Killdeer Dance

by Ronn Fryer

  Courtney’s smug look totally affirmed the assumption. “And why in hell not? Nothing makes a man more attractive than a stack of dead presidents.”

  Jennifer, meanwhile, ran a brush through her auburn hair and listened without comment. Courtney was just talking again. No one would really base a lifetime commitment on money.

  Jenny didn’t know where she’d find her soulmate – school, at work, introduced by friends, or simply dropped from the sky – no way of knowing, but it hardly mattered. She would recognize him instantly, and money would have absolutely nothing to do with it. She’d know just by the love in his eyes. Wealth was fleeting, but real currency never devalued.

  Chapter 6 - Little Faker

  The killdeer is substantially larger than Michigan’s famed Kirtland’s Warbler. Closer to the size of a robin, it’s also far less picky. Where the Warbler will only nest in the lower branches of the scraggly Jack Pine tree, killdeer are much more adaptable. Although considered a shorebird, they’re just as likely to nest in open fields like the power line clearing cutting through Old Orchard Park. Such wide expanses, with short, wild grass, provide abundant fare – plenty of juicy grasshoppers and tasty insects.

  Like a good many of Michigan’s feathered residents, the sandy-colored plover migrates in the winter. Rather than settle for the tiny Isle of Eleuthera like Kirtland’s Warbler, or any of the Caribbean Islands, the killdeer is a bit of a show-off. It endeavors to fly all the way to Mexico and sometimes even the tip of South America.

  Beyond admired as a long-distance traveler, the tenacious piper with the black forehead and double-banded necklace, is thought to be quite noble; willing to sacrifice its own life for the sake of its young. Employing a unique distraction display – limping along the ground, wing dragging helplessly, seemingly offering itself up as easy prey – the killdeer pulls predators away from the otherwise unprotected nest. Depending on one’s point of view, the tactic could be regarded as downright foolish or extremely valiant, even inspirational. With only one exception, the girls agreed on the latter.

  Rather than spend another day lazing at the beach, Stacy was eager to explore the campground. Consequently, the following morning had evolved into an impromptu group field trip. With a clear blue sky overhead and the temperature already inching into the mid-seventies, a tour of the park seemed ideal.

  Convincing Nikki was easy enough and Keisha and Ramona thought it was also a great idea. Rather than do anything around the campsite that remotely resembled work, Courtney quickly decided to accompany them. And, although Jennifer always had the hardest time crawling out of her sleeping bag, she wasn’t about to stay back by herself.

  The girls had been walking along the park’s powerline clearing when they came across the killdeer.

  “OMG, the poor thing’s wing is broken,” Courtney exclaimed, turning to Stacy as if she expected her to rescue it.

  The killdeer had been running in arcs around the girls, shrieking and dragging its shoulder along the turf, seemingly in unbearable pain.

  “It’s fine,” Stacy reassured her.

  “How can you say that?” Courtney asked, looking first at Stacy, then checking Nicole’s reaction. Surely the nature girls were going to show a little compassion.

  Calmly watching the bird’s performance, however, Stacy added, “It’s just faking.”

  Courtney’s face registered equal parts confusion and annoyance. Neither girl seemed slightly concerned in spite of the bird’s obvious suffering. Faking? Why would a bird fake pain?

  Since Nicole wasn’t about to question the all-knowing Ponytail, Courtney turned to Jennifer. She may be a little out there at times, but surely the hippy chick would have a soft spot for injured critters.

  Before Courtney could elicit any reaction from her, however, Jennifer smiled pleasantly and substantiated Stacy’s claim. “She’s luring us away from her nest.”

  Evidently the killdeer wasn’t fooling anyone except Courtney.

  The blonde looked again to the bird sending out a series of shrill cries. Turning first to Keisha, then Ramona, she discovered that neither of them seemed concerned either. Maybe they’d already heard about the mother’s sacrificing techniques; or, like Nicole and Jennifer, they simply accepted everything Stacy said as gospel.

  Aware of Courtney’s skepticism, Jennifer tried explaining the tawny bird’s motives. “They nest on the ground and the eggs are vulnerable. So, whenever anything comes near, they divert attention, pretending to be injured. Predators are quick to take the bait.”

  Courtney turned to watch the killdeer closely. Jennifer didn’t seem to be putting her on, but the bird’s act was pretty damn convincing.

  “Such a pretty Pluvier Kildir,” Ramona gushed, “Would only had I brought my appareil photo.”

  “Write her a poem instead,” Keisha suggested, waving her hand toward the distressed bird, as if giving its performance a literary coronation. “Call it Killdeer Dance.”

  “Coo-well!” Ramona’s face beamed, her mind quickly trying out possible lines.

  “Let’s give her a wide berth,” Stacy directed, pointing to a clearing between the trailers that led back into the park.

  “Fine,” Courtney snapped, the tinge of resentment in her voice quite palpable. No longer concerned about the killdeer, she shifted her attention to her nails. She should have stayed back at the campsite and reapplied her pink-pearl polish. Camping was torture on your hands, and as far as she was concerned, the Great Outdoors and all its stupid critters was vastly overrated.

  Chapter 7 – Ramona’s Reverie

  Ramona had never known anything about Michigan. Until this year, she’d never even been in the United States. She was spending her senior year as an exchange student from the seacoast city of Nice in France. Most everyone assumed that leaving her friends had been hard, especially during graduation, but she really wasn’t into pretentious celebrations, and her list of close school friends was pretty short. Real friends? She did have one, once.

  Although not a complete loner, she simply preferred strolling along the Promenade des Anglais instead of the deafening halls of enseignement secondaire. There were a few subjects she did enjoy however; writing of course, and geography (although she never imagined the likes of a small-town like Oscoda); and, for the most part, she got along with most classmates. Even though cruelty seemed an essential aspect of primary school, lycée classmates had ceased judging her orientation; taunts subsiding once their suspicions were confirmed.

  Simple admission usually dispersed whispered rumors and snide comments. ‘Vous êtes gay! Oui, alors quel est votre point de vue?’ ‘You’re gay! – Yeah, so what’s your point?’

  The truth of course, was that underlying feelings of alienation stemmed mostly from her own introspection, although an intolerance for superficiality hardly endeared her to the masses. Often lost in existential contemplation, she discovered the beauty of figurative language at an early age. Even though her first efforts were predictably naive, she’d begun crafting poems almost the day she could hold her crayon. Her collection of notebooks soon blossomed – vivid images woven within esoteric metaphor proving to be a most effective method of exploring confusing pubescent emotions.

  ‘Such a precocious little thing,’ they’d say.

  Well okay, if precocious meant sensitive, thoughtful, then yes – she was indeed guilty. She wasn’t really trying to be different from the other girls, she just was. Their incessant, self-absorbed chatter seemed such a waste, and she could not have felt more out of place at all those silly parties. Securing the latest frock or reaching higher rungs on the social ladder hardly seemed worthy of attention, let alone celebration – no more than eventually standing in line to receive a form-printed validation that anyone with a pulse could earn.

  Beyond the random passing of calendar squares, however, there were things worth celebrating. Her first taste of feminine lips, for instance; being selected as an exchange student and meeting Stacy and her friends; or, observin
g the valiant mother-bird, willing to sacrifice herself for the safety of her brood. Such an act not only deserved celebration, it needed to be commemorated in stanzas of the highest praise.

  Sitting by herself along the lapping water of the Au Sable, Ramona absently chewed on her fingernail, reflecting on the little bird with the dual black rings about its neck. Her pencil hovered over the blank page as she searched for words worthy of such a selfless act.

  What was it that made the bird risk her very existence? What was the source of sacrifice – bravery, duty, empathy? No, it was much simpler. The killdeer just loved her babies more than her own life. That was the only reason she’d offer herself up to such potential peril.

  Transfixed in contemplation, Ramona gazed absently at the diamonds bouncing on the water’s surface, glistening as fledgling waves crested and fell. A gull, wings so white they were nearly translucent, deftly worked the air currents above, as unseen fish imitated the same technique below. Perched on an overhanging branch, a red squirrel nibbled a pine cone, the husks fluttering down nearly on the French girl’s head.

  Meanwhile a gentle breeze toyed with her raven hair, the same exact shade as the killdeer’s double necklace. Wiggling her toes into the sand, Ramona sighed, brought pencil to paper, and finally confronted the real question plaguing her.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Sournois, dangereusement

  traîné à travers l'escadre fauve sable limoneux,

  la vulnérabilité d'une voix perçante à talon et fang -

  amour, si intense, offrant le sacrifice ultime......

  .......Si je fixe assez longtemps,

  l'eau en réflexion révèlent

  si une telle dévotion

  ne sera jamais trouvés pour moi ?

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Dangerously devious,

  tawny wing dragged across sandy loam,

  vulnerability shrieked to talon and fang –

  love, so intense, offering the ultimate sacrifice......

  .......If I stare long enough,

  will the water’s reflection reveal

  if such devotion

  will ever be found for me?

  Chapter 8 – Amphibian Ambush

  Bobby was in rare form as they pulled out of Slacker’s driveway, gunning the engine and spraying gravel like a wake from a motorboat. Football practice had begun and last night’s scrimmage was a disaster. Although he’d had better efforts, he’d find his groove soon enough. His teammates, however, were pathetic. Ass-wipes couldn’t even catch a cold.

  “Ja bring both boxes?” he asked, exhaling a mouthful of Marlboro smoke.

  “Shit yeah!” Slacker confirmed. Only a complete idiot would only bring one box of 12 gauge shells to blast frogs.

  Shooting amphibians wasn’t much of a sport, but it did wonders for Bobby’s mood. The tiny pond along Rea Road was chock full of the little shits and if you hit them just right there’d be nothing left but a hole in the muck. Rather than risk getting the El Camino sideswiped, parking it along the shoulder, they pulled into the potholed lot by the Dam. From there it was only a couple hundred yards to their happy hunting grounds.

  Conditions were ideal, and within twenty minutes, they’d managed to significantly reduce any chance of environmental dystopia by frog infestation. Despite soggy shoes and sore shoulders they were soon both as happy as a frog on a log – assuming it wasn’t one looking down the barrel of their shotguns.

  Taking a well-deserved break to let the ringing in his ears fade, Slacker turned to Bobby. “What about that girl at the fire tower, that conservation bitch?”

  “What about her?” Bobby replied with a scowl.

  Wading into the foreign waters of deep thought, Slacker shouldered his Remington pump and scrunched his face. “What if she blabs a bunch of shit and somebody tells coach? He swatted a mosquito as he waited for Bobby to respond to his paranoia. “Maybe we should pay her a visit, make her a Simon and Garfunkel fan.”

  “What the fuck you talking about?” Bobby asked, with a look appropriate to viewing someone who’d actually managed to insert their head inside their own ass.

  “Make sure she learns to appreciate the Sounds of Silence,” Slacker snickered. Blocking the sun with his hand, he scanned Bobby’s face to see if he got it. When his buddy failed to crack a smile, Slacker started to explain his comic genius.

  “I got it, dipshit,” Bobby said, taking aim at the pair of glassy eyes emerging from the mire.

  “So whattya think?” Slacker asked.

  Bobby’s initial answer was a thundering Ka-BOOMM and a fountain spray of pond water. “Nailed that little fucker!”

  “I don’t know,” Bobby finally answered, “It’s been a couple months. Burt said it’d blow over if we stayed clear of her.”

  Probing his lexicon of witty retorts, Slacker exclaimed, “Piss on him!”

  Bobby, in a rare moment of indecision, flirted with what amounted to his better judgement. He was seriously considering ignoring Slacker’s idea when he heard an old pickup truck. Although the muffler had long since rusted into little more than a hollow core, it wasn’t normally that obtrusive. The hill leading up to the dam, however, had strained the Chevy’s five cylinders to the limit. There wasn’t anything drastically wrong with piston number six, the ceramic casing of its spark plug had simply cracked sometime in the past decade.

  As the truck chugged past the frog pond, Bobby did a double-take. Slacker, not to be outdone, did a triple-take. Not only was the conservation bitch driving past them this very moment, the slut from Ruthie’s was sitting right next to her.

  “I’ll be damned,” Bobby uttered, suspended partway between sheer disbelief and the effective suspension of it.

  Slacker suffered no such dilemma. “It’s that bitch!” He blurted.

  Staring at the girls pass by until trees finally blocked his view, Bobby was too engrossed to even mock Slacker’s habit of stating the obvious as if it were a cosmic revelation. Instead, he actually offered his friend a compliment. “Maybe you got something besides shit in your brains after all.”

  Rather than waste any more time, or verbiage, Bobby shouldered his gun and began hightailing it back to the El Camino. Slacker may have been a bit dense, but he was smart enough to know they were now in hot pursuit.

  The bitches, however, were clueless. It wouldn’t be much of a challenge, outsmarting girls was easy – they were completely predictable.

  Chapter 9 – Protect and Serve

  “Refill?” The question was just a courtesy, of course. Charlie could, and often did, drain the whole pot. Keeping the streets of a small town safe evidently required ample fortification.

  As the waitress leaned in, topping off his cup, he cleared his throat and croaked, “Might take another cruller too – while you’re at it.” While you’re at it, you could leave a decent tip for once, Jeanine thought to herself. Shame he didn’t tip as big as he talked, nothing like a BWB.

  His radio crackled and a woman’s voice emitted from his belt. Charlie shifted his ample mass to one side. Unclipping his handheld, he raised it to his face and hit the call button. “Ten Four, dispatch.”

  Officer Burt gulped down the remainder of his coffee and waved at Jeanine. She was busy with another customer (one hopefully sympathetic to the challenges of making ends meet on minimum wage), so Charlie had to resort to audible. “Hey!” he barked.

  Jeanine’s pencil suspended over her pad as she turned, helpless to ignore the big hunk, sworn to Protect and Serve. “Yes,” she answered, loud enough to be heard all the way across Ardra’s quaint interior. “What now, you BWB?” She added, at a mere fraction of the volume.

  “Make that cruller to go,” Burt instructed. “I got me a report.”

  Jeanine nodded. Official police business – a mass murderer on a rampage, a ten car pileup, or more likely, a squirrel in someone’s chimney.

  As Charlie pulled out his wallet, extracting the amount tallied on his bill; plus
not just one, but two quarters, he grumbled something about them Flint bangers. Seemed there had been some serious vandalism out near Foote Dam. Someone called in about shotgun blasts and shattered power line insulators.

  Luckily, Charlie was blessed with the ability to ascertain the identity of the perpetrators without the nuisance of exhaustive investigation. His record weren’t perfect; hell, no one was a hundred percent, but he knew it sure weren’t no local white kids what done this.

  Understandably proud of his ability and kind enough to divulge professional secrets, he explained to everyone within earshot, “That’s why I pull them over.” He waited a moment, allowing his constituents to gather his inference. Then, just in case they weren’t quick on the uptake, he clarified what amounted to simple, common sense. “Nips it in the bud.”

  As Officer Burt clanged the door shut behind him, Jeanine returned to her previous customer, apologizing for the interruption.

  “No problem,” he said, then added, “I was just curious.”

  “About....?” Jeanine asked, honestly confused.

  “BWB,” he answered with a bemused smile.

  The waitress blushed slightly, realizing her comment had been overheard. Her job was far from easy. Even if most people were pleasant, rudeness was an occupational hazard. Stupid wasn’t fixable, and it wasn’t prudent to set people straight, especially if you hoped to meet the rent. Jeanine had therefore developed an interesting coping mechanism over the years. She seldom, however, explained her anachronisms. This customer was a tourist though, not likely to tap into the local gossip hotline. Besides, she couldn’t help herself – she detested loudmouth bigots.

  The waitress leaned in close enough to avoid additional ears. Just slightly above a whisper, Jeanine explained, “BWB – Blowhard with a Badge.”

  Chapter 10 - Instant Idiom