by stillcrazy

Created on: November 07, 2008

Agnes woke to a cold, cloudy day in mid November. Laundry day. Rising from her pillow, she took a long look at the muddy sky hovering over the hilly pasture, then fell back and groaned for more sleep and even more sunshine. Both were as far away as her last youthful dream. She hugged the covers around her for a few greedy minutes, hoping a sliver of sunlight would tease the soreness out of her seventy-three-year old bones, but none came so she crawled from under the layer of quilts. The farmhouse was eerily quiet as she traipsed, barefoot and freezing, through the naked hallway to the kitchen. Within the usual minutes, she had the furnace fired up, the coffee pot humming on the gas stove, and had started for the bathroom to dress when a cardinal flew to the window beside the kitchen table.

The feathered, red soldier of song and winter peered in as if he could see her and only her. Agnes loved birds. Not enough to go in search of them with binoculars draped around her neck like her Charlie sometime did. No, she wasn't interested in the science of birds. Only the poetry of them. Her interest was just enough so that when one crossed her path, she'd stop and look. Her heart would curtain off the world, thereby, silencing its heartaches.

Dressing could wait and so could the laundry, Agnes decided on the spur of the moment and eased down into a kitchen chair as quietly as possible so not to frighten the bird. A chill lingered under her skin so she worked her chenille robe tighter around her skinny frame until she looked like a wispy caterpillar content inside its worn, warm cocoon. At this point, Charlie would be full of information, telling her all about the cardinals' habits, what they ate, what their nests looked like, and so forth and so on. One thing he had told her that made the cardinal her favorite was that they mated for life.

"I didn't know that," she had told Charlie one morning when he gave her the news over coffee. "How did I live forty five years and never know that."

She remembered him chuckling. "That's what I'm here for, Agnes. To educate you."

"Umph, I thought it was my chicken and dumplings."

His smile had warmed the room. "That, too."

It had been a while since Agnes felt the wrinkles on her face stretch into a smile. She didn't have to sit long before the red bird trilled into the morning dreariness, his song so sweet and clear, Agnes was sure it would lure the sun, but it didn't. No matter. The sunless sky wouldn't change her plans. Laundry day was

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