A Catalog of Birds

  “She would have done whatever he told her to do. Even something stupid,” Nell says.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. But he scares me.”

  When the policemen leave, Nell hurries through her chores at the Alsops’. The farm looks shabbier than ever and the onset of mud season isn’t helping.

  The week before when Nell had found the ponies’ feed barrel empty she’d begged her father to buy a few bags of grain at the feed store. He was adamantly opposed, not because of the money, but because of the insult to Asa. When she would not be dissuaded and then developed a plan to sneak the grain into the storeroom barrels while Asa was in town, he was her reluctant accomplice.

  Nell is mucking out stalls when Maeve Alsop steers up the rutted drive, tires spinning in the mud. Nell watches from the barn as Mr. Alsop helps Evan load two suitcases and a few boxes into the trunk and wishes she were not here to witness this. Ten-year-old Evan is fighting tears, stuttering his goodbyes. The onset of Evan’s stutter is why he supposedly needs to move into town with his mother. Closer to school and a speech therapist.

  Had anyone given any thought to what it was like for Evan alone in that house? Megan gone, God knows where, her room empty, his father shattered, grieving, raging for all she knows. Ten years old, so thin you can see the wings of his shoulder blades through his T-shirt. Painfully shy. He’d come out to the barn one morning to tell her something. Couldn’t get the words out.

  Mrs. Alsop stays in the car, her window cracked open, cigarette smoke curling into the cold air. Asa stands by his son’s side, his huge hands opening and closing. Dash, still confined to the house, is barking frantically and trying to push open the back door.

  Nell grabs a currycomb in the tack room, sees Megan’s green sweater hanging on a hook. Ducks into a stall to curry the ponies; ecstasy for them as they shed their winter coats. When she hears the car head down the drive and the farmhouse door close, she makes a break for it, jogging down the farm lane, not looking back, even when she hears Mr. Alsop call her name.

  That night she tells her mother she has to quit; she’s too spooked to keep going to the farm. When her mother asks for details, Nell doesn’t know what to say.

  He makes me uncomfortable, the farm is sad and lonely, I can’t stand the way it feels like he needs me; that he wants to reach out and hold on to me, to touch me.

  “Nell, Asa Alsop would never . . . ”

  “It’s not the same since Megan disappeared. And now Evan’s gone. I just . . . ”

  “What?”

  “I can’t go back there.”

  “Did something happen?” Marion asks.

  “It’s just different. It feels different.”

  “Did you see something?”

  She thinks for a moment. What’s bothering her? “Megan’s green sweater. It was hanging from a hook in the barn.”

  “So?”

  “It wasn’t there before.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Nell hesitates. “Yes.”

  “Was she wearing it the day she disappeared?” Marion asks.

  “I don’t know. But she wouldn’t have left it there.”

  “There are dozens of possible explanations.”

  “Like what?”

  “That she forgot her sweater at the farm.”

  “Why is it in the barn?”

  “Maybe it’s a talisman,” Marion says. “He keeps it near him.”

  “That’s kind of strange.”

  “You wore Billy’s hunting jacket for two years.”

  “I can’t go back, Mom.”

  “You have to call him.”

  “But . . . ”

  “Could Billy manage your job?”

  “Some of it.”

  “So tell him you’ll talk to your brother, see if he can fill in.”

  On the phone Asa makes it easy for Nell. He tells her he understands and that he’s sold the ponies. It knocks the breath out of her.

  “Where are they going?”

  “A family over in Clifton Springs. Could you be here, Nell, when they’re picked up on Wednesday? I’m not sure I can stand to see them go.”

  “What time?”

  “You tell me.”

  “3:30, after school.”

  “I’ll arrange it,” Asa says. “I’ll take myself off to town.”

  “My brother might be able to help you out. Do you want me to talk to him?”

  “Tell him to stop by.”

  “Mr. Alsop, was that Megan’s green sweater I saw in the barn?”

  “She forgot it in my truck the last time I drove her to school.”

  “Why is it in the barn?

  “I don’t know what to do with it. I should probably put it away in her closet, but I like to see it. I know that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I miss her, too.”

  “Don’t be a stranger, Nell.”

  “I won’t.”

  They both remain on the line for a moment. When Nell sets the phone down, she feels sick. It doesn’t seem possible that Mr. Alsop can walk through his barn without those ponies, any more than he can walk through his house without his children. Nell is just one more person leaving him behind.

  Pamela Moss’s body is found less than a mile from her home in Penfield. Buried just off the path that all the kids use as their shortcut between the new mall and Panorama Trail. Steep gullies, wooded slopes; an island of wilderness surrounded by the backyards of the latest housing development.

  Still no suspects, no one in custody. Is she part of the Alphabet Murders—Pamela from Penfield—or is this an isolated case? Kids as young as seven or eight use the path to visit friends and neighbors. Teenagers love it for the privacy it affords. Many firsts occur just off the trail: kisses, cigarettes, joints. Now it’s a crime scene.

  The papers mention Megan Alsop in passing. One enterprising reporter dug up Megan’s middle name: Grace, suggesting that Megan Grace from Geneva could, in fact, fit this serial killer’s profile.

  Billy is late for his PT appointment in the pool. Eight weeks out from his last surgery, he has a new prescription for his therapist, given to him by his surgeon that morning: Strengthening. No limits.

  His range of motion is improving, but his hand is still more like a paw. He can barely grip a glass, turn a key, or wring out a sponge. But little by little, the pain is lessening. They say it’s all a question of the nerves.

  He wants to see what Kyle will do with those three words: Strengthening. No limits. And he wants to race his brother Brendan in June. To win.

  Kyle is all for swimming, but he never encourages Billy’s racing fantasies. His job is to get that arm in motion again, the hand less of a liability.

  “We’ll start with gloves; they’ll give your hands a little support. And the webbing will give you some resistance, good for strengthening your arms and back, some additional pull, some speed.”

  Billy’s eyes light up.

  “That’s a maybe on the speed. Expect to be slow. Expect to be awkward, okay? Then you can feel great when you start to improve.”

  “Okay.”

  “Lower your expectations.”

  “Got it.”

  “After the gloves, a week or so, we’ll see how you do, we can work with hand paddles.”

  “Like the real swimmers.”

  “Like the real swimmers.”

  “For now,” Kyle hands him a kickboard, “fifty meters kick, fifty meters swim. That’s the drill. Stop when you need to.”

  Kyle walks the pool deck, correcting and encouraging him.

  “Who the hell invented the kickboard?” Billy asks.

  “You want to beat your brother? Shut up and kick.”

  “Come on . . . ”

  “It’s your power. You think i
t’s all about your arms. It’s not.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You’ve got some deficits, Billy.”

  “I thought one of your jobs was cheerleader.”

  “Your legs can make up the difference. We’ll start with fins next week.”

  Billy finishes the fifty, pulls on a pair of webbed gloves.

  “Keep it simple. Any pain, we stop.”

  “If it’s minor, can I work through it?”

  “Let’s see how it goes. Start with breaststroke.”

  “Jesus!” Billy can’t keep the flare of anger out of his voice.

  “We on the same page here?” Kyle asks. “I don’t want to push you into last week. Or last month. We clear?”

  Fifty meters of breaststroke, with an ineffectual kick, and one and a half arms, is endless. Who invented this? He feels ridiculous.

  “Take a break. Full stop. One minute rest. Then we walk it out. Then we talk.”

  Billy squats in the shallow end, dizzy, trying to catch his breath. He should’ve had breakfast.

  “You a smoker?” Kyle asks.

  Billy nods.

  “Drink much?”

  “I’m trying to quit.”

  “Good idea. How’s the arm?”

  “Tired. But not sore.”

  “One hundred meters crawl and you’re done.”

  “No way.”

  “We start slow. We progress. Let’s go.”

  Four lengths and his muscles are burning and screaming from the effort. Jesus Christ.

  “It’s a start,” Kyle says.

  “It’s for shit,” Billy replies, his anger refueled by having to use the set of geriatric steps with a handrail just to get out of the frigging pool.

  “Where were you?” Kyle asks.

  “Where was I when you were smoking dope and protesting the war?”

  “I’m a vet, you dumbass. Marines.”

  “Where? In the rear with the gear?”

  “Siege of Khe Sanh good enough for you? I’ve got a good idea what you’re going through.”

  Billy takes this in. “I was at Camp Holloway. Then Da Nang.”

  “You talking to anybody?”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You calling me crazy?”

  “Of course not, but . . . ”

  “But what?”

  “Your doctor thinks you’re not being realistic.”

  “And you?”

  “Nerve damage is complicated, it’s . . . ”

  “Enough with the relentless bad news!”

  “I told him you could work through a lot of pain, that you wanted it bad enough to work through just about anything.”

  “Anything that’s possible, that is.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is it possible?”

  “I don’t have a crystal ball.”

  “Is it possible?”

  “It’s not likely.”

  Billy looks across the pool to the wall of glass blocks refracting sun and blue sky. “Odds?”

  “Billy—”

  “Thanks, man.”

  Late that afternoon, when Nell finally finds him at the Veterans’ Club, cheapest beer in town, extracts him from the booth in the back corner, and walks him home, he’s in rough shape. Crap beer with rotgut chasers and he smells like the toilet he’s spent half the afternoon puking in. Beer, bourbon, rage, self-hatred: a lethal brew. And some asshole kept playing Richie Havens over and over on the jukebox. Freedom, freedom, freedom, with that insanely fast guitar lick. The irony enough to kick your teeth in.

  “You’re gross.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, you really stink, Billy.”

  “That bathroom is not a nice place to be on your hands and knees.”

  She hands him a packet of saltines. His hands shake as he pulls off the cellophane, crams them into his mouth.

  He stops outside Nelson’s. “Can I borrow a few bucks? I need some cigarettes.”

  “I don’t have any money with me.”

  “Liar.”

  She shrugs. “You eat anything today?”

  “What are you, my mother?”

  “Did you?” she asks.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Ha!”

  “Crap coffee, maybe a piece of lousy pie . . . ”

  “You’re beating yourself up pretty bad, y’know?”

  “This is nothing.”

  “Maybe you could quit it.”

  “I need a shower, I need a cigarette; I need to get laid.”

  “Billy!”

  “You need to get laid.”

  “Stop it.”

  “C’mon, little miss priss.”

  “Why are you being like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like somebody I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know or don’t like?”

  “Maybe both.”

  They turn onto Highland and walk down the hill to East Lake Road. Highland is Nell’s favorite street, still lined with American elms, though the blight is moving through these giants, too.

  She stops, listens. “Oriole . . . cardinal . . . catbird . . . woodpecker.”

  Billy stops beside her.

  “There’s the cardinal again,” she says.

  He shakes his head, as if to clear it.

  “And a jay, too.” This is what he taught her. “Hey, you learn any new birdcalls in Vietnam?”

  He shushes her with a gesture.

  “Not one?”

  “What are you hearing now?” he asks.

  “Woodpecker, 4 o’clock. Robin, 8 o’clock. Blue jay . . . ”

  “Crow?”

  “Screeching directly overhead.”

  “The crow and the blue jay. That’s all I can hear.”

  “You’re just out of practice. Cardinal.”

  “I can’t hear it.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  The robin again, its loud liquid carol: Cheerily, cheer-up, cheerio. Surely he can hear that.

  He shakes his head. She wants to reassure him, but stops as the gravity of what he’s saying begins to sink in. If he can’t hear properly . . . They’d spent their whole lives listening. And watching.

  “What do your doctors say?” she asks.

  “Give it time. It’s a fucking mantra. They’re worthless.”

  “But . . . ”

  “Drop it, Nell.”

  When they get home, Rosie’s car is in the driveway and Connor and Collin are playing in the backyard. Rosie sits in the kitchen while Marion makes dinner.

  Billy heads for the shower, promising to come down to say hello as soon as he’s presentable.

  “What’s going on?” Nell asks.

  “Nick’s taken a lease on his own shop,” Rosie says.

  “Really? Where?”

  “Just outside Rochester. The Twelve Corners in Pittsford, between a wine store and a shoe store. Great location, a well-to-do community, and look at this, Nell.” Rosie unrolls the floor plan. Explains how they’ll have room for Nick’s butcher shop and for prepared foods, too. All the things they wanted to do that Nick’s father had resisted or outright refused.

  “There will be so many more possibilities for part-time work. Or I could help Nick in the shop.”

  Nell hasn’t seen Rosie this excited in years.

  “There are good schools for the boys. And it’s closer to home.”

  “Where will you live?” Nell asks.

  “We’ve put in a bid on an old farmhouse with six acres on the outskirts of town. It needs work, but it’s solid. And we can almost afford it.”

  “I can help you mo
ve. I can babysit, whatever you need.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  “Nell,” Marion says. “Set the table. They’re staying for supper. We’re celebrating.”

  Jack asks Billy to help him for a day or two at the Ag Station. Jack, in his small corner, is a contrarian, bringing samples of soil from surviving Seneca Indian trees to his colleague, Grant Walden, an ethnobotanist. What can they learn about the soils and the Seneca practices of complementary planting? Jack is leery of the promises made by chemical companies. Living alongside lakes and rivers has made him protective, and Silent Spring confirmed a lifetime’s worth of intuition and observation.

  Billy is dressed and ready to go that morning, a surprise given his late nights. But that’s the point. Get him up and out as early as possible, into the warming April sun. Tire him out so much he’ll have to rein in the booze and the bars.

  A father can hope.

  Billy hasn’t slept much. The nights are endless, the nerve pain relentless, sleep a release he both dreads and longs for. He’s clinging to the belief that swimming every day will make him so physically tired the nightmares will cease. That his hand can heal; will heal, whatever it takes. Building himself back up one penny at a time.

  The ringing in his ears is maddening. At its worst it sounds like the high-pitched whine of an incoming mortar. At its best it’s a stubborn drone.

  His father turns on the radio. Wall to wall blather about the Apollo 13 emergency landing. Billy snaps it off, irritated, without explaining to Jack that tinnitus, plus the radio, plus a hangover, sends him around the bend.

  At the Ag Station Jack grabs a pair of pruners and a small folding saw. Together they load dozens of comfrey seedlings into a wheelbarrow and a basket full of numbered and labeled scions.

  Today Jack will graft the new cuttings he’s taken from the remnants of the Seneca orchards. He’d found these trees with Billy and Nell, a handful having survived the wholesale destruction of Seneca lands and livelihood during the eighteenth century, followed by the neglect and cultural amnesia of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They are miracles in their way, and, Jack believes, eloquent voices from the past.

  If you live on Seneca Lake, you live with the buried history of the Sullivan Expedition of 1779. The Seneca Indians had cultivated the rolling hills lining the banks of the lake for hundreds of years before George Washington sent General John Sullivan and one quarter of the Revolutionary Army to destroy the fabled Iroquois Confederacy.