One Morning, Over Dove

Hudson Review, The, Winter 2003 by Bedell, Jack B

My wife is not afraid of blood or knives. She's spent all morning cleaning the doves Brother and I swept from the soybean fields beside our land.

She scrapes the hearts and livers out with her fingers into a bowl and piles the rest of the birds onto the table. By the time I step out back to stow

the shotguns, she's already filled a pail with meat for the week's stew and wants to talk of love and children and time. The whole while she builds a stain

on her forehead, brushing away a hair that interrupts important points of room temperatures and ovulations. I wipe down my.20 gauge

and wonder at the tenderness she holds in her voice while elbow-deep in gore. The space between her words and mine is enough to register

desire, and more than enough for her to clean two doves, reaching her fingers into their chests, popping the meat out with a subtle snap.

JACK B. BEDELL* is Assistant Dean of Arts & Sciences at Southeastern

Indiana University.