A Boneyard of Laughter-Silvered Wings
By Dana Chamblee Carpenter
Piper sat high in the sycamore watching her house burn. She wasn’t sad about it.
A half-mile west, the schoolhouse burned a brighter orange along the horizon like another setting sun. A thin, dark line of clouds pulled taut between the two balls of flame, near and far.
The tender skin of her legs slid along the cool, smooth bark of the straddled limb as she turned toward the growing dark. The tiny post office, Pop’s General Store, a dozen homes sprinkled between the highway and Village Creek—all gone to fire and ash. Katydids that hadn’t burned, warbled out an evening call, and left-behind lightning bugs ventured out into the smoky dusk, flickering questions. Piper shoved her hand into the leather satchel slung across her back and pulled out an old rosewood recorder that had belonged to her mother’s mother’s mother. She played “Greensleeves” for the survivors as night fell on the last fiery throes of Moran, Arkansas.
Sacrifices were expected in a time of war. The only home Piper had ever known would become an Army airbase to train new pilots to send overseas to avenge those lost at Pearl Harbor. That’s what her daddy said at supper one night weeks ago. Early next morning, he packed his family into the truck, his pocket crammed with the cash he’d gotten for the house. Daddy and Mama and Piper’s eight younger siblings had rattled away, wakes of dust rolling like thunderheads around her as she watched them go.
There wasn’t room for her.
Piper wasn’t angry or scared about it. Or if she was, she didn’t know how to show it. She knew from studying other folks when she ought to be happy or afraid. But it was like playing Simon Says. Simon says smile, Simon says frown, wiggle waggle. Simon says cry. She just couldn’t get the knack of it on her own.
What Piper had a knack for was machines. It wasn’t something she decided to be good at—she didn’t really work that way. In her life, something just was. Or it wasn’t.
A year back, she’d come home after school one day to find an untidy trail of parts and tools out back of the house that led to her daddy’s pickup, hood lifted, doors agape as if it were panicking, screaming, its mouth wide. Piper reckoned she’d scream too if her innards were spilled hither and yon. She set to work, gathering bits of truck and tool, compelled by a need to stop its suffering. She flung herself over the grille and looked down at the puzzle of metal and tubes and wires. She just seemed to know where the parts belonged.
“Get out from there, girl.”
Piper had gone still at the sound of her daddy’s voice. She wasn’t afraid. She just knew what was coming. Smiling at the put-back-together engine, she dug her feet into the dirt and twisted out from under the hood.
“What the hell did you do?” He wasn’t yelling. He hardly ever did.
“I fixed the truck.” She stared off at the pigpen just past her daddy’s shoulder. Piper didn’t much like to look people in the eyes.
“What you did was undo the heap of work I done already. Now I got to take it all apart again.”
His voice got tight like a fresh-strung clothesline. “No sir, you don’t.”
“What’s that?”
“I fixed it,” she said again.
“You ain’t done no such thing.”
She knew better than to say more. She just stood there until he finally tossed himself into the cab of the truck with a laugh. He was laughing at her. He laughed as he slapped at the gas valve and turned the ignition and yanked the choke. He stopped laughing when the truck came to life on the third turn of the engine.
Quick as a blink, he was out of the cab, fingers dug into the back of her neck. “Some boy teach you to do that?”
“The truck told me.”
She said it as quiet as she could. She knew it’d make him mad, but Piper didn’t know how to tell a lie. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to—life would’ve been easier if she could’ve lied about most everything. But Piper had only ever told what she knew to be true, bare-naked, though she’d learned to say it soft.
Saying it soft didn’t matter to her daddy. To be fair, it didn’t matter to most folks.
Until that moment with the truck, Piper had lived in a world of dissonance, as if everyone around her were a half-note sharp or flat. Or maybe she was the one off-key. She’d given up trying to understand. Best she could figure, there wasn’t any way to make a harmony between her and everybody else. But setting the truck to rights made her feel quiet and easy like the bass at the back of Glenn Miller’s “The White Cliffs of Dover”—nothing anybody’d ever notice unless they were listening for it, but a part of the tune all the same.
Now everything was silent. Ash and ember and gone.
Piper sighed as she lifted the sycamore branch above her to eye the harvest moon rising. She couldn’t see them from her tree—the machines come to build the base—but they were there, sleeping in the same disheveled night as she.
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Piper sat high in the sycamore watching her house burn. She wasn’t sad about it.
A half-mile west, the schoolhouse burned a brighter orange along the horizon like another setting sun. A thin, dark line of clouds pulled taut between the two balls of flame, near and far.
The tender skin of her legs slid along the cool, smooth bark of the straddled limb as she turned toward the growing dark. The tiny post office, Pop’s General Store, a dozen homes sprinkled between the highway and Village Creek—all gone to fire and ash. Katydids that hadn’t burned, warbled out an evening call, and left-behind lightning bugs ventured out into the smoky dusk, flickering questions. Piper shoved her hand into the leather satchel slung across her back and pulled out an old rosewood recorder that had belonged to her mother’s mother’s mother. She played “Greensleeves” for the survivors as night fell on the last fiery throes of Moran, Arkansas.
Sacrifices were expected in a time of war. The only home Piper had ever known would become an Army airbase to train new pilots to send overseas to avenge those lost at Pearl Harbor. That’s what her daddy said at supper one night weeks ago. Early next morning, he packed his family into the truck, his pocket crammed with the cash he’d gotten for the house. Daddy and Mama and Piper’s eight younger siblings had rattled away, wakes of dust rolling like thunderheads around her as she watched them go.
There wasn’t room for her.
Piper wasn’t angry or scared about it. Or if she was, she didn’t know how to show it. She knew from studying other folks when she ought to be happy or afraid. But it was like playing Simon Says. Simon says smile, Simon says frown, wiggle waggle. Simon says cry. She just couldn’t get the knack of it on her own.
What Piper had a knack for was machines. It wasn’t something she decided to be good at—she didn’t really work that way. In her life, something just was. Or it wasn’t.
A year back, she’d come home after school one day to find an untidy trail of parts and tools out back of the house that led to her daddy’s pickup, hood lifted, doors agape as if it were panicking, screaming, its mouth wide. Piper reckoned she’d scream too if her innards were spilled hither and yon. She set to work, gathering bits of truck and tool, compelled by a need to stop its suffering. She flung herself over the grille and looked down at the puzzle of metal and tubes and wires. She just seemed to know where the parts belonged.
“Get out from there, girl.”
Piper had gone still at the sound of her daddy’s voice. She wasn’t afraid. She just knew what was coming. Smiling at the put-back-together engine, she dug her feet into the dirt and twisted out from under the hood.
“What the hell did you do?” He wasn’t yelling. He hardly ever did.
“I fixed the truck.” She stared off at the pigpen just past her daddy’s shoulder. Piper didn’t much like to look people in the eyes.
“What you did was undo the heap of work I done already. Now I got to take it all apart again.”
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Each paragraph will flow naturally from the left column into the right column, just like a print journal layout. Screen readers will still read top to bottom in correct order.
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Piper sat high in the sycamore watching her
house burn. She wasn’t sad about it.
A half-mile west, the schoolhouse burned a
brighter orange along the horizon like another
setting sun. A thin, dark line of clouds pulled
taut between the two balls of flame, near and far.
The tender skin of her legs slid along the
cool, smooth bark of the straddled limb as she
turned toward the growing dark. The tiny post
office, Pop’s General Store, a dozen homes
sprinkled between the highway and Village Creek
—all gone to fire and ash. Katydids that hadn’t
burned, warbled out an evening call, and left-
behind lightning bugs ventured out into the smoky
dusk, flickering questions. Piper shoved her hand
into the leather satchel slung across her back and
pulled out an old rosewood recorder that had
belonged to her mother’s mother’s mother. She
played “Greensleeves” for the survivors as night
fell on the last fiery throes of Moran, Arkansas.
Sacrifices were expected in a time of war.
The only home Piper had ever known would
become an Army airbase to train new pilots to
send overseas to avenge those lost at Pearl Harbor.
That’s what her daddy said at supper one
night weeks ago. Early next morning, he packed
his family into the truck, his pocket crammed
with the cash he’d gotten for the house. Daddy
and Mama and Piper’s eight younger siblings had
rattled away, wakes of dust rolling like thunderheads
around her as she watched them go.
There wasn’t room for her.
Piper wasn’t angry or scared about it. Or if
she was, she didn’t know how to show it. She