Sanctuary

I first saw them, tall and stately, eight months after my brother’s death. I was watching the white edge of road ahead when Jack slowed the car and wordlessly pointed across me to where they stood ankle-deep in Pond Lily Lake. At the sight of them my hardened acorn heart split a little and put out a cautious root hair.

We parked at the sanctuary and squished our way up the hill. Woolen clouds were cable-knit across the sky. Mist settled on my hair, a network of diamonds I glimpsed at the edge of my vision. Jack set up the tripod and scope, focusing and turning knobs and cursing softly to his stiff fingers. There wasn’t anything to focus on. The wetland below us reminded me of a frying pan, pewter water, lead lid of sky, rim of copper cattails. No one else was around. A few chickadees jived in a dogwood.

Other soggy birders soon joined us. There were sighs and foot stampings. “The show’s a little late,” Jack murmured and wiped his glasses for the fifth time. It was getting dark.

A smoky smudge right on the horizon line sent the birders scrambling to their scopes. I heard a faint sound like someone running a thumbnail down a comb. The sound got louder, harsher, and the smudge resolved itself into a formation of flying sandhill cranes. Once over the frying pan they started to drop, legs dangling, like a platoon of paratroopers. The noise increased as more birds arrived, then more, and more, until long skeins of them wove across the sky in all directions. I happened to look straight up just as a pair coasted in directly overhead. Their soft gray bellies seemed close enough to skim my outstretched fingers. They held their black toes together like steeples. I felt like church.