The Someday Birds

by Sally J. Pla

  “Where to?” says the driver in an accent that’s kind of like Ludmila’s as he pulls away from the curb.

  I tell him.

  39

  I take the southern entrance by the visitor center and wend my way inward, through and across the marsh for some time north and east. After a while, a stand of deep, dark pine and cedar appears like a mirage, shimmering on its own island hill, with no apparent way to reach it. But there is always an approach to the unreachable. Persist, move closer, and the treasure rises up like a gift: my hidden refuge within this refuge, its roof the greenest of greens.

  —Tiberius Shaw

  In my backpack is my wallet with practically a year of allowance money—I don’t really need to spend allowance on anything, as a rule—and a small bottle of Purell. Also two granola bars, my Bird Book, my sketching pencils, and Shaw’s green journal.

  In my head is nothing.

  The fear I felt in the cab is gone. But the rumble in my feet is still propelling me on, through the deep gray morning mist of this endless marsh.

  I’m calm now. I only think about the path. There are one hundred thousand streams, creeks, and rivers threaded through this place, but this is the path. I’m sure.

  I concentrate on the path. Only on the path.

  There are lots of dark green piney patches around here, according to Google Earth, but looking northeast about five miles from the visitor center (humans walk at two miles an hour times two-plus hours) I did notice a house with a green roof on a little bit of land jutting out into the bay. I figure it’s got to be that house. It’s the only house that fits Shaw’s description for miles around.

  Shaw’s house.

  I’m heading for it.

  The trail goes from pebbly shoreline path to wooden boardwalk over marshland. Thick green reeds, what Shaw describes as eelgrass, shoot up every which way. Brown cattails stick out of the mud. Dragonflies dance in the drizzle.

  A great blue heron maybe five yards to my right suddenly whooshes up and heaves himself into the sky, flapping and complaining at me, with a call that sounds like a truck’s rusty brake. I guess I disturbed his breakfast. Well, he disturbed me, too. My heart is jumping in my chest now, and I realize I am the only one around. There’s no other sign of humans, anywhere.

  Usually, I would like this. Usually, this would calm me. But right now, it’s feeling a little spooky.

  I walk for about an hour, just one foot in front of the other, not thinking too much. I just try to get closer to the area that juts out from the bay. That’s all I’m concentrating on, step, after step, in my old, tired-looking Crocs.

  After about forever, the mist lifts a bit. I can see something like a dark green blur that has to be a stand of pines. But I never seem to get closer to it. I’m farther off than I was when I started.

  All of a sudden I hear someone talking, faint but distinct. It’s a tour-guide kind of voice, and people are murmuring replies and clomping along. I try to avoid them, but somehow I walk right into a small group of birders, perched on the boardwalk. I feel scared and embarrassed, but there’s nothing to do but stand there with them, at the back of their flock.

  “Yes, folks,” says the guide, “climate change is impacting the biodiversity of this precious place in serious ways. We have to make some hard decisions if we want to keep it vibrant for our kids and grandkids.”

  A lady in a khaki baseball cap nods and smiles at me. I nod back. Then she suddenly turns and points out into the reeds: there’s that heron again! I nod and smile for real now.

  I have to stay with this group, because we are all going in the right direction, according to Shaw’s green journal. And actually, after all this time walking alone, I have to admit: it’s kind of nice to be walking along behind the flock of birders. They are quiet and calm. They care about birds. I could almost feel like I could belong to a group like this.

  We are getting to the spot, according to Shaw’s book, where there should be that small stand of pines on the spit of land overlooking the marsh.

  I peer carefully at the tree line, trying hard to find the outline of a house, any house. A man next to me notices me staring. “What do you see over there? Osprey?” He trains his binoculars.

  I wish I had binoculars. “Actually,” I say, “I’m looking for a house. Do you maybe see a house somewhere in those trees?”

  “Well, let me look . . . Yes, I do. I see a little brown house, with a green roof,” he says. “What about it?”

  My stomach drops to my knees. I swear he’s got to be kidding. But he’s totally serious.

  “Really?” He hands me his binoculars. Sure enough, there’s the glint of a reflection on a red-framed window. The roof is dark green, with shiny edges.

  I cry out loud: “It’s really there!”

  The whole group of birders gets very excited and whisper, “What? What is it?” They all train their binoculars on the stand of pines and murmur quietly to each other, trying to figure out what I saw.

  The tour guide taps me on the shoulder. I jump. He has a bushy brown beard hanging down the front of his green warden’s shirt.

  “What you looking for, youngster?” he says.

  “Can you tell me, do you know if, well, maybe, if that’s Tiberius Shaw’s house?”

  His eyebrows shoot way up. “Tiberius Shaw? Do we have a Tiberius Shaw fan here then?” He smiles and shakes his head. “That’s not his place, no. I happen to know the old lady who lives in that little house. Great location. She’s a big supporter of the sanctuary. Nice old gal.”

  He turns to the group of birders. “But this boy asked about Shaw. Haven’t heard that name in a while. Remember him? Bird guru, did a lot of work around these here parts, years ago.” They nod politely.

  You know when they say your heart sinks? I feel like mine is as low as the mud we’re walking over. If Shaw doesn’t even live here anymore, what am I doing in this stupid sanctuary? But if Shaw doesn’t live here, then what did he mean by “my hidden refuge within this refuge, its roof the greenest green?”

  I walk slower and slower until I’ve left the tour group behind. I rumble along the wooden boardwalks on my own, moving like a robot, like a droid.

  There are miles and miles of boardwalks and walking paths. And, of course, those one hundred thousand creeks, streams, and rivers. No wonder I got it wrong. Did I think it would be that easy?

  The soft gray morning fog is gone now, and the sun shines harsh, leaving nowhere to hide. It’s beautiful, though, glinting bright silver on the water. It has no right to be beautiful on a day like today.

  I notice birds, but I don’t care anymore. Wrens try to cheer me up with their tweety chirrupy songs, but it doesn’t help. There are marsh birds, shorebirds, and two dark brown and white osprey, diving and soaring from nests on high wooden platforms that someone built right there, high up over the marsh.

  But I can barely lift my feet.

  I am slow, sluggish, heavy.

  I was so sure my guess was right.

  So sure that today was the day I would finally find Tiberius Shaw. So I could finally ask him my big question.

  I lost my mother at birth, and my father passed away when I was twelve. It was Nature that raised me—I was a child of forest and field—and kind relatives lent a hand. Forest, field, and family. And I gained a glimmer of real wisdom, there, along the way, about how to survive . . .

  —Tiberius Shaw, PhD

  My big question for Dr. Tiberius Shaw, PhD, is: What was it? What was the glimmer of real wisdom you gained, that helped you survive?

  My steps slow to a stop. I crouch down in a small ball, right there on the boardwalk, and put my arms around my knees, and rock. I am practically facedown on the walk. I peer through the cracks between the boards and watch a bug, a water skater, sluicing by on his long legs across the brown water. I scan the roots of reeds, my eyes close to the ground. I’m not looking for anything, anymore. I don’t care about anything, anymore.

  That’s when I
notice something peculiar.

  There are some pressed-down reeds branching off from one side of the boardwalk. It takes me a minute to realize it’s a path. There’s a small piece of green cloth tied to a reed about a yard out, to mark the place. It’s a path that’s barely a path, something someone has tramped through just enough times. And perched on a branch at the far end, right before it turns, I see a strange bird. A bird I’ve seen only in a book. But I swear, I see it.

  It couldn’t possibly be. It’s a little green parrot with a yellow head and red-orange patches. A bird that used to live around these parts more than two hundred years ago. An extinct bird. It’s impossible. But there it is, or I am really going crazy: a little Carolina parakeet, sitting on a reed stalk and whistling at me.

  There used to be millions of them back in Audubon’s time. Dad said. And I read about it: They lived from southern New York and the lower Midwest all the way through the South. They were the only native American parakeets. They were pretty, and made nice pets.

  But they were also stupid. No survival instinct. Farmers shot them for eating fruit, and seed, and they never learned to fly away. They’d just stick around, fluttering in the field, like, “What the heck? What’s that shooting? Is somebody killing us?” Hundreds would die within minutes. The whole species got killed off within a century.

  Or did they?

  The yellow-headed parakeet flits from reed to reed, down the narrow, reedy path.

  I follow.

  I step off the boardwalk. Water squelches through the holes in my Crocs. I shudder, but I can’t stop looking at the fluttering wings up ahead.

  I don’t think about the cold, muddy water. Or Shaw. I don’t think about getting lost. I don’t think about my dad, or Ludmila, or the twins, or Davis, or Tiberius, stuck all alone in Gram’s hotel room. I don’t think about Gram. I try not to think about how horrible it is to wear soaking wet socks. There’s nothing I can do about any of this anymore.

  I don’t think about anything except the little green back of the parakeet who shouldn’t exist, but who is just ahead of me, flitting through the tall reeds.

  He leads me through this jungle for so long, I’m starting to think the world’s turned into one big reed marsh. But finally, we come to the bank of a narrow stream. It’s strewn with mossy stepping-stones. Above the tinkling water, a flash of green. The Carolina parakeet, still there, whistling. I strain to memorize his song, in case I lose sight of him and have to track him by sound. Too-wheet! Too-wheet!

  I place my foot carefully down on the first, slimy stone. It holds. I stutter my way slowly across, slipping and jerking, but I make it to the very end. By the other bank, I step off and sink knee-deep in muddy, stinky ooze.

  Too-wheet! Too-wheet! sings a probably-extinct bird, somewhere deeper in a thicket of green. Am I going crazy?

  In my haze, I notice that on this side of the stream, heading into the thicket, there is a path. By the path is a post. On the post is a green metal box with the outline of a gold feather painted on it in metallic paint. I don’t see any house around. I look everywhere—no sign of one. Just a mailbox. No house.

  I take off my backpack. I take Shaw’s green journal out of it. I look at the golden feather on the cover of the little book. I remember the feeling I got the first time I saw that image, so many days ago in the Twa Corbies shop, way back across the country in Nevada. Like a lifetime ago.

  It’s the same image, on book and box. The same feather.

  My heart is beating hard now, and not just from my slog across the stream.

  I open the metal mailbox. It’s rusty. There’s nothing in there but a spiderweb.

  Quickly, I flip through my own notebook, and find a sketch I did a long time ago, right after Dad first told me about the Carolina parakeet.

  I based my drawing on Audubon’s, in his baby elephant folio. They were actual real, live birds, back when Audubon was living. He painted a bunch of them all fluttering around a flowering plant. So I had taken my colored pencils and sketched a grouping of them, too.

  I rip out the sketch, take a pencil, think for a minute, and write a long note on the back, making sure not to get drips of mucky water on it.

  I write, and write, and write.

  Then, I take the DNA brochure from my backpack—the one that lady Helen at the Field Museum gave me, with Tiberius Shaw’s name listed as scientist/donor for DNA/genomic research. I fold the sketch and tuck it, and the brochure, into the Carolina parakeet page of Shaw’s little green book. I put all three items together in the green metal mailbox, and put up its rusty metal flag.

  I pause a minute, to say good-bye to the green journal. It’s been with me for a while. It’s given me much to think about. But it’s not really mine. The old green journal is Shaw’s.

  The Bird Book is what’s mine.

  “Too-wheet!”

  It’s faint. I hurry down the path.

  Tall reeds give way to more open brush, and soon I see another stand of little pines at the top of a rising hill.

  What is this new place? Will I finally see Shaw’s house?

  My feet are still squishing and squelching water with every step. The skin on my nose and the back of my neck feels burned. I don’t have any idea where I am on the map, or how I’m going to get back, but I’m not thinking about it. I just want to know where that Carolina parakeet went.

  So when I reach the top of the rise, I gasp.

  On the rise, there is no house.

  What there is instead: a tall, thick stand of pine trees, their branches filled with the flutter and chirp of Carolina parakeets—as well as a few buntings, thrushes, wrens, and other birds of different sizes and shapes. There are flashes and flitters and winging around. There’s hopping, and chirping on branches. It’s a bird party.

  I approach slowly, but the action doesn’t stop. They don’t seem afraid of me. I sit carefully down on a soft bed of pine needles, smelling the pine smell, taking in deep lung-filling breaths of it, and looking up at the birds. If you look, really look, you can see that the trees are filled with nests and knotholes, with bird-action. With Carolina parakeets, dodging in and out.

  I let my ears fill with summer sounds I don’t quite understand, but feel soothed by.

  I think I fall asleep for a while, leaning back on my backpack. I am perfectly alone here, but not afraid. The world is so far behind, I don’t have to think about it. This is peace. This is a type of house. Maybe this is what Shaw meant by his “refuge within this refuge.” Maybe he didn’t mean a real house, with doors and windows and such. Maybe this sanctuary is what he meant.

  After a while, I get up, stretch, and explore some more, through the trees. And on the other slope, I see signs of a campsite. A circle of rocks, two metal stands hammered into the ground on either side. A bar across the middle, just right for a pot to hang over the fire. Some wooden pegs in the ground, which might have supported a tent. I sit by the empty campsite and sketch the pines, the birds, the flat silver fingers of marsh water.

  My socks are still covered in black silt; I peel them off. My toes are white and pruney, covered with bits of pond matter. It was a terrible idea to take those wet socks off, because now I’ll have to put them back on.

  I know I can’t stay here forever.

  The sun was straight up when I saw the green mailbox; now it’s not. It’s afternoon. All I want to think about are the Carolina parakeets, those miracle birds. But Gram and Ludmila and Davis and the twins are peeking around the edges of my thoughts. Gram and Ludmila will be really worried. The world is seeping back into my head, and although I wish I could stay here in the green pine calm forever, I know I can’t.

  I tell myself I don’t want to think about it. But part of me needs to know about Dad.

  I leave. I go back through the beautiful stand of pines, make my way across the shallow stream without worrying this time, because now I know the depths of the water. I stumble along the boardwalk trails until I notice a man in a rowboat, wearing
a big floppy hat and holding a fishing pole.

  “Hello!” I yell. I don’t even hesitate one bit. No heart-pounding or anything. I ask him, flat out, which way is back to the entrance, and he silently points.

  Along the way, egrets and blue herons stare at me. I go over footbridges and wade again through even more ankle-deep muck—yuck!—zigzagging through marshland past groves of slim, black trees growing straight out of the water. I pass a beaver’s dam. I watch an osprey dive for a fish.

  It’s dusk when I finally stumble into the clearing around the wildlife refuge visitor center, full of mud and covered in mosquito bites. My arms and legs are shaking and my throat’s like cotton, I’m so tired, thirsty, and hungry.

  There’s no one in the visitor center, thank goodness. The first thing I do is head for the restroom. I rinse out my socks and try to dry them in the hand dryer. I duck my head under the faucet and try to rinse my hair. I scrub my face, feet, arms, legs, everything I can fit into the sink. Soap-rinse-one-soap-rinse-two-soap-rinse-three-soap-rinse—oh, to heck with it. I soap-rinse-one-gazillion. I stop counting.

  I use up all the soap in the dispenser and have to go to another sink, and I use up all the soap in that dispenser, too. I’m kind of whimpering without even realizing it.

  And as I’m combing my fingers through my slightly cleaner hair, I notice, on my neck, something that looks like an apple seed scrambling along.

  Wait.

  No. Please. Of all things, no.

  The apple seed has hairy little legs.

  A loud shriek echoes off the bathroom wall. Was that me?

  I pluck off the tick and fling it into the sink. My arms and legs are flailing, and I jump up and down in silent panic. A tick! My archnemesis insect! Most hateful in existence!

  I run the water scalding hot and am just washing it down the drain when the restroom door opens. A tall, thin, very dark man is standing there, wearing a warden’s shirt. He has a name tag, but I don’t stop to read it.