Grinning, Birdie brought up her other hand, opened it beside the eggshell, and revealed a tiny feather no larger than my thumbnail. The sun reflected against it, causing it to glow iridescent blue.
“Oh, that’s so pretty,” I whispered.
Bending close to my hand, Birdie rolled the eggshell and the feather carefully into my palm, then stroked the feather. “Pretty bird.” Her voice was little more than a breath, but I heard it. The words were clear and intentional.
“Yes, a very pretty bird.” Emotion choked my throat, and for a moment our situation felt anything but clinical. “A bluebird, I think.”
“Blue,” she whispered. The breeze lifted her hair, so that I could see her face, her eyes the deep hue of the feather, as fragile as the eggshell. “Blue pretty bird,” she whispered, and smiled.
“Yes,” I agreed, and then she stepped away, turning toward the house. I closed my fingers over her tiny treasures, and as we walked up the driveway, she slipped her hand over mine, as if she were protecting them, too.
When we reached the house, we deposited the eggshell and the feather safely in an empty butter tub from her soggy sand pile, and then proceeded with a tour of Birdie’s favorite things – her plush toy raccoon, a used baby doll that must have come from the church, pink Barbie pajamas that had been carefully laid on her bed.
A pair of tennis shoes in her size and some clothing sat piled partially in a used grocery bag in the back bedroom, as if it hadn’t occurred to anyone to put the things away after Reverend Hay brought them. Considering the rest of the house, that was no surprise. The edges of the rooms were filled with accumulation of all sorts, allowing living space only in the centers. No telling what might be lurking in all those piles.
In the old school bus beside the house, Birdie showed me a partial set of plastic dishes and a generic Barbie. Apparently she’d been using the bus for a playhouse – dirty clothes, puppy droppings, and all. My stomach wrenched as we finished the tour and returned to the fresh air. Near the barn, Birdie captured a scrappy-looking calico cat and carried it as we walked back to the garden to find her grandfather. On the way, I asked questions about her mother and where Birdie had been before coming to Grandpa’s house. All of a sudden, she didn’t have anything to say.
I left the appointment uncertain of what should happen next, but also firm in the conclusion that, after several days at home alone with Len during the storm, Birdie seemed to be happier and more communicative than she was the first time I’d seen her. She was getting better, not worse.
At lunch, Mart and I discussed the visit while the Wailing Woman sang her soft, moaning song, and the mockingbirds responded in kind. A call came in on Mart’s radio, and lunch ended abruptly, with Mart apologetically grabbing his barely touched sandwich and heading for his boat, and me checking out the park restroom, then finishing lunch in the car with my computer while a group of canoers stopped on the shore below to picnic.
That evening Dustin came home dirty and tired from helping with the dock project at the Waterbird, but he was in an upbeat mood. Mart had been called away again, so Reverend Hay had dropped Dustin at our dock. Before heading for the shower, Dustin filled me in on the afternoon’s dock building and the plans to create some sort of hoist system that would allow Pop Dorsey to get out of his wheelchair and into a boat. Tomorrow one of the Waterbird regulars planned to bring a portable welder, and Dustin was going to learn to weld. I was obliged, of course, to offer a few cautionary mom notes like, “Be sure to wear safety glasses, okay? You know those things are dangerous.”
Dustin responded with an eye roll and a reminder that he was
fourteen
, after all. Not a baby anymore.
“You’re
my
baby,” I said, and he answered with the boyish grin that had always melted my heart, then he continued on to the shower.
Over dinner we discussed Dustin’s day and Mart’s boat in even greater detail. I learned about the differences between the loaner boat that Mart was driving and his regular patrol boat, which was in for repairs. Dustin couldn’t wait to see the real patrol boat when it came back. He was looking forward to riding in it, and Cassandra had assured him that the patrol boat was
seriously prime
.
I hid my concern about Dustin spending time with Mart and Cassandra and tried not to overanalyze things too much. After dinner Dustin and I walked down to the dock, and I ended up chatting with Mrs. Blue while Sydney and Ansley lured Dustin in for a swim.
“They’re so glad he’s next door this summer,” Mrs. Blue offered, laughing as the three of them tried to climb onto a giant inner tube. “I hope they’re not driving him crazy.”
“I think he enjoys it.” Right now, Dustin seemed to be having a ball. He was a rock star being showered with adoration, albeit between dunkings. It was two on one, and Sydney and Ansley could definitely hold their own. “It’s lonely out here for him.”
Mrs. Blue nodded sympathetically. “Normally, we wouldn’t stay here at the lake all summer. It was just a fluke that a broken water main flooded our house just as the girls were coming for their usual visit. So here we are. Who knew the girls would have someone so charming to pester right next door?”
“Thanks for looking out for him.” We turned our attention to Dustin and the girls as they descended into a particularly raucous bout of inner-tube war.
A fluke,
I thought.
Just a fluke that they’re
even here this summer. . . .
But it didn’t feel like a fluke. It seemed that this place, Moses Lake and the people here, had been prepared for us, designed ahead of time as a nurturing nest, a soft place from which to grow new wings.
When we went into the house, Dustin headed for his room to work on English, and I put on my sweats and snuggled in with a book and a cup of decaf. I was drowsily reading just one more chapter when lights drifted up the cove. My eyes popped open like roller shades. I sat up and checked the hallway. No glow under Dustin’s door. After class and working and swimming, he was probably more exhausted than usual. In a heartbeat I was at the back door slipping my feet into flip-flops, then hurrying down the hill in the darkness. I met Mart on the other side of the boathouse.
“Thought you might be asleep,” he said, standing with one foot on the dock and one in the boat, in the Robin Hood pose.
“Couldn’t sleep.” The words surprised me. The meaning was clear by the tone.
I couldn’t sleep because I was watching for you.
Mart smiled, as if he understood the silent message. “Nice night to sit out.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Nice night for a boat ride, too.” He extended a hand, the palm open, waiting for me to place my fingers inside it, to be bold enough to accept the invitation.
“Yes, it is,” I agreed and slipped my hand into his, felt his fingers close over mine. The boat shifted as I stepped off the dock, and Mart caught me in the strong circle of an arm. For a moment I was suspended above the water, feeling the steam rising from it, and then the warmth of his body. His lips touched mine, not with a careful unfamiliarity this time, but as if he knew me, as if he’d been waiting for this for hours.
I realized that I had been, too. I’d lived it a dozen times since the abrupt end to our lunch. Now I abandoned myself to it, left behind every hesitation, every shred of worry, let him sweep me away into the night like a thief.
The bird of paradise alights only
on the hand that does not grasp.
– John Berry
(Left by John and Ann from Dallas,
on their 50th anniversary trip)
Mart McClendon
The lake was quiet and dark, the surface so glassy-smooth the stars glittered in it. The water rolled out in a reflection of the night sky, uneven at the edges where it touched the shore, weaving into cliffs and crevices, hiding pitch-black under the shadows of overhanging trees. On nights like this, with the lake calm and not another human in sight, it was hard to believe there could be anything wrong in the world.
As we left Larkspur Cove, I looked at Andrea, said, “Hang on there, shotgun,” and pushed the throttle. The boat dragged down in the water, then jumped like a frog off a lily pad. Andrea slid a little in her seat, catching the side rail with one hand. Laughing, she tossed back her head, shook her hair into the breeze, then let her hands fly into the air, roller-coaster style. For a moment I forgot that I was piloting the boat across a ribbon of captured sky, speeding toward the moon.
I finally looked away, got my bearings, tugged my brain back into my head, and snugged it down with a ratchet strap. For the first time, I understood how one watercraft could run into another when there were miles of open space in all directions. Maybe the guy driving was looking at the pretty girl in the passenger seat. . . .
We crossed the lake, and I throttled down and let the boat idle along while we wandered past Eagle Eye Bridge, where the long, twisted branches of live oaks and sycamores shook hands over the water. Somewhere in the cliffs a mountain lion called, the sound high and sharp like a woman screaming. Andrea jerked upright in her seat.
“Just a mountain lion. He’s a long way off,” I said, and turned the boat around, cruised along the shoreline. The hull rode soft and quiet as we ducked up a cove into Nightingale Canyon. The low rumble of the motor bounced off the limestone cliffs, and far away, I heard music from one of the campgrounds at Seven Springs, where cold water from underground fed into the lake, creating favorite swimming spots like the Ice Hole and the Blue Moon.
“I’d forgotten how amazing this place is.” Leaning back, Andrea rested against the seat, watching the cliffs draw a jagged line between the sky and its reflection.
“Not a bad place to work,” I agreed. “Completely different from southwest Texas, that’s for sure. Down there, the job’s all about driving dry-dirt roads, looking for hikers and rock climbers who end up in a bind, counting a few black bear up in the mountains, nabbing poachers after mule deer or snakes, and helping Immigration watch for border jumpers and drug traffickers. There’s some water work on the river. Had a population of stray alligators show up down from Presidio a few years ago.That generated some excitement around town.”
“So that’s where you grew up – Presidio?” She was still leaning back in the seat, taking in the view.
“Thereabouts – Alpine, mostly. My daddy worked in the oil patch, did construction, and cowboyed on ranches until I was fourteen, so we moved around a lot. Seemed like every year we started school in a new place – sometimes moved two or three times in a year.”
She turned toward me. “That sounds rough.”
“You know, the thing is, we were pretty happy, the way I remember it,” I said. “Kids don’t need a perfect life. Lord knows, we never had one. Our family was crazy from one end to the other, always changing, always moving. Mama and Daddy fighting over money and him never being happy with a job, or a place. Sometimes we were living high on the hog; sometimes we ate dollar-a-pack hot dogs and boxed macaroni and cheese. But no matter where we were, we always knew that Mama would be solid as a rock. Even after they split up and Daddy took off for some ranch job in Wyoming, Mama held us four boys together.”
Andrea studied me a minute, like she was thinking about something. Then she shook her head. “I admire your mom. You know, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in thinking your kids need to have everything all the other kids have – that they won’t grow up okay if they’re not top of the heap.”
I let the boat drift into a turn, then idled, soft and quiet, back up the canyon. “Kids don’t need all the junk people buy – the video games, and the high-dollar sports stuff. Get ’em a pole and send them out to fish. It’s healthier. Look at that lawyer’s kid who was driving the boat at the Scissortail – a blank check isn’t doing him any good. Kids need somebody to love ’em and look after ’em, and give time instead of dollar bills.
“I see youngsters out here on the lake, and they’ve got everything. But when I pick them up for driving without a license or nab them with alcohol and I call the parents to let them know what happened, they don’t even have time to wonder how the kid got into the mess or why. All some of these parents care about is how they can sweep it under the rug, so nobody’ll know and it won’t interrupt their plans. They don’t want the kid to get kicked off the football team, or the baseball team, or to miss some vacation, or have to do community service, picking up trash on the side of the road.” Every time I dealt with parents like those, I couldn’t help being mad all over again that my brother was taken from his kids too early.
We motored out of the canyon, and I noticed that Andrea had straightened in the seat. “You thought that about me when you caught Dustin, didn’t you?” Her voice had a hint of a laugh, so that I could tell she thought it was funny – now.
I pretended to be busy steering around the rocks at the canyon’s mouth. “Can’t recall,” I answered.
“Pppfff ! Yes you can. You thought I was horrible.”
“I thought you were cute.”
I pictured the first day we met, her marching down the hill in her suit and high heels, me covered in swamp slime and gator scat. What a postcard.
“I’ll bet.”
“A little uptight, maybe.”
She slapped a hand over her eyes, her laughter jingling into the night air. “I’m remembering the look on your face that morning. That look didn’t say
cute but a little uptight.
”