The Death and Life of a Goldfinch

Ashlyn Arneson

It had been nine years since Ralph’s death. One minute he was soaring through the air, the wind gently lifting his wings and rustling his feathers, his legs tucked up into his little body so as to not slow him down. A crack to his head had Ralph falling to the ground with a small stone dropping next to him.

He had stared at that tiny stone in his final moments, as the energy drained out of him and a coldness replaced it. The yellow down at his neck slowly stained red. His wing gave a few final weak flutters, a desperate attempt to return to the air, but was held back by the rest of Ralph’s immobile body. He kept his eye trained on that rock until his lungs could no longer fill and his limbs could no longer twitch.

A young man dropped to the ground beside the small bird. He picked up the pebble first, glad that he hadn’t lost his ammunition. He then wrapped his fist tightly around Ralph’s body, prepared for any resistance. When the bird didn’t even twitch, the man was relieved he wouldn’t have to wring the creature’s neck, relieved the bird had died instantly.

To Ralph’s horror, he soon discovered he was the subject of the young man’s new hobby. He would not end up as one of the creatures in the woods with their bodies torn apart by nature until there was nothing left belonging to himself. Instead, there were a few weeks spent in a freezer, surrounded by slabs of beef and venison wrapped in parchment. It was dark almost all the time. Once in a while, the man would open the door to pull out something for dinner. He would stand over Ralph for a minute before stroking a finger over the bright yellow feathers through the plastic bag that sealed the bird away.

When the man had finally made his preparations, Ralph found himself removed from the freezer bag and pinned to a large oak table. He was taken apart and put back together, at least, most of the way. When the man was done, Ralph was posed as though he was about to take flight. His pose and delicately fluffed feathers hid the thread and wire crudely

holding him together.

Ralph’s perch was next to the window in the man’s shop. Over the next few years, he watched the man craft almost anything a human could want or need. From furniture to leatherwork and even to book repair, Ralph watched over as the man created oneof-a-kind pieces every day. Though it was satisfying to see the large, callused hands form graceful chairs and unique chess boards, there was a certain vindication when a piece failed. One extra slip of the wood carver or a mismeasured leg of a chair would send the man into a fit of rage. Ralph was more sympathetic towards the failed projects that were destroyed or discarded than the frustrations of the man who had killed him.

Ralph’s resentment was especially sharp on the days when another creature would end up pinned on the table. Beavers, raccoons, and even a fox once would be laid out and find their end as Ralph had. He would watch as they were precisely flayed and cleaned. Their bones picked clean, and their innards discarded into a bucket to be replaced with cotton. It was never easy to watch the once wild animals become forcefully domesticated, but one mercy was that there wasn’t another bird after Ralph.

The one point he could never watch was in removing the eyes. At first, the man had used cheap black beads like what now sat where Ralph’s eyes had once been. As the man honed his craft, he began ordering special fake eyeballs that, to Ralph, felt more lifeless than the beads. Most disturbing was the imitation of life that inherently lacked everything that had made the creature alive. The soulless stares of a mountain lion and a bear watched over the workshop from the other end of the room as Ralph. He never looked in their direction but felt the neverending weight of the predators’ stares.

On the days an animal appeared on the table, Ralph began to simply look the other way to the window. Across the pane of glass, just a dozen feet away, stood three bird feeders that never ran empty. All day, birds of all colors and sizes would happen upon the boxes of seed and excitedly stop mid-flight to pluck at the food. Sometimes, they would eat until they stuffed themselves and fly away, only to return an hour later with a friend before attacking the seed once again.

Ralph wasn’t sure if watching the birds was better or worse than watching the taxidermizing. One he wished he could live a thousand times again, and the other, he wished he could forget.

It was the second, or maybe the third year after Ralph’s death when a spot

of yellow peaked around the birdhouse, its beak working happily at the seed spilling from the box. A gust of wind sent the feeder swinging and the tiny bird flapping its wings to stay on the ledge. As its wings unfurled, Ralph recognized a unique black feather tucked between the brightest yellow of the wings. The bird steadied itself and took a few more pecks before swiveling its head in the sure sign it was about to take flight. Ralph wished more than ever that he could make a noise or jump to get the other bird’s attention. Alas, the bird on the feeder unfurled its signifying wings and pushed off with its legs before disappearing back into the forest.

That was the last time Ralph saw his brother.

About four years after Ralph’s death, the peaceful routine of the home was shattered by a single baby human’s wail. Well, actually, it was many wails, all through the days and frequently breaking the silent nights. Ralph found that he didn’t mind the miniature human that now dominated the small home. The man now spent his days feeding and cleaning and playing with the baby instead of destroying and rebuilding forest creatures.

Ralph’s new favorite time was in the middle of the night when the man would come into his workshop with the baby held tightly to his chest. The baby was sometimes crying, and he would watch as the man bounced around in the low lamplight, making odd noises in rhythm with his movement until the baby conceded and quieted. Usually, the man carried a bottle that he would hold to the baby’s mouth as he rocked his torso back and forth. Ralph began to see the man’s massive hands as gentle instead of brutal. Instead of his form being tense and vicious as it was with his tools, he seemed kind and nurturing with the child in his arms. The man would stand in front of Ralph’s window, and the small human would stare at the yellow bird until its eyes could no longer stay open.

As the years passed, the little boy’s fascination with Ralph only grew, as did Ralph’s fascination with the boy. By the time he could walk, the boy would toddle after his father into the workshop. His legs grew too fast for his small body, so his gait was wobbly, unlike the confident stride of his father. The boy had a small rug by the window with a box of small wooden tools that imitated those that his father used across the room.

Ralph watched as he mimicked the hammering and sawing on a plain wood block. When the fake tools did nothing to form the wood, his father’s temper would manifest as he threw the tools to the ground with a clatter. He would take a minute to glare at the tools before dramatically sighing and putting his work away. The boy somehow made having a temper endearing instead of frightening.

Unlike his father, the boy was easily deterred from his work. A new bird would visit the feeders, and the boy would rush to the window and smudge the glass with his little hands and nose. He was gifted a book of native birds for his fourth birthday, so Ralph became his captive audience to his newfound bird knowledge. It became a little routine whenever a new bird came past the window for the little boy to run over to Ralph’s perch with his book and flip through the pages until he found the matching photo. He would hold the book up to Ralph and try to sound out the names with his limited reading abilities.

Ralph found joy in the little boy’s enthusiasm over other birds. If he couldn’t be out there with them, at least he had someone as excited to see the birds as he was. This routine carried on almost daily for months. Until one day, the boy stopped appearing in the workshop.

Almost exactly eight years since Ralph had been placed on his perch, he moved for the first time. It was nearing dusk with the golden sunset having just dipped below the horizon when the man entered his workshop heading directly towards the yellow bird. He wasn’t dressed in the thick flannel and rough pants he wore when he worked but had on a tattered burgundy sweater that emphasized the redness of his eyes. He gingerly picked up Ralph and stared into his plastic eyes with a weary sigh that shook his full body.

For the first time, Ralph experienced the rest of the small cabin as he was carried from the workshop to a small room at the opposite end of the house. The only light in the room came from a nightlight on the bedside table that projected stars onto the ceiling. Ralph was placed next to the nightlight facing the mound of blankets and pillows on the bed. A small movement revealed a little face and hand buried in the pile. The little boy cracked his eyes open, and upon seeing his favorite bird, let a weak smile grace his lips.

Then a noise emerged from the boy’s tiny body, more aggressive and terrifying than any wild animal Ralph had encountered during his

life. If Ralph could have whipped his head around in shock, he would have at that moment. Again, the noise sounded, and the boy’s face contorted in pain. It appeared to Ralph that he had something stuck in his chest. He pressed his fists to his heart and curled in on himself as another fit of coughs possessed him.

The little boy didn’t stop making the horrendous noises, even though it appeared to cause him immense pain. For almost a week, Ralph stood guard at his bedside. His coughing began to produce blood, and the boy was barely able to eat or drink. He spent the time when the pain and coughing subsided gazing at his yellow bird. Eventually, one night, the coughing subsided, and the movement of blankets from the boy’s breaths slowed and slowed and stopped.

Ralph was left in the dark staring at the rumpled sheets on the small empty bed. At first, there had been a flurry of delicate but rushed activity. The man cried over his child’s body for hours as it slowly cooled. An old woman Ralph had never seen before but who had the same blonde hair as the man and his son came in and cried with him. Once their sobs subsided to silent tears, the woman stood and led the man out of the room. Another man entered shortly after and gently positioned and placed the boy’s body in a massive black bag before taking him away from his home and favorite yellow bird forever. The last image Ralph had of the boy was his hands uncharacteristically still and folded over his chest, the sharp features on his face tinged with blue. No one returned to remove Ralph.

The bird perched on the nightstand, listening to the faint sounds of the man wandering around the cabin. He heard the distinct noise of smashing wood echo from the direction of the workshop, but this time it was often followed by howling sobs. Ralph wondered if the boy would end up on the workshop table like Ralph and so many others had. He was almost glad to be secluded, alone in his sorrows.

Ralph didn’t know how much time had passed before the door to the bedroom finally opened. In the doorway stood the man, now with a full beard sporadically decorating his chin. The strands stretched out in every direction, as if they were looking for any way to escape the man whose face they were attached to. The man went to the bed and sat on the sheets that by appearance could still be warm as if someone had

vacated them only minutes ago. A shiver shook his broad shoulders.

The man stared at the bright yellow bird reflecting the sparse light from the doorway. Reaching out a hand, he gripped Ralph the same way he had that first time as if the bird that had been moved only once in ten years would finally flap his wired wings and escape. The man clutched the bird to his chest as another fit of sobs wracked his large frame. A single teardrop escaped the trails now running down the man’s face. Ralph felt the wetness stain the feathers at his neck once again.

The man returned Ralph to his perch that day. There was an odd tension to the man, and he spent every waking hour working at his table. He almost missed the dark seclusion of the boy’s room. He watched the man desperately throw himself into his work and tried instead to focus on the birds flocking to the seed. Even in his grief, the man did not let the feeders run empty. Each time one of the boy’s birds returned, Ralph expected the patter of small feet and the flipping of pages to find the matching photo.

The man had started to take more time to watch the birds. He would drag the stool from his workbench to the window to sit with Ralph as the living birds swooped in and out of the yard. One day, a brilliant red cardinal landed on the corner of the largest feeder. It sat for a long while, twitching its head at different sounds and smells and shifting its feet when the wind moved its perch. Ralph and the man sat together, observing the sight that would have had the little boy pointing and jumping.

The cardinal made a movement signaling its impending flight, and in an instant, the man had the window thrown open and a loaded slingshot in his hand. Ralph had been so mesmerized by the flashy bird; he hadn’t even seen the man dig the weapon from the back of a drawer. It was just a single breath for the man, a twitch of his fingers, and Ralph watched the unsuspecting bird crumple to the ground at the rock’s impact. Its wings feebly flapped, and its beak gave one final click before stilling.