by Will Hobbs
When we got close, the spot was obvious. Underneath a cluster of tall spruce trees, people were standing around keeping watch. They cheered when they saw Neal on the run and the carrier in my hand. I spotted the nest, a huge tangle of sticks high in one of the trees.
The crowd parted for Neal and he went to his knees close to the bird. The eagle fledgling was way bigger than I would have guessed; it looked practically full grown. It hissed at Neal and flopped around something awful. The feathers on its head and tail weren’t white like a bald eagle’s. That must take time, I thought. Somebody said that a car had backfired three or four times in the street below just before it fell. “Its wings might be broken,” somebody said.
“Likely so,” Neal agreed.
Neal was wearing a heavy pair of gloves. With a move that was nearly too quick to see, he had the eagle contained and tucked against his side.
People cheered. “Thank you, everybody,” Neal said. His eyes were moist, which was as touching to see as the hurt eagle. “We’ll do everything we can, I guarantee you that. Cody, would you open that carrier for me?”
Neal gently placed the bird inside. Cody alertly swung the door shut. Neal said, “Let’s get the ambulance on the road, guys.” He turned to the people and handed out some sort of small cards. They were donation cards for Jackie’s Wild Seattle. “Thanks, everybody,” he said softly, and we were gone.
Back at the van, the baby raccoons were fussing and crying. “Hungry, real hungry,” Neal explained as he punched up Jackie’s number. “I just hope Jackie’s there. She’s crazy about any kind of raptor, but eagles are her heart’s delight—eagles and red-tailed hawks.”
She was there. “Call one of your bird vets,” Neal told her first thing. He was beside himself with excitement. “Fledgling bald eagle inbound from Discovery Park. Took a bad fall, both wings possibly fractured.”
A pause and then, “What do you mean is that all? Have you lost your mind, Jackie?”
We heard squawking on the other end. Neal made a show of holding the phone away from his ear. Then he said, “Oh yeah, got them, too. They appear to be in the pink of health. Two Homo sapiens from New Jersey. Siblings that migrated west for the summer. The male appears to be seven years old and the young woman fourteen. Cody and Shannon Young, if you please, coming your way in an hour’s time along with four raccoon babies, a possum, assorted birds, two squirrels, and a bunny. These baby raccoons are real hungry. Got a call on my way to the airport. The people live-trapped and relocated the mother without realizing she had babies under their house—until they started crying their little lungs out, that is. Familiar story. Start mixing formula or go milk your goat, Jackie, whatever it is you do.”
Neal hung up. Was our uncle ever pumped. “Man oh man, how I love this job, but did Jackie ever get on my case.”
“What for?” we both asked at once.
“For not bringing you hours ago, like I talked about. I should’ve called her when I picked you up. I got so excited seeing you guys, it slipped my mind. Supper’s ready as soon as we hand off the eagle. No doubt one of her raptor vets is already on the road.”
What a day it had been, and still the sun wasn’t even close to setting as we reached the little town of Cedar Glen and drove out a country road lined with tall cedar trees. I noticed a red warning light appear on the dash, then a second one. Neal had noticed them too, but didn’t look worried.
For once the kid in the backseat had nothing to say. The last hour had been real quiet, each of us deep in our own thoughts. Talk about a long day. I thought about my parents, how far along they might be on their journey while we were so close to the end of ours, or at least the end of the beginning.
I guessed my parents were only as far as France. They had a long layover in Paris before they caught a plane to Karachi, Pakistan. Then they’d have to catch another flight to Islamabad. Somebody from Doctors Without Borders would meet them there and drive them to the refugee camp in the desert outside Peshawar, close to the Afghanistan border.
I was worried about how we’d stay in touch. E-mail was our best bet if there was a telephone in or near the refugee camp. My parents had a handheld device that they could press to the mouthpiece of a telephone. Theoretically they could send and receive e-mails that way. But we weren’t supposed to count on it.
My eye caught the small JACKIE’S WILD SEATTLE sign set back from the road. We turned in to the driveway. I breathed in the aromatic cedars. I thought about those deserts in Afghanistan and all those refugees. Pictures I’d seen came to mind of people cutting down their last trees for firewood, slaughtering their last animals, abandoning their homes and walking hundreds of miles to the feeding camps across the border. I thought about the disasters they’d suffered, drought, starvation, disease, and wars that had been going on for more than twenty years. I was so fiercely proud of my parents going to help, my eyes were brimming.
As we drove up Jackie’s long gravel driveway I was almost ashamed for our green, well-watered land and all our blessings. I blinked away my tears and saw a small mob of people waiting for us in the parking area in front of the wildlife center, a cluster of nondescript one-story buildings. The old two-story Victorian house on the right, a “fixer-upper” you might call it, had to be Jackie’s home. A gray-haired woman stepped forward from the group with two golden retrievers at her side. She walked with a limp, and somehow I knew this was Jackie. Cody and I got out of the van and followed shyly behind Neal, who was holding the eagle carrier high, like he was the Statue of Liberty and the bird was his torch.
A younger woman with red hair came to Jackie’s side and took the carrier. Jackie called Cody and me by name and took us under her wings. “I bet you’re hungry,” she said.
From the corner of my eye I caught sight of someone standing apart from all the rest, sort of behind one of the cars, just watching. He was my age or a little older with wild-looking black hair and intense dark eyes. He seemed to want to join in, but wouldn’t. He was holding himself apart, and I was wondering why.
Jackie introduced us to her evening-shift volunteers, then pointed out the young red-haired woman heading into the clinic with the eagle as Rosie. Jackie didn’t identify the boy on the fringe, and I wondered what that was all about. Curious, I glanced back at him and took in his off-balance stance, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans, head cocked at a proud, skeptical angle, eyes that in the brief second he looked my way were appealing for help or hope or I couldn’t tell what, maybe understanding.
A lost soul, that’s how he struck me, sending out a beacon before he went down, but that was only a fleeting impression. Moments later he melted around the back of the cars and started walking down the driveway without looking back.
The jet lag had my eyelids at half mast. It may have been early evening in western Washington, but Cody and I were still on Weehawken time. Cody actually fell asleep over his lasagna. He never really woke up as we trooped him upstairs. Jackie had three separate rooms for us up there, with thoughtful touches in each, like scented lotion and a vase of fresh-cut flowers on my nightstand.
Checking in on Cody, I discovered he’d crash-landed facedown onto his bed. I took off his shoes, then let sleeping dogs lie. Myself, all that I unpacked was a sleep shirt. I thought a prayer for my parents, wherever they were, slid between sweet, clothesline-fresh sheets, mused momentarily about how strange it was that Jackie and this farmhouse, as she called it, had been here all along without me knowing they existed, then closed my eyes and let go. It was such a relief, just letting go.
5
THE DISTINGUISHED GUESTS
A strange repeating cry woke me up. It took me a few seconds to realize a rooster was crowing its head off and I was upstairs in Jackie’s house somewhere out in the forest in the state of Washington. I peeked at my watch on the nightstand. It was five in the morning, but the room was bright with the rising sun. Go back to sleep? Not if that rooster could help it.
Cody hadn’t visited duri
ng the night. No doubt the nightlights had helped. Jackie had come up with three: one for his room, one for the hall, and one for the bathroom across from Neal’s door.
As for me, no matter that I’d been sleeping in a haven of peace on earth, I’d fought my sheets all night. A ridiculous nightmare had kept me tossing and turning. I was on a sinking ship on the way to Pakistan, no less. Everybody was getting in the lifeboats, but suddenly my brother was missing. Something about going to rescue the dogs in the hold. Finally I found him, but when we got back to the deck Uncle Neal didn’t have any quarters for the life jackets in the vending machines.
Look who’s preoccupied with disaster, I thought. And quit renting the movie Titanic.
The rooster crowed again, then again and again. Cody, I realized, was standing at the open door watching me wake up. He crossed to the window and said, “I can see that rooster from here. Did it wake you up?”
“Duh.” I propped up my head with the extra pillow. I’m charming in the mornings.
At the window, Cody announced that Uncle Neal was in the parking lot moving kennel carriers from the van to the back of an old pickup.
He went to another window. “Jackie’s on her way to the barn to milk her goats with the golden retrievers.”
All I could do was yawn. “I bet you anything she uses her hands.”
“Shannon,” Cody groaned. “Wake up! Let’s go!”
I humored him. Barefoot and still in my I ♥ NEW YORK sleep shirt, I followed him downstairs and out to the goat barn. Jackie was sitting on a stool, milking a goat. The nanny goat was standing on a platform in front of her and eating grain from a small wooden box. Slats on either side of the nanny’s neck kept her from backing her head out. Jackie’s hands were amazingly strong and quick. For someone in her sixties who claimed to have enough metal in her body to start a junkyard, she was doing all right. Jackie had told us over supper that she’d been in a terrible car wreck years before. She swerved to avoid a deer and crashed into a tree.
Cody was riveted by the jets of milk shooting into the pail. Naturally he had to try it, but couldn’t get even a dribble to come out. Jackie told him that you have to get the hang of it, to which my brother replied, Cody-fashion: “I’ve seen bald eagles before, up at the Palisades, but I never heard a rooster crow.” He asked if he could collect the eggs, asked if he could bottle-feed the baby raccoons, asked if he had to drink goat’s milk. Jackie’s answers were yes, yes, and no.
The first nanny was done eating her grain and was fidgeting. Jackie quickly finished milking, then released her. The goat jumped off the platform and goat number two took her place. Jackie started talking to us about Uncle Neal, how fond she was of him, at least as much as her sons. Cody got that peculiar expression on his face that means he’s just about to ask an inappropriate question. “What happened to Mister Jackie?”
Fortunately, Jackie was amused. “You’re interested in ancient history, eh? Well, Cody, Mr. Jackie and I split over religious differences. He thought he was God and I didn’t.”
This was more of an answer than Cody was capable of digesting. It left him speechless. Jackie laughed, then ran her hand over his head. “Ask an honest question,” she said, “I’ll give you an honest answer.”
As Jackie milked the third goat she told us how happy she was that we were going to be staying with her for the summer. When I said that my mother didn’t really know much about Neal’s situation, she looked at me a little funny. “How do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, she had no idea he was going to have to find a different place to live when we came. I guess he didn’t tell her.”
“Oh,” Jackie said. “Anything else she doesn’t know?”
I couldn’t tell what she was getting at. “Probably a lot, I guess. They’re both bad about keeping in touch. For another thing, she thought he had all kinds of time on his hands this summer, from being unemployed.”
Jackie hesitated, then shrugged and worried her hand through her gray hair. Something was making her uncomfortable. “As much as I appreciate all he does,” Jackie said finally, “I wish Neal wouldn’t work so much. I keep telling him to take it easy. He needs to take better care of himself. That’s one reason I’m so glad he took me up on my suggestion that the three of you live here, with me. I can look after him better here. Maybe he’ll even stay after you go—but don’t tell him I said that. Okay? You promise?”
Cody nodded uncertainly. I wasn’t much closer to understanding why the secrecy. Neal was a grown man and Jackie didn’t want to appear to be mothering him even if she sort of was, that’s what I thought.
“I want you to know I’m thrilled to have family under my roof again,” Jackie said, “and that’s how I think of you already.”
Back in the kitchen, we watched Jackie strain the milk through a cheesecloth. She asked if we wanted to take a quick tour of her menagerie before she made breakfast for us and Uncle Neal. “Should I change?” I asked. I wasn’t really dressed.
Jackie shrugged. “The volunteers won’t be showing up this early. How about you, Cody?”
My brother screwed up his face and said, “It depends on what a menagerie is.”
“A menagerie is an odd assortment of birds and beasts. Mine numbers over five hundred at the moment. Come on, I’d like you to meet my distinguished guests.”
Jackie’s opening of the clinic door was greeted by rustling and chirping. “We’re filled to overflowing,” Jackie said. “It’s baby season.” From floor to ceiling, row upon row, it was baby bird condos everywhere we looked, small plastic enclosures with screen doors. Some of the patients were solo birds and some, babies that must have been orphaned in the same nest. Two especially adorable yellow fuzz balls were begging with their necks stretched to the limit, mouths wide open. “Pigeons,” Jackie said.
“You better feed ’em,” Cody told her.
“Don’t you see the bags under my eyes? I just did, three hours ago. See the whiteboard on the wall with all the checklists? That’s our system for being sure everybody’s getting fed.”
Jackie called out the names of other birds as we walked by them: “Sparrows, crows, robins, grosbeaks, finches, swallows, wrens, starlings. Those are baby barn owls. We have thirty-one of them at the moment. Every patient’s little hospital room is cleaned every day. Food, water, warmth—we can’t let them get chilled. Baby birds are so fragile.”
We were turning a corner. The rooms were small, and I felt a little claustrophobic. I’d pictured the clinic more like a hospital. This was more like a poorly designed house. A large bird began to cry fiercely from the next section. “Birds of prey, kids. Raptors are so magnificent!”
The cages along this wall were much larger. “We have four kinds of owls at the moment, three species of hawks—that’s the red-tailed. Here’s the osprey that’s been doing all the yelling, here’s another osprey. They’re fish hunters. These two are brother and sister. The male was badly burned—look at his poor feathers. Their parents built their nest on top of a light pole at a racetrack. There was a short circuit and the nest caught fire. That’s a kestrel; here’s a golden eagle from clear over near Spokane. It has a severe infection from a leg-hold trap, which the voters have outlawed. We’ve had a lot of luck with raptors, so they keep coming. We’re the biggest raptor-rehab place in the state.”
We passed by a room banked with sinks, counters, cabinets and refrigerators, with a long table down its center. “Food prep,” Jackie said. Everything was clean, but nothing was new. The place looked like it had been stocked from garage sales.
A peek at the laundry and we turned a corner. We were into the small mammals. The patients here were squirrels, possums and weasels, full-grown raccoons, our baby raccoons, and a darling baby porcupine. The baby beaver in the bathtub was cuter yet. It was love at first sight for Cody, who dropped to his knees at the edge of the tub. The beaver couldn’t have been more than fifteen inches long, adorable flat tail included. It came to Cody, scratching at the enamel with
its tiny claws.
“Will it bite?” Cody asked. I hoped not; they were practically nose to nose.
“They’re gentle,” Jackie told him. “Go ahead and pick him up.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Go ahead, pick him up.”
Cody did just that, put it against his chest. This was love. They touched noses. “If Mom and Dad could only see this,” I cooed. “If Uncle Neal could—”
“Neal never comes into the clinic,” Jackie said.
“He doesn’t? How come?”
She shrugged. “He says, ‘I bring ’em, you fix ’em.’”
The little beaver gripped one of Cody’s fingers in its little hands. Cody looked up and said, “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s an orphan, that’s all. Some homeowners didn’t like it that beavers moved into their stream and started taking down their trees. When they killed the beavers, this little guy was overlooked. So much ignorance, so much education left to be done. The best water engineer in creation is that little creature in your hands, Cody. Beavers would have built those people ponds, then all sorts of birds would have come, not to mention frogs, fish, crawdads, turtles…All they ever had to do to save their trees was wrap them waist-high with chicken wire. Cody, you can put him back now.”
Reluctantly, Cody did, and asked, “Does he have a name?”
“No, but you can give him one,” Jackie said as we turned another corner. The clinic went off in all directions like the word lines on a Scrabble board. You could tell Jackie had put the place together in bits and pieces as she got donations, with volunteer labor from the slapped-together looks of it.
“Chuckie,” Cody proclaimed. “I’ll call him Chuckie.”
“Good name,” Jackie said, throwing open yet another door that said MEDICAL RECOVERY ROOM.
There was Uncle Neal, sitting by a carrier on a table in the middle of the room. Sage was at his feet. We’d just heard that Neal didn’t come inside the clinic. The look on Jackie’s face, well, she couldn’t have been more surprised.