By Jennifer Schomburg Kanke

Featured Art by Debbie Norton

The union was strong, but not strong enough to make Detroit Steel keep a dying man on the payroll. John shouldn’t have known this, but he often overheard his parents talking in the room beneath him until late in the evening. He was a respectful boy and was never trying to eavesdrop, but in a house that’s small with heating vents that weren’t so much vents as just holes in the floor (or ceiling, depending on your perception), there wasn’t much of a way to avoid it. He knew the other men at the mill were keeping an eye on his father, Bernard. They were propping him up at his station and bringing him water and coffee throughout the day, whatever he needed to keep him going. “I don’t know why they do it, I don’t need no special treatment,” his father complained to his mother at least once a week. But he still hopped in the car of whoever showed up for him in the morning, usually Jay Mingus’s dad Jimmy who had a 1947 Studebaker with a long front hood and wild wrap-around back window. The fathers of most of John’s friends had older cars like that, bought when they first returned from the war and were fresh hires at the mill. Some bought new ones every few years, like Joseph’s dad who bought a 1957 Buick a few months back even though his old one, which Joseph’s mom had now, was only three years old. The Bondurant’s didn’t even have one car, let alone two. His father always told John it was because he liked to walk to work and couldn’t imagine missing out on the fresh New Boston air, which John assumed was a joke like when he told him his Purple Heart was from getting stabbed with a fork in the chow line. No one, not even John, who loved his town with a ferocity rivaled only by his love for Roy Rogers, would describe the air of their town as fresh. 

Roy Rogers was about the only thing John had in common with most of the other nine-year-old boys in the neighborhood. He was stoical and loved facts and figures. He had little time for things like playing Around the World in 80 Days down in the dump beside his house like the others. He explored there, of course, but he didn’t need to play pretend. He was looking for treasures for his mother. She’d smile so broadly at him when he hauled load after load of sturdy bricks up in his little red wagon. He liked it when she smiled. She could use the bricks to build that wishing well-shaped BBQ from the magazines, the one she’d clipped a picture of and kept hidden inside one of the encyclopedias on the shelf. The set had been bought for them by some of the men at the mill when his father had first gotten sick. John thought there were better ways to spend money, better ways to help the family, but he didn’t hold that against the books and read them cover to cover like novels.  

He liked knowing things. And one thing he knew was that his father hadn’t walked to work for at least two months. It might have been longer. He only noticed at the end of March when Hubert, Joseph’s dad, was driving John and his older sisters home after watching Cinderella. Since Joseph’s mom was his mom’s sister, they’d sometimes get invited out to their house on Niner Hill for special occasions like this. The Chabots had a color television. He’d liked Peter Pan better, but that had been in black and white, and it was awfully fun to see a show in color. Sissy and Ruthie had sung the whole way home, belting out lines from “Impossible-It’s Possible” back and forth in a way that only vaguely resembled the original tune. When they’d pulled up outside their house, Mr. Chabot said, “Don’t forget to tell your dad I’ve got to get to work by seven tomorrow. He needs to be ready on time.” The next morning, instead of watching his dad walk off down Maple Street swinging his little gray dinner bucket, he watched him ease his way into the back of Mr. Chabot’s car and ride off. He wondered what was going on, but he figured if they wanted him to know, they would have said.  

Eventually, the last day of school came. His mom greeted him at the door after school wearing her visiting dress, a blue and white striped shirtwaist one with a crisp collar. She made him put on nice slacks instead of letting him get into play clothes right away. “Don’t get into any mischief, Doris is coming to take us all to Huntington in a bit.” His mother didn’t say why, but he knew he’d find out soon enough. It was only a little over an hour to get down there and he was a patient boy. 

Even with baby Annie on his mother’s lap and not a single one of Doris’s kids along for the ride, the car was crowded. At sixteen and fourteen, Sissy and Ruthie might as well be adults with the length of their legs and size of their butts. He knew better than to point that out to them. John was squeezed between his sisters and counted his blessings that at least they weren’t singing, just discussing whether it was okay to find Harry Belafonte cute or not. Sissy said yes, Ruthie said no. John didn’t care.  

“We’d appreciate that,” he heard his mother say. 

 “No problem, it’ll be nice for Joseph to have the company, even if they don’t get along the best,” Doris responded.  

John knew they couldn’t be talking about him—Joseph was pretty much his best friend— next to Alfred the Dog, so he tuned them out and watched the scenery go by. The entire ride his eyes had been trying to adjust to the blue sky. It was unsettling to him. He’d seen blue sky before, of course, out on Niner Hill or when they’d gone to Shawnee Forest for picnics, but it still made him feel itchy and out of sorts, so he focused on the shadows the trees were casting on the road before them. Lowering his eyes away from the sky made him feel a little better and realizing some of the shadows looked like Roy Rogers really made him feel better. Some farther on looked like his horse Trigger and there was Dale and Bullet and Brady and everyone. It felt good to let his mind wander away from the chattering of the pairs of sisters in the car talking about unimportant things. The Roy Rogers show, now that was important. Roy Rogers was probably the only important thing he and Joseph disagreed on. John wanted to be just like Roy and shoot, sing, and solve crimes, like a real man.  

Doris wouldn’t let Joseph like Roy Rogers. He could watch the show, but he couldn’t look like he was enjoying it or she’d make him turn it off. Back when Roy had been just little Len Slye out to Duck Run, one of his pigs had beaten one of Doris’s at the Scioto County Fair and she still held it against him.  

When they passed Camden Park, Sissy and Ruthie’s conversation turned from celebrity crushes to boys at Glendale High and which ones they would or wouldn’t want to ride with on the big wooden roller coaster. John was thankful that it wasn’t long before they were turning off the road and going up a high and winding drive. The sign at the bottom said Veterans’ Medical Center, and John filed the information away for later. If there was anything his mom wanted him to know she’d tell him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to pay attention and learn what he could learn in the meantime.  

The lobby of the hospital was about the grandest thing he’d ever seen with marble on some of the countertops and a wide staircase going up to the second floor. The rug by the door was even lovely with golden fleurs-de-lis on a blue background, similar to the ones that decorated Sissy’s beau’s Boy Scout uniform. John wasn’t quite old enough for the Scouts yet, but in a few years he planned to join like all the other boys in the neighborhood. The Scouts learned tracking, an essential skill for solving crimes.  

 The woman sitting at the front desk looked up at them, but his mother showed no signs of slowing as she headed up the stairs with Annie in her arms and the older ones trailing behind.  

“Hey, you can’t take all those kids up there,” the woman yelled after them. When John’s mother didn’t even turn her head, the woman went back to her paperwork and let the issue drop for the time being, which he considered a good call on her part.  

“I’ll just stay down here and wait,” Doris said as a peace offering. 

But the nurse couldn’t leave well enough alone, and she popped her stern, barred owl-looking face into his father’s room the minute their laughter got above a polite titter. He hadn’t even had a chance to ask his dad about joining Scouts or whether he’d heard any scuttle down at the mill about Roy Rogers coming home now that his show had gone off the air. All there’d been time for was for Sissy to go on about how she was going to be stupid head majorette in the fall and for Ruthie to tell some stupid knock-knock joke about some stupid fruit. Stupid. When she said, “Orange ya’ glad I didn’t say banana?” their father let out a loud bark and the man in the next bed started coughing, which brought in Old Beady-Beak the Nurse. 

She took John by the arm and turned him toward the hallway.  

“But I didn’t do anything. Why do I have to leave?” 

“Right, none of this ruckus is your fault. I’ve heard that before.” 

“Mom?” he looked over his shoulder back into the room. 

“Just go sweetie, it’ll be nice for you to chat with Doris for a bit, get to know her better. We’ll come back later, just you and me.” 

He made eye contact with his father, who sat on the bed in the middle of the stark whiteness of the room with his hand resting on top of the sheets. It looked smaller than John remembered.  

“Go on with the woman now John, we don’t want a repeat of what happened out to church last week.” John’s brows furrowed; how did his dad know what happened? He never went with them. And nothing had happened at church. Not really. The collection basket, which was really more like a small wicker plate, was coming around during Sunday School. Joseph put a dollar in, and John slid that dollar back out and, through quick sleight of hand, put the self-same one back in with a flourish you couldn’t miss. Carol Ann Peck saw him and kicked up a fuss, telling Doris, who everyone had to call Mrs. Chabot during Sunday school, that he’d stolen money from the basket. Which showed what she knew because it wasn’t stealing, it was just lying. A heated disagreement followed where he may or may not have called Carol Ann a bug-eyed snitch and Doris asked him to listen to the lesson from the back of the room away from the other children. He crossed his arms over his chest and seethed while everyone else sang “Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man” with youthful abandon.   

But the nurse didn’t know any of that, so her blame was even more frustrating to him. He accepted his fate and let himself be escorted back down to the lobby where his aunt was sitting in a small yellow chair reading a copy of Good Housekeeping. She was wearing a black pencil skirt and matching sleeveless shirt with a white belt at her waist. Her tidy little hat sat in the chair beside her. On the cover of the magazine she was reading were the words “Special and Wonderful” in a fancy script and a little blond girl sporting a page boy haircut working needlepoint in a crisp sailor suit with a big blue bow. John ran his hand across his own tight buzz.  

“Well, you just couldn’t keep out of trouble, could you?” 

“It wasn’t me . . .” John stopped when Doris got that look adults get when they’re about to start in on you. 

“What are you reading?” he tried to make conversation. 

“Just a magazine.” 

He opened his mouth to clarify that he’d meant “What was the article about,” but thought better of it and just said, “Oh.” She made no move to pick up her hat. He stood by the wall with one leg slightly bent so his foot could rest against it. 

“Foot down, Johnny. Be respectful.” 

His foot returned to the floor with an exaggerated thunk and he crossed his arms. The only thing to read in the lobby was the stack of Good Housekeeping magazines and a few old Highlights for Children, so he figured he’d need to entertain himself. One of his favorite ways of doing this was to replay TV shows in his mind. He picked the final episode of Roy Rogers, the one that had just aired that past weekend. The fistfights, the hard riding in the dust, and, of course, Roy saving the day. What stuck in his craw was how Johnny Rover, whose real name was Jackson Revere Jr., had lied to his father. Not the actor, his name was Dan something (the same guy who played the banker that got held up by his own brother a few seasons ago). John tried not to remember that because then the two shows would get all mixed up in his head and he wanted to savor the last episode as best he could. Jackson told his father, also named Jackson and played by the guy who also played his dad in that other episode (which was not helping John keep the scenes straight), that he was a deputy sheriff when really he was a no good low-life breaking out of jail. It made him feel bad, thinking about this boy lying to his dad. He hadn’t lied to his dad about what happened out to church Sunday, but he hadn’t had a chance to explain himself really. Next time he saw him he’d explain. He’d tell him the full truth about how watching Joseph put all that money into the collection plate week after week, and not just nickels like the other kids put in, whole dollars, sometimes two, made his skin feel all hot and prickly. “Can you believe it, two dollars?” he’d say and then his dad would laugh and say “Two dollars? What are they, made of money?” And he’d understand.  His dad would understand, and it would all be okay. 

“You’re just going to have such fun with us this summer,” Doris interrupted his prognosticating daydream. “The fresh air, the woods, playing in the creek.” She pronounced it with a long “e” like the announcers on television, not like his mother (and everyone else he knew). “You and Joey are just going to get on like gangbusters, so long as you don’t argue like always.” 

The last part was said more to her shoulder than to John, but he heard it anyway. Nothing she said made sense and he planned to ask his mother about it when he saw her again. But when the time came, he decided it could wait. Her eyes were puffy and red. Ruthie carried Annie while his mother descended the stairs half-supported by Sissy’s shoulder.  

When they got home from the hospital his mom explained he’d be spending the rest of the summer out on Niner Hill. She didn’t say much about why, but when Doris and Joseph came to pick him up the next morning, he overheard her thank her sister for “lightening the load a little right now.” “It’s our pleasure,” Doris replied in a voice that sounded like Sissy’s when she was helping Ruthie learn the routine for majorette tryouts, a voice that reminded the listener which of them was clearly the better of the two.  

Joseph’s cowboy-themed bedroom had two twin beds with large wooden wagon wheels nailed to the sides near their foot ends and a small wooden desk painted a deep green and decorated with revolver-shaped drawer pulls. His blankets had cowboys in red shirts riding bucking broncos on them. Last year, before Mr. Chabot had the addition put on the house and Joseph had still shared the space with one of his brothers, the room had been decorated in muted colors and the beds were bunked to make space for all the older boys’ sports gear. John couldn’t remember which sport he played, he just remembered that it took up a lot of space. He and Joseph had to sleep in the living room any weekends he stayed over. He liked it better the way Joseph had it now, though he still liked his own room in town better.  

He missed the reassuring sounds of the trucks and trains coming to-and-fro moving the coke and coal at the mill and he found it hard to sleep without the bright floodlights or furnaces that ran all day and night. He missed the soft sounds coming through his open bedroom windows. The raccoons moving the layers of trash around in the dump. The music floating in from the sock hop down at the high school. His parents talking beneath him. The only things he could hear through Joseph’s open window were the cicadas in the trees and the roosters and horses on the next ridge over.  

The quiet aside, the summer turned out to be a lot of fun and Joseph was an admirable companion in adventure. Their most exciting adventure, before the day of the peacock, was at the end of June when Doris had driven them into town to watch the steamboat coming down the river. Joseph’s older brothers, Samuel and Edward, were going to ride it up and down the river all day and then have a dance in the main pavilion at night with a big band and everything. Joseph and John had asked to tag along, but Doris said it wouldn’t be fair to the older boys. They had sold potato chips and popcorn with the rest of the 4-H’ers to raise enough money to rent the boat for the day. The boys nodded solemnly and didn’t press the issue. Though later, as they lie with their bellies pressed flat to the bank watching for the mast of the boat to come into sight through the fog, Joseph let him in on the real reason. 

The year before when the 4-H rented the same boat, the little ones were allowed to go. They ran up and down the decks eating corn dog after corn dog, drinking the ship dry of its pink lemonade. And the cotton candy, oh the cotton candy! This sounded like a respectable way to spend the day in John’s opinion. 

But that wasn’t the end of it. When some of the boys started feeling sick, they got the bright idea to head for the paddlewheel in the ship’s stern. Any fool could see where this was leading, which is why none of them told Doris or the other chaperones what they were up to. They all Keystone Copped their way to the deck above the paddle and looked down at the churning river water and the rhythmically turning wheel until the inevitable happened, after which they all erupted in such a jubilant cheer the chaperones came running to see what the commotion was. None of them were welcome back on the Avalon again. 

“Was it beautiful?” John asked. 

“Yep.” 

“Worth it then. If it’s coming up, might as well make it worth it.” 

“Our thoughts exactly.” 

The boat broke through the morning fog, its calliope playing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” to the delight of the crowd of teenagers waiting on the dock. 

“I bet that boat’s seen a lot.” 

“I bet you’re right.” 

They traded steamboat facts and facts about the Avalon in particular that each had gleaned from reports in the Portsmouth Times the week before as the paper tried to drum up excitement for the boat’s annual visit. Doris was a subscriber, which John’s mother said just showed she had more dollars than sense because if she wanted to know what was going on, all she had to do was ask the neighbors or look out the front door. Which was true for his mother, but not for Doris who lived so far out in the country that the nearest neighbor was old Mrs. Mackey at one end of the holler below and the Tomlins at the other. 

The boys tried to impress each other with their knowledge. 

“Did you know it was originally named Idlewild?” Joseph said. 

“Yep. Did you know the hull is made of steel?” John replied. 

“Yep. Did you know it’s one hundred sixty feet long and forty feet wide?” 

“Yep . . .” 

This went on for far too long. Since they’d both read the exact same articles, it was a useless endeavor. However, it passed the time nicely as they watched the semi-orderly lines of 4-H’ers walking carefully over the gang plank to the deck, both secretly hoping that one of the pretty girls in their pedal pushers and ballet flats would turn an ankle and splash into the river below. Not out of meanness, they weren’t mean boys, just to have a story to tell when school started in the fall. They were certain they’d remember something like that until September at least, if not longer. This day would never slip away into the blur of summer days. It was the most memorable day, or at least the most memorable before the one they saw the peacock, even if Doris had given them what for when she’d found them on the bank. 

“Joey, Johnny, you boys should know better. It’ll take forever to get those stains out.” 

They knew better, but they were tired of standing and made the practical choice of laying down on the bank. Such smart, practical and solemn boys, which made it all the more odd that they’d gotten so wrapped up with that peacock later in July. 

It was a Tuesday, but that didn’t matter to boys in the country in the summer. Every day had the same flow to it, a little exploring in the morning, a little TV in the afternoon, and evenings at the church or Grange. Joseph’s house was high on Niner Hill, a thousand feet above sea level according to the last survey data that John had been able to find at the library back when he’d been preparing to go watch Cinderella out there. He’d wanted to be ready to tell Joseph all about it. The height, combined with the money Joseph’s father made as a foreman at the mill, meant their TV had the best antenna to pull in all the best channels from Huntington and Columbus, and yes, even Cincinnati. It was simply the best, to hear Doris tell it. The boys would watch Bozo the Clown from Cincinnati and Flippo, the King of the Clowns, from Columbus. No one in town could say that—New Boston being more in a valley as it was, so John looked forward to enlightening his classmates in the fall about all the new shows he watched over the summer. That would be something to fill the Roy Rogers-shaped void in his conversations. 

The Tuesday of the peacock their plans were to pick blueberries until dinner around noon, then go back out after to see what they could see before making it back to watch Mickey Mouse Club at 5:30.  

That morning the blueberry picking had been exquisite. After, they hid out in the cool of a hollow space they’d made at the center of a large forsythia bush, a good hiding place that needed a name. John wanted to call it Double R Bar after Roy Rogers’s ranch, but Joseph said that didn’t make any sense because it wasn’t big enough to be a ranch, not by a long shot. He said it was more of a hut, so it was The Hut. Whatever it was called, it was a good place to sit and let the fruit settle in their bellies before heading back to the house and fried bologna with mustard and mayo, a combination that seemed decadent to John compared with the peanut butter and jelly his own mother typically served up. There would probably be both chips and an apple too. He and Joseph sat in companionable silence in The Hut digesting and dreaming. 

“Joseph,” he said after a while. 

“Yes, John.” 

“You think Roy Rogers will move back now that his show’s done?” 

“Why no, I don’t think so.” 

“Oh.” 

And as they both sighed and relaxed back into the quiet of the late morning, they heard horse hooves off at a distance. Moving swiftly in their direction. 

“Who do you think that is?” John asked. 

Joseph shrugged, parted the branches of the forsythia, and poked his head out of The Hut just enough to get an eye on the situation.  

“Is it a horse? A wild horse? Can we tame it?” 

Joseph gestured for him to lower his voice. The hooves came closer and closer. John could tell Joseph saw the animal but still wasn’t giving him a full report. 

“Let me see.” He jostled his way up to the opening in time to see the biggest dog in the world galloping by. It was at least two feet tall and moving at least thirty miles an hour. His dog back home was a droopy-eared basset hound who sat on the front porch all day. 

“What’s that?” 

“Greyhound. Mrs. Tomlin up the road keeps them. She keeps all kinds of things. I got to pet one once.” Sometimes Joseph was an admirable companion and sometimes he was just a big old show off like his mom.  

They heard more hooves. 

Joseph had reclaimed his spot in the branches, so John was forced to make his own peephole. The other options were to be completely exposed by leaving the safety of The Hut or not being able to get a good look at what was going on, and neither of those was a real option at all.  

This time it was a horse. The smallest horse in the world galloping by. It was only about two feet tall and moving about five miles an hour down the wooded path. 

“Bet we could catch it and give old Roy a run for his money,” John said as the horse approached. 

“I don’t think Mrs. Tomlin would like that much. It’s gotta be one of hers. A Shetland pony, I got to ride one once. Did you know they’re from Scotland? Well, not Mrs. Tomlin’s, she got hers from a farm over near Huntington, but originally, they’re from Scotland. They can be forty-two inches tall at the withers.” 

“Oh.” John was not heartbroken; he just didn’t know what withers were and didn’t want to give his cousin the satisfaction of explaining. 

Joseph said they’d better get back and let his mom know so she could let Mrs. Tomlin know, which made sense to John though he thought it might be more fun to tell Mrs. Tomlin themselves. Then, she would offer to let him pet any of her other animals as a reward. Joseph said she kept dogs, cats, horses, donkeys, and sheep, as well as monkeys, ferrets, and peacocks, all of which he had been allowed to pet at one time or another. 

When they arrived back at the house, Doris already knew all about the escaped animals. Mrs. Tomlin had called to ask her to keep an eye out. 

“You didn’t see a peacock out there, did you?” 

They hadn’t, but desperately wanted to go back out and look. “Maybe after dinner, if Mrs. Tomlin says you won’t be in the way.” The neighbor and her four adult sons were going out in the woods to look for the dog, pony, and peacock. Animal wrangling was serious business, too serious for two boys tagging along. 

John understood that but didn’t understand how to make Doris understand that he wasn’t like other boys, he could be trusted to behave. Last fall, before his father had gotten sick, he’d taken him out hunting the Saturday after Thanksgiving. He’d been so quiet he hadn’t scared a single deer away, though he had eaten most of the bait apples. A fact he omitted when trying to prove his stealth and maturity to Doris. 

“We’ll see after dinner I said, after dinner.” 

The heat of the bologna was slowly melting the mayo back into just an oily slick on the bread, but it was delicious all the same. John’s prediction was accurate, an apple and chips, though he hadn’t counted on half an R.C. Cola to go with it. Once his dad got better maybe he could be a foreman too and John could eat like this all the time. Maybe he’d let him buy a greyhound as well. No, the pony, he wanted the pony. Then when Roy Rogers moved back to town he could trot right up to him and say, “Dearest Lenny, it’s a most prodigious occasion having you back in this locale,” and Roy would be impressed by his maturity and also think he was an old pal of his because he used the name only Roy’s sister did. He’d tell him all the secrets about how pictures got made out in Hollywood, all the things John couldn’t read about in the encyclopedia. 

The phone rang when the boys had just about finished with their sandwiches and were expressing their excitement about the moment in the only way they could. 

“Did you know that only the males are peacocks? The females are called peahens,” Joseph began. 

“Of course. Did you know that they can fly, even with all that tail hanging down in the back?” 

“Well, yes, who doesn’t know that? Did you know that peacocks live a long time? They live longer than horned owls or puffins or even bald eagles, but not as long as albatrosses.” 

“What do you think we’ll get for dessert? You think your mom would let us have both Jell-O and pudding for dessert?” John knew when he was licked. Had he known ahead of time, he could reread the entry for peacocks, but as it was, he ceded quickly to Joseph’s superior knowledge just this once.  

“Why no, I don’t think so.” 

“Oh,” and they went back to their own thoughts while Doris continued talking on the phone. 

“Why yes, I see. Thank you. I’ll tell him.” 

She calmly placed the phone back in its cradle and looked over at the boys. 

“Johnny.” 

“Yes, Aunt Doris.” He returned her serious tone and did not correct her on his name as he usually would. His name was not Johnny, it was John, which she well knew.  

“You remember that book, Old Yeller?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Well, the same thing that happened to Old Yeller happened to your dad.” 

He was confused. His dad was in a hospital in West Virginia, so it seemed unlikely that he’d run into any rabid wolves in the cancer ward. 

He looked at Joseph for clarification. 

“I think she means your father’s dead.” 

“Well, why didn’t she just say so?” 

Joseph shrugged and they returned to their silence. 

“Do you need a hug, Johnny?” Doris held her arms out wide and moved to embrace him. 

“Not particularly, thanks.” He moved back a few paces. 

“Do you think you’d like a handkerchief?”  

“No.” 

Doris let out a long, slow breath and began clearing the dinner dishes from the table. 

When the boys announced they were going out to find the peacock she only said, “Be back in time for supper,” and didn’t try to stop them. 

Joseph went one way and John went another. He sat by the creek and waited to see if the peacock would stop by to take a drink, but there was no sign of the bird there. He went back and sat in the Double R Bar (which he had to admit was more of a hut) by himself. Still there was no peacock. At one point he heard rustling and got excited enough to poke his head through the branches, but it was just Joseph walking by. John silently retreated back into the Hut without even saying “hey.” He stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. 

When his stomach felt suppertime, he unfolded himself from his cross-legged position in the bush and walked back to the house. Joseph was already there and seated in front of the television watching the Mickey Mouse Club. 

“I thought we were still watching it together today.” Joseph said as the show’s ending credits rolled. 

“Guess not.” 

The news came on and neither felt like getting up to change the channel, so they watched until Doris called them to the table for supper. It was supposed to be pot roast, John had overheard Doris that morning telling her husband before he left for work. Instead, it was hamburgers and fried potatoes. 

“Your favorite, right Johnny?” she said as she placed the overly full plate before him. 

“I suppose so.” 

He was quiet for the remainder of the night. Doris let him stay home while everyone else went out to the Grange to talk about plans for the county fair. He didn’t even join Joseph outside to catch fireflies before bed. 

“I just don’t know Effie. Okay . . .I guess? He’s so quiet anyway, how can you tell?” He heard Doris hiss into the phone to one of his other aunts as he was brushing his teeth. 

He slept fitfully throughout the night and thought about getting up at one point to stare at the snow on the TV. He wanted to see if it looked different in color. If anyone else woke up and found him they would only ask what he was doing, which was an unappealing prospect. 

Instead, he traced the shadow of the bed’s wagon wheel on the wall with his eyes until he fell asleep. When he woke back up, he did it again. Fell asleep again. Woke up again . . . continuing until the sun began to rise. He wouldn’t get out of bed until he heard his aunt stirring in the kitchen. He lay there breathing in and out wondering what a funeral would be like. They’d probably put him in a suit and shiny shoes, an idea John didn’t much like. He hadn’t been to a funeral yet. They never showed one on Roy Rogers either. And besides, Roy was content to just shoot the gun out of the outlaw’s hand just to get his point across, no need to go so far as to kill him.  

As he thought about funerals, tight new shoes, and gunfights, there was a rustling outside the open window and John looked over to find himself eye to eye with the peacock who lifted his tail and opened his mouth, shattering the stillness with his giant bird scream. Then it screamed again. And again. By the time Doris ran into the room, the boy was crouched beside the bed breathing slowly and purposefully, one hand over his heart and the other pointing out the now empty window. 

“It’s okay Johnny, it’s okay. Let it out.” She knelt down and wrapped him in her arms. 

“We have to go get him.” 

“Now honey, you’re a big boy. You understand your daddy’s not coming back. I know you know that.” Doris huffed and held him a little less tightly. 

“No, no, not my dad,” John broke away from her embrace and ran the back of his hand across his eyes, “The peacock. The peacock is out there, we’ve got to go get him. Take him back to Mrs. Tomlin. She’ll let me pet the monkey and ride the pony, she will.” 

Doris could hardly make out what he was saying as he tried to catch some air, still breathing high and tight in his chest. 

“It’s okay to be sad.” 

Doris was an idiot. She was getting it all wrong. Why didn’t she understand about the peacock? Its call had been so loud, just so very, impossibly loud.  

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Jennifer Schomburg Kanke’s work has recently appeared in Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah, and Salamander. She is the winner of a Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Editor’s Choice Award for Fiction. Her zine about her experiences undergoing chemotherapy for ovarian cancer, Fine, Considering, is available from Rinky Dink Press (2019). Her full-length poetry collection, The Swellest Wife Anyone Ever Had, about Appalachian Ohio will be available from White Violet Press in Fall 2024. She can be found on YouTube as Meter&Mayhem.