Chasing Redbird, Page 4

  PRESENTS

  On Sunday, the day after Jake had given me the bottle caps, I was outside at the squirt gardens when Jake returned. He said he’d just stopped by for a minute. In his hand was a small box, punctured with holes. “Here,” he said, whisking it under my nose.

  The contents of my stomach were tumbling around like socks in the clothes dryer. A present, from Jake. But then, in a flash, I thought, Here we go again: another Tommy Salami bribing me with gifts so he can win May. I will not be swayed.

  “Open it,” he urged. “It’s for you. It’s a thermometer.”

  I lifted the lid and quickly replaced it. “Very funny,” I said, handing it back. “Looks more like a cricket to me.” Why did he have to look so eager? Why was he going to so much trouble when May was already falling all over herself trying to attract his attention?

  “Which one of those windows is your room?” he asked.

  Reluctantly, I played along, pretending I didn’t know what he was really after. “That one, up there. I share it with Bonnie and Gretchen and—May.”

  “Where’s your bed?”

  “There—by that window. May’s is by the other window.”

  He didn’t even flinch when I mentioned her name. Stop it! I wanted to yell at him. Quit pretending!

  “Perfect,” he said, leading me to the oak tree which grows beside the house, its branches tapping against our bedroom window. “See this tree?” He opened the box, tilting it against the trunk. The cricket hopped out and clung to the bark. Jake seemed mighty pleased with himself. He said, “Do you have a clock near your bed? With a second hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now tonight, if you listen for this cricket and count the number of chirps in a minute, divide by four, and add thirty-seven, that’ll be the temperature. Don’t that beat all?!”

  May surfaced as Jake’s truck disappeared down the drive. “Was that Jake? Where’d he go?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What’d he want? What’d he say?”

  “Just fuss and feathers. Nothing special.”

  “Did he ask for me?” May said.

  Gretchen came outside. “Was that Jake? What did he want?” May took her by the arm and led her toward the house, whispering. I didn’t hear what May said, but Gretchen said, “He’s probably just shy. He probably wanted to ask for you, but he probably got embarrassed, that’s all. He’ll probably be back.”

  A few minutes later, Bonnie emerged. “May’s mad at you,” she said. “Guess why.” When I didn’t answer, she said, “May says you should have told her Jake was here. She says you don’t have the sense of a flea.”

  Uncle Nate ran by waving his stick. “Hold on!” he yelled. “Wait on up!”

  “What are you chasing?” Bonnie called.

  “My Redbird—look at her go!”

  “Does he really see her?” Bonnie asked.

  “Maybe—”

  “Do you ever see her?”

  “In my mind—” I admitted.

  “But around here, do you see Aunt Jessie like Uncle Nate sees her?”

  I wanted to be able to say yes. If he could see her, why couldn’t I? “Nope, I don’t. Do you?”

  “Of course not, but Ben does,” she said. “Ben said he’s seen Aunt Jessie twice since she was buried. Does he really? Or is he imagining it?”

  Later, I found Ben sitting at the foot of his squirt garden, tilting his head to left and right. “Are they straight?” he asked. “Doesn’t that third plant look a little crooked?”

  “They’re fine, Ben. Don’t have to be exactly straight.”

  “Yes they do.” Ben had decided to grow only beans in his garden, and he was very particular about his row. He liked it to be straight, and he would not allow any weeds whatsoever to grow in it. He checked it two or three times a day, and if he found a little weed trying to sprout up, he’d yell at it, “Where’d you come from? Get on out of there!”

  Once, when Ben was much younger, he told Aunt Jessie that he wanted “the other kind of beans” too.

  “What kind is that?” Aunt Jessie said.

  “Human beans.”

  Aunt Jessie explained that it was human beings, not human beans. Ben listened carefully and said, “But maybe it really is human beans. Maybe if you took a little human egg and put it in the ground and watered it, it might grow.”

  “Into what?” Aunt Jessie asked.

  “A human bean, of course.”

  Ben asked if I was going up to my trail.

  “Yes,” I said, “but don’t tell anyone.”

  “It must be getting long, Zinny,” he said. “What about when it gets five or ten miles long and you have to walk five or ten miles out there just to start clearing and then you’ll have to walk five or ten miles back? And what about when it gets to be fifteen miles? Or sixteen? Or—”

  “I’ll manage,” I said. I hadn’t really thought about that potential problem, and I wished he hadn’t mentioned it, because I would worry about it all day.

  Ben said, “Maybe you’ll run into Uncle Nate up there. He’s visiting his sweetheart.”

  “Is not.”

  “Is too, Zinny. That’s what he said—‘Guess I’ll go see my sweetheart.’”

  “He’s joking.”

  “Is not.”

  “Ben, have you seen Aunt Jessie—recently?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where? What was she doing?”

  He poked at the dirt. “Up by the barn, just walking.”

  “She see you? She say anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe you imagined it,” I said.

  “I did not imagine it.” He didn’t seem at all bothered. In his nine-year-old mind, he thought it perfectly reasonable to see his dead aunt wandering through the farmyard.

  I went on up to the trail, and as I cleared away weeds, I wondered if it were really possible to see a dead person, and felt terribly jealous that both Uncle Nate and Ben had seen her, but I hadn’t. Maybe I hadn’t looked hard enough. To be able to see her—oh! It gave me the shivers just thinking of it. To see her face, to see her walk in that funny way of hers—slow then fast, slow then fast—oh!

  As I neared the barn on my way home, Ben joined me, and we saw Jake’s truck leaving. “Again?” Ben said. “Wasn’t he already here today?”

  May, Gretchen, Bonnie, Will, and Sam were crowded around another cardboard carton—a big one this time, about a foot high.

  “What is it, what is it, what is it?” Ben called.

  May glared at me.

  “Guess,” Bonnie said. “It’s from Jake.”

  Inside the carton, squatting on loose hay, was a box turtle, about seven inches long. Its shell was high and round and black with eight orange splots. There was no sign of its head.

  “Is it alive?” Ben asked.

  “Jake said it was,” Gretchen said. “He also said its name is Poke, and it’s a weather predictor. If Poke keeps his head inside, it’ll be good weather. If Poke sticks his head out or scrabbles around, it’s going to rain.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Ben said. “Wouldn’t you think he’d rather stick his head out if the weather was good? And go inside when it rained?”

  “I’m just telling you what Jake said, is all,” Gretchen said.

  Just then, the turtle poked his head out, and as he did so, a raindrop splatted on his shell.

  “Can I have it?” Ben asked, lifting it from the carton.

  Bonnie said, “Put it down. It’s for Zinny.”

  “Why for Zinny?”

  “Because Jake said so.”

  “But why for Zinny?”

  May rolled her eyes. “Probably because she collects all those stupid and immature things. He probably will bring over any old piece of rubbish he finds and give it to Zinny just to get rid of it. It’s so embarrassing.”

  That night the tree cricket chirped one hundred and twelve times in one minute. I divided that by four, and added thirty-seven, and it
came out to sixty-five. I got out of bed and went down to the kitchen and checked the thermometer fastened to the outside of the window. The temperature was sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit.

  I stared out the window at the oak tree. Beyond stretched dark shadows. Was Aunt Jessie out there? If I looked hard enough, long enough, would I see her?

  CHAPTER 12

  THE BIRDS, THE ROSE, AND THE TURTLE

  Every evening after dinner, Aunt Jessie and Uncle Nate used to swing slowly back and forth, back and forth, on the porch swing, gazing out at the ash tree and the rose garden in the front yard and at the river far in the distance. Railroad tracks ran alongside the river, and at six o’clock the mournful song of the train’s whistle drifted through the valley.

  Sometimes I sat with them on the swing. One evening, shortly after the train passed below, a male cardinal swooped to the ash tree. The brilliant red bird sat there a minute or two, looking around, as if he were waiting for someone, and then he plunged to the feeder which hung on a nearby branch. He snatched seeds, tapping them against the perch, breaking them open, and snipping out the soft insides with his beak. Seeds that didn’t appeal to him were flung to the ground with a toss of his crested head.

  “Where’s his mate?” Uncle Nate asked. “He’s all by his lonesome. Poor old thing.”

  After Aunt Jessie died, Uncle Nate sat alone on the swing. One night, from my upstairs window I heard the train whistle below, softly, then louder, then fading into the distance. I saw a flutter of red as the male cardinal approached the tree and settled in it. He sat there for several minutes looking around. And then—there—there she was, fluttering down beside him—a pale-brown female with red streaks on her head and wings.

  The male flew to the feeder, selected a few seeds, and returned to the ash tree. He broke one open, snipped out the insides, and passed them to the female.

  Uncle Nate stopped swinging. He leaned forward, watching. “You lucky thing,” he said. “You lucky old thing.”

  At the sound of his voice, the female sprang from the branch and drifted across the yard toward a birch grove. The male waited behind in the ash tree until she had nearly disappeared from view, and then he plunged from the branch, swept close to the porch where Uncle Nate sat, and rose in the air to follow his mate.

  “Lucky old thing,” Uncle Nate repeated.

  Beyond the ash tree was a rose garden: twenty bushes planted by Uncle Nate the year that baby Rose died. Aunt Jessie loved those roses. She could see them from her bedroom window, and that summer, she and I would walk through them, counting the blooms.

  When the first frost came in November, Aunt Jessie fretted. She stared out the window at the few remaining blossoms, stiff and matted with frost. “They’ll all die soon,” she said. It sent a shiver through me.

  Each year after that, she was thrilled in the spring when the first rosebud appeared, and each year, with the arrival of winter, she became dejected all over again, as if she didn’t believe or didn’t remember that spring would come again.

  Several years after Uncle Nate had planted the roses, I was with my family one Saturday at a store in Chocton. Each of us kids had a dollar. The boys were sifting through the candy, May and Gretchen were at the makeup counter, and Bonnie and I were wandering around the store, unable to make up our minds what to choose. Then I saw it. It was perfect: a red plastic rose on a stiff green stem. I bought it and kept it in my closet until October, when I snuck it into the rosebushes in the yard, tying it to a branch.

  When Aunt Jessie started to fret over the frost and the dying buds, I’d say, each morning, “There’s still a few left,” and, finally, “There’s still one left.” She didn’t seem impressed and said, “It’ll be dead soon.”

  By December, after we’d had two snowfalls, she could no longer ignore the single rose still blooming in the garden. On one of our walks, she headed for the bushes. “I want to see this rose,” she said. I tried to discourage her, tried to pull her in another direction, but she was determined. She reached across the bush in front and touched my plastic rose.

  “What?” she said, tugging at it. “What—?” She pulled it loose, and the look on her face I’ll never forget: such disappointment, such dismay. She threw the rose to the ground. “It’s fake! Who would do such a mean and nasty thing?”

  My own face must have betrayed my guilt.

  “You?” she said. “You did that? How could you?”

  I ran to the barn, ashamed and confused.

  Later, she apologized, saying that she knew I hadn’t meant to hurt her, that I must have thought it would please her. She didn’t know why she had reacted the way she did. “I so much wanted that rose to be alive,” she said.

  Shortly afterward, she restored the red plastic rose to the rose garden, and it has bloomed there year round ever since, faded nearly to white, but still there. When Aunt Jessie died, Uncle Nate bought a second plastic rose and added it to the other one in the rose garden.

  One day shortly after Jake had visited, I came around the side of the house and saw Uncle Nate sitting on the porch. I heard him say, “Now whose little baby are you, sugar pie? Where’s your mama? Ain’t nobody keeping an eye on you, little darlin’?”

  He was talking to Poke, the turtle, who was sitting in the middle of the porch.

  “It’s a turtle, Uncle Nate,” I said.

  He leaned over and examined it. “I knew it,” he said. “Where’s the other one?”

  “What other one?”

  “Don’t be a noodle,” Uncle Nate said. “This-here turtle is all by his lonesome. He needs a mate. You tell Jake I said so.”

  Two days later, Poke was missing, and Ben was frantic. “The box is empty! Someone stole Poke!” He looked under bushes, trees, and the porch, as if Poke might have suddenly taken wing and flown out of the box.

  I was under the porch trying to coax Ben out, when Uncle Nate thumped on the floorboards above us. “What’re you looking for down there?”

  I scrabbled out. “Poke. Ben thinks he might have—”

  “Foot! That old turtle isn’t under there.”

  Ben crawled out from beneath the porch, brushing clumps of dirt from his shirt. “He might be. He might be hiding—”

  “Listen, tadpole,” Uncle Nate said. “He ain’t a-hiding. He’s down at the creek this very minute searching—”

  “For what?” Ben asked.

  Uncle Nate thumped his stick firmly on the porch. “For his sweetheart, that’s what!”

  Ben made me go with him to the creek to see if we could find Poke. We searched all along the bank, but didn’t see any sign of him.

  “How does Uncle Nate know Poke is down here anyway?” Ben asked.

  “Maybe he brought him here.”

  On the way back to the house, I found a cricket, which I took to the tree outside my bedroom window. I didn’t see the one Jake had put there, but I figured it was around somewhere, because I’d heard it each night.

  Mom called from an upstairs window. “Bonnie? Zinny? Is that you, Zinny? Have you seen Uncle Nate?”

  “A while ago, on the porch.”

  “Go see what he’s up to, will you?”

  Uncle Nate wasn’t on the porch or up at the barn. Dad was in the field, weeding the tomato patch. “Seen Uncle Nate?” I asked.

  “Not lately.” He stood and looked around. “Wait a minute—there he goes—”

  Cresting the hill and waving his stick at our invisible Aunt Jessie was Uncle Nate calling, “Wait on up! Wait on up!”

  “Follow him, would you?” Dad said. “Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”

  Uncle Nate ran down the hill, around the barn, through the squirt gardens, and around the house, circling the ash tree twice. Ben and I caught up with him as he started down the drive.

  “Come on!” he shouted. “Help me get her.”

  We ran down the drive behind him. He had a funny, waddling gait, but he could run pretty fast. He turned and plunged into the bushes, where he was
soon tangled and flailing. “Dag-blasted branches!” He whacked his stick against the bush. “Got away again.”

  To Ben, I whispered, “Did you see her?”

  He nodded, his eyes wide open. “Yep, I did, didn’t you?”

  I hadn’t. Why couldn’t I see her?

  On our way back to the house, a truck crunched along the gravel drive behind us, and we stepped to one side as Jake pulled up. “Hey!” he called. “Get on in, and I’ll give you a ride up to the house.”

  “No thankee,” Uncle Nate said. “Things to do.”

  “Zinny? Ben?” Jake said.

  “Have to keep an eye on him,” I said, watching my uncle cross the drive and head toward the ash tree.

  Jake turned off the engine. “I brought you something, Zinny.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I like to.” He shoved a small brown paper sack at me.

  Uncle Nate was off and running again. “I’ve got to go after him.”

  “Zinny—Zinny!” Jake called after me. “Don’t forget to open it. Hope you like ’em—” He drove up to the house, backed up, and turned around, leaving the way he had come.

  Ben stood in the drive, yelling, “Bring me something next time!”

  “Zinny!” May called from the front door. “Was that Jake?”

  CHAPTER 13

  BINGO

  Four smooth, white lucky stones were in the sack Jake had given me. I slipped one stone into my pocket and hid the rest upstairs in my closet. Bottle caps, a cricket, a turtle, and lucky stones. These might sound like innocent presents, and they were, but they were the last of the innocent gifts.

  The next day, he brought me a beagle puppy. It’s hard to resist a puppy.

  “Do you like him?” Jake asked.

  I stroked the puppy’s back. “Of course I like him.” I handed him back to Jake. “But I can’t keep him.”

  “What? Sure you can. He’s yours.”

  “Why? Why for me? Why not for someone else?”

  Jake looked down at his feet. “I know I’m older than you, Zinny—”

  “Three whole years older,” I said.

  “I know it, but—I just want you to have him, that’s all.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “You’re a hard nut to crack, Zinny Taylor.” With that, he jumped off the porch and headed for his truck.