Migration of the Sandhill Cranes by Lisa Thornton

The North Platte River was nearly dry, long sand banks exposed. She watched a guy in a Funyuns T-shirt eating Cheetos gas up his Penske. Passing a semi, her husband pointed at the words Isaiah 50:3 written in dirt on the back door. I do, she had said last week and so had he a few hundred miles back where the sky didn’t take up so much space.

They spotted brown cows and black cows out the windows. The smell of manure was sharp, and bright yellow grass shone in the spring sun. His ring glinted every time he took a sip of Pepsi. She wiggled her finger, slyly so he wouldn’t see, and her diamond fractured the light into purples, yellows, and blues. They were not due on the west coast until next week. The lease on their apartment began the day before he started his new job. She would decorate and then find work. The pictures showed a clean two bedroom, though she knew the word “cozy” in the description meant uncomfortably small. 

A warbling cacophony of sandhill cranes flew overhead in long Vs, flapping like broken umbrellas let go in a strong wind, tipping their big, pale blue wings this way and that and bumping into each other. “The birds rest here on their way north,” the front desk girl told them when they stopped for the night. They would all be gone by April.

A pamphlet in the lobby said the cranes slept on long legs in the river and showed the way to a viewing platform. They followed the map at twilight and walked the wooden path to what was left of the river where many people were gathered. Here they come, shouted an idiot in a Panama hat and the low-flying V swerved. She knew they would never be like that. They would keep their voices down. They wouldn’t scare off wildlife.

The next morning, they headed west again. In this season before things woke up, bare tree branches reached up like witch fingers toward the sky. She saw a dead skunk on the side of the road, white stripe on black fur waving in the wind. It was impossible to believe the brilliant yellow fields were not lit from within. “Look, a cow on that hill,” she said. “A fake one, a cut-out.” “That’s a buffalo,” he said. “Look, a buffalo on that hill,” she said. “A fake one, a cut-out.” White bulls with wide horns and rippling muscles stood next to wire fences. They listened to Bob Dylan tunes, the soft ones she preferred with lulling harmonicas from after his motorcycle accident when maybe he just wanted to heal instead of pointing out everyone else’s faults.

She loved to see horses and cows together in a field. Did they know they were different? Hawks soared above, wings white underneath, temporary second fiddles to the giant, clumsy cranes. The land was so dry the dust from one car on a dirt frontage road looked like a tornado approaching. “Eventually no one will live here,” he said, shaking his head at the pitiful South Platte. “Someday this will all burn down and be dust.” “People will go somewhere else,” she said with the end of the sentence lifted like a question, but he looked straight ahead.

They passed billboards for a petrified wood art gallery, Buffalo Bill’s ranch, a Days Inn. A Sapp Bros giant coffee pot stood on four long, steel legs beckoning. The Fat Dog gas station had a subtitle under its name that read You Are Nowhere. Haystacks like giant toilet paper rolls cast oval shadows onto the grass. Sometimes she wondered if all her husband saw were shadows. It didn’t matter, though, because whatever he lacked, she would make up for. Together, they would reach equilibrium. Their new life would also be lit from within.

The pamphlet said the cranes had been landing in this area for thousands of years. She tried to imagine this place that long ago. She tried to imagine what it would feel like to be visited by skies of wild birds every year. A lucky hostess, a blessed life. And she considered having the responsibility of keeping the land healthy so the birds would keep coming. Of being a steward. “Not all of them will make it,” her husband said, watching Vs land in fields to spend the day eating bugs and seeds. “Most of them will,” she replied.

Ten chipping white silos pushed together like cigarettes in a pack stood tall spelling out B-I-G S-P-R-I-N-G-S, one capital letter on each. In their new apartment, she daydreamed they would listen after dinner to songs about moonshine and the ocean. They stopped at a crossing and watched a freight train from engine to caboose with colorful bubbles of graffiti sprayed on in distant cities like Los Angeles and Seattle.

The front desk girl had said the cranes flew from as far south as Mexico and all the way to Canada and even Siberia to have babies every year. She felt the rhythm of the highway under the tires. She pictured the first room off the entryway in their new apartment as a nursery. Their life would be gold and grey mixed, she knew, as she squinted at the glowing fields.  But they would teach their children how to be so quiet a crane could swoop low and roost right next to them.

She watched him scowl at the horizon and knew he was glad to be leaving here. But she liked the brightness and the way the land never stopped, no matter what direction she looked. The morning after they watched the birds land in the river, she found a tiny plastic crane, hard and shiny, one of a flock of surprise gifts planted around the hotel as keepsakes for guests. She turned the crane over in her hands before slipping it into her pocket. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t tell him about it.

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LISA THORNTON — Lisa is a writer and nurse. She has stories in SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, and other magazines. She has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and Best Small Fictions. She lives in Illinois and can be found on Bluesky and Instagram @thorntonforreal.

Art by KIMMY LARSON — Kimmy is an autistic writer and artist living near Antwerp, Belgium with her husband and their bunnies. She also volunteers as a wild animal rehabilitator, providing care for everything from hedgehogs to owls. Baby doves are her favorite. See more artwork, or say hi @kimmy.creatures on Instagram.