Coo
Page 16
“More pigeons hurt,” Coo said, choking back tears. “Other flocks. Tully heard.”
Roohoo turned around to look at her. “Tell more, you,” he said. “Flocks, how many?”
Coo told him everything Tully had said.
“Leave, pigeons,” Roohoo said when she was finished. “Leave humans. Fly away. Far!”
“Where?” asked Coo.
Tully came over and collected her half-filled, raisin-less oatmeal bowl. “Not hungry, Coo?”
Coo shook her head.
“Place with no humans,” said Roohoo when Tully returned to the sink. “Go there, pigeons. Safe there!”
There were places like that on Earth, Coo knew. Forests, deserts, icy lands.
“Need humans, pigeons,” said Burr. “Need bagels, donuts, birdseed. Need ledges, dovecotes, roofs.”
“Why, pigeons?” said Coo, shocked to find herself siding with Roohoo. “Don’t need humans, other birds.” She was thinking of parrots, penguins, and even—with a shudder—hawks.
“Always together, pigeons and humans,” Burr said. “Good and bad, bad and good. Always so.”
“Change now,” Roohoo grumbled. “No more humans. Pigeons leave.”
Coo despaired. Roohoo was right. If humans kept trying to get rid of pigeons, why did pigeons keep living near them? She thought about the globe in the library and the videos of the vast, wild places that she’d seen on TV. There was so much empty land on Earth—more than her mind could ever hold. Why didn’t pigeons go far away from humans who wanted to hurt them?
“What’s the place with the least humans, Tully?” she asked.
“Antarctica, I guess,” Tully said. She finished washing the last breakfast dish and turned off the faucet. “It’s really cold there.”
“Pigeons could go live in Antarctica,” said Coo. “No people, no poison.”
“And everything is ice and snow! It’s much too cold for pigeons there,” said Tully. She handed Coo the sponge. “Can you wipe down the table for me?”
“Penguins live there,” Coo said, nudging Roohoo out of the way as she cleaned. She remembered seeing a program about it.
“They’re very different from pigeons, Coo. They have different kinds of feathers, they can swim, they eat fish. And they love winter,” said Tully. “It’s nearly always wintry in Antarctica.”
What’s dealing with a little more winter if you aren’t getting poisoned? Coo didn’t think the penguins would give pigeons any problems about sharing the ice and snow.
“There’s no food for pigeons in Antarctica,” Tully said gently. “Honey, it’s all ice and ocean there. Have you ever seen a pigeon catch a fish?”
Coo stopped wiping and went over to the sink. She carefully rinsed the sponge.
“The north?” Coo said. At the library one afternoon, she had studied a picture book about her home state. North of the city there was a huge forest full of mountains and lakes. “Many trees there. Pigeons can eat . . . berries and stuff.”
“That sounds nice. It’s true that it gets pretty wild north of here. Lots of forests.” Tully’s tone was vague, as if she wasn’t really thinking about pigeons or forests at all. She’d sunk into a chair at the table and was staring off at no place in particular. Coo knew that look. It was her thinking-about-problems look, and Coo didn’t like it one bit.
“I will tell the flock to fly to the woods,” said Coo. “So they are safe. And no more worries about anything.”
A plan was hatching in her mind. When the flock was well enough to get out of the pigeon hospital, she would convince them to go north to the woods. She and Tully, and maybe even Aggie, could go with them. The pigeons had carried her to the roof once when she was a baby. Why not now, even though she was bigger? They could hook their beaks into her shirt and pants. Coo was shocked she hadn’t thought of it before. Tully was a bit heavier, but the stronger pigeons, like New Tiktik, could help take her. Coo was sure of it. The authorities would never find them, nor would the pigeon poisoners.
Suddenly it all seemed so clear. Burr could ride along safely tucked into her coat. She looked at Roohoo, who was attempting to rotate the arm of Tully’s pepper grinder with his beak and sprinkling black flakes all over the freshly cleaned table in the process. Pigeons were definitely clever. They would know how to make her idea work.
“Tell other flocks, too,” Coo continued out loud. “Lots of pigeons could fly north to woods all together. All the pigeons! All safe.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Tully said absently.
She started to share her plan with Roohoo and Burr.
“Fly north, us! Woods. Safe. No humans. Carry me, you. In beaks—”
“Carry you, us?” Roohoo scoffed. “Leave the city, you? With us, you? No. Pigeons only, no humans.”
“Heavy, you,” Burr added. “Big now, you. Dangerous.”
Coo sighed. She didn’t even bother mentioning also bringing Tully.
The week passed slowly. Aggie was too busy to visit. Coo’s flock was still too sick to come home. Something called a polar vortex arrived. The radiators hissed and clattered all day and night. The windowpanes were so cold it stung to touch them, and Tully moved her spindly little houseplant away from them to the kitchen table. It was too cold to go outside.
Instead, Coo leafed through books, drew pictures, and watched TV, as much as she could stand.
And she kept an eye on Roohoo.
Roohoo was a careful observer of how things worked. Soon he was stealing the remote and rapidly changing channels, especially when Tully tried to watch the news, which he found dull. On the third night he was in the apartment, Tully and Coo hid the remote, but within ten minutes Roohoo had learned how to press the buttons on the set itself.
“Better, this way,” he insisted as the channels flashed by. He only stopped for cooking shows.
“I can’t wait for the flock to get well and this bird to get out of my house,” Tully grumbled. She was still annoyed by the little nicks Roohoo’s beak had left on the outside of her phone.
“Having fun, me,” Roohoo said to Coo the next morning as she sat on the floor by the closet trying to put the vacuum cleaner back together. He had managed to detach two of the brushes and pull the bag partway out. “Might stay here, me.”
“Tully, Roohoo says he doesn’t want to go back to the dovecote,” Coo said, picking the large globs of dust from the vacuum bristles off Roohoo’s feathers. “He wants to live with you.”
“Absolutely not!” Tully looked up from the table, where she was paying bills. “Milton Burr can stay forever, but this one—out! Tomorrow, if he doesn’t stop breaking things. You tell him that.”
“Hrmph,” Roohoo said when Coo translated, and for good measure he tugged the auto-retracting vacuum cord with his beak so it whipped back into the machine, spooking both Coo and Tully.
As the days passed, Roohoo and Burr hardly spoke, except to exchange grumbling criticisms of each other.
“Too nice to humans, you,” Roohoo spat as he waddled by Burr helping Tully line up her spice jars in a neat row.
“Hyper as a squab, you,” Burr huffed as Roohoo rode up and down Tully’s window shade, hanging on by his beak.
“Eat like a human, you,” Roohoo said, watching Burr daintily nibble pancakes from his own small dish.
Roohoo didn’t believe in eating from dishes—not his own at least. Ignoring the plates Coo set out for him, he snatched whole pieces of bread from the toaster, dive-bombed salads, and at dinner one night retreated to the top of the refrigerator with three ravioli from Tully’s bowl. He left the small plate that Coo had prepared for him untouched.
“This bird has no manners,” Tully said, chasing him with a spatula. “Tell him to go eat his own ravioli.”
Roohoo kicked a roll of paper towels from the fridge onto Tully’s head.
“Enough!” Tully growled.
Coo tried to make Roohoo understand about food, about how humans divided it into portions and ate slowly, and ab
out how rude it was to take food that was someone else’s. But the point of politeness was lost on Roohoo.
“Belongs to no one, food,” he said, nipping a ravioli from Coo’s bowl. “Until you swallow it. Silly humans.”
Spending time with Roohoo made Coo appreciate Burr more than she ever had before. Pigeons cared more about the flock than about each bird in it, but they were still individuals. Coo thought that Burr, in his quiet way, was the most individual of all. What other bird would have gone the lengths he did to rescue and raise her? Burr was the reason she was Coo.
“Who is this new bird? He isn’t like Milton Burr,” Aggie said when she finally came down for a visit.
Roohoo had figured out how to turn on the ceiling fan. He was riding on one of the blades and hooting.
“His name is Roohoo,” said Coo.
Roohoo noticed Aggie and dropped down from the fan and onto Coo’s head.
“Face windows, human,” he murmured, peering at Aggie eyes. “Always curious about them, me.”
Before Coo could stop him, he snatched Aggie’s glasses. Aggie screeched. Roohoo flew to the top of the bookshelf.
“Roohoo, no!” Coo yelled in pigeon. “Give them back, you!”
“Silly pigeon, you,” Burr said, hobbling back and forth on the sofa.
Tully burst out from her room, where she’d been on the phone again.
“What is happening?” She looked from Aggie, who was crying, to Coo, to Burr.
Coo pointed to the bookcase, where Roohoo perched with one blue arm of Aggie’s glasses in his beak.
“You’re lucky I’m a vegetarian or you’d be pigeon pie tonight!” Tully yelled. Scooping Burr out of the way, she jumped onto the sofa and reached for Roohoo, who promptly dropped Aggie’s glasses and flew to the top of the refrigerator.
“Come down right now,” said Tully, grabbing a broom. She began poking the handle around the cereal boxes. Roohoo ran back and forth and kicked two boxes onto her head. Cornflakes scattered everywhere. “You’re going in the cage, and not just when you need to use the bathroom!” At least Roohoo had been as quick as Burr to learn that part of living at Tully’s house.
Roohoo dashed across the table, knocking an open jug of orange juice onto the floor, then fled to the ceiling fan.
Coo fetched Aggie’s glasses for her.
“I’m sorry,” Coo said. “Not broken.”
“Thanks.” Aggie wiped her eyes before putting them back on. “I don’t think I like this bird.”
“What a mess!” said Tully, looking at the soup of cornflakes and orange juice. She put down the broom. “We don’t have enough paper towels for this. I’ll run to the corner store. Girls, don’t let him set fire to the apartment while I’m gone.” She glared up at Roohoo, and he glared back.
As soon as the door shut behind Tully, Aggie turned to Coo.
“Okay, what’s going on? Why is this pigeon—what’s his name?”
“Roohoo.”
“Why is Roohoo here? He doesn’t look injured. And who was that lady who showed up after we were at the park last Saturday?” Aggie adjusted her glasses with both hands. “Tell me! Fast, before Tully gets back.”
“Lucia,” Coo said. “Lucia who used to be a social worker and thinks Tully is doing everything wrong so I might be taken away.” The words came quickly. Maybe Tully’s insistence that she talk all the time was helping. “Roohoo is here because those guys from the city tried to kill my flock. They poisoned them.”
“Hold on, what?”
Coo managed to explain everything that had happened with Lucia, the pigeons, and Roohoo, and told her the terrible news from Nicolas about the other flocks.
“But your flock is okay?” Aggie asked when Coo was done. “Tully’s veterinarian gave them medicine and everything?”
“Yeah,” said Coo. “They’re getting better.”
Roohoo dove down from the ceiling fan and started to peck at the juice-soaked cornflakes on the floor, but Burr hopped over from the table and chased him away.
“Are the pigeons going to come live here when they get well?” said Aggie. “All of them?”
Coo tried to picture it in more detail than she had before. Tully’s apartment was bigger than the dovecote, and it had lots of food that pigeons liked, but it already felt very crowded with just a second bird. She couldn’t imagine most of the flock would be happy cooped up all day, either. And Tully would be even less happy about it after the Roohoo experience.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Coo.
“But what if those bad guys come back?” Aggie sank down into one of the kitchen chairs, carefully avoiding the orange juice. She nudged at her glasses and frowned. “They could hurt them again. Even if they went to a different roof.”
Memories of her flock lying sick and helpless in the alley, not even able to fly, flashed through Coo’s mind. She pictured lots of pigeons—flock after flock—sick and dying in the same way. She felt dizzy.
“Need to help them,” Coo said. “Need to leave. All pigeons in the city.”
Before Lucia or people like her take me away, she wanted to add, but Aggie spoke first.
“I guess pigeons leaving the city is one way to do it,” Aggie said thoughtfully. “But where would they go?”
“The woods? North?” said Coo.
“I went there once on a field trip,” Aggie said. “There were lots of trees. Kids on the other bus saw a bear. I don’t remember seeing any pigeons, though.”
“I will go with the pigeons,” Coo said. “Tully, too.”
“You?” Aggie said after a pause. “Go away?”
Coo was shocked to see Aggie’s lip trembling. She wasn’t sure, but it looked like Aggie was about to cry.
“For how long?” Aggie asked in a very quiet voice.
“Until the pigeons are safe. Maybe quick.” Truthfully, Coo wasn’t sure how long that would be. Maybe forever, she thought, but she didn’t want to tell Aggie that.
“How will you get there?” asked Aggie.
“Um, flying.”
“Like by plane?”
“No. By pigeon.”
Aggie’s eyes went wide. “With Tully, too?” she said. “It sounds scary.”
“I have to help the pigeons.”
“I know they need help, it’s just . . .” Aggie frowned, then lifted up her glasses and rubbed her eyes. They were wet again. “Everything has been so much better since I met you. I don’t want you to go away.”
Coo felt tears come to her own eyes.
“But we can secretly visit each other,” Aggie continued, taking a deep breath. “And send messages by pigeon! I know about pigeons who carried messages on their ankles during World War Two. They saved people. Maybe some from your flock could do that? They could come to my fire escape.”
“I guess so.” Coo thought of New Tiktik, who was always so helpful. “Yes.”
“I wish you were going to be here for Lunar New Year. It’s this month. My family does all kinds of things to celebrate. My dad even cooks.”
Coo felt a sudden sharp longing mixed with fear. There would be no holidays in the woods. She looked at Queenie, smiling on the loveseat. Would there be enough room to bring both Burr and Queenie, and all the food and supplies she’d need?
“I wish I had a pet horse,” Aggie continued. She stared dreamily at the window. “I would lend him to you and Tully so you could run away more easily. Or I could ride him to visit you, or something.”
“Thanks,” Coo said, swallowing. She felt sick.
The door opened, and Aggie quickly grabbed Coo’s pinky in hers.
“Don’t worry, Coo. We’ll be friends forever. No matter where we are.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bread, Peanut Butter, and Flowery Shampoo
The evening after Aggie left, Nicolas called to say the flock was well enough to be released. In the morning he would drive them home in his taxi. Tully told Coo that she and Nicolas had discussed trying to find some new place nearb
y for the flock to live, but thought they would just return to the roof and dovecote on their own anyway. Pigeons nearly always returned to where they were born, no matter how far away. But the woods would be so peaceful and safe, Coo was sure for once the birds would decide to stay put. Other things worried her more.
“Is Lucia going to come back?” Coo sat at the table in her pajamas with her before-bed snack of graham crackers and milk.
Burr sat on her lap pecking at crumbs. Roohoo watched silently from the top of the fridge.
Tully chewed her own graham cracker and swallowed slowly. “Why are you worrying about Lucia? She called me with some ideas of how to help. They might work.”
“But how do you know?”
“Earlier this week Lucia spoke to a lawyer at her old office,” Tully said quietly. “She says—she says it will be a tough case, but it’s possible we can stay together.”
Possible? Coo knew possible and definitely meant two very different things.
“We can leave the city.” Coo’s voice trembled. “Fly away with my flock to the woods. Then they will be safe, too. No police. No Lucia.”
Tully slowly shook her head.
“Lucia doesn’t want to hurt either of us, Coo.”
“How do you know? We have to help the pigeons. We can fly!”
At the sound of Coo’s raised voice, Burr hopped onto the table. Tully got out a whole graham cracker for him.
“No, Coo. We don’t have anywhere to go right now, or any way to get there.” It was as if Tully hadn’t heard her. “It’s expensive to start over somewhere new. I would need to save up money for a new apartment. We would have to lie and hide, and that never ends well.”
“We will live in the woods. No other people.”
“That would be nice someday, Coo, but it takes planning.”
“We can plan and go tomorrow.” Coo stood up and looked around the apartment.
“Sit down and finish your snack, please,” said Tully. “Planning takes a long time.”
“What if Lucia takes me away first?” Coo sat back down.
“Coo, you are misunderstanding the situation.” Tully looked at her. “Lucia isn’t going to come take you away, okay? She’s my friend, and she wants to help us.”