Sugar Birds

by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

  Daddy. I stiffened.

  Gram pulled the handset away from her ear. “Celia?” She held the phone out to me and arched her eyebrows. “Isn’t it time you talked with your dad?” I turned my back to her and covered my ears before I tripped toward the door. If I stayed in the room, I would have to engage my father or argue with my grandmother. I was not willing to do either.

  “No offense to you, Gram, but please tell him to shove it.” I pushed past her extended arm and that handset with my dad’s voice inside it. He could talk to his mother, not me. I wanted nothing to do with him. I bumped open the screen door and headed for the barn.

  CHAPTER 10 ~ AGGIE

  Secret

  Though the searchers had dispersed hours before, Aggie stayed high in the tree, suspicious, her rear end gone numb, her elbows and knees creaky as old hinges. Now she had to move. Find somewhere to sleep. Eat.

  But near the tree where she’d cached her food, she caught sight of two striped tails disappearing into the brush. Her bottle lay behind a log fifteen feet away, and spilled seeds clumped like milky little islands along the game trail. A line of ants hauled off dregs.

  Woeful, hungry, she lifted her empty bottle like she would a baby and cradled it all the way to the pool. She was rinsing it when she realized something important, there in the mud: those searchers never found her footprints near the water because four-legged visitors trampled them.

  Outlines of small paws, their thumbs extended and splayed, trailed through the muck: opossums. They’d be no help to her. Neither would those thieving raccoons, whose long-toed prints appeared by the dozens where the rivulet exited the pool. On the pond’s periphery, she found the oblong tracks of coyotes, plain as day, same as those left by the whelps Dad had chased from the garden.

  “They’re weanlings, Agate. Den will be abandoned. Want to find it?” She got her jacket. Within half an hour, they found the entrance, a burrow dug into the slope, hidden under a salmonberry bush.

  “Someone else is hunting here, too.” Dad pointed at a fresh earth hill beside the den’s opening.

  “C’mon, Dad. Not moles.”

  “Definitely not.” He pulled a tape from his pocket and measured the width of a paw print recorded in the molehill’s soft soil. “Five inches. M-shaped heel pad. No visible claws.” He pointed at each feature. “Guess.”

  Aggie ticked through the prints she had learned when they tracked in the snow. Dad had quizzed her until she could identify them in her sleep: possum and raccoon, but also squirrel, bobcat, muskrat, skunk, rabbit. She counted them on her fingers and added porcupine, beaver, mink. She even saw a bear track once, in late spring—and she knew the difference between deer and elk. But this one?

  “Beats me.”

  “Mature cougar. Male, given the size.”

  Aggie wiggled her nose like a rabbit, remembering. Could she find an abandoned den without her dad’s help? If she did, she’d stay warm at night—and safe, even from a cougar.

  Sure enough, coyote tracks led away from the pool, but within a few feet of the water, the ground hardened, and the detritus topping it proved too difficult to read. Oh well. Today she would be a coyote. She crouched low, sniffing as she crawled. When the air gave no hints, she veered uphill along a faint path through the understory. She inched along, probing under every bush and stump and log for piled dirt that would suggest a creature had dug beneath it.

  She was about to quit when she saw the hole. Under a decaying cedar log, something had hollowed out an oval doorway the size of a lopsided soccer ball. She found a long stick and jabbed the dim interior as she crouched, ready to spring away and run if an animal came after her.

  The cavity seemed empty, so she put her head near the door and inhaled. A faint odor like their neighbor’s lab after he swam in the pond wafted her way. Doggy, but not awful, and yes, like the scent of the den she and her dad found. Had the coyotes left fleas inside? She scratched her leg and hoped the cedar oil from the old log would keep them away. With a shorter, fatter stick, she expanded the opening, digging into the earth where the log touching it had rotted.

  She squeezed inside. Not very tall or wide, but deep enough for a full-grown coyote and a litter of pups. The den held her small body comfortably. And if she found some padding, she wouldn’t have to sleep on dirt.

  To break her scent trail, she waded in the shallows along the river’s sloped dike, straight to where female cottonwood trees puffed out silken down. Pods lay gaping on the ground, spilling out fluff that accumulated like snow near bases of the massive trees and rocks, or wherever any obstacle interrupted their flight. Single seeds, each wrapped in a cloudy wisp, floated through the air by the millions. Aggie batted at them before she swiped her hand through a drift and compressed it into her shirt pouch.

  While daylight lasted, she gathered the fleece and hauled it to her den, stopping only to gulp orange salmonberries—she recognized them for sure—that grew in thickets along the river. By dusk, a cottony mattress lined the floor and partway up the sides of her little cavern—a soft insulation against the cool soil and rotting cedar. Stars blinked through foliage overhead when she surrendered to exhaustion and grief, folding herself against the fluff until her body warmed the tiny space and her teeth stopped chattering.

  That night the calico found her again and curled into her belly. Aggie welcomed her, even as she worried. Was human scent stronger than the coyotes’? Why else would the cat risk entering an enemy’s den? She vowed to find a pine tree, crush its needles, and rub the fragrance over her entire body to cover her smell.

  What other animals could detect her?

  She found out. Late that night, heavy footfalls thumped across her log, and a flashlight beam crossed her cave’s mouth. A dog snuffled the opening. “Whatcha got, Mesa?” A man’s voice. More voices in the distance.

  At the dog’s appearance, the little cat growled and sprang to life. Hissing, she batted the intruder’s nose and, when the dog yelped, streaked from the hole. The dog’s feet skidded in the leafy duff as he gave chase.

  “Give it up, puppy. A real shot to prove your nose and—”

  “Find somethin’?” Another man.

  “Just a cat.” He whistled, and she heard a dog’s rhythmic panting. Metal collar tags jangled as the dog scratched. A leash clicked, the tags clinked again, and the flashlights moved past her through the woods. Unnerved and hungry, she lay listening, sleepless.

  Still awake at moonset, her hunger grew so insistent that she rose and crept through the blackness to the garden, where she yanked carrots, gathered pea vines. Not enough to fill her up, but she stumbled back to her cave and chewed her feeble plunder in the dark.

  Her dead parents pushed all else from her thoughts. The horror descended on her, shriveled her. The cedar walls of her den muffled her wailing until, spent, she drifted in and out of disjointed, tormenting dreams. She writhed against a dark bird of sorrow that pecked at her with a sharp beak before it turned into the terrifying mouth of a wolverine, its teeth filling her with rough-coated terror. Her fingernails clawed at her throat as a strangling, ropy snake of guilt tightened around her neck with each image of the burning house and her parents’ bodies. An angry rat with eyes like hers chewed on her dead mama’s ear.

  By morning she was gasping and gulping, submerged and drowning in loss. She relived the deadly hours—from building her campfire until her mother ran back into the burning house—in a fragmented loop of memory that she revised again and again. In one scenario, she poured water on the campfire, and no fire rekindled. In another, she awoke to the acrid smell of smoke, roused her parents, and they escaped unharmed. In a third, she clung to her mother’s legs and kept her away from the fire, and Dad joined them both at the treehouse. At the end of each imagining, an inner voice sneered at her like a possum, hissing. No, Aggie. You burned them. You did it. You! Then the wrenching mental battle would begin again.

  She felt utterly alone.

  But Dad had said she was never alon
e. He said it for the hundredth time that day on Blanchard Mountain, when they played Homing Pigeon. As usual, he tied a cover over Aggie’s eyes and led her into the woods, away from the trail. Then he took the blindfold off and told her to locate the truck.

  She figured Dad was following her like always, but this time when she turned around, he was gone. She retraced their path, scoured the ground for tracks, but came up empty. Only when she had screamed at the top of her lungs did he run to her, there all along. “Like the Father is,” he said, enveloping her in his arms. “Even if you can’t see him.”

  By early afternoon, the storm inside her abated, and she crawled from the den. Her belly throbbed. How would an angleworm taste? Or a beetle? A yellow slug oozed in the shade by her foot. Could she eat that? Never. She nudged the slimy creature with her toe until its antennae retracted.

  Dad taught her to follow streams if she got lost. Would a stream lead her to food, too? Worth a try. From the pond’s outflow, she tracked a rivulet past the woods, through a swale and into a marsh where blackbirds gurgled as they clung to cattails.

  Cattails? She hopped as she recognized them and waded into the swamp toward the plants. Her dad peeled them like leeks and ate the tender stalks raw.

  “Try ’em, Aggie. Full of nutrients. We can cook the roots, too. More starch than potatoes.” Dad’s words prodded her as she pictured the two of them gathering bowlfuls of toothy young corms and baby rootlets for Mama, who chopped and stirred them into pots of vegetable soup.

  Aggie stripped a round stem from its sheath and snapped off a pliable section several inches long. It smelled fresh, mild, like the ones Dad pulled, so she nibbled, took a bigger bite, and ate it all. Like cucumber. She ate three more before she rinsed a root in the creek and dissected it, tearing corms and rootlets from the rhizomes and peeling them with her teeth and fingernails. Then she chewed forever, until the root parts released their nourishment and she swallowed her starch-thickened saliva.

  The leftover fibers felt like wood in her mouth, so she spat them into the creek before she repeated the process. So much chewing. She’d have to think of the roots like her sticks of Doublemint gum, only with food in them. She plunged into the soggy peat and started pulling, found a fat stick and dug deeper. Her hands roughened and stung, but now she knew she could survive.

  Her first thoughts the next morning were of the cattails. She wriggled outside and retrieved her digging stick and a hand-sized piece of shale. Eager, she waded midstream to the marsh. The reeds continued far down the little draw, an endless food supply.

  At the end of an hour, her shirt bulged with roots and the tasty stems. She stashed half of them in her den before she sat in the sunny grass several feet from the trees and ate more. For the first time since the fire three nights before, the land looked pretty again. Maybe she could pretend to be happy, like Dad had wanted. Maybe, if she did everything Dad wanted, God would erase the fire. Chase off the sadness. Change this misery into a dream. Only a dreadful dream.

  If Burnaby were here, he’d suggest a routine to help her do the right things. She made a list:

  1. Get water.

  2. Pull cattails.

  3. Climb trees.

  4. Explore.

  5. Spy.

  6. Visit nests.

  7. Sleep.

  Time for number three. Pretending to be a squirrel, she leapt onto a low branch of a maple laden with samaras. “Hello, old tree.” She hugged the trunk like she would a grandmother. “Whirlybirds? Don’t mind if I do.”

  The dark ache didn’t leave, but pretending helped. She plucked a cluster of the winged seeds, tossed a few in the air and watched them helicopter to the ground. When she split a fuzzy seed casing, a tiny, immature bead lay inside. Too small. A squirrel like her wouldn’t eat any of these yet. Not for a few more weeks.

  She scampered higher, intersected a limb, and crossed first into an alder, then another maple. At a sturdy fir beyond her reach, she returned to the forest floor then climbed it, passing from its long lateral branches through more trees, denying the fire and pretending her dad was below her as she skirted sleeping owls and a porcupine and bedded deer.

  And nests. So many nests. Their eggs were food for her sad heart, but never for her stomach.

  Midafternoon, she climbed toward a commotion in a hemlock tree, where three raccoon kits noticed her and scrabbled her way. She sat owl quiet while they patted her arms and lifted her hair in their fingers.

  A chitter from below interrupted them. The kits forgot Aggie and somersaulted down the tree to their mother, who pierced the girl with her black bead eyes and hurried the babies across the forest floor. Aggie tumbled down the trunk after them. She would avoid that fierce mama. But those kits? They could be her friends if she hung out near them.

  She raced to keep up. When the animals dissolved into a thicket, Aggie clawed through tall ferns and found herself in a ring of familiar, dilapidated buildings. Years before, she and Burnaby took an overgrown trail from the dairy and found this small, collapsed barn, punched through with alders. Blackberry vines mounded where the house had stood. A river rock chimney rose toward a blue patch of sky overhead—a pioneer’s chimney, Burnaby said. Nearby, immature plums, apples, and pears dangled from gnarled, neglected fruit trees. Food for later.

  A root cellar’s mossy roof blended into the hillside behind the orchard. She remembered this tiny house. Could she sleep here? She was lifting the door’s wooden latch when a branch’s loud crack stopped her.

  Brush rustled as something large pushed through it, coming down the hill. Aggie dropped the latch, ducked behind the plum tree, and climbed, entering its leafy cover just as a tall figure stepped into the clearing. He walked toward the root cellar, right under her tree, so close she could smell him. Cows. He’s been with cows. Burnaby smelled like that after he milked.

  He seemed older than Burnaby, though, and didn’t resemble Burn at all. Black, shaggy curls grew over his collar and forehead. His arms, poking out from short-sleeved coveralls like the ones Uncle Loomis wore, were hairy and tanned. He looked beautiful, even with his face scrunched in concentration. He reminded her of a raven, all dark and strong and shiny.

  As if expecting someone, he surveyed the rim of trees and slowly ran his eyes over the decaying buildings and the ground around them. Lingering. Ingesting the farmstead like a dinner. Aggie fretted that he would look up and see her, but he instead pulled a clear plastic bag from his pocket and pushed the air from it. Aggie glimpsed little red circles about the size of quarters inside. Though she wasn’t sure, they appeared to be rolls of caps for a toy pistol, like the ones in the cap gun she fired to shoo crows off the corn. After each little pop, the paper would roll away from the gun’s hammer, charred and smelling of burned kitchen matches. She liked the scent.

  Her mouth drooped. Her caps, like everything else in the house, had burned in the fire. Besides, the toy gun was Burnaby’s, and the caps were his, too. Dad thought they might keep her brother from lighting fires whenever he got upset. The plan worked, sometimes. Though now and then Burn still lit paper, he often pulled a roll of caps from his pocket or the glove box of his truck, walked to a private spot, and pounded a few of the little gunpowder dots with a hammer or stone. Mama said the tiny explosions calmed him like fire did.

  The man tied a knot in the bag, stooped under the jamb of the cellar’s small doorway, and emerged a minute later, his hands empty. His actions puzzled her. Why would he hide a bag of caps way out here? Something was fishy.

  He shut the door and slipped into a fringe of greenery at the edge of the clearing. Aggie counted to forty before she left the tree, then tracked him. For her own safety, she had to know more about him. She wanted no more close calls. If he had shown up a mere minute later, he’d have intercepted her inside the cellar. And what if he came here again?

  Her skin prickled as her mind returned to the bag. Why did he bring it here? And from where? Where else in these woods did he go? She climbed to a crossing
branch from another tree and set out.

  Numbers three and four? Check. Climbing and exploring complete. Next up: number five. Time to spy.

  CHAPTER 11 ~ CELIA

  Bones

  I wanted to distance myself from that phone, far enough away that Gram wouldn’t try to call me back, make me talk to my father. I would not tolerate any strategic affection from him, and I certainly would not agree to stay put and wait until he returned. He lied to me. I did not owe him my allegiance.

  Gram’s barn sat on a knoll about fifty yards west of the house—typically an easy dash, but I was wheezing after the first few steps. Reminded me of the night after my mother left, when Meredith dug in her purse and handed me her asthma inhaler. “Allergies,” she said, but I knew better. A spell like this didn’t happen often, but when it did, anxiety gripped my throat in a slow squeeze, trying to tell me something. What this time? To talk to Daddy? Make up with him? Or to run even faster in the other direction?

  After how he tricked and abandoned me, I opted for the latter. I had a right to be pissed off. Royally pissed off. Besides, anger made me feel powerful. I liked the way it moved me, and I did not want to pop its tires. I’d have relished it even more if I could have filled my lungs.

  When I reached the barn, I stretched my arms overhead, fighting for breath and waiting. Experience told me that these wrestling matches with my airway eventually ended, so I waited without surrendering for that unseen hand to release my throat. I imagined myself buying that bus ticket as I addressed a crowned sparrow, hunting bugs in the grass. “I’m outta here, little guy.” The bird tilted its head at me, pecked something, and flew off. “Yeah. Like that.”

  When my respiration calmed, I lowered my arms and watched the house. Gram came out the side door, waved a trowel at me without smiling, and continued to the flowerbeds. Remorse bit me. I owed her an apology. Trouble was, I found apologies to be exhausting—and they made me feel naked. My ire didn’t seem so sturdy after telling someone I was sorry.