Halcion
by Robert Warf
Horses sleep standing and I don’t sleep at all. Horses like to come up under our beach house and sleep facing our door. Mother likes to go up to the door, turn the outside lights on, and peek her 35mm out. Sometimes she puts carrots out. My father stays asleep because he doesn’t have sleep to waste.
Behind us, the row behind us, our neighbor had a peacock that he said was fenced in on his unfenced property. “He know which trees not mine,” our neighbor told us. My father specifically.
See peacocks never shut the fuck up. If you’ve been woken by a rooster and you think those are annoying, then you haven’t been woken by a peacock. They’re loud. Especially when they’re right next to your house. They wake up early and they wake you up early. They don’t shut the fuck up.
My father told me he should take his .308 and put it to sleep so he can get some.
A couple years of this went on. During boar season father shot one of those obnoxious peacocks with his .308.
“Thought it was a boar,” father said. When the game warden came, “Sorry about that, I didn’t even realize it was his property. Not much of a fence you see,” father said.
“Not much of one is there,” the game warden said.
“But he knows where it is,” our neighbor said.
“But I don’t,” father said.
Father paid a small ticket. “Price of a good night’s rest,” he said. Father slept like mother after that, but I didn’t, and I didn’t have anyone else to be up with after he put that peacock to sleep.
Robert Warf is from Portsmouth, Virginia. His work can be found in Post Road, HAD, and X-R-A-Y. You can follow him on twitter @rwarfburke