Excerpt from The General and Julia by Jon Clinch, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

There is lumber inside the shed, white pine by the look of it, sawn thin and cut for clapboards. Its grain is straight and its lengths are without bending or warpage. He shall need only a bit. He measures out his work and scribes a few lines and saws the pieces off clean, and then he fits them together by hand as a trial. He frowns in satisfaction and makes adjustments here and there with a plane, a file, a sanding block. It takes no time at all. He goes on to prepare a flat lid for the box with a shallow rim around its edge, fitting closely but not too close. A less thoughtful individual might have resolved simply to nail the top on once the bird had been gotten inside, but that would never do.

A little jar of yellow paint on a high dim shelf catches his eye, its spilled traces glowing like the yolk of an egg. The contents prove nearly dried-up, but a splash of turpentine remedies that. He finds a scrap of wood to stir it and it yields up a thin mixture that gives the wood a faint yellow sheen more than paints it. But it dries rapidly, which is in its favor. He leaves the box and the lid to finish drying on a crate just inside the barn door and he sends the boy to fetch him back a spade, along with a Holy Bible if he can find one.

He seems to recall that the book of Matthew has something to say about birds, but when he finds the text it proves to be anything but complimentary as to their value. He chooses a psalm instead. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." He has heard that one read at a funeral or two, and he will live to hear it read at many more.

The boy assumes that he is to be charged with digging the grave, but Grant releases him to go about his business. He and Julia choose a sunny spot in the flower garden, just at the foot of a trellis that supports an ancient climbing rose, and he digs the hole. In the shade of the porch they arrange the body in its little yellow coffin and close the lid.

"Tell me, Ulysses," she says as she stands before the climbing rose, the box in her hands. "Are you merely humoring me?"

"Never."

"I mean, Father says…"

He touches her wrist. "What does your heart say?"

"Oh, Ulysses."

"This is not for your father, Julia. It's not even for Birdie, or not entirely. It's for you." He kneels and takes the box and sets it into the grave and covers it. The mound is hardly larger than his hand. The bird is gone and yet it shall be here forever. A yellow bird in a yellow box beneath a red, red rose.

He straightens up and rubs the dirt from his hands with a kerchief, and then he finds the psalm and reads it aloud. He does not linger over any of it, and when he is finished he closes the Bible like any utilitarian thing that has served its purpose. Like the spade, like the box, like his muddied handkerchief. He glances up when he is done and through the front window he makes out the silhouette of the colonel himself, paused and watching. He waits an instant in a kind of silent defiance before he looks away for good.

Excerpted from The General and Julia by Jon Clinch. Copyright © 2023 by Jon Clinch. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.