it’s not safe for us here. I ask Papa why we don’t leave if it is dangerous. Why don’t we move elsewhere? We’ve done it before.
Because I’ve clipped our wings, says Papa. We cannot run from our suffering anymore.
I have a different theory. We could run. But then Papa would miss out on the catharsis suffering brings. This is why he will not run.
Papa loads his pistol every night. He wants it to be ready when the pale rider comes for us.
Do not fear the outlaws, says Papa, when he puts me to bed. You are well prepared to face them when they show their faces. I have raised you like a shoebill.
◆
In the twilight gloaming I hear a discharge and Papa screaming in the front room. I shamble out of bed to see what has happened. He is here, the pale rider the godly gentleman spoke of. Papa is kneeling by the window, his flintlock loaded. The window is shattered. Papa fires out the broken glass, then sets to reloading his piece. Achilles is bouncing on his feet, snapping his beak angrily.
We’ve been set upon by terrors, says Papa. Please, my son, you of the finest genes, help me confront this beast.
I crawl towards the window and peak outside. I see a figure shrouded by an immense duster coat. The figure wears a floppy brimmed hat, tilted low over their brow. Behind them is a gang of debauched youth, wearing weatherbeaten rags.
Come out, you scalawags, says the figure.
But you’ll shoot us, won’t you? I say.
The figure spits on the darkened ground. I wouldn’t shoot you. I haven’t the stomach for it.
I open the door and walk outside. Wait, my son, says Papa. He chases me to the door, but he stops for cowardice and doesn’t follow me outside.
I walk towards the figure. If it kills me, then I’ll be free. My soul shall be liberated, and I can go wherever I wish. My dying shall return to me my wings. I may very well be special. I am special because Papa says I’m the strongest, yet I’ll be gone before my siblings. I am special in my dying young.
The figure removes its hat. It isn’t a figure anymore. Victoria has her hair made up in a bun so that it fits beneath the hat. Her face is covered in dirt. She has crow’s feet along the corners of her eyes.
Victoria? I say.
Don’t call me that, says Victoria. My name is Billy the Kid, and I’m heading west. I am a man. I’ve wrought pain and suffering upon the locals. I am the fastest gun in Texas.
That sounds exhausting, I say.
I look at the posse gathered behind Victoria. I ask her who they are.
We are the Forsaken. We’ve all been forsaken by the ones we love, says Victoria.
I’ve heard stories, I say.
Believe every word. All of it is true, says Victoria. Where is Maximillian?
Gone, I say. He ran away, like you.
Where to? says Victoria.
England.
Victoria scoffs. He’ll be lucky if he makes it. Probably assaulted by a coyote, if he hasn’t starved already or taken sick. And even if he does make it, he won’t fit in. We aren’t English. We are shoebills.
That we are, I say.
Kiss me, brother. Then play along.
I kiss Victoria on the cheek. She wraps an arm around my neck and places her pistol against my forehead. In a deep voice, one I don’t know, she demands Papa exit the house. Come on out, she says. Or I put a bullet in the boy’s head.
Papa, crying, hobbles out the door. He’s got his pistol leveled at Victoria or I one.
Victoria fires her pistol in the air. Drop the piece, says Victoria.
Papa drops his gun and falls onto his knees. Victoria lets go of me, and I walk away from her and Papa.
Victoria frees her hair from the bun and shakes her head to and fro. She is beatific. She looks like a saint. Papa is sobbing.
Do you remember me? says Victoria, kicking Papa’s pistol against the house, pressing her own against his temple.
What has happened to you, my beautiful baby girl? says Papa.
I’ve become a man. I have proved my dominance and violence to the masses. No one stands in my way. But here you are, firing out the window as if you could ever oppose me.
Please. I am very sorry. I only wanted you to be strong. I always wanted the best for you. I didn’t ever expect my daughter would become this, says Papa.
I am of the world, says Victoria. I killed your horse, I burned your pasture. These were all flesh wounds. Now, the only thing you own of value to me is your breath. Your love, I have forsaken. She pulls back the hammer of her pistol with a pudgy, calloused thumb.
I laugh uncontrollably. My voice sounds like a shoebill. I am a shoebill.
◆
We bury Papa in a stretch of hardpan surrounded by prickly pear. We do not fix him a tombstone. We are both dirty. Victoria mounts a horse, a godly paint. Our house stands on the horizon. The Forsaken are all horseback waiting for their leader to join them.
Come with me, says Victoria. We are alike, me and you.
I shake my head, no.
Then where will you go? says Victoria.
I tell her I need time to decide. Maybe I’ll look for Maximillian. Perhaps I can catch him before he leaves the American Mainland.
Look out for news of my travels, says Victoria. I’m going to be a great man someday.
I do not doubt she’s telling the truth.
I watch Victoria ride away, waving all the while. She is going west, where the sun sets in the evening. The wagons cannot escape her. Maximillian is going east, where the sun rises in the morning. I am stuck between the two, in a sort of noontime purgatory. What will become of me, I do not know. When I enter the house, Achilles is nesting beside the hearth. It’s just me and a shoebill. Me and a diasporic shoebill, together forever.