A Catalog of Birds

  “You’re my brother. You have to say that.”

  “Read.”

  She angles the flashlight, opens the book.

  Several days without drinking and his hands are shaking and he can’t quit thinking about Megan so he can’t sleep and he’s reduced to almost crawling into bed with his kid sister. It’s always worse in the middle of the night. He feels thick, heavy, as though grief has a weight. He avoids looking at his body, wasting, he knows, the burned flesh, the looping, line-drawn, angry scars, the bubbles beneath the skin where shrapnel lies in wait. His fingers tease these bumps, pressing, pressing to the point of pain, sharp release, blood.

  Of course he remembers when she split her lip, and skinned both knees, but she seems to have forgotten about her knees. She has a scar on her upper lip, very faint now, the scar a slightly different texture than the rest of her crooked smile.

  He watches her read. She’s dubious. And embarrassed.

  She glances over at him. He’s still awake.

  “Keep reading,” he says.

  Billy’s breathing changes as he finally falls asleep. A struggle to surrender. Like the dark is a dangerous place. Nell marks the page and slides the book under the bed. Glances at her watch: 3:45. The birds are waking up even though there’s no hint, yet, of light in the sky.

  She hears the ringing metallic trill of a junco, the high-pitched whistle of a tufted titmouse. Looks up to the ceiling to see the wings Billy made for her turning slowly.

  She wishes she could say: Tell me about a day, a night, your tent, or your hooch or whatever you call it. How do you start a conversation about Vietnam with this wary, chain-smoking, boy? Man. He’s a man. She knows that. He doesn’t even smell the same anymore.

  Asleep, you can almost see the kid in Billy again: his knees drawn up under the quilt, those long eyelashes his sisters envy. The bones in his face look sharp. Not like the bones of a boy who’s growing so fast his body can’t keep up, more like the bones of an old man, too prominent, the flesh burned away.

  Why is she thinking like this? In the three months he’s been home, has there been one night without nightmares, one day without too much to drink? She’s not sure how much longer he can tough it out at the gas station.

  So many things they can’t talk about, don’t talk about. The future a minefield. Everything he’s dreamed of, worked for: drawing, flying, Megan. Gone.

  Two years alone with her sad, quiet parents. The last kid. Her siblings envy her: all that attention, not so strict anymore. They have no idea how the old house echoed, the air thick with worry, how the six o’clock news beat them bloody every night.

  She knows it’s useless to try to sleep. She works through a few math problems in her head. Mental gymnastics, Mr. Ware calls them. Like crossword puzzles. Math is Nell’s secret pleasure, the subject she found her way to all on her own. Everything she’s learned: shape in geometry, operations and their applications in algebra, infinitesimal change in calculus, adds to her sense of the invisible, mysterious, beautiful world.

  Tuesday, on his way into town, Billy pulls Asa’s truck over to the side of the road at the crest of the hill on Route 16. Flanagan stretches across his lap, pokes her head out the window.

  He loves this view of the lake. High enough to be eye level with the hawks riding the thermals, wheeling in slow sun-warmed circles. As a kid, he imagined running to the edge and throwing himself off to join the birds in their flight. This is where he and Nell rode their bikes and hatched their plans to build wings and fly.

  An older woman pegs laundry to the line next to her trailer. The stiff May breeze slaps her hair around like a flag. Her small garden is fenced against the deer. Asparagus and foxglove push up out of the soil.

  Maybe she knew the old man across the road who lived in a shack made of cast-off doors. Walter kept a mean-looking mongrel chained to a tree in the yard. Some unlucky devil must have had to put that dog down after Walter died. Billy hopes it hadn’t been Harlow.

  There are fox in the sumacs nearby, and once he’d seen a stag, hidden at the edge of the forest. Walter told them that big white stag was the legend buck; he’d hit it three different times with his bow and every time it walked away.

  It’s rare to be alone and in a vehicle. He can go anywhere, he realizes with a start. He follows the flight of a great blue heron, its extraordinary wingspan, feathers flashing silver in the sun.

  He’s so tired. Even his bones are tired. Where is he headed; where is he supposed to be? When did he get so slow and vague?

  Deliver eggs to Schuyler’s, swing over to PT, then to Harlow’s, then to the Y to swim; that’s it. Chores and work, not dreams. He’s been making progress at the Y: he’d managed a solid three-quarter mile the day before. His muscles tired, a good tired.

  He picks up his notebook, rolls down the windows, shoves the seat back, and finishes the worksheets Cindy gave him. Steely Cindy, the hand therapist, promises him he will write and draw left-handed. Like a pro. Doubtful, he thinks, as he traces letters. How about like an artist? Or a draftsman, at least. Competent. Can he settle for competent?

  And a right hand that functions.

  Two wrens bathe in the dust of the trailer’s rutted driveway. He itches to sketch them, a few lines to capture their boisterous energy. Cindy has been badgering him to take a figure drawing class at the high school. Starting tonight. Maybe the models will be naked. And young.

  Nell tags along with Billy. It’s the last session of adult ed classes offered for the year. The half-lit hallways smell of dust and chalk. Nell walks with Billy to the art room door and then crosses the hall to an open classroom where she can finish working on her cell diagram.

  She’s detailing the workings of cell metabolism at the molecular level, down to the very last pathway. Drawing this helps her see and sense this information in a deeper way than simply reading about it or memorizing a chart. Nell’s colorful rendering looks like several big-city subway maps blended into one.

  She wonders what the disruptions of DDT and mercury look like at the cellular level. Is there an illustration somewhere? Surely someone has already done that. Miss Rosenthal or Esme will know. She’s grateful for having learned to draw at Billy’s elbow, all those years keeping field journals. The concepts she is learning come alive when she can imagine them in physical form, drawing the chamber of a heart, for instance. She thinks of the structure of a hand, the articulation of bones, the sheath of muscle fibers, the intricate nerve system. Wishes for the magic of regeneration for her brother, like a starfish or a salamander.

  Billy introduces himself to Anna Barnes, the instructor.

  She shows him to an easel. There are a dozen students, all ages, from a boy who looks to be about fourteen to a woman in her seventies with a long white braid down her back.

  The easels are ranged around a riser with a chair on it. The model emerges from behind a curtain wearing a robe, steps onto the riser, hands the robe to Miss Barnes, and stands with his back to them.

  “Quick sketches,” she says. “The model will change his pose every three minutes.”

  Everyone sets to work. Billy is surprised at how little the man’s self matters. His body is a puzzle to solve, form and shape to capture.

  Billy has never taken a life drawing class before. Art classes in school, sure, but that was half horsing around and they never had models. Though he remembers Mrs. Higgins’s patience and all he learned from her about watercolor and the serendipity of mistakes.

  Here Miss Barnes moves among the students, making corrections, offering suggestions. In faded jeans, a paint-spattered man’s shirt, and work boots, she is understated and matter-of-fact. Her dark hair is loosely twisted and pinned off her neck. She touches her students, stands with a hand on a back or a shoulder, changes the grip on a pencil; tells one student, a high school girl, to get up and walk the corridor, shake her hands and arms to
loosen up.

  When she sees Billy struggling, she brings him a thick piece of charcoal and suggests he use shading rather than line. After working left-handed through three poses, he tries it right-handed.

  Confronting the evidence of his failures strewn on the floor at his feet, he wants a drink. And the door. He’s promised himself, yet again, to quit drinking. On weeknights at least.

  Miss Barnes puts her hand on his shoulder. “Can you stay after class? I’d like to talk to you.”

  She waits until the other students have left, her gaze frankly appraising him, unflinching as she takes in the burns on his face and neck. She had been unafraid to touch his crabbed hand, he realizes. Not even his mother has touched that hand.

  “What’s your story?” she asks.

  “I used to be . . . ”

  “Really skilled. What happened?”

  “Helicopter crash. Burns. Breaks. Shrapnel.”

  “Nerve damage?”

  “Shredded.”

  “Therapy?”

  “Three days a week.”

  “And you’re here because . . . ”

  “They want me to learn to draw left-handed.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want my life back. All of it,” he says, surprised to hear the words out loud.

  “As far as drawing?”

  “Is it possible to make the switch? Or are they bullshitting me?”

  “Some people can do it,” she says. “It’s hard work. It takes time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Not only are you learning a new skill, you’re rewiring your brain.”

  “Can you help me?”

  “Some. It’s really up to you.”

  “What do you do?” he asks.

  “I teach at the community college. Studio art. Art history.”

  “And this?”

  “I love these classes. All ages. No pretensions. What about collage? Or big canvases, big brushes?”

  “I want what I had,” he says. “Maybe that sounds crazy. But it’s all connected to birds for me.”

  “Bring me some of your work.”

  “The paintings are gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bonfire.” He sees the shock register. “My sister saved my field journals.”

  “I’ve seen field journals so exquisite the pages seem to breathe.”

  “They’re not that good.”

  “There may be more than one way back. Remove the old expectations. Let your left hand develop; strengthen your right hand. You could surprise yourself.”

  “So maybe I’m in the wrong class.”

  “For now.”

  “Do you teach collage?”

  “Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9–12,” she says. “It’s too far into the semester for you to register for credit, but you could audit the class, just a private understanding between you and me.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why not? They moved the art department downtown. We’re in the old Smith Opera House. Third floor. Come if you want. No pressure.”

  Harlow closes the garage on Saturday and goes fishing with Billy. It’s May, God damn it. After a long, hard winter, it’s finally fucking May. Fires up the runabout and speeds down to the Keuka Lake outlet before dawn. Cuts the motor. Drifts, drops a line, helps Billy bait his hook.

  There’s a deep pool beneath overhanging willows on the lee side of the outlet, enough current to keep the water running fresh. This spot has never failed them. Billy fights with his reel. Harlow lets him be. By the end of the morning he’s more or less gotten the hang of it.

  As the day warms, they tie the boat to a stump and walk the stream to fish in the shade of birch and sycamore trees. They climb a series of cascades, high and loud in the spring runoff.

  Harlow wonders if Billy ever thinks about flying anymore—is it off-limits, stuck in the freezer for later use and consideration—or does it haunt him and make him miserable every day?

  They used to talk about running a plane for hunters and fishermen, making the rather large assumption that Harlow would be able to parlay his expertise with cars to airplanes. With some study, yes, maybe. If Billy can still fly. He’ll need two fully functioning hands. And from what he’s seen today, Billy’s a long way from that. He’s gotten good at hiding or minimizing his deficits at the garage, but here, with a new task, the shortcomings are more glaring. He’s clever and quick, devises compensations. Harlow’s not sure any of that will hold water in a cockpit.

  Returning to the boat and their beer, kept cold in the water, they eat lunch. Billy tips his face to the sky to follow the path of a kingfisher, rolls his shoulders to ease their stiffness, opening and closing his right hand. Testing, always testing.

  They motor down to a small spit of land, leave the boat, and nap in the sun. Harlow promised himself to keep his mouth shut and let the lake take care of things. Time is what Billy needs. Time and the water. They have both in ample supply.

  Billy slips inside Saint Joe’s late that afternoon, sunburned and filthy. Father O’Rourke is escorting the elderly Mrs. Valenti to the door where her youngest daughter waits. He looks at Billy, taps his wrist. Billy stifles a laugh in deference to Mrs. Valenti and the recent death of her husband.

  “You’re late, Billy Flynn,” O’Rourke says as they walk up the central aisle, taking in Billy’s boots and pants, muddied to the knee. “Too late, today. And I’m sure your mother told you it’s a good idea to clean up a bit before coming to the house of the Lord.”

  “I’m not here for confession, Father. I’ve brought you some trout.”

  “Son of a gun.” The old man’s eyes light up. “You have not.”

  “As I live and breathe.” Billy hefts his canvas bag.

  “Let’s take those to Margaret right now.” The priest walks quickly to the side door.

  “I’ll wait here for you.” Billy hands him the bag. “Tell Margaret I’m sorry I couldn’t clean them for her.”

  “She’ll manage. I’ll be right back.”

  Billy sits in a pew. He feels like an intermediary between the settled and the wild world. All day he’s been thinking of the Seneca. As boys he and Harlow wanted to hunt as the Seneca did, to capture an animal, to outwit it with a trap or come close enough to catch it with their hands. To do this you have to know the animal intimately. And somewhere inside that knowing is the fact that you are an animal yourself.

  He needs to get out of the church. The stone suddenly feels cold and oppressive. He takes the side door and finds half a dozen apple trees in bloom in the rectory’s yard. The Seneca spoke of a Tree of Light whose branches held blossoming stars and whose fruit tasted of the sweetness of life. Billy imagines all of the apple trees bursting into flower on the hills and in the side yards of Geneva, with their white, starlike blossoms soon to fall like snow.

  If, as the Seneca believe, the outer shell of a man crumbles into the soil after he dies and then passes into the roots of trees, then these trees, blossoms, apples contain the Seneca and the past itself.

  Is Megan in the earth? A dark thought he tries to suppress. Or is she still breathing the air somewhere, waiting to be found? He keeps stubbornly fighting the thought: he will never see her again, hear her voice again, lift her into his arms, breathe her complicated scent.

  She had refused to say goodbye, saying instead: Wherever you are you will think of me.

  O’Rourke strides toward him.

  “Margaret refuses to touch them until they can’t look at her. I’m just going inside to hang up my cassock and lock up. Then I’ll roll up my sleeves and clean some trout. She did offer you the casserole she already made to take home to your family.”

  “Please thank her, Father. But no.”

  “Will you stay, Billy? Have a drop with me while I
gut the fish?”

  “I’m gonna head home. I’ve been out all day.”

  “I still expect you to keep your promise and take me fishing.”

  “You tell me when you can do it.”

  “Soon.”

  “May I make a suggestion, Father? Give Margaret the night off. All you need is a frying pan, butter, a little cornmeal, and some salt and pepper. Margaret will just cook the life out of those poor trout.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “Wait. I almost forgot.” Billy draws two broken eggshells from his pocket, a vivid blue. “Wilson’s thrush. I found the nest in a moss-bottomed ravine.” He places the shells in the priest’s hand.

  Father O’Rourke puts his palm on Billy’s head, a quick blessing. “Billy . . . ” He gathers his thoughts. “Curing and healing are not the same thing. To cure is to remove disease. To heal is to make whole. Wholeness can be yours again.”

  Just before dawn, Nell hikes into the woods above the Alsops’ farm. She drapes a net between several trees and presses play on a portable cassette player. She waits, crouched on her haunches, hugging herself, conserving warmth. The trill of songbirds lures a wood thrush into her trap.

  She gently disentangles the bird, slightly smaller than a robin, cups it in her hand, stretches out one brick-red wing, and counts down to the eleventh flight feather. Removes it with a quick tug, then, and this she likes even less, takes a sample of its blood. The large dark spots on its white chest are a beautiful surprise.

  She releases the thrush. He flies to a nearby tree, settles his feathers. Briefly silent, then full-throated song. Protest perhaps. Or warning.

  Cranky at first, whit, whit, whit, developing into an agitated series of bup, bup, bup notes, faster and faster. Now the loud whistled prelude, ee-oh-lay, and the softer fluting flourish that follows. He continues alternating one prelude with another in combination with a staggering variety of flourishes. Song after song, high in the trees, Nell’s insult seemingly forgotten.