Fall 2007 / Spring 2008

Catching Cardinals

by Kristin Naca

—Annandale, Virginia

For a week, dusty, plastic sacks of birdseed stacked up in a kitchen corner.
Then parts of his booby-trap: spools of white cotton twine, two-by-fours
he'd nail into a box frame and laced with wide-tooth chicken wire peeled
off a thorny ream at the Hechinger's hardware store. Out of nowhere came

the gold-plated cage where he kept his reward, and years later he'd keep
a pet cockatoo that he hung in the kitchen to talk to while we ate.
The night before, he carved bread into squares with scissors. In the morning,
I woke up. A dew of coffee, menthol cigarette smoke and sweat whirled

as I dashed to a basement window to watch my father and brother,
at the base of the yard, ready to rip the cord and walk away red bird in hand.
Every so often, Father lugged himself up the porch steps, arms bloody
from wrestling blackbirds from his trap. How it took hours, even days,

for them to came away with Father's prize. When they did, I remember
I looked at his bird and wondered why keeping this wild thing was so important—
as it howled, bled and shoved its beak through the rods, into the unbound air.