Authors: Janette Jenkins
‘We certainly have common or garden nightjars in Illinois,’ he said impatiently, ‘but these have strayed off-course. They should be in Mexico by now.’
‘And that makes them rare?’
‘In Illinois they are rare,’ he said. ‘I thought that much would be obvious.’
Beatrice sat watching her father with his stacks of papers, rubbing his hands through his matted greying hair, picking at some aspirin. Every few minutes he’d scribble something into a jotter. At dinner time she tentatively pushed a plate of bread and cheese across his bird-filled horizon. He grunted.
Elijah was lucky, Beatrice thought. Nightjars had probably never even crossed his mind. He was spending a month in Jacksonville with the Church. The common nighthawk spent winters in Argentina.
‘Are you going to put one in a cage?’ she asked. They weren’t at all pretty, like finches or canaries, and she couldn’t imagine having a living breathing bird inside the house, singing on its perch, in its own kind of mortuary.
‘I just want one,’ he snapped, clicking his heels together. ‘If this Ratchett found one in Pontiac, then Normal’s just an evening’s flight away, and they could be sleeping in the garden right now, only they weren’t there last night, or the night before.’
‘It says here that they prefer wooded areas,’ said Beatrice, pointing to
Nocturnal Birds of America
, by J. Pfeiffer Scott (second edition). ‘They might be sleeping in Hackett’s Wood?’
‘Ratchett’s bird wasn’t in any wood. His was sitting in his garden like a stone, waiting to be picked.’
By nightfall, her father was pacing slowly around all the rooms. He perched on windowsills. He hummed. The stuffed and mounted birds seemed to be watching him. Every so often, he would pause to look up at the sky. The moon, when it eventually appeared, lit up the blue-edged clouds like a lantern.
‘The perfect backdrop,’ he mumbled.
Beatrice had a stomach ache. Why couldn’t her father stay inside the outhouse with his pelts and solutions? His agitation had gripped her. Suddenly, he turned.
‘What do you know about the nightjar?’ he asked.
‘Ratchett’s nightjar, or the usual one?’
‘Ratchett’s nightjar? What do you mean, Ratchett’s nightjar? It isn’t called Ratchett’s nightjar, and it never will be. He hasn’t named the species,’ he growled. ‘It’s the buff-collared nightjar, plain and simple. This damn Ratchett isn’t an explorer or a naturalist. The man’s discovered nothing. Well?’
Beatrice licked her pale lips. She’d been reading about these birds all day. Her head was full of them. ‘They do like wooded areas,’ she stuttered. ‘And they’re often called goatsuckers, because they suck the milk from goats.’
‘Nonsense, that’s nothing more than an ignorant myth. They eat moths and other flying insects.’
‘They forage close to the ground?’
‘Yes, yes?’
‘Their brown mottled feathers make for an excellent camouflage?’
‘That’s right. Now go upstairs and put on something white.’
‘White?’
‘White makes a nocturnal bird very curious,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘We’re going to walk to Hackett’s Wood and get ourselves a nightjar.’
It was past ten o’clock when Beatrice and her father left the house. Beatrice was wearing a white blouse and a shawl. Her father had tied a bed sheet around his shoulders. Between them, they carried fishing nets, a large basket and a smaller basket containing the five live moths they’d managed to catch from the back of the closet, where they’d been feasting on her father’s old collars and neckties. They also had a small jotter pad and pencil, and four ginger cookies to sustain them through the night (Beatrice’s idea).
The walk took them past the church, and Bethan Carter’s house, where the windows were in darkness, and where the swing, now even more dilapidated, was creaking on its tilted broken chains. Beatrice shivered, tugging at her shawl. Her father kept his eyes on the sky, which he had to admit, was nicely illuminated. Between their hollow footsteps, he listened for the
cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk-cukachea
cry of the buff-collared nightjar, who might be above their heads right now, looking for beetles, flying insects and Mexico.
Hackett’s Wood skirted the edge of downtown, past Beaufort Street and the Orphan’s Home that looked so sinister with all its tall windows flashing in the moonlight. Beatrice kept her eyes on her feet.
The wood was sparse with small dense patches. Most of it had been cut down to make way for the cannery. Beatrice squeezed her net tight as her father walked on ahead, their feet crunching on leaves and snapping deadwood branches. She could smell something sour. Stumps were covered in fungi the size and shape of dinner plates. Her heart was pounding. Her father’s sheet billowed in a sudden gust of wind. She couldn’t see his bent head, just the sheet hanging ghostlike, until he paused at a large shingle oak, and crouched down beside it.
‘Over here,’ he whispered. ‘This is as good a place as any.’
She crouched down beside him, suddenly feeling the cold, her back resting against the thick bony trunk. Then the sounds came. The crunching, rustling, snapping, crying. The wood was coming to life. It was hiding things.
By now, her father was lying flat out on the ground, the basket sitting ready in the leaves. Beatrice pulled in her knees. What if they weren’t the only people in Hackett’s Wood that night? Elijah had told her that men lived deep inside the wood, building small shacks out of branches, foraging for berries and wild mushrooms, whispering tales to each other, of how they’d lost their families, or their fortune, their once expensive clothes hanging threadbare from their shoulders.
‘Can you hear the cry?’ her father whispered. ‘Listen carefully. Concentrate.’
She tried. Her teeth were chattering and she could feel things in her hair. She could hear birds all right, but how was she to know if they were nightjars?
‘It has to be them,’ said her father, slowly edging his way into the clearing with his elbows.
They sat looking at the sky through the knotted branches. The birds were in silhouette, crying and slapping their wings.
‘Now keep very still,’ said her father. ‘They might want to take a closer look at us.’
Beatrice didn’t move. Her legs were frozen. She was thinking about the men in their shacks, the moths in the basket and the birds that were moving like puppets in the sky. A couple of minutes later, her father unhooked the lid of the smaller basket, and the moths fluttered out, hovering, dazed in the thin pool of light, before disappearing into the darkness.
‘Damn.’
They kept their eyes peeled to the ground, where the birds were supposed to be resting. By now, she could see quite well in the moonlight, and between the mounds of soil and dead leaves, rocks that looked like eggs began to move.
‘Oh, Lord,’ breathed her father. ‘This is it.’
The birds were brown and purring; her father moved closer, the net poised in the air, his arm shaking with the effort of it. She was sure she could hear his thin heart pounding through the sheet. The tension made her ache. She closed her eyes tight. There was a fluttering, and a shrill kind of screaming, as her father dragged the thrashing net towards the basket.
‘As easy as that,’ he whispered. ‘Ratchett and his butterfly net. Some professor. What does he know about birds?’
Feeling euphoric, they made their way home, their white clothes glowing, the basket gently bouncing at her father’s side, while Beatrice ate the sweet ginger cookies to stave off the cold. She felt light-headed. She’d braved the night-time wood. Captured a Mexican nightjar. Would Elijah ever believe her?
Down Beaufort Street they walked, their tired feet stumbling over paving blocks, her father’s white sheet dragging in the dust. A boy looking down from his shady bedroom window rubbed his tired eyes and thought he must be dreaming.
The house was in darkness, the lamp they’d left shining in the kitchen had died. Exhausted, Beatrice sank into a chair at the table. Her father was still restless. He gathered up some papers and the small twitching basket, disappearing into the night. Beatrice fell asleep with her head resting on
North American Birds
. She didn’t dream. She didn’t feel anything.
It was not a good week. The bird they had captured had not lost its way. On closer inspection, the bird in the basket was a whippoorwill, common to Illinois. Her father banged his fist through the porch screen, wailing and cursing Professor Ratchett. He refused to buy the
Chronicle
.
Most of the nightjar books and papers had been thrown to the back of a cupboard. Spines had broken. A couple of them had torn. Beatrice was sure she could smell liquor on her father’s sour breath, though she supposed it could possibly be one of the solutions that had soaked into his shirt, something that he’d ordered from a catalogue. These parcels came at least once a month. Beaks and eyes from Jefferson. Chemicals from Duluth. Bags of natural plumage from an office in downtown Monroe.
‘Is the bird still alive?’ she asked.
‘Who do you think I am?’ her father said. ‘Professor Henry Ratchett?’
‘So it’s dead?’
‘Of course the bird is dead. I specialise in the art of taxidermy. I have no intention of writing any fancy unreadable papers.’ And with that, he stood away from the table and swayed. ‘I’m feeling rather faint,’ he said. ‘The floor is starting to dip a little. Perhaps you would do me the great honour of bringing me over a bite to eat? Something plain. I’ll be in the outhouse, working.’
‘I’ll leave it on the step.’
‘No,’ he told her, ‘you’ll bring it right inside.’
Beatrice paled. She hadn’t been in the outhouse for years. She’d crept around it. She’d peered into the small side window. It was always dirty. The glass was splashed with something that looked like goose fat.
She took her time arranging crackers on a plate, a slice of trimmed ham, a somewhat soft tomato. She poured a glass of fresh water. The jaybird on the counter glared at her.
It was cold outside. There was a sharp snap of wind. She could hear Mr Rickman next door talking about his dog. ‘She’s getting on, and the poor girl’s as blind as a bat, but the wife wouldn’t part with her, not for all the world.’
Balancing the glass on the plate, she knocked on the door. As soon as her father opened it, the smell knocked her sideways. The air was clogged with glue, old blood and chemicals. It made her feel dizzy. No wonder her father was swaying.
‘Put the plate on the back bench,’ he told her, wiping his hands on a torn piece of rag. ‘There’ll be a space for it somewhere.’
The bench ran along the back wall. It was full of pails, boxes and deep metal trays. She tried not to gag.
‘Now, come over to me,’ he said. ‘This is where it happens. This is where the light is.’
Standing beside him, she tucked her thumbs into her fists. The basket was there, with its lid wide open. The bird they had captured had been pinned onto a board.
‘The smell,’ she said, looking away. ‘Can’t we open a window?’
‘Are you out of your mind? A small gust of wind could spoil everything. You’ll soon get used to it.’
She put her hand on her face. Her eyes were stinging. Her father, with his tools on the table and his torn white overall, looked like a down-at-heel surgeon at the Cook County Hospital.
‘I’ll talk you through it,’ he said. ‘See, look closely now, you lay the specimen on its back and part the feathers along the bare area of the breastbone. The opening incision is made from a point at the forward tip of the breastbone, to the vent.’
Beatrice held tight to the table as he picked up his scalpel.
‘It has to be sharp,’ he said, holding it into the light, like an actor. ‘You have to avoid cutting into the abdominal wall, or blood and body
juices
will run out and damage the feathers. See, this is perfect. Now, pass me the borax, it’ll soak up all the mess and help preserve the skin.’
She pushed the box towards him. She didn’t want to look. Standing with the bird spread open, surrounded by the skulls from other creatures that had been boiled and scraped in the pot, she tried to think of other things. The blue hyacinths in her bedroom. Rose water. The beads her aunt Jess had sent her, small and creamy white, but then they reminded her of the whippoorwill’s tiny eyeballs that were sitting dead and glazed on a plate. She was sure the bird was twitching as she stepped away from the bench.
‘Girls have no stomach,’ said her father to the bird.
Beatrice moved around blindly. Broken skulls in various shades of white sat across a narrow shelf, proud souvenirs, bowls held teeth and bones, and a ferret, mounted on a piece of polished bark, had pins in its eyes and sticks where its toes should have been.
‘It’s drying,’ said her father. ‘Do you think it looks fierce? I’m practising the fierce look for when I get something bigger.’
‘Like what?’
‘A wolf,’ he told her with a smile. ‘Now that would be a challenge.’
He scratched his ear. Beatrice could see a globule of dark stringy blood hanging from his lobe. His fingernails were black with it. Retching into her hand, she grabbed at the door, running through the garden and into the house, gulping all the way to her bedroom, where she plunged her hands and face into the bowl of cold water on the washstand. She stripped off her clothes. They were full of death and chemicals. She kicked them into a corner. They made her feel dirty.
A branch pressed against the window as she pulled on yesterday’s dress. There was a coffee stain on the sleeve, but now it felt like something clean, and it smelled as good as the French perfume they sold in Davenport & Lamb, where the salesmen wore oil in their hair and ruby-coloured cufflinks.
She slumped against the window. The outhouse was dirty against the fresh trees and sky. She could see Mr Rickman with the dog they called Bess. What did he think happened in the outhouse? Did he picture trays of seedlings? Soil-stained rakes? A crate of yellow apples?
She stayed in her room for the rest of the day, sitting on her bed, reading Elijah’s
Good for the Soul
storybooks. She couldn’t face the birds. It was only when she saw her father weaving over the lawn, his
hair
springing back in the wind, losing feathers, that she braved the wild turkey on the landing.