Excerpt from The Birdcatcher by Gayl Jones, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Finally, he took the bicycle spoke and tossed it over the fence.

It dangled on top of a pile of junk, like an antenna.

"I know where they mend leather," Catherine said. I let go of her.

Ernest folded his jacket, so the hole in it wasn't visible. "So where do you folks want to go for lunch?" he asked.

"I want Greektown," said Catherine.

"I'd like to hear where Amanda wants to go. You like Chinese, don't you?" he asked.

"Greektown's fine," I said.

"Greektown then," he said, scratching the side of his neck and blowing air out of his mouth, sounding like a tire deflating.

So every time she tries something now it's new, like an inspiration. In the beginning it used to always be knives, then we stopped allowing knives, not real ones, not even rubber ones. Now she has to improvise.

And Ernest has to carry her doctor's reports everywhere they go, so he doesn't have to keep explaining. He carries around xeroxed copies in brown manila envelopes. In fact, I've got a couple of her doctor's reports in my suitcase.

If Catherine is the trapdoor spider, Ernest is ... How can I describe him? He's lovely. Cinnamon-colored with big shoulders. I call him "big two-hearted river." You have to have two hearts to take care of a difficult woman like Catherine. And my husband thought I was a witch! I'm a unicorn compared to her.

When Catherine isn't looking sweet she's looking like she's standing behind glass. I guess that's because she's spent so many fucking days standing behind glass. What would you expect? They won't even let her take her compact when she goes to those places, you see because it's got a mirror in it, and they're afraid she might break the mirror, harm herself, cut her wrists or something. But it's not herself she tries to harm, never herself. They could let her have all the fucking mirrors in the world, and it wouldn't be herself she'd harm. No. There are some bitches like that. And then there are the other kind—it's always their own selves they go for. Like this one woman Catherine told me about, sneaked her compact in—but she didn't go for her wrists, but for her cunt—cut it all to shreds. Some bitches ...

It hasn't been but a week since Ernest has taken her out of the hospital in Milan and brought her here to Ibiza. I got his postcard when I was traveling in Brazil. In the old days I used to stop everything and come running. Now I come, but I take my own time, and when I get where they are I don't even ask what happened. I used to make it a little ritual of asking: "Catherine, what happened?" "I've just tried to kill my husband."

Now I don't ask, and all the asylums smell the same, like cellophane and orange juice. All stone and glass. This time she had to go all the way across the fucking Atlantic to go crazy. Catherine had just won this international Italian art prize too—I forget the name of it, but a real prestigious one; and they'd traveled to Milan for her to claim it. She claimed it all right, the bucks and this brass and gold trophy. It's the trophy she tried to do her thing with.

Anyway, well, I remember this one time she'd just tried to kill him, and I got there and there they were sitting on a bench in the hallway outside the locked door, and he was holding her elbow. You'd think they were turtledoves. Baby! If all lovers could look that way! Well, it takes all kinds. And Catherine's got enough jabber to fill the whole country. She starts talking about elbows! Just tried to kill the man and talking about elbows.

"You know, you can tell the age of somebody by the skin on the elbows," she jabbers.

"No. I didn't know that."

Ernest glances up, notices me there before Catherine does. The wrinkles in his forehead seem to peel off, then they deepen. When Catherine notices, she winks at me and keeps on talking.

"Yeah. Pinch the skin up and if it goes back down you're young! Pinch the skin up and if it stays up, you're old."

Excerpted from The Birdcatcher by Gayl Jones. Copyright 2022. Excerpted with permission by Beacon Press.