The Wild Birds

below in a jagged line westward toward the ocean—the slimmest of remnant green corridors for the songbirds, insects,

The Northern Harrier flew higher than usual above the fence line, catching an updraft off the hillside and letting the warm air loft her into the sky.

travel from the valley all the way to the Pacific. The bird let her senses take in the immensity, as it is not just humans who find pleasu

them all, and in Lily’s fifteen years of life they had gone through Moo Cat, White Cat, Fatfac

hands some sort of divine creature. The manic intensity in her mother’s voice made Lily brace for a fall. She knew this phase well.
The word “divine” was secularly defined in their house but used often. Wine was divine, film was divine, books and music were divine. These moments received the heavenly, swirling crescendo of her mother’s contagious enthusiasm. Lily’s outfit from her first day of high school of ripped jeans and an old Pendleton wool shirt, or her black nail polish and matching lipstick and attitude—not so divine, according to Alice. Lily’s sass about her mother’s opinion on such matters, also less than divine. This decrescendo could be steep. For Alice, divinity was really a matter of opinion, and people should understand that on her farm, in her world, her opinion was the only one that counted. The orchestra of whim and wonderment was not to be conducted by anyone other than herself.
At the suggestion of a divine creature, Lily simply nodded with a clenched jaw and said, “Divinity is really in the eye of the beholder. Isn’t that what you always say?”
Alice smiled and put her arm around her much smaller daughter as they walked back toward the house. Something caught Alice’s eye and she stopped to check out a small oval-shaped black sore on the trunk of one of the hazelnut trees, her mood shifting further out of orbit.
“Goddamn it. Damn fucking dammit.” She turned to her daughter with her finger still on the sore. “This fungus is going to kill my trees and then me, I swear.”
“Yes, you do swear. That will be a dollar twenty-five since noon,” Lily said. “Leave it. Come inside and eat something.” The turn in her mother’s voice released a familiar turn in Lily’s stomach. The pitch up in tone indicated she would soon be swinging wildly down from her happy place, and the mere thought of it made Lily’s shoulders tense up.
“Dammit all.” Alice sighed as they approached the old two-story white house, listing on its foundation a little more every year. She waved her daughter into the house without really looking at her. “I just want to put out some oranges for the tanagers, then I’ll be right in.”
“Bird nerd your heart out,” Lily said, letting the screen door slam behind her.
Alice picked up the oranges she’d set on the deck railing and sliced them with a deer-dressing knife she produced from her pocket, the blade flicking open with dangerous grace. She pulled