Mistaken for a large duck, she was eaten on Memorial Day. Aunty cooked, crispy skin with roast potatoes and greens, not asking where the boys had found it, no comment on the state of the neck. Once scalded, the smell of shit and earth until plucked and shucked, the pink body a pockmarked mess of feather and oil. It fed them all plus leftovers, and only the one, no royal forty at Winchester required, though the incense might have clouded the scent, might have hidden that peculiar tang of fish. In the nest, cygnets whistled and trilled, honouring the dead under spangled flags and barbeque smoke and the hiss-bang of fireworks, their gunfire salvo rippling across the emptied pond. In Celtic myth, a pair of swans steered the Sunboat across heaven; in Norse, two drank from the sacred well of Asgard, the water so pure it turned all that touched it white. In Manlius, a southeast suburb of Syracuse, Faye was spit-fried and stuffed into buns, babies sold to a pet store downtown. Through the late spring evenings, her mate screeched across the water, a threnody of violence and hunger that unsettled cicadas and cricket frogs, pulled away all the quiet noise from the sky.
The Death of Faye
Photo © Amy Dupcak. All rights reserved.
