One of the many fascinating aspects of this story is the
way that birds are used as visual markers of the path that Phoenix Jackson takes and her
progress along it. In the narrative that she gives us, along the road that the
protagonist takes are littered many different kinds of birds, and these serve to show
the distance that Phoenix Jackson has travelled and provide examples of nature that
Phoenix Jackson interrogates or comments upon. For example, when she crawls through the
fence, she sees a buzzard sitting and looking at her. Her response is to ask the
buzzard, "Who you watching?" Just a few lines later, when she has passed the scarecrow
and made her way to a wagon track, she sees quail that were "walking around like
pullets, seeming all dainty and unseen." Again, Phoenix Jackson talks to them, saying:
"Walk pretty... This the easy place. This the easy
going."
The birds that appear in this short story therefore
seem to act firstly as markers of the journey of the protagonist, but secondly also show
the close relationship that Phoenix Jackson has with nature through the way that she
interacts with them, asking them questions and talking to them as if they were other
humans.
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