The Best Medicine

"Can you hear it?" Grandmother asked.

"Hear what?" I was too busy working a nail out of the cracked wood of the porch. It was so weathered that you couldn't even tell what used to be surface and what used to be inside.

Firefly light lit Grandmother's face as she turned to look down at me, smiling. "The Feathered Men are coming, Susie."

Her voice was like honeyed branches breaking, and after my name the wind picked up. It bent the willow trees at the edge of the property, the two that flanked the gravel path to the sidewalk. Across the street Jennifer Azman's house slumped, as drunk as Jennifer's Dad, who left the TV on again. Whenever people asked about him, Jennifer would say he was sick, and that was why he couldn't come out. We all knew the truth Jennifer and her mother lied around, but we were polite enough not to say anything. We could see the poison-blue tv-light flashing from inside the house like a warning in reverse.

Wind again.

The overgrown weeds bent in modest supplication to the night breeze, tickling the toads that squatted at their roots. They croaked in protest, and the fireflies, alarmed, took off into the moonless night.

They threw green-lit shadows over the front porch, where Grandmother and I sat, her in her chair, I on the faded Hello Kitty beach towel next to her. Grandmother considered a rocking chair far too fancy for her tastes, but the ancient chair made of the same wood as the rest of the porch rocked and creaked all the same.

"Who are the . . ." I began before Grandmother put her hand to my mouth. It smelled of canola oil and trout--Jim and Travis had caught fish today and Grandmother and I were left to cook them. They were unreliable big brothers at best, but their habit of spending a day doing nothing coincided well with fishing.

"Shhhh . . ." said Grandmother and the Feather Men came.

I saw them by streetlight and nothing else. In the orange light, they walked, taller than Mr. Tremaine down at the grocery store, who could reach our gutters with no ladder. They didn't walk like Mr. Tremaine, though, who, though eighty, was as spry as he was when he was twenty, according to Grandmother. They walked like Joseph Hardy, who came back from the war missing a leg and his smile.

Slump-bump. Slump-bump. Slump-bump.

That was their rhythm. Slump-bump. One long leg would come down, bent with one more knee than normal, then they were stop for a second, hunch over, then bring their other leg over. They walked from the edge of town down our street, from the left to the right, coming from the west. Coming down Hansen Street.

Slump-bump. Slump-bump.

They wore formal coats, that must have once been fine. Grandmother keeps a coat like that in the attic. She says it belonged to my Grandfather--I've never met the man, so I can't confirm. Unlike the attic coat, which was dusty, but had a shine hidden deep in the threads, these were covered in feathers.

White feathers, black feathers, brown feathers. Here and there a red feather, a blue feather. Their coats were covered with them, from the tails that flapped in the wind to the cuffs that they held up close to their chests. Their faces were simple things, like painted-over cereal boxes, black and square, with holes poked in their broad sides for their eyes.

Slump-bump. Slump-bump.

They walked in single file, in perfect order, walking in perfect time. The toads stopped croaking, but the fireflies still swirled, though they kept their distance from the Feather Men. In front of our house, where the streetlight was out, the Feather Men disappeared for twelve steps (I know because I measured it myself the next morning). They came back, still marching in perfect time under the next streetlight.

I felt something sting my arm, and I swatted at it on instinct. The mosquito was a smear when I lifted my hand, my blood a black smudge on my forearm. The Feather Men stopped as one, and one, the one nearest to the willow tree on the right turned to look at me. I saw something move deep inside its box-hole eyes, and something inside me went cold. I remembered the day when I came home and I could hear the water running upstairs in the apartment. They day when Mother didn't come downstairs. The day we all came to live with Grandmother. In those cereal-box-hole eyes, I saw what I saw between the blocking bodies of my brothers, under the arms of the other adults that kept me from the room.

I felt Grandmother's hand on the top of my head. The distraction was what I needed to break away from the Feather Man's eyes. I looked up at Grandmother, who was frowning at the Feather Man. Slowly, like the hands moving around a clock, it turned back to its fellows and they began their walk again.

They crossed the street in a single line. No cars came down the street--the cars knew better, even if their drivers didn't. They disappeared at the double-line, but came back on the other side, just outside of Jennifer's house. They walked up the garage path, and to the front door. The first Feathered Man put a gloved hand to the doorknob and it turned under his grip. One by one, the Feathered Men walked into Jennifer's house.

I didn't know why, but I started to sob. Jennifer wasn't a close friend. I went to school with her, and didn't really know her. But she had the close association of living next door, which to grown-ups, made her a friend, though children know better than to mistake proximity for affinity. When the last of the Feathered Men walked inside Jennifer's house, Grandmother picked me up, towel and all, and held me to her bony chest. Her arms were thin but strong, made iron-like by years of packing fish into cans.

When the Feathered Men came back out, I was done crying. Two of them carried bundles in their arms, wrapped in the same feather-covered fabric of their coats. I saw the people inside. I didn't want to see them as they twitched and jerked, but my eyes were stuck open with dried tears. I saw them walk back down Hansen Street, all the way down to where there were no streetlights and they disappeared, bundles and all.

Slump-bump. Slump-bump.

Jennifer didn't come to school the next day. Her mother wasn't seen at the grocery store. Three days later, the police came for Jennifer's father, and took him away. They school came alive with a hundred buzzing rumors, each told with more gruesome gusto than the last. None of them were right. None of them knew about the Feathered Men.

Slump-bump. Slump-bump.