the birds

On December third, the wind changed overnight and it was winter. Until

then the autumn had been mellow, soft. The earth was rich where the plow

had turned it.

Nat Hocken, because of a wartime disability, had a pension and did not

work full time at the farm. He worked three days a week, and they gave him

the lighter jobs. Although he was married, with children, his was a solitary

disposition; he liked best to work alone.

It pleased him when he was given a bank to build up, or a gate to mend,

at the far end of the peninsula, where the sea surrounded the farmland on

either side. Then, at midday, he would pause and eat the meat pie his wife had

baked for him and, sitting on the cliff’s edge, watch the birds.

In autumn great flocks of them came to the peninsula, restless, uneasy,

spending themselves in motion; now wheeling, circling the sky; now settling to

feed on the rich, new-turned soil; but even when they fed, it was as though

they did so without hunger, without desire.

Restlessness drove them to the skies again. Crying, whistling, calling,

they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore.

Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what

purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon

them, and they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.

Perhaps, thought Nat, a message comes to the birds in autumn, like a

warning. Winter is coming. Many of them will perish. And like people who,

apprehensive of death before their time, drive themselves to work or folly, the

birds do likewise; tomorrow we shall die.

The birds had been more restless than every this fall of the year. Their

agitation more remarked because the days were still.

As Mr. Trigg’s tractor traced its path up and down the western hills, and

Nat, hedging, saw it dip and turn, the whole machine and man upon it were

momentarily lost in the