A full harvest was the only way he paid the note. A farmer could only hope that his crops were successful enough to allow him to do it all again the following year. “How’d you like to throw all your money on the ground,” went the old saying, “and hope there was enough left to pick up several months later so you could throw it all on the ground again?”
Yeah, Baker often thought, farmers feed the world. We also keep the antacid companies in business.
It was a quandary unique to agriculture. Would there be too much water or not enough water? Is this too much pesticide? Too much fertilizer? Or not enough of either? Too much sun? Is all this wind dry-burning the leaves? There’s not enough wind for pollination. Planting too early? Too late? Unfortunately for farmers, the cliché really was true: hindsight is 20/20. The second-guessing never stopped.
Last June had been the first time Baker missed a payment. It seemed as though the rain, which had been needed so desperately months before, would never stop falling during the spring. Severe thunderstorms had washed out the rows of seed corn almost immediately after planting. The kernels that did sprout came up in clumps that were finally reduced to decomposing mush by the weeks of rain that followed.
That month Baker had skipped payments on the land and the house, using the money instead to replant the field in September. The collards and broccoli got a good start, and Baker was optimistic that he would right their financial ship with the harvest in November, but when October rolled in and out without any rain at all, he knew he was in trouble.
For a time it seemed as if it just might work out. Baker and Sealy had talked to their creditors about a last-ditch effort with wheat; and while no one was happy, they all knew there was no other alternative but to try. It rained just the right amount throughout the early months of the new year, and when the weather warmed significantly, the wheat was a sight to behold, growing taller and thicker by the day. Baker and Sealy often drove slowly around the edge of the field and watched and laughed as the winds blew swirling patterns in the long grass.
Their great spirits lasted until several weeks before the projected harvest when Baker noticed a few browning plants. He had never planted wheat but had followed common practices and used tips he gleaned from local farmers or found online. He had been closely monitoring the moisture content, and it had always been within the parameters set for his area. Maybe, he thought, this is just a small section of the field that received less rain. But no, within a week the brown, shriveling plants were everywhere.
It was the Hessian fly, Baker was informed, one of wheat’s most devastating pests the world over. His field was calculated by the county farm agent to be at a level of 58 percent infestation. Of course, that meant a total loss. There was no combine harvester that could reap a field and target only the wheat stalks that were not affected.
For more than a week after the traumatic pronouncement about his field, Baker had kept alive the crazy idea that maybe he and his family might harvest the good wheat by hand and at least be able to stave off their creditors. Then, three days ago, the starlings had showed up.
It was absolutely unbelievable. Baker had never been particularly religious—and the past year had certainly not nudged him in that direction—but it was simply inconceivable to him that multiple disasters of this magnitude could befall him by chance. First too much rain, followed by not enough rain. Then, at last, when the rain actually fell in the perfect amount, bugs ruined half the crop and birds ate the rest. It was a plague, Baker decided, of biblical proportions.
On this particular morning Baker’s wasn’t the only location being targeted by the starlings. Other farmers in the area were taking hits, too, but at the moment, Baker only cared about his field. The birds were here by the millions. The vast flocks, he was told, had not invaded Baldwin County for years. Yet here they were, just for him it seemed, during the one year that really mattered.
Baker Larson was about to lose everything. He was out of moves, inconsolable, empty of hope, and full of rage. And he had a gun.
Arriving at the southeast corner of his field, Baker slowed the truck briefly and looked at the sky filled with birds before slamming the gearshift into low and plowing on through the broad ditch in front of him. There were four entrances to the sixty-acre plot that the farmer could have used, but he was so enraged at the sight of the winged destruction and the thought of his ruined life that he simply didn’t take the time. He drove right out into the doomed wheat, spinning his tires and cursing, toward the largest concentration of starlings.
Moments later, still a couple of hundred yards away from the birds, Baker skidded to a stop and stared. His eyes had been on the flocks wheeling through the air, but there was someone in the field under them. It was a man, Baker decided, an old man and obviously a lunatic. The guy was bending and turning and waving his arms around. First one arm would reach and wave or move, then the other. Then both arms at the same time.
Baker watched only a minute before jerking the gearshift into park. Stepping from the truck, he thought, I’ll put a stop to this. The birds were flying together, Baker saw, in some odd motion that made the flock look as if it had a mind of its own. And they seemed to stay close to the crazy guy, wheeling above and around him. It appeared as if the old man was enjoying the show and his arm motions were attempting to follow the movement of the flock. Either way, Baker intended to kill a few and get this old man off his land. At least, while it still was his land.
The farmer had shut the door of the truck when he got out and didn’t bother to open it back up. He simply reached through the open driver’s side window and pulled a shotgun from the rack mounted on the back window. Baker kept the gun’s chamber empty, but the magazine was fully loaded. It was a Remington 1187, a 12-gauge, semiautomatic. The plug was out, so when Baker jacked a shell filled with Number Sixes in the chamber and started walking toward the old man, there were still three shells in the magazine.
As the agitated young farmer stalked closer and closer to the old man, he maneuvered around to approach the guy from directly behind. The guy was clearly nuts. Baker knew that for sure now. He was less than a hundred yards away and could hear the man talking or yelling to the birds, which continued to fly in weird, tight groups around him.
Baker Larson didn’t know it, but he was witnessing a murmuration. No one knows why they do it, yet, occasionally, hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions—of starlings gather in great shape-shifting flocks called murmurations.
After decades of observation researchers continue to be uncertain how they do this. The starling murmurations are an example of “swarm intelligence,” which is also seen in vast schools of fish. So far, even complex algorithmic models have not been able to explain the starling flock’s unique ability for group acrobatics. What has been measured, however, is the reaction time of the individual birds flying as a group. Flying as if controlled by a single brain, the birds use just under one-tenth of a second to move as a team or group and successfully avoid midair collisions.
Baker closed to ten yards. The crazy man was apparently oblivious to his presence, and the starlings were flying so close he wanted to duck. Instead, he raised the gun to his shoulder, punched off the safety with his right forefinger, and pointed it at the middle of the swarm. Baker pulled the trigger three times in quick succession, and stricken birds rained down around the two men while the flock made a panicked escape.
Even as he shot, Baker had kept an eye on the old man, who had both arms in the air when the blasts ripped into the flock. Strangely, the man did not react immediately with the terror Baker was expecting. Instead, he barely moved at all, continuing to hold up his arms for several long seconds as the starlings fled and the gunfire faded away. Only then did he allow his arms to fall to his side and carefully begin to turn around.
The farmer had taken two quick steps after the shots, and when the object of his immediate attention finally turned to face him, Baker was even closer and had the long gun pointed right at th
e old man’s head. His cheek was on the stock, his right eye sighting down the twenty-eight-inch barrel. “Don’t you move, old man,” he threatened. “I will put you down.”
Five
The circle shape that is formed by the end of a 12-gauge can seem larger than it really is if the gun is close. This is especially true when the gun is pointed between one’s eyes. The old man had been instructed not to move, and, for the moment, he was more than willing to comply. The farmer holding the gun, on the other hand, was so enraged that he was trembling, a fact that did not escape the old man’s attention.
“Who are you?” the farmer demanded. “What’re you doing here?” The gun wavered again. Sweat streamed down Baker’s forehead and into his eyes, forcing him to wipe his face quickly with his left hand. Firming up his grip on the gun again, he inched even closer. “Did you hear me? I said—”
“Yes, I can hear you,” the old man said softly.
Baker yelled, “What? What? Speak up! What’s your name?” all the while becoming more menacing in his body language.
“Jones,” the old man said. “My name is Jones.”
“What’re you doing here? This is private property.”
“Yes, I know,” Jones said. “I am where I’m supposed to be. I actually came to see you. Just got here a little early is all. There’s no reason to get upset.”
The farmer never took his cheek from the gunstock and said, “You old fossil, you don’t know anything about why I might be upset. And there is no reason for you to be here to see me. I’m not hiring. I ought to shoot you for trespassing.”
At that, Jones’s demeanor changed abruptly. The passive look on his face disappeared. He rolled his eyes as if he had had enough and stepped forward, pushing the barrel of the 12-gauge from his face and taking it from the farmer’s hands without a struggle. Pointing the gun away from them in an obvious manner, Jones stepped a few yards to Baker’s right. Expertly, it appeared, he put on the safety, ejected the lone shell from the gun’s chamber, and caught it in the air.
Returning to Baker with the shotgun still pointed in a safe direction, Jones flung the remaining shell out into the wheat. At that moment, Jones’s attention was attracted to something on the ground. He stopped, shifting the gun into his other hand, and reached down. As he did so, Jones’s piercing gaze moved upward and into the eyes of the young man in front of him. Without looking away, the old man carefully picked up one of the dead starlings.
The old man looked away from Baker and shifted the shotgun into the crook of his arm. With great care he placed the starling onto his right hand, where its still-bleeding breast pressed down against his palm. The bird was darkly colored but glistening with a shine accented by the speckled pattern that was typical of a starling. Though the bird was a duplicate of millions just like it, the one in the old man’s hand was stunning. Even in death, its glossy feathers of blackest black seemed polished by the highlighted flecks of deep green.
Contrasting distinctly with the dark, glimmering feathers was the bird’s bright yellow beak. Now relaxed, it was slightly open, displaying the tiny pink tongue it had protected in life. Longer than that of a comparably sized bird, the starling’s beak is unique in all the world. Its gentle curve synchronizes perfectly with a razor’s sliver of a tongue in order to source the starling’s astonishing ability to produce thousands of distinct sounds.
Moving the bird from one hand to the other and turning it over in the process, the old man looked at Baker and said simply, “This was a female.”
Good, the young farmer thought. I’m glad. At least that’ll be one less nest of babies to grow up and destroy someone else’s life.
The old man directed his attention back to the bird. Now upturned in his left hand, the starling’s head lay to the side. The ruined breast, open and ugly, was now visible, and her wings, capable of speed and acrobatics only moments ago, hung limp and were opened wide.
Baker stood three feet away and didn’t know why he didn’t just leave, but he remembered the old man still had his gun, so he waited and watched. He had seen something in the old man’s face a few seconds before that had made him want to run. What is up with this guy? he thought. What kind of look was that? Mad as a hornet and about to cry at the same time . . . very weird.
Still, Baker watched. He was more than a bit aggravated on top of everything else. I’m the one standing here with his life ruined, and this old dude is acting like I shot one of his pets, Baker raged silently. Dang, man! Get over it. There’re a jillion starlings flying around here, and every single bird is just like the one in your hand.
The starling’s open wings revealed the absence of green speckles on their undersides. They were jet black. The old man eased the bird up to his face as if he were inspecting it as thoroughly as he could. Of course, Baker was so close, the bird was practically in his face as well. Staring, Baker blinked hard two times. His mind was racing. The old man put his fingertip on the starling’s feathers and gave a little push. When he pulled his hand back, a white spot was left behind.
Baker blinked again and moved his head so he could see. Yes, there it was, a white spot—a brilliant white—right in the middle of the underside of the starling’s right wing. Was it paint? Baker didn’t think so and wasn’t sure where the old guy would have gotten paint in the first place. Then, weirdest of all, Baker thought, the old man closed the starling’s wings and put the bird into his pocket.
He paused only for a moment before moving a few feet away, and in a practiced manner, pulled back the shotgun’s breach bolt with his right hand and tilted the chamber to show it was empty. After everything that had preceded it, only then did Jones hand the gun back to the farmer.
Baker stood openmouthed, not quite understanding what had just happened. He hadn’t really wanted to shoot this old guy in the first place, but he hadn’t walked over here intending to let him have the gun either. But that’s what he had done. Then he had stood there, like an idiot, and waited through a bird funeral of some kind for the guy who had taken his gun to give it back!
“Now look here, Baker Larson,” Jones said sternly. “I know you’re having a bad time of it, but if your foolish thinking is going to have you pointing guns at people, there won’t be much I can do.” Then he added, “You keep acting that ridiculous, there might not be much I want to do.”
“Hey,” Baker said as if he were just waking up, “how did you know my name? Have we met?”
“Of course we’ve met, son. You think I pulled your name out of the air? Now sit down, Baker.”
Curiously, the strong voice Baker obeyed without question reminded him an awful lot of someone from his past. He couldn’t place the memory, though, and his brain was scattering in several directions at once.
“What were you doing with those birds when I came up? And that one bird . . . the one you touched . . .” Baker had put the shotgun aside and watched as the old man settled cross-legged directly in front of him. Noting that Jones had not answered his question, the farmer asked several more. “Is Jones your last name? You’re Mr. Jones? Where are you from?”
Jones sighed, and with that rush of breath most of his aggravation with the young man before him seemed to dissipate as well. He reached out his right hand and smiled. “I’m thinking we should start over. Hm? I am Jones. Not Mr. Jones. Just Jones. And at the moment I am from Fairhope.”
Baker hesitated only a fraction of a second before reaching out as well. As he shook the older man’s hand, he forced a small laugh and said, “Glad I didn’t shoot you.” He glanced around and added, “Ah . . . what are we doing?”
“You and I are about to have a little talk.”
“Oh. Well, hey, you know, it’s nice to meet you and all. And I’m sorry about that a few minutes ago, but um . . . I really have a lot to do. So . . .” Baker started to get to his feet. He wasn’t sure why he was on the ground in the first place.
“Son,” Jones said, “you don’t have anything to do.”
Baker fro
ze. “What?” he said. He was offended. At the same time his mind was registering the fact that the old man in front of him was correct. He did not have anything to do. “Yes, I do have something to do,” he huffed anyway. “I’m—”
“You do not”—Jones broke in evenly—“have anything to do.” At that, the farmer’s shoulders slackened, and he eased back to the ground.
Jones continued as if he had not been interrupted. “You do not have anything to do. Baker Larson, at this moment in your life, there is nowhere else for you to go. You have run as hard and as fast and as long as you can run. Until right now, right here. You have finally cornered yourself in this disaster of a wheat field. You have called yourself a farmer, but you . . . and your father . . . and your father’s father . . . have been planting bad seeds for many years.”
All the air seemed to go out of Baker at that moment. There was no anger, no aggression. He wanted to cry or die or melt into the ground. “Who are you, man?” he said to Jones. “For real. Why are you here? Why am I here?”
Jones cocked his head and showed a hint of a smile. “Why are you here? Why am I here? Those are questions Socrates and Aristotle asked centuries ago. Is it possible that you and I might find the answer today in Baldwin County?”
Baker returned the old man’s smile with a weak one of his own and said, “Yeah, probably not. I really meant . . . ah . . . I guess I meant, why are we together? Did something happen to me? I’m feeling strange. And no offense, but I feel weird sitting out here with you. I think I need to go home.”