The Afterlife of Birds

by Elizabeth Philips

  The morning before the day they were to move the bear, Yuri was in an orchard at the top of a ladder, his head surrounded by leaves and his hands full of apples, when he heard the bear’s ferocious bellowing and men bawling. He ran as fast as he could to the enclosure, where he found the animal with a hood over its head and chains around its neck and feet. One of Valentin’s men was furiously beating the creature with a branch — the sleeve of the man’s shirt in shreds, claw marks beaded red along one arm — while others hauled on the chains as the animal thrashed and snarled against them. Valentin clutched a rifle, the barrel waving erratically as he tried to keep the bear in his sights, yelling at the men not to be such cowards. When he saw Yuri his face reddened and he roared, “Stay back, you old fool,” but Yuri just crept nearer and nearer to the terrified bear.

  “Just hold the chains steady,” he instructed the men calmly. “No, no, you must hold fast but stop pulling.”

  For a moment the only sound was breathing — the panting of the men and the great huffing of the bear. Then Yuri sang, as sweetly as he could, under his breath, Nobody shall break down the birch tree. And eventually the bear quieted, and it stood there, its head in a burlap sack, its snout touching the ground.

  Valentin spat and left them.

  Slowly, slowly, they walked the bear toward the new cage, no one speaking but Yuri, the men lifting the chains, trying very hard to keep them from clanking. It took two hours to traverse the quarter mile from the old to the new enclosure, which was very grand, with bars of scrolled ironwork in the shape of leaves and vines.

  Released from its hood and chains, the bear cowered at the back of its new cage, a fresh wet wound across its muzzle. Yuri sat as close to the bars as he dared, and sang. He sang until night fell and the bear was asleep on its bed of straw.

  Walking home later, Yuri was thankful for this close escape. He’d always known that Valentin wanted to hurt the bear. Strong as the oaf was, the bear was stronger, and the man’s fear only deepened the black streak of cruelty that pulsed through his veins like a whip. Yuri slept for a long time that night, barely moving, not opening his eyes again for many hours.

  Mrs. Bogdanov pushes Henry’s plate toward him — he’s forgotten all about his second helping. “Valentin, he had it all worked out — the blame for the bear’s destruction would have fallen on my grandfather’s shoulders. Instead, Valentin was seen to be the real fool — and for this, my grandfather had to pay for many years. To the count, Valentin would bad-mouth him. And he told lies about Yuri to other villagers — not everyone believed, but you know, slander, it leaves a stain.”

  Henry devours the honey cake while she finishes her tea.

  “And you know who this Valentin is?” she asks.

  Henry shakes his head.

  “Mikhail’s father.”

  Henry freezes, his mouth full of sweetness.

  Her grandfather did build the water garden, Mrs. Bogdanov says, the next year, in the spring of 1916, but it was never used. By the time the fighting was over, K’s house had been razed to the ground, and the clay fountain, shaped like an enormous vase, had been knocked over and cracked. And the immense circular pond, which was to have teemed with fish, was full of broken crockery, shattered plates, shattered goblets — so much glass. And it glittered in the sun, the shards dazzling, almost like water.

  DAN IS LATE. Henry slouches in a window booth in one of their favourite restaurants, Sullie’s Bar and Grill. He pulls a small book out of his pocket, something he bought a few minutes ago at the used bookstore across the street. The book’s pale blue cover is soft and tattered, and when he opens it, a water-colour illustration of a yellow warbler slips out onto the table. He fingers the creamy paper, puts the book back into his coat pocket, and stares at the warbler’s sulfur-coloured wings.

  When he was a boy, a yellow warbler crashed into their kitchen window and died. He buried it in an anthill, in a mesh bag, and in a couple of days the skeleton was in pieces, miraculously cleaned of all feathers and flesh. After that he cleaned many small birds the same way, and kept each tiny collection of bones in a separate drawer in a cabinet in the old shed his mother let him use for his bone-building projects.

  The bird’s luminous yellow reminds Henry of the dress Amy wore the weekend they went to visit his mother. He sighs and tucks the page away, alongside the book. Amy liked to dance in the living room to CDs she played on a boom box and she always put on a dress first, the flouncier the better. She was so unselfconsciously graceful when she was caught up in the music, her eyes fluttering open and closed as she moved in and out of the beat, that he could hardly bear to watch her.

  On the snowy street outside the restaurant, a woman wearing no hat is hustling by, hands clasped over her ears like someone refusing to hear how cold it is. Then a man sails past her running flat out, makes a hard left, and veers across the street toward Henry. Running effortlessly, Dan’s feet are sure, never slipping on the glassy surface of compacted snow.

  A second or two later Henry feels icy air rush in and hears the heavy glass door thud closed. Dan jog-trots between the tables, coming to an abrupt halt in front of Henry; he’s wearing a frost-scabbed balaclava through which his mouth gleams almost obscenely. Dan rips the thing off his head with one quick tug.

  He’s glowing pink with exertion, his face thinner than Henry has ever seen it.

  “Hey, Hank,” he says too loudly and grins, then piles his jacket and toque into the far corner of the seat and drops onto the bench seat opposite Henry.

  Dan’s smile doesn’t fade; in fact he looks a bit loopy, as if he’s discovered that running at twenty-five below is the secret to eternal happiness.

  “You’re in a good mood,” Henry says.

  Dan smells of wintry air and clean sweat. He thumps his hand on the table and then scrapes his fingers back and forth across his shorn scalp. “I racked up over a hundred miles this week. I’m, like, the real deal.” He raps his chest with a fist before grabbing at the menu trapped under Henry’s elbows.

  Henry realizes his mouth is hanging open and he shuts it. He’s seen Dan pumped after games — squash, basketball, volleyball, whatever — but he’s never seen him like this. Even his fingers, pinning down the menu, seem to be full of hot rushing blood.

  “I’m running everywhere now,” Dan says, a note of wonder in his voice. “If you could feel like I feel …” He looks up and his eyes stray to the window.

  “Everywhere? Really?”

  “Laz is a genius,” he says, turning abruptly and waving the waiter over to their table.

  AFTER THEY’VE ORDERED, and Dan has slurped his way through a large glass of milk, he asks about Henry’s date. “What was her name again? Deedee?”

  “Deirdre.”

  Henry tells Dan about the bean bag chair that almost swallowed him alive, and the awful stew, and the inquisition that passed for conversation.

  Dan smirks. “So you got out of there pretty quick.”

  “Not nearly as quick as I should have,” Henry admits. “I drank too much red wine and she —”

  “There’s this girl who runs with us —”

  “Forget it,” Henry cuts in and they both laugh. Dan has mostly accepted that Henry doesn’t want a blind date with some girl Dan would love to get his hands on himself, if he weren’t with gorgeous, smart Rae, who makes twice as much money as he does and is generous with it — although Rae occasionally does question Dan’s tendency to buy so much stuff on credit.

  “Is Rae in Calgary again?” Henry dumps ketchup onto his fries.

  “There or the Edmonton office, I’m not sure which,” Dan says, rolling up his sleeves to attack his steak, his forearms bulging with new muscle. “Hey,” he says, “did you watch that show I recorded for you?”

  “What show?”

  “I gave you a couple of DVDS, remember?”

  “Did you?” Henry is pretty sure that he hasn’t even taken them out of his backpack.

  “You’ve gotta watch the on
e about all this new technology. This stuff is going to make it possible to increase our lifespan by a hundred years — by two hundred.” Dan reaches across Henry’s burger as if he’s going to grab Henry by his shirt front.

  “Spare me,” he says, fending Dan off with an upheld hand.

  “No, listen,” and now Dan clamps Henry’s wrist in his fist.

  “Ouch,” Henry protests.

  “You’ve gotta watch it,” he says. “Promise me you’ll watch it.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll watch the damn thing,” Henry says and Dan lets go of him.

  “There are these microscopic robots they can inject into your bloodstream to take care of cancer, blood clots, heart disease — whatever.” Dan’s eyes shine and his voice is tight.

  Henry stares. Are those tears in his brother’s eyes? Must be all the running in the cold.

  “So eventually almost everyone would be ancient, but in a good way,” Henry says.

  Dan wipes up the last traces of steak juice with a hunk of bread. “You’re such a pessimist, Hank.”

  Henry used to take Dan on, used to try to shake him awake with facts, but he doesn’t anymore. You can’t win an argument with someone who doesn’t listen, and who doesn’t care about how a body really works. He wants it to be this way; so that’s that. “We’re saved,” Henry sings, trying to keep his tone light. “We’re going to live forever. Hurray.”

  “Imagine how many races I could run,” Dan says, staring into the distance as if he wasn’t seeing the snow-covered street but some kind of utopian future.

  “You haven’t even run one yet,” Henry retorts.

  “Just wait,” Dan grins. He tosses his napkin down on the tabletop. “Laz has me on these amazing supplements. They’ll make me invincible, he says.” Now Dan’s pulling on his jacket. “You ready to go?”

  Supplements? Henry doesn’t want to know. He crams a few more fries into his mouth as he’s pulling on his coat.

  DESPITE DAN’S CLAIM that he runs everywhere, he climbs into the car beside Henry without a murmur, then launches into a monologue about the virtues of his running club. How great it is to run in a pack — that’s the word he uses.

  “You know,” he says, “Laz has run as fast as two-twenty-seven, something like that. The record is about two-fifteen but nobody around here can touch that.”

  “You think you can run that fast?” They’re stopped at a red light just before the bridge. The river is dark and Henry can’t see anything except the faintest impression of the far bank.

  “Two-fifty maybe? But how can I tell, yet, how I’ll perform in a real race,” he says, his skin jaundiced by the mercury glow of a streetlamp, the whites of his eyes red. “I won’t know till I actually hit the finish line.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “I’m not sure. June maybe.”

  About five months away. That’s not so insane.

  Henry tips his head toward Dan as they turn onto the bridge. “Ever heard of bacula?”

  “The actor?”

  “No,” Henry laughs, “baculum is a term used for the penis bones of certain mammals.”

  “Penis what?”

  “Bones,” Henry says. “Lots of mammals have a bone to help hold up the equipment.”

  “No way.”

  “Coyotes and wolves have them. Raccoons. Walruses.”

  “Seriously?” Dan’s voice cracks.

  “Seriously. Foxes do. Well, all canines.”

  “Monkeys?”

  “Monkeys, yeah, but some of the primates, like chimps and apes, have a small one, a remnant, they think, of a bone that used to be more substantial. And when it comes to humans, well, we got nothin’.”

  “No kidding,” Dan says. “I think I’d have noticed if I had a bone in my cock. Christ, how weird.” He plucks at the crotch of his running tights, as if he’s checking, just to make sure. “Gotta tell Lazenby about this,” Dan says, laughing now.

  “Anyway, I thought I’d get you one, you know, since your birthday’s coming up next week. I thought it would make a good talisman, kind of like a rabbit foot, only …”

  “Only a dick bone!” Dan is still cackling, hanging forward against his seatbelt.

  “But if you’re not interested —”

  “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, that’d be cool. Lots of runners carry things when they race, little things, like a lucky coin, or they wear, you know,” he draws a line around his wrist with his opposite hand, “a bracelet. But wait, how heavy …”

  “Light as a feather,” Henry says, enjoying himself now. “Unless you’re talking walrus.”

  “Walrus?”

  Henry takes his hands off the wheel for a second and holds them apart. “That big,” he says.

  “What about a jaguar?”

  “It’s got to be the bone of an animal we have here, or it’s not going to give you the right — I don’t know, mojo. And I’ve got to be able to actually find it. A jaguar. God almighty. Anyway, if you really want one …” Now he’s beginning to think maybe this isn’t such a great idea. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says, shoulder-checking and braking to let a truck pass before he changes lanes.

  He steals a glance at Dan, who looks exhausted, his eyelids heavy.

  “What other animals have them?”

  “Oh, well, squirrels, mice, guinea pigs.” Henry racks his brains for other puny baculum owners.

  Dan opens one eye and gives him an unamused look.

  “Okay, what about a marten?” Henry asks more seriously.

  “Nah, they’re too — I dunno — ferret-like.”

  Henry smiles. “Okay, what about a wolverine?”

  “They’re nasty, right, and fast?”

  “Yeah,” Henry agrees, “fast and fearsome.”

  “A wolverine wang. Sweet. How big?”

  “Maybe three inches.” Henry draws up behind Rae’s Prius, parked at an uncharacteristically sloppy angle in front of their house.

  Dan’s smiling to himself. He’s slipped down so low in the passenger seat that he couldn’t see out if he tried.

  “We’re here, Dan,” Henry says.

  Dan doesn’t move.

  The place is completely dark; even the outside light over the front door isn’t lit.

  Henry bats his brother on the shoulder and nods toward the house. “Time to go.”

  Dan grunts and reaches for the door handle. He almost falls out of the car, but then bounces into a crouch, in what must be his imitation of a wolverine, and lopes to the house.

  Henry fishes in his pocket for the book on songbirds, and draws out the loose page, the yellow warbler. He remembers being particularly delighted with the skull, which was no bigger than the tip of his thumb, and thin as a blister. Probably Amy wouldn’t have liked even those bones, so tiny and, he thinks, pretty, with all the delicacy of the living bird in them.

  He places the page on the dash, and the heat from the air vent makes it shimmy as he drives off, the bird’s sulfur-coloured wings fluttering like a half-starved flame — and he wonders where he’s going to get the penis bone of a wolverine in time for Dan’s birthday a few days from now.

  Nine

  HENRY’S AT THE RECEPTION DESK typing up a bill, rapping numbers into the calculator, half-listening to Ed tell a customer about a botched root canal. He’s hoping Ed will get to the punchline soon — the customer’s drooping shoulders indicate that she just wants to pay and drive away in her terminally ill Tempo. Probably she’s broke, and forking out six hundred bucks is going to make her more broke. Ed has actually opened his mouth and is pointing out the molar in question when Rae phones. Which is a surprise in two ways. She hasn’t called him at all in three months or so, and Henry can’t remember her ever calling him at work before.

  “Henry, can you hold a second?” There’s the sound of water running. “Sorry,” she says, “I’m at the Bess for a meeting. And yes, I was in the bathroom, but now I’m just walking down to the end of the hall … there … okay.”
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br />   He imagines her in one of those half-hidden nooks that punctuate the hallways of the old hotel.

  “I know this is a little last minute,” Rae says, “but what are you doing tonight?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Can we meet?”

  “Have dinner, you mean?”

  “No — I’d just like to see you. Not for long, an hour maybe.”

  “Okay,” he says, not sure what he’s agreeing to. “Would you like me to stop by your office on the way home?”

  “Wait,” she says, and there’s a pause, a man’s voice saying something in the background. “They’ve found me, so I gotta run. Henry, when are you off work?”

  He tells her he’ll be home by quarter to six. She says she’ll be there at six and hangs up.

  Henry looks at the invoice under his fingertips. Rae’s coming to visit him. Alone, it seems.

  The customer is laughing now and Ed is smiling foolishly.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Ed is saying as he urges the woman toward the counter. She’s fishing for her wallet in her purse. Henry types in the labour costs and hits print.

  Ed thinks the business thrives because of his charm, his way with people, but it has more to do with neighbourhood loyalty and the fact that his rates aren’t as high as the other garages and he employs three good mechanics who actually fix things instead of just replacing parts. Small, fat, balding, scatterbrained, and he stands too close to people. And yet customers seem to like him. Ed does tell funny stories, and he’s kind to everyone, not just his old cronies from the curling club, but you can’t save anyone unlucky enough to own a decomposing Ford.

  Henry tears the bill off the printer and slides it across the counter. The woman’s smile fades.

  WHEN HENRY GETS HOME, he scans the apartment. The place is not Rae-friendly. Teensy shrew bones are scattered across a sheet of newsprint at the far end of the kitchen table because last night, instead of working on the crow, he dissected a couple of red-tailed hawk pellets. The rug in the living room is covered with grit and lint, and books slump in untidy heaps around the living room. A jar of dark, beautifully barred ruff grouse feathers sits on the coffee table, a memento of the kill site where he gathered them last spring. He can see the blood and feathers on the melting snow and is afraid that’s what Rae will see too.