by Charles Rose
The birds, too, have my attention. Some of them I will learn to identify, with the help of a manual on birds. The birds are a pleasure to look at, and, in the evening, a pleasure to listen to. But when they wake me up in the morning, it seems that all the birds in the neighborhood are in league to grate on my nerves. The little bastards just won’t stop; the tweets and twitters and chirrups and caws roll over me like an avalanche.
If I hold the feeder in place—already the stepladder is in place—Loraine can pour seed straight from the bag, a plastic bag half-filled with birdseed, yet unwieldy, difficult to manipulate in the process of lifting the lid on the wire. But she does it, does it easily. The feeder is filled to the brim. We put the stepladder in the laundry room, and, comfortable now on the screen porch, the mail all in for today at least, the letters ready to go out tomorrow, we talk some about the feeder. In steadying it while Loraine filled it, I noticed the wire wrapped around the nail. I bring up this matter to Loraine—why the wire, why the nail?
“I assumed,” I say, “the nail was there from the start.”
“Let me explain,” Loraine tells me.
The nail didn’t come with the feeder. The wire from which the feeder hangs runs vertically down the center, along which one raises and lowers the roof in order to introduce the seed. It was a knot at the end of a cord that was the sole support of the feeder once. The problem was that the cord was too long; the feeder hung too close to the ground; it was necessary to shorten it. It was Charlie who came up with the idea of using a wire instead of the cord. He wrapped the wire around the nail so the nail would provide support. There was no need for him to snip off the wire. That’s what happened. We had to shorten the wire.”
“But you didn’t tell me who thought of it.”
“No, I told you Charlie thought of it.”
“You told me you raised the feeder,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter who thought of it. What matters is I didn’t know.” I was angry for not having figured out why the nail was there for myself.
I see Loraine with a roll of fiberglass, beside the ladder to the attic. She has Charlie insulating the attic now. Why do I have to see her there, instead of with me, close to me?
The weeks pass, lengthen into months. Other applications are put on file. It is time to think of what to do next, how to put my abilities to use. Not that we can’t make ends meet here. Money continues to come in. When our expenses exceed our income from the land and securities I own, I have only to pick up the telephone, call my broker in Atlanta. Only yesterday I had him sell off a hundred shares of Georgia Power and Light. He informed me I’d take a capital loss, which would help on my income tax.
I usually get up early, on edge from the chattering birds and the prospect of nowhere to go. I have a way of getting through mornings. I watch the nostalgia channel, with my orange juice, my cinnamon toast. I watch old movies, “Movietone News,” the big bands of the swing era. What I like best is “The March of Time.” Only yesterday I saw the Hindenburg go, a climbing, spiraling column of flame, then tiny moth-like crumpling steel still hopelessly trailing mooring lines. I think of the people on the ground, just footage now from the “March of Time.” I too might soon be footage, assuming we made home movies here.
I still have the feeder to contemplate. The windows are turned away from me, an upper and lower sliver of glass, in perspective, turned away from me. The walls are protected from the rain by the overhanging roof. Droplets are beading the edge of the roof. I hear raindrops on the shingled roof that Charlie put in when he built the screen porch. Charlie is down by the river. Loraine has him painting the boathouse. Some termite-infested boards on the pier also need to be replaced. Since Loraine had already pointed them out, I will have no trouble avoiding them on my way to take the boat out, to take a spin on the river.
We are sitting out on our screened-in porch while Charlie paints the boathouse. A squirrel leaps from the roof of the porch. He is swinging the structure like a trapeze. His bushy tail flaps on a window; his head comes around the other side, and he buries his head in the trough. I find myself looking at the squirrel, not the rocking, gyrating feeder. Loraine hasn’t really noticed the squirrel.
“I’m willing to move if you are.”
“I know. That isn’t news to me. The point is I don’t have a job yet.”
“You’ll get a job, “ Loraine tells me. She strokes my hand, my right hand, along and around the palm and on up the ball of the thumb. “I know someday you’ll get one. And if you don’t, you’ll find something here. Until something better comes along.”
The squirrels are becoming a problem. They are coming on board from the screen porch, making giant leaps, happy landings. The level of seed is going down, below the level of the feeding trough. The upper windows are unobstructed by seed. In a bend of the river not far from the house, the large-mouthed bass are feeding.
Loraine has an idea to foil the squirrels. There is a certain netted shield, or hood, that can cover the roof of the feeder. Charlie knows where to pick one up. A squirrel is sitting on the roof, large-eyed, with lots of time on his hands, his tail overhanging the edge of the roof.
The level of seed in the lower windows is still at the top of these windows. The reason for this is simple; the squirrels haven’t room to operate in the feeder’s lower section. The seed that spills out of the lower vents, due to the pressure from above, is available only for birds. The squirrels having frightened the birds away, the level of seed remains the same in the windows of the lower part. We wouldn’t need any netted shield if our birds had a little gumption. Charlie wouldn’t have had to pick one up, at the pet store, where these things are sold.
We discuss it, on the screen porch. I tell Loraine the birds should fend for themselves.
Loraine—she still looks good to me, although her hair is gray and her legs are thin—is about to place her hand in mine. What she says I am willing to accept, for what else can I do now?
“Charlie will come up with something,” she says. “He’ll find a way to keep off the squirrels.”
“Charlie will show them who’s boss,” I say.
We play Ping-Pong in the basement. Just before Charlie starts his serve, he holds the ball flat on the paddle. He serves a high, bouncing, easy ball, but that doesn’t keep him from winning the point.
I still send out applications. The boathouse has been painted, and the rotten boards on the pier replaced. We are about to put in a redwood fence. Charlie is unloading the boards from the back of the station wagon. I hear the boards slap and clatter, thinking Charlie has found a home here. We have taken him in. We like him. We have accepted him as our man of all work. When I go, Charlie will still be here for whatever Lorraine has to have done. So it doesn’t matter so much when I go. And now that I have accepted this truth, I can see the feeder differently. I see it as image, as metaphor. It’s a temple, a kind of pagoda, in a garden where there are exotic birds. So one roof isn’t set on another, each section and roof a bit smaller in diminishing tiers that thrust at the sky. It isn’t literally a pagoda, but it could be where pagodas are found. Seed flows into the feeder. Loraine is pouring in the seed. I steady the feeder, holding the lid. There is a lump in the surface of the roof, a palpable bulge for the fingertips.
Another squirrel makes a leap. It is amazing how agile these squirrels are. Charlie is putting the fence up.
A blue jay is causing the feeder to tip. It is pecking birdseed out of the trough, its head down, tail extended straight. It looks around before flying off. Next a pair of purple finches show up. The carmine breast and head of the male make me think of when I was a child and my mother—warning me this will hurt—put Mercurochrome on a cut. The female finch is a grayish brown, and she doesn’t have a crest. Her tail shoots up while she eats. The male finch stands guard on the upper trough while the female feeds from the lower trough. This, I tell myself, is chivalry.
I
n a heavy flap of beating wings, a grackle slams into the feeder. Its eyes are yellow thumbtacks. Its beak is a cruel, curving blade that punches and hammers the glittering glass. The finches, they panic, screeching. These finches, streaking across the yard, I follow their flight to the river.
Treasure Hunt
How my mother persuaded her big sister to keep us boys is still a mystery to me. Uncle Amber and Aunt Edna would be spending two weeks at their cottage on Lake Lagoda. Uncle Amber had two weeks off from Apperson Finance, where I used to see him behind his desk, in shirtsleeves, wearing suspenders and a floral four-in-hand tie. He had been a staff sergeant in World War One, seen combat at Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood. Yet Aunt Edna could wind him around her little finger.
Aunt Edna at one time had been a looker. She’d had lots of beaux before she married Uncle Amber. She had the figure of a Gibson girl on a bicycle built for two. Aunt Edna, Mom used to say, wouldn’t ride tandem with anybody, not even Clark Gable.
We would stay for ten days, Mom told us. Ten long days, while Mom and our stepfather, Horace Fridlin, vacationed in Cape Cod. Dad would pick us up on his way back to Indianapolis. He couldn’t keep us because he would be pushing Bond and Lillard bourbon in southern Indiana and eastern Ohio. Since his insurance agency had gone down the tubes, not long before his marriage did the same, Dad had been working out of Indianapolis, “On the road,” he used to tell us, “the open road for big boys like you two will be when you get to be my age.” I put down The Open Road for Boys when I heard that, his eyes engaging ours like semaphore flags wigwagging from one foundered ship to another—don’t abandon ship, help is on the way.
On our way to Lake Lagoda my little brother, Rex, fizzed up his Coca-Cola, took a swig. I knew he shouldn’t be doing that in the car. My Coca-Cola stayed between my knees, where it was supposed to be.
Aunt Edna turned toward Uncle Amber, her thin lips edged with pink lipstick, powder caking her sallow profile. “Amber,” she said, “you’re driving too fast.”
Uncle Amber slowed down to thirty-five. When Aunt Edna turned to us to make sure we were on her side, a belch came from Rex. Aunt Edna’s powder-caked face returned to profile. “Amber?”
Uncle Amber kept his eyes on the road, the back of his head tilted toward Rex. “You apologize to your aunt,” he said, meaning business.
His Coca-Cola stashed between his knees, Rex swiped off his beanie and said, “I’m sorry I upset you, Aunt Edna.”
Aunt Edna directed her sour smile over the passenger seat toward Rex. “I’m not upset but I am concerned. Drinking Coca-Cola in the car, from now on that has to stop.”
A Studebaker chugged past us. What if, I thought, Dad passed us gunning his Buick Roadmaster, on his way to the lake, honking his horn to let us know he would be waiting for us, he hadn’t forgotten us, he would drive us back to his apartment in Indianapolis, take us to the ballpark to watch the Indians play, buy us hot dogs, all the Coca-Cola we wanted. But he didn’t pass us. Other cars did. I didn’t count how many.
Uncle Amber stopped for fresh eggs at a farmhouse about half a mile from the cottage—and for tomatoes in wicker baskets, tomatoes almost the size of softballs, and a carton of strawberries. He parked the car by the mailbox, waded through goldenrod and sawgrass to the front porch, where a woman with a goiter the size of a lemon rocked on a porch swing until he climbed the front steps. She got up, smoothed out her flower-print dress. He followed her into the house. Aunt Edna powdered her face in the rearview mirror until Uncle Amber came out the front door, a basket of tomatoes in one hand, a carton of strawberries in the other. The goiter lady carried the basket of eggs.
We passed a row of poplar trees, fresh eggs pillowed in Aunt Edna’s lap. We were getting close to Pioneer Cottage. Through the gaps between the cottages, patches of glistening lake water cheered us up, all of us, including Aunt Edna. Her voice, usually abrasive, perked up, as if she felt she had at last glimpsed an end to her innumerable discontents. She turned to Uncle Amber and said, “We’ll have strawberry shortcake for dessert tonight,” and to us boys, “How does strawberry shortcake sound to you?” Rex said, aware that the shortcake was stored in one of several paper bags in the trunk and the whipped cream was packed with ice in the cooler, “Sounds like a winner to me,” and I said, “I’m with Rex.”
Uncle Amber parked the car beside the outhouse, and we all got out. Rex and I followed him around the cottage to the lakefront, into the front porch, the screen door unhooked, on to the locked front door. Uncle Amber fitted the key into the keyhole, and the door swung open. He had us unlocking the windows, opening them to cool the cottage off. A musty smell trailed us as we moved through the living room and the narrow dining room to the cramped kitchen and on to the back porch. Uncle Amber unhooked the screen door and in came Aunt Edna. She opened the refrigerator door. There were cubes in the ice tray and half a pitcher of iced tea. The first thing she did was fix four glasses of iced tea, one for each of us. Rex and I helped Uncle Amber bring in the sacks of groceries. He hauled the cooler to the back porch.
When Rex griped about the outhouse, our stepfather, Horace Fridlin, had this to say: “You boys should consider it a privilege to use the last outhouse in Indiana.” Horace had used an outhouse on his grandfather’s farm outside of Marion. “What is good for your aunt and uncle should be good enough for you.”
Our stepfather, Horace Fridlin, owned and managed Fridlin’s Laundry and Dry Cleaning—a loaf-shaped structure sandwiched between the plate glass factory and the gravel pit on South Buckeye Street. Horace lifted weights, worked out with dumbbells. He’d tell us, “If you boys aren’t careful you’ll turn out to be ninety-eight-pound weaklings.” Horace had Mom working out with dumbbells. He gave up playing golf on Sunday afternoon so he could take us to the country club pool. He would swan dive off the high dive. His legs churning water, he’d swim to our end of the pool, wade out, pectorals thatched with sodden black hairs, booming “Come on in, the water’s fine.”
During our stay at Pioneer, the one thing we took pleasure in was fishing with Uncle Amber. We fished with cane poles for bluegills and perch. Uncle Amber would row out to the southern end of the lake. I remember him feathering the oars, water trickling off the oar blades, the boat docks, piers, trees, and flagpoles getting smaller and smaller. I remember him saying when the fishing was good, “Boys, they’re biting today,” with an excitement we shared with him, when all you had to do was throw your line into the lake and before you knew it your bobber took a nosedive and you pulled and felt the line yank taut and you hauled in a writhing bluegill.
We were up at six and out on the lake by seven. Around eleven we quit fishing. Uncle Amber rowed us back to Pioneer. Sometimes Aunt Edna was waiting for us at the top of the steep front steps leading from the pier to the front porch. I can picture her standing pigeon-toed, her frizzy red hair catching snippets of a breeze off the lake, her lips, one corner twisted slantwise, pressed together in what for her was a smile. Rex held one of the pier posts and I held the other while Uncle Amber set his tackle box and rod and reel on the pier. Then he looped a line over one post and then the other and only after he had done that could we get out of the boat with the cane poles. If it was Rex’s turn to carry the fish net, he’d hold it up and holler at Aunt Edna, “Looks like you’ll have a lot of fish to fry.” If it was my turn, I didn’t hold up the fish net and I didn’t say anything. And if we hadn’t caught any fish or had to throw the undersized ones back in the lake—the ones, Uncle Amber would say, that weren’t keepers—we still waited for Uncle Amber to get out of the boat, with his rod and reel and tackle box, before we got out and clumped up the steps behind him with the cane poles. It was our job to prop them against the roof of the porch, the lines wrapped around the poles. We wrapped while Uncle Amber was rowing us in, turning a pole with the right hand, the line held out and taut with the left, taking care to make sure the hook was snagged in the line.
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sp; Something Uncle Amber made clear—we were not to play our radio after nine o’clock because that would upset Aunt Edna. We had brought along our radio, a pink Bakelite that Horace had purchased for us, so we could listen to Jack Armstrong and Captain Midnight and the Lone Ranger late in the afternoon and after dinner in the evening. At the cottage we could only listen to the radio in our room up over the living room. Its one window let in a little breeze at night. After our radio curfew but before lights out, we were permitted to read comic books, which were to be kept upstairs, a stack of them we had packed with the radio, our clothes, Citronella to ward off mosquitoes.
We would roam around the lake in the afternoon. We slurped on Popsicles, licked Brown Giants, swilled Coca-Colas, taking care to bring the empty bottles back to the cottage. The Popsicle sticks we dropped on the road.
One afternoon toward the end of our stay, I thought up a game I would play with Rex. Something we could do while we were supposed to be on our afternoon walks. Supposing, I said to myself, I told Rex there was treasure buried along the lakefront or next to the road behind the cottages or in the peony bushes next to the bedroom window, or in the phlox bed behind the outhouse. I would draw a treasure map. This I would find in the attic one night. As for what the treasure was, the map didn’t have to say. Then it came to me, it would be one of the bloody handkerchiefs dipped in John Dillinger’s blood, after he was gunned down by G-men coming out of the Biograph Theater. Whoever buried the handkerchief might have also buried his share of the swag from Dillinger’s last bank robbery—right here, near Pioneer Cottage, on Lake Lagoda. This unknown gangster had intended to spend a weekend with his latest gun moll in the Palmer House in Chicago, where Mom and Dad had spent their honeymoon. On his way to dig up the swag, he had a heart attack and keeled over.