“Hey, Bob, I’ve got this baby bird over here, I think it’s been shot.”
His friend was not surprised. “Those kids with the BB guns again?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of bird?”
“I don’t know.” Roy looked over at the bird. “He’s kind of ugly . . . looks like some kind of mud hen. He’s gray and brown, I think. Could be some kind of sparrow or mockingbird or—oh, I don’t know what the thing is, but it looks like it’s hungry. Should I feed it?”
“Sure, if you want to.”
“What should I give it?”
“Give it the same thing its mother would, worms, bugs, a little raw meat.” He laughed. “After all, Roy, you’re its mother now.”
“Oh, great, that’s just what I need.”
“And Roy . . .”
“What?”
“Seriously, it probably won’t live, but you might want to check and see if you can get those BBs out. If you don’t, it will die for sure.”
Roy went over, picked up the bird, and examined it and was surprised at how strong it was as it squawked and struggled to get free. He held out the wings and could see four BBs lodged right under its right wing close to the breast. He got a pair of tweezers. After having to dig around for a moment, he carefully lifted the BBs out one by one as the bird squawked and squirmed in discomfort. “Sorry, fella, I know that hurts, but I’ve got to do it, pal.” He cleaned the spot with alcohol and put him back in the sock. Then he went over to the live bait section of the store and pulled out a large English red worm and a few grubs and took a razor blade and chopped up a nice breakfast for the bird, who proceeded to gobble the entire thing down and scream for more.
Roy continued to keep the bird in his office. He did not want anyone to know that he was hand feeding a baby bird three times a day and twice at night. He did not want to take the ribbing he would get from his friends. After all, he was a strapping six-foot-two man, and taking care of a baby bird might have seemed sissylike to them. As the days went by Roy tried not to become too attached. He knew how fragile they were and how hard it was to keep them alive. Every morning he half expected to find it dead, but each morning when he opened the door and heard the bird chirping away, he was secretly as pleased as punch and proud of the little bird for hanging on. He never saw anything want to live so bad in all his life, but he still didn’t tell anyone. He planned to keep feeding it, and if it survived he would release it when it got old enough to fly.
Several weeks went by. The bird grew stronger and stronger and pretty soon was hopping all around the room, trying to flap his wings, but he could not seem to get off the ground. Roy noticed that each time he tried he kept falling over to the right. As this continued to happen, Roy began to worry about him. One day he put him in a shoe box and drove him over to his friend Bob’s office.
The vet looked the bird over and said, “That wing is just too badly damaged, Roy. He’s never going to be able to fly like he should, and he’ll certainly never survive in the wild. We probably should just go ahead and put him to sleep.”
Roy felt as if someone had kicked him in the stomach.
“Do you think so?” he asked, trying to hide his disappointment.
“Yes, I do. You shouldn’t keep a wild bird like this inside. It would be cruel, really.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I was just hoping he would make it.”
“I can do it for you right now if you want me to.”
“No, it’s my bird. I’ll do it.”
“All right, that’s up to you. I’ll give you a bottle of chloroform. Just put it on some cotton and hold it over the beak; he won’t feel anything. He’ll just go to sleep.”
Roy put the bird back in the shoe box and drove home, and every time he heard the bird jumping around in the box, trying to get out, he knew his friend was right. It would be cruel to keep a thing meant to be free closed up inside. That night he gave the bird as much food as he would eat, and around nine o’clock he sat down and took out the chloroform and a ball of cotton. He sat there, staring at the bird hopping around the room, jumping on everything in sight and pecking at the papers on his desk. He picked him up and examined him more closely under the light. It was then he noticed that some of his feathers were just beginning to turn from brown to red. Upon closer inspection he began to see the beginnings of a small crest forming on the back of his head and a black mask starting to form around his eyes. Then it hit him. This was a redbird! What a shame, this little guy was not going to get the chance to grow up and become the beautiful bird he was meant to be. Damn! All of a sudden Roy felt like going back in the woods and finding those two boys and cracking their heads together right then and there. Finally, after sitting and staring at the bird for a few more hours, Roy stood up and threw the bottle in the trash can. “Oh, the hell with it, buddy. See you in the morning.” He turned the lights out and went home to bed. He could no more have put that bird to sleep than fly to the moon.
After that night Roy started keeping the bird in the front of the store with him. Eventually word got out that a baby redbird was living at the grocery store, and everybody who came in got a big kick out of it. At first the bird sat on the counter beside Roy and hopped all over the cash register, but as the weeks went by he was able to fly in short spurts, many times missing his mark, but he was getting stronger and more active every day, so much so that just in case Roy put a sign on the front door:
DON’T LET THE BIRD OUT!
At night when Roy locked up and went home he left the bird in the store so he could have the whole place to himself to roam as freely as he pleased, and roam he did. One morning Roy came in and found he had pecked his way through the top of a Cracker Jack box and was hopping around with a large Cracker Jack stuck on his beak. Roy removed it and laughed. The crazy bird must like Cracker Jacks! From then on he called the bird Jack. But as Roy found out later, Jack also liked Ritz crackers, potato chips, peanut butter, and vanilla wafers, and he especially liked chocolate-covered Buddy Bars. The little bird’s appetite for sweets was relentless and not exclusive. He once pecked his way inside a large bag of marshmallows, and by the time Roy found him the next morning he was completely covered with powdered sugar. Eventually, everybody got used to buying things that had been pecked at by Jack first.
Everyone who went in the store got a big kick out of Jack except one person. Frances’s younger sister, Mildred, made it clear that she did not like the bird and constantly complained to Frances. “I just know he walks all over everything,” she said. “There’s little peck holes in everything I pick up. He’s just a pest. The last time I was up there he landed in my hair and messed up my hairdo and I had to go home and redo the whole thing.”
Frances, who liked the bird, said, “Oh, Mildred, he never does that to me. I think he does it just to aggravate you because he knows you don’t like him.”
“Well, I don’t care what you say, I don’t think a place where you sell food is a sanitary place to have a bird, and I told Roy; I said, “It’s a good thing we don’t have health inspectors around here, or that bird would be against the law.”
“Then why do you keep going up there if all you are going to do is fuss about that bird night and day?”
“Where else am I going to shop? It’s not like we are living in the middle of twenty-five supermarkets. I don’t have a choice; I’m stuck. I’m telling you that bird is a nuisance. You can’t go up there without having it jump on you. He’s a menace to society and that’s all there is to it, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Frances said, “Well, I don’t either. Just make out a list of what you want and I’ll go and get your groceries for you so I don’t have to listen to you complain.”
Mildred looked at her, highly incensed. “And just how am I supposed to know what I want until I get there? That’s why it’s called shopping, Frances!” And with that she marched out the door.
Although Jack was a real handful and, without a
doubt, could be a pest at times, he had grown from the tiny ugly mud hen he started out as in life into a beautiful scarlet-red and black-masked bird. With his lipstick-colored beak and shiny little reddish-brown eyes, he looked exactly like a redbird should, but for some reason when Jack looked right at you, he seemed to have a silly smile on his face. One day Roy told Claude Underwood, “I swear that crazy bird has a sense of humor. Every morning I come in and he’s done something else just to make me laugh. I came in yesterday, and the fool was hanging upside down swinging back and forth in the fishnet.”
As time went on, Roy saw how smart the bird was and began to teach him tricks. Pretty soon he had Jack riding around on his finger and eating sunflower seeds out of his hand. His favorite game was when Roy would hide a sunflower seed in someone’s pocket and Jack would go inside the pocket of the surprised person and come back out with it and fly over and hand it to Roy. Then Roy would give him ten more.
Jack clearly loved all the attention he was getting. When he saw himself in the mirror for the first time, he hunched down and bobbed his head at his reflection and tried to attack it, so Roy had to get rid of all the mirrors. Jack had made it known that as far as he was concerned the store was his territory, and he did not want another bird around. When the bird in the mirror had disappeared so quickly, Jack was convinced that he and he alone had run the intruder off, so he puffed up and strutted around and became bolder and bolder. Most of the time he rode on Roy’s shoulder or on his hat, but he pretty much went where he pleased. Eventually that turned out to be dangerous.
One day, the postmistress Dottie Nivens’s big fat orange cat named Henry sat outside the store all day, looking in the window at Jack fluttering around the cash register, just waiting with his tail swishing back and forth, his eyes never losing sight of the bird. He was determined to catch it one way or another. Around three-thirty, when the kids from Lost River got off the school bus from Lillian and started coming in for candy and cold drinks, the cat saw his chance. He lunged through the open screen door, and before anyone saw him he had leaped up on the counter and made a grab for Jack. Jack shot straight up in the air, just barely managing to escape Henry’s claws, and landed on top of a shelf. Not to be deterred, Henry went tearing through the store right behind him, knocking racks of potato chips, cigarette cartons, cans and bottles on the floor as he chased Jack all around the room. And then everybody was running through the store chasing the cat and yelling. What a racket! It sounded like an earthquake. Poor Jack with his feathers flying and his crest standing straight up on his head, was hopping and leaping as fast and high as he could, with the cat continuing to miss him by mere inches. Jack somehow flapped and hopped his way all the way to the back of the store and landed on top of the meat counter, and the cat immediately sprang up after him and slid on all four feet all the way down the other end, knocking off bottles of ketchup, barbecue sauce, and horseradish in his wake. In the meantime, Jack, in one herculean effort, took a tremendous leap from the counter and flapped his wings long enough to land on the deer head, just out of the cat’s reach. Roy was finally able to shoo the frustrated Henry out the back door with a broom while Jack, with his feathers still all fluffed up, sat on his safe perch and fussed at the cat as he slunk out of the store.
Jack did not come down for the rest of the day and continued to fuss at Roy for letting the cat inside in the first place. The next day a new sign was added to the screen door:
DON’T LET THE BIRD OUT!
DON’T LET THE CAT IN!
River Route
BACK IN CHICAGO, Oswald Campbell met with his insurance agent and signed over his death benefits and anything that might be left from his pension after he died to Helen, stipulating that she spend it on herself and not let those kids get ahold of it. He knew they would anyway, and it galled him, but there was nothing he could do about it. He closed out his bank account and had only a little money left. The train was the cheapest way to go, so he made his reservations. The next morning he phoned Mrs. Cleverdon to tell her when he would arrive and find out the new address to have his pension forwarded.
Frances said, “Send it in care of Miss Betty Kitchen, River Route Forty-eight.”
“River Route? Is that the name of the street?”
“No, that’s the river,” she said.
“Oh. Well, I need a street address.”
“That is the address, Mr. Campbell. We get our mail by boat.”
Oswald was confused. “By boat? I don’t have a boat.”
She laughed. “You don’t need a boat, the mailman brings it by boat.”
“Where does he bring it?”
“Right to your dock.”
He was still confused. “Don’t I need a zip code or anything?”
“No, you don’t need to fool with that, Mr. Campbell. Our mailman knows where everybody lives.”
“I see . . . so it’s just River Route Forty-eight?”
“That’s right, I’m River Route Forty-six. My sister Mildred is Fifty-four.” She wanted to mention Mildred to him as much as possible.
Oswald hung up and wondered what kind of place he was headed to. She had not mentioned they got their mail by boat, for God’s sake. He was starting to have second thoughts but he had already given up his room and said goodbye to Helen on the phone, so he guessed he’d just go on as planned. After all, he had not told Mrs. Cleverdon he was a walking time bomb and would probably die on them. Besides, it was too late now. He couldn’t afford to go anywhere else at this point. He only hoped the grocery store down there sold beer at least. There was no reason to stay sober too long. Not when you had nothing to look forward to anyway.
The moment Frances had hung up, she realized that she had forgotten to at least warn him about Betty Kitchen’s mother, Miss Alma. She thought about calling him back but changed her mind. Maybe it was for the best; after all, she didn’t want to scare him off before he even arrived. Besides, she had to run over to Mildred’s house and help get ready for the meeting of the Mystic Order of the Royal Polka Dots Secret Society. Christmas was just around the corner and they had to make arrangements for the Mystery Tree. Every year in the dead of night, all the club members would get together and decorate the large cedar tree standing in front of the community hall. The Polka Dots did a lot of good works and they did all their good works in secret. The club motto was “To Toot One’s Own Horn Is Unattractive.” The only honorary male member of the Polka Dots was Butch Mannich, whom everybody called Stick, because he was six-four and weighed 128 pounds. He was Sybil Underwood’s twenty-six-year-old nephew and a good soul who did anything the ladies needed. He supplied the ladder and was the only one tall enough to hang the lights on the top of the tree each year.
When Frances walked in the house for the meeting, Mildred was lounging on the couch in the living room wearing a bright floral Hawaiian muumuu and reading the new book she had just borrowed from the bookmobile entitled Romance on the Bayou: A Steamy Story of Forbidden Love Deep in the Bayou Country of Louisiana. When Frances saw what her sister was reading, she said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Mildred, when are you going to stop reading all that trash?” Mildred closed the book, laid it on the coffee table, and answered, “When are you going to stop eating all that candy?”
Frances never could get the best of Mildred. As girls they had both attended one of the finest finishing schools in Chattanooga, but even then Mildred had always been somewhat of a maverick. She had been the first girl in town to ever wear a pants suit inside the Chattanooga Country Club: too independent, long before it was fashionable. Frances thought it was probably the reason that the boy Mildred had been engaged to ran off and married someone else. It could also account for the fact that you never knew what color Mildred’s hair was going to be the next time you saw her. She dyed her hair on a whim and according to how she felt from day to day. Today it was some sort of plaid. Frances hoped that by the time Mr. Campbell arrived it would be at least close to the color of something natural. But she did
not say anything. If Mildred knew she was trying to fix her up with a man she would do something crazy for sure. Frances worried about her sister. Mildred had retired after twenty-five years of work, had good insurance, owned her own home, and had plenty of friends, but she did not seem happy. Frances worried that Mildred was getting bitter as she aged and turning into an old curmudgeon right before her eyes. It was one of the many reasons that Frances was holding such high hopes for Mr. Campbell. Mildred needed to get over that boy who had left her, and move on with her life before it was too late.
Dreamy Alabama
AS THE DOCTOR had suggested, Oswald tied up all loose ends and settled his estate, a task that took him no more than five minutes. It consisted of throwing away three pairs of old shoes and giving away one of his two overcoats. He packed the one baseball he had caught at a game and all his other belongings into a single suitcase. That night a few of his friends from AA took him out for a farewell cup of coffee. He told them he would most probably be back in the spring. No point in getting anyone upset.
The next morning he took a cab to the L&N railroad station at LaSalle Street. He found his seat, and the train pulled out of the station at 12:45 P.M. As the familiar buildings passed by his window, he knew he was seeing Chicago for the last time and he thought about going to the club car for a drink right then and there, but the “One Day at a Time” chip his friends had given him last night was still in his pocket. He felt he should probably wait until they got farther away from Chicago and his AA group, so he just sat and looked out the window and soon became preoccupied with the scenery passing by. As they traveled south, through Cincinnati and Louisville to Nashville, the landscape slowly began to change. The deeper south they went, the more the brown land started to turn a different color, and by the time he woke up the next morning the barren black trees that lined the tracks the day before had been replaced with thick evergreens and tall pines. He had gone to sleep in one world and awakened in another. Overnight, the gray gloomy winter sky had turned a bright blue with huge white cumulus clouds so big that Oswald’s first thought was, You’ve got to be kidding!