The Confusion of Laurel Graham
Page 21
“‘When people flock together, change can happen’?” Risa finished.
“Yes,” I said.
“Figured the house counted as part of the Wood. It sits right on the far edge of the woods,” Jerry said. He busied himself with papers on his desk, which I think was his way of avoiding any feels Risa and I might display.
“Is this one yours?” I said. I held up a stunning pink sky with three herons taking flight in a neat row.
“Yes,” said Risa. “Heron-tastic.”
“Herons are the shit, Risa. And I would bet money you are the only loon who got up early enough to get this shot.” I snorted. “See what I did there?”
“Wow, Birdscout in chief. Good one.” She rolled her eyes.
The bird whisper network had attracted attention from all over the county. I refilled my water bottle a third time and took a group of nine college students on a bird walk. The chickadees were out in force, and our oriole and blue jay game was pretty strong as well. Risa took the second tour. I was emptying the recycle bins when the recycle dumpster whispered to me.
“Laurel,” it said.
I peered around the corner to see Birdie Bro Greg standing there, rubbing his hands together.
“Uh. What the fuck, Greg?”
“Listen. I’m not going to stay here long. I, um, shouldn’t be here. But I needed to warn you.”
“Warn me? About what?”
“The deputy mayor expects there to be trouble today. They are prepared.”
“Prepared to do what, exactly?”
“Disperse the crowd. You know.”
“I do not. I don’t think Shunksville has riot police, Greg. Unless the Steelers get themselves a championship and bid at another ring, I don’t see the city springing for any, either.”
“Still. They can take names and shit. Michael Ross is really connected.”
I thought about Mom’s job. She didn’t know about the protest, of course. Though, what the fuck did she know about me at all? The fault for that sat on her shoulders, not mine.
“I appreciate the warning, Greg. But haters gonna hate, and birders gotta bird, you know?”
Greg nodded. “Okay. Figured as much.” He turned to leave.
“Greg?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you read all those reports?”
He looked at the ground. “Um. Yes. Wasn’t supposed to. Was just supposed to ‘sort’ them into the circular file. Even if they are technically meant to be publicly available. I just put them in the next box over, though.” He glanced up, a slow smile spreading over his face.
“Do you really think it’s a good idea to put a school here?”
“Of course not. I was here for the fucking whooping crane. Like any building is worth losing a chance at that again.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Good luck,” he said.
Two more jaunts through the woods and one story time later, Risa and I mounted our bikes to meet the others at city hall. Richard and Louise were picking up Jerry and the posters.
“It’s gotta be, what, at least a hundred degrees now?” said Risa.
“The heat index is well above that. There is someone in a full chicken costume. I hope they don’t die of heatstroke.”
I’d never seen a chicken at the pond before, but a bird is a bird. I had to give whoever donned that costume props for commitment to the cause.
Karen came in full flamingo, her moms in pink to match her. Sure enough Louise and Richard came in raven costumes, though they looked less like birds and more like masquerade guests. Risa wore her “We are not emused” shirt, and I dug out my “Toucan play that game” tank. Both of us had cameras and binos. We sat in the shade of the park across the street as one by one people amassed. Some came in Pittsburgh Penguin gear and some in Philadelphia Eagles. (Okay, fine, all birds are technically in support of the cause.) Still others arrived as peacocks, swans, ducks, and one red fox. Louise and Richard worked the crowd, greeting everyone as they scattered seeds along the ground.
“We’ll take over,” said Risa. She handed me Richard’s seed bag.
“Let’s do across the street, by the actual building,” I said.
Risa and I laid a careful trail of birdseed from the front door all along the walls until we hit the alley. Deft avian scouts already picked up on the bounty and started to arrive and call their friends. Bolder birds hopped amid the feet of the people milling around the park. A Channel Four truck pulled up down the block. A Channel Eight truck pulled up on the other side of the park.
“There’s gotta be at least a hundred people here,” I said.
“One person per point on the thermostat,” said Risa, wiping her head.
“Look, they have the antenna things on their vans. I think they are going to broadcast live,” I said. Ellie King got out of her van with two people, as did Bill Andrews.
We crossed back over to the park. “It’s time,” said Louise.
“Shit’s getting real now,” said Risa. “You ready for this?”
“I don’t want you to be owl by yourself.” I grinned.
Across the street and up the stairs into city hall we walked, everyone following Louise like she was the drum major in our parade. The shyer birds who pecked along the building flapped away from the throng of humans suddenly upon them. As soon as we hit the stairs, we ran into a snag. A police officer emerged from the double doors.
“Hey, Frank,” said Louise. “We’re here for the meeting.”
“No can do, Weezy,” he said.
“Frank. It’s an open meeting. Isn’t the whole point of this meeting so that the public can weigh in on the school plans?”
“I was told that’s a no. It’s a closed session.”
“Frank,” said Richard. “What are they trying to hide? Has a meeting ever been closed?”
“Not that I can remember, no.”
“Where’s your partner?”
“He’s at the other entrance, ’round back.”
“Is it just the two of you?” said Louise.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Isn’t there another side entrance? On Locust Street?”
Frank shifted. Beads of sweat pearled on his forehead. “Can’t say?” He answered like it was a question.
Of course there was an entrance on Locust Street. And on Main and on Elm. No one went over there, because porta-potties for the perpetual construction site next to city hall sat directly across from the entrance.
“And there’s only two of you?” said Louise.
“Yes,” said Officer Frank. “But we were told to stand at these two.”
“Got it,” said Richard. They turned and a small parting in the birder crowd zipped back to let them pass. They led us over to the smelly door, which we found unlocked.
“I wonder if they are as good at planning district mergers as they are at keeping people from voicing their opinion about them,” said Risa.
Everyone filed into the building as quietly as a flock can. The halls stood cool and empty. The ornate doors at the end of the hall led to the Shunksville common room. We went in and arranged ourselves in the pew-like wooden benches. The members of city council sat in the front of the room, all of them taken aback. Whispers erupted at their table. The mayor and deputy mayor got up and exited through a back door. They came back a few minutes later.
Bill Andrews’s cameraman held the door open for Ellie King and her crew.
Officer Frank came in after them.
“Pardon me, folks?” he said. “This is a closed meeting today. I’m afraid there was an oversight in the fact that all of you went in an unstaffed door. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Where’s Jerry?” I said to Risa.
She shrugged.
“No,” said a man I didn’t know. “It’s our right to stay.”
“Someone needs to speak for Sarig Pond and Jenkins Wood.” That was the hard-core birder dad who almost got scared away by the protestors.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” said Officer Frank. He pressed his lips together like he was fighting a smile. That could have been because a chicken stared him down from three feet away.
“No,” said another person.
“We’ll stay,” said yet another.
Though the vents above us blew cool air, the room warmed from the mass of bodies present. I noticed, too, that both Ellie King and Bill Andrews motioned for their crew to scan the room with cameras.
“These meetings are televised on Cablevision Channel Nine,” said the deputy mayor into his microphone. “You are welcome to watch at home and comment online at w-w-w-dot—”
“We are hear to comment now!”
“Just start the meeting already. Where are those reports the news keeps talking about?”
“I’m going to ask you again to leave. I don’t want to have to get more of my guys down here, okay?”
Heat and tension mingled in the air.
“Fine,” said Louise. “We don’t want to make trouble.” She got up out of her seat and strode down the short aisle like a fucking cassowary. The group had to circumvent the Cablevision cameras, splitting the receding birders into a letter V behind her.
Outside, we found Jerry hanging out with the people who had gathered after we’d gone in. They hadn’t tried any other entrances and watched us as Officer Frank escorted us onto Main Street.
“Hey,” Jerry said. “Take this.” He shoved wooden sticks with pond and wood pictures duct taped to them in our hands. “Now the real fun begins.”
“You knew we’d get kicked out?” said Risa.
“Oh yeah,” he said.
“That’s reassuring,” I said.
More birds, actual flying ones, had shown up to. Grackles, sparrows, nuthatches, red-bellied woodpeckers, robins, starlings, crows. They twittered and hopped around the birdseed. Most looked pissed at the invasion of their park, but some calmly realized that our presence correlated with the food.
“What’s the word?” Jerry suddenly shouted.
“Bird!”
“What’s the word?” he shouted again.
“Bird!” more people answered.
Officer Frank shooed us all over back to the park. A line of counter protestors marched over from the KFC.
Fitting.
“What do we want?” a man yelled.
“Jobs!” his group responded.
“When do want them?”
“Now!”
“What do we want?”
“Education!”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
“Birds can fly, fish can swim, but not if you kill them for your gym,” called Louise. People laughed but joined in.
Officer Frank held back people from the door. Every once in a while, I’d scatter more birdseed across the sidewalk in front of him. He just kept biting his knuckle as he watched me do it.
“I don’t think he sees a lot of action on this detail,” said Risa.
“Best day of the summer, I bet,” I said.
“Binoculars up!” someone called. A hundred pair of binos pointed toward the building as Ellie King and Bill Andrews exited city hall.
“Oh, this is gold,” I heard her say. “Let’s see if we can live broadcast this.”
“On it,” her camerapeople said.
Bill Andrews went straight over to the counterprotestors. Ellie King came over to us.
“Want to go back on the air?” she said to me.
“No thanks. Once was enough.”
She nodded. Plenty of other people dressed as waterfowl wanted her attention anyway.
When Risa and I ran out of birdseed, we stood behind Ellie King’s camera.
“Thanks, Ted,” Ellie King said.
“Who’s Ted?” I whispered.
“I think that thing in her ear let’s her hear them back at the news studio,” said Risa. “She’s talking to the anchor on air.”
“Got it.”
“We were planning on attending the special city council and school board meetings today, but as you can see, we were not allowed in city hall. Protestors both for and against the new combined district’s proposed location for the new schools are out in full force here this evening. Here are some residents concerned with the loss of an important ecological habitat.”
A few college students gathered near her to talk about the honeybees. Risa and I shook our own pictures on our signs and walked and shouted. Around seven, Ellie King and Bill Andrews left in their news vans and people started to disperse. We walked over to Louise.
“Did that do anything?” I said. “Did they vote on the location?”
“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow? I saw two reporters from the Shunksville Gazette in there who didn’t get kicked out. I think they snuck out the back. We’ll have to get the news from them.”
“I just hope that…,” I said, but then a two-toned call echoed from overhead. My head swiveled around. Risa, Louise, Richard, and Jerry got out their binoculars and peered toward the increasing summer twilight.
“You heard it, too,” I said to them.
“Where’s that little guy been?” said Jerry.
“Been chasing it all summer,” said Risa.
The call came again.
“There. Right there,” I said. A shape hopped around a high branch. It flew to another tree. And then.
I followed it with my binoculars. It landed on the ground, finding spare birdseed in the grass. It charged at a tiny sparrow to take the food from it. It opened its beak and sang the unmistakable, melancholy tune.
“That,” said Richard, “is a blue jay. A male blue jay.”
A call came from another tree. And another. Three jays, two male, one female, scattered the other birds as they tend to do. They claimed the area with the food and no one else would be getting any anytime soon.
“But. That’s not possible. It’s—it’s really a blue jay?” I said.
“Seems like it.” Louise smiled. “A blue jay with a distinctive Western PA accent. It’s probably calling us all jag-offs right this second. We should tell the Shunksville Community College bio class. Bet they’d love that.” She looked at Richard. “Come on, Rich. I’m starving. Let’s go to Em’s Subs before they close.”
“I’m in,” said Jerry. “Girls?”
Risa shook her head for us both.
“Your loss. See you tomorrow. Good work here, everyone. No matter what happens.”
“It’s a blue jay,” I said.
As if to emphasize the point, the jays called and called to one another in that strange, incredibly un-jay-like song.
“A fucking blue jay,” I said. I walked over to the mean little fuckers. They didn’t fly away. They just moved over, miffed. One looked straight at me.
“Laurel?” said Risa.
“A. Shitty. Ass. Mother. Fucking. Blue. Jay. Bet she had been out looking for the call the day of her accident, so Gran was in a coma for this?” It hit me, right there after a probably failed protest in the middle of ever-growing piles of bird shit that the birds had never been Gran. They’d never been anything special. They were just stupid, run-of-the-mill, awful blue jays that I’d probably seen all along.
No mystery.
Nothing for the life list.
No winning picture for Fauna that would wake up Gran so she’d kick Mom’s ass and then Brad’s and then get her house back and single-handedly save Sarig Pond and Jenkins Wood.
I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
“I have to go,” I said to Risa.
“I don’t know that I should leave you alone right now,” she said.
“Please,” I said. “I’ll be okay. I just need to … go. Please.”
“Okay,” she said. She frowned and reached for me. I took her hand and squeezed it. But I drew back and shoved my protest sign into the recycle bin. The neat wooden stick snapped when I forced the bin door shut.
I got on my bike and rode home. Mom and Brad sat on t
he couch with the television on.
“Baby—” Mom started, but I ignored her. I slammed my door and locked it. Then I locked myself into my bathroom and threw my clothes in a heap on the floor. In the shower I let cool water run down over me. I sank to the bottom of the tub.
It was just a blue jay. It was always just a blue jay.
I couldn’t bring myself to do anything except try to let the spray erase my utter failure. Eventually I got out because I shouldn’t waste water in addition to all the other things I’d done wrong.
I dried off and got under the covers. I pulled the sheet over my head like I did when I was little, trying to hide from the scary world.
The blue jays called from outside.
I knew who they were now.
And they weren’t Gran.
FIELD JOURNAL ENTRY
JULY 11
The next morning, the traitorous sun rose at the butt crack of dawn. Optimistic beams hit my face no matter which direction I turned. I yanked down my blind, but then the whole thing sprang lose from its mount and clattered to the floor. I sighed and got out of bed. The upside of spending so much time in the shower was that I was clean, though my hair had dried at funny angles since I hadn’t bothered to comb it before getting into bed.
I jostled down the stairs, fantasizing about peanut butter toast, when I stopped short on the threshold to the kitchen. There Mom looked up at me from the table.
“Hi,” she said, taking a long sip of coffee.
“Um. Hi,” I said. I started to back away. Though, lovely odors drifted out of the kitchen that made me rethink my flight plan.
“Laurel, please. Don’t go. We need to talk.”
“Mom…”
“Sit. Have a waffle.” Mom got up and went over to the counter where the waffle maker sat. She forked a couple onto a plate and set it down at my place at the table.
My stomach growled.
Stupid, traitorous stomach. It was in league with the sun, surely. The world should stop spinning on its axis, the body should stop needing humany things when stuff was awful. But no, that’s never how it worked.
“I bought maple syrup at the farmers’ market. This one has a hint of blueberry.”