From the Hilltop

Killing Elvis

day eight Ditches wide and dark all around, fog thick enough for a hundred spoons, and my friend Jeffrey watches a blackbird who is not watching him back. Technically, Jeffrey is not my friend,is instead my husband,and the bird,though it is black, may not be a blackbird. Jeffrey is the one who knows about birds, who can call them what they are, but he’s leaning over this one and its broken beak, and he’s crying. I want to know if it’s a blackbird, raven, or crow, and how I might know the difference, but Jeffrey is stomping around the ditch, his dark hair flying, and Raven or crow? seems like the wrong question. Jeffrey was my biology lab instructor six years ago, back in college, and we’ve been together since. I’ve seen him yell, have heard him curse in Anishinaabemowin and English,but this is the first time I’ve seen him cry. To say it’s a spectacle Killing Elvis Killing Elvis 94 would be making it small. He’s kicking the sides of the ditch. He’s holding his round face in his hands, shaking it side to side,stretching the freckles.His breath comes in hiccups,and his shoulders shake in time with the idling of our pickup but out of sync with Elvis who is still on the radio, singing about wise men, fools, love. Jeffrey is yelling, I hate you, and I am glad it is not quite seven a.m., that the two-lane is empty of all but us and the bird we’ve hit.If no one sees this,does it happen? My mother’s voice says, No, of course not. Close your eyes, but I don’t. The Bitterroot Mountains hover beyond, the big darkness that is Montana all around.I know Elk Mountain stands to the north with Mt. Snowy to the west and Lookout Pass to the south. My vote is to go east, to drive as fast as we can until the prairie opens up and short grass tickles my ankles and I can take a deep,full,Minnesota breath.Montana is dangerous.We are fresh out of a tent and our honeymoon, and I’m standing in front of the truck, trying to decide whether to put my hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder or to step back into the cab and quietly close the door when Jeffrey stops spinning and kicking and kneels over the bird. I move in behind him, the dew from the tall grass on my pant legs. I wrap my arms around his waist and lean in. I could cut it open, I say. I could tell you what he had for a last meal. I want Jeffrey to laugh, to close his eyes and forget where we’ve just been.His father lives ten miles back down the twolane in a town called Thompson Falls.Before this trip,Jeffrey hadn’t tried to see his father in nine years, since the last time his father got out of prison. Killing Elvis 95 Jeffrey sits down in the ditch next to the bird,and I sit next to him. Nothing in our eight days of marriage has prepared me for this,but I take his hands from his face anyway.I thread my fingers through his, feel the cool metal of his ring against skin.Wrappers from a gas station sandwich wrinkle and curl around our feet and knees. I kick away a Coke can and bend to kiss the underside of his wrists. The shaking has slowed so it’s more like an occasional jerk or seizure. Steak, I say. I’ll bet he had a steak sandwich and a Coke. Jeffrey takes his hands from mine and puts them back on his face. The grass is cold and damp through my jeans, and he topples over so his head is in my lap. The fog lifts some, and his face shines pale and spotted under the sun’s first weak light. Unlikely, he says. I run my hand through his hair, feathering it back, knowing it will flip forward, back to how it was before I touched it. He doesn’t like me to play with his hair, and his shoulders shift and squirm beneath me. But possible, I say. I want to say, Crows are common. I want to say...