Case of the Glacier Park Swallow

by Anastasio, Dina

  Was that what love meant?

  She helped them carry the tree inside, and then she went to the attic and found the box of Christmas ornaments. The angel was there, at the very, very bottom.

  Katie came up to the attic while she was trying to straighten it out, and when she saw the angel she took it and twirled it around in the air so that it looked like it was dancing.

  Juliet and Katie carried the box of ornaments downstairs together and Juliet climbed up on the stepladder and carefully placed the angel on the top of the tree.

  It was a silly angel really. The body was made of cardboard, and the skirt was cut out of red foil. It had glitter glued all over it, but the strangest thing about it was the eyes.

  One of the eyes was a blue star, and the other was a red one.

  “Remember the day we made her?” Juliet said as she climbed back down.

  “Sure I do,” Katie said. “It was three years ago, and you wanted a blue eye and I wanted a red one.”

  Juliet laughed. “I told you that no one in the world had a red eye, and you said it didn’t matter. You said it was our angel and we could do what we wanted. I thought you were silly then, but I was wrong.”

  “I know,” Katie said.

  Katie seemed to have grown, even though she was still much shorter than Juliet. For a moment, when Juliet looked at her, she felt envious, and then she felt sorry that she saw her sister that way. Why couldn’t she just think, well, this is Katie and this is me and we’re different and that’s fine? Why did she always have to compare herself to someone. First it was Cam, and now Katie.

  Katie was cute. She was little, and funny, and cute, and Juliet had never been little or cute in her whole life. Katie had short, dark curly hair, and she had long straight blond hair, and why couldn’t that just be the way it was.

  Juliet felt nicer the next day, after she had had a good night’s sleep. The whole family finished decorating the tree together, and then they went into the kitchen and made Christmas cookies.

  Juliet was putting the last batch into the oven, when Katie started to cry. It came as a surprise to them all, since everything had been fine until then.

  Juliet closed the oven door and went to her. She could tell that her sister wanted to run, and so she sat close to her and put her hand on her arm to stop her.

  “What’s wrong?” Juliet said.

  Katie wouldn’t speak for a long time, but finally she said something that Juliet couldn’t quite understand.

  “Tell me again,” Juliet whispered.

  “It’s the cookies,” Katie sobbed.

  “What about them?”

  “I don’t know how to do it.”

  Juliet sat back and looked up at her parents. They seemed puzzled, but they seemed to understand that this was between Katie and Juliet and it was best if they stayed out of it. They left the kitchen then, and Juliet and Katie were alone.

  “What? Make cookies? Of course you do,” Juliet said. Katie’s cookies had been perfect, so what was this about?

  “You do it better.” Katie was angry now. “You do everything better!” she cried. “You do everything perfectly. Like the eyes. You always have the right color. Your eyes are always the right color.”

  Juliet couldn’t believe it. She hated that she had chosen a blue eye. She thought that Katie had been creative, and she had been right, and dull, and boring.

  “You’re beautiful,” Katie whispered.

  How strange, Juliet thought. How very, very strange.

  She touched her sister’s arm, gently this time, and said, “It’s funny, but I’ve been thinking that you were the beautiful one. You’re so pretty and cute, and I’m so big and, well, unsure about everything.”

  Katie started to laugh then, because she was unsure about everything too, and now they could be unsure together. After a moment Juliet laughed too, and everything was all right.

  The next day was Christmas and it was fine and warm and they were friends again.

  Her parents gave her money for Christmas so that she could go to Canada, and she felt lucky to have parents who supported her comings and goings.

  9. THE GOAT

  The next day she went back to work.

  Cam wasn’t there when she came in, and she was glad. She picked up the phone and called the lab and gave them the reference number for the blood sample.

  “The bird was injected with a very strong tranquilizer called chlorpromazine,” the technician said.

  Juliet corrected her. “It was an implant,” she said. “Does Cam know?”

  “He knows,” the technician said. “He called last week.”

  Juliet thanked the woman and hung up the phone. Two minutes later it rang. It was Cam. He was calling from the phone in his van.

  “Could you come?” he asked. “I need your help.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the park, by Medicine Lake, and I’ve got a very sick mountain goat here. The van broke down and I need you to come and get us.”

  Juliet wrote down the exact location and drove toward the park.

  She found him easily. He was kneeling on the ground just where he had said he would be. The goat was lying beside him. He was very still, but when Juliet touched him gently, he stirred and tried to look up at her. He was very heavy, probably 250 pounds, and it was not easy to carry him to the jeep, but together she and Cam managed it.

  Juliet drove back to the office slowly. They carried the goat inside and placed him gently on the table. He was almost frozen, and so they covered him with blankets and warmed him until he was fully awake. When he opened his eyes they could see that he was in pain.

  “Something’s probably broken,” Juliet said. “I wonder what happened to him.”

  “A fall, probably,” Cam said. “A bad fall from the looks of it, but not bad enough to make him immobile. Somehow he made it to the road before he dropped.”

  They took turns running their hands through his shaggy, yellowish-white coat, searching for a break. When Juliet examined his right rear leg he jerked in pain and they knew they had found it.

  They anesthetized the goat, set the bone without speaking, and moved the goat into a confined recovery area. Then they went into the other room and sat in chairs on opposite sides of the room.

  “I called your home first. Your father said you were back. How was the trip?”

  “It was all right, I guess. I learned a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  “I learned.....” She hesitated. She didn’t want to tell him, but then she did tell him, slowly, and when she was finished she knew that she had done the right thing.

  “Someone’s putting implants in those birds,” she said. “Some of them are being tranquilized, and some are filled with amphetamines. The question is why.”

  Cam stayed up with the goat that night, and when Juliet returned the next morning the goat was awake and annoyed that he couldn’t walk. Once when Juliet turned her back for a moment, the goat pulled himself up and seemed quite surprised that one of his back legs didn’t work. He teetered for a moment before he tried to move, and then, when he did, he crumpled and settled back into a corner with eyes filled with terror.

  But he was a determined creature, and so he tried again and again until his confusion and terror changed to impatience.

  “Give it time,” Juliet told him softly. He hobbled wildly until Cam sedated him.

  “I’d like to go to Alberta tomorrow,” Juliet said.

  “All right.”

  “Don’t you care?”

  Cam shrugged and smiled an understanding smile. “Of course I care,” he said. “But you need to go, and I can’t stop you. I’ll tell you when I can’t handle the animals without you, and when that happens you’ll probably still want to go, and then you’ll stay and hate me, but until then it’s all right.”

  He’s changed, Juliet thought. He’s become nice, and for the first time she realized that she was coming to like him. But all she could thi
nk to say was, “Oh.”

  10. CANADA

  When Juliet got home her parents were waiting for her in the living room.

  “Are you sure about this trip to Canada?” her father asked.

  “I’m sure,” Juliet assured them. “There’s something very strange happening with these birds.”

  She could see that her parents were worried. Her mother came to her and gave her a hug. “We raised you to be independent,” she said. “But now that you’re going every which way, we’re having second thoughts. Please be careful.”

  Juliet put her arm around her mother and promised to be very careful.

  That night Katie came into her room and sat on the end of her bed.

  “When are you leaving?” she said.

  “I’m going early in the morning.”

  Juliet could tell that Katie had something that she wanted to say and was having a lot of trouble trying to say it.

  Juliet said it for her. “You want to come, don’t you?”

  Katie nodded.

  Juliet pulled herself up and sat foreward. Katie was petting Max absentmindedly as she waited for Juliet to say something, and when Juliet finally spoke she stopped and folded her hands and waited.

  “I wish you could, Katie,” Juliet said. “But you can’t this time.”

  Katie’s eyes clouded. Juliet didn’t want to make her sad, but she had to. “It might be dangerous, Katie, but don’t tell Mom and Dad that. I’ll be all right, but I can’t have anybody but Max with me to worry about. Maybe next time. Is that all right?”

  “I guess so,” Katie said, too quickly. “Did I tell you about the weasel? He was all white. I thought weasels were brown.”

  “Did it have a long tail?”

  “Very long.”

  “Then it was a long-tailed weasel. They turn white in the winter so that they can blend with the snow and hide from predators.”

  “Like mountain goats and snowshoe hares,” Katie said as she slipped off the bed and started for the door. When she was almost there she hesitated and turned and said, “Could I come to work with you when you get back?”

  “Of course you can,” Juliet said. “Why? Have you decided to become a vet?”

  “I think so. Animals are interesting, aren’t they?”

  Juliet smiled. They were alike after all. It was nice to know that. “They’re very interesting, Katie,” Juliet said. “But they’re a problem too, because you always fall in love with them, and then they leave you.”

  “Be careful,” Katie said.

  “I will. I promise.”

  Juliet left the next morning. She drove straight through. She stopped to eat and feed Max, and let Max out for a run, but that was all.

  She arrived in Edmonton at dusk, checked into a small bed and breakfast on the outskirts of the city, and fell into a deep, dream-filled sleep. She dreamed about Canada geese this time, hundreds and hundreds of them, flying in V-formation. The old males kept changing places, so that one of them would always be leader, just like they always do, except that in the dream it wasn’t always an old male at the tip of the V. One minute a swallow was the leader, and the next minute it was a swan. And then something strange happened. Instead of a bird at the tip it was Cam, and then herself, and then Cam again, and they kept fighting and fighting to lead the geese south. And just as she was about to become the leader of all leaders, she woke up and looked around and realized that she was in another strange room in another strange place. She pulled the blanket up to her chin and called Max to her and held him tightly until she had calmed down, and then she pushed him off the bed and slid off behind him.

  She looked at her watch and saw that it was almost ten in the morning. She fed Max and drove to the main post office. The line was long and slow, and by the time she reached the counter she was quite nervous.

  “I’m trying to find the person who rented box number 98,” she said to the clerk. Her voice sounded shakey to her, and she wondered if it was obvious to the woman behind the counter.

  “We can’t give out that information,” the woman said.

  Juliet wasn’t surprised, but she was a bit disappointed. She went directly to box number 98 and looked inside and saw that it was full. He’ll come soon, she thought. And if he doesn’t then I’ll just wait until he does.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  He came at eleven. She saw him coming down the street through the window, saw him stroll toward her, saw him glance at the jeep and move closer to it and look inside at Max. She could tell by the way that his shoulders stiffened that he recognized him, and he must have made a noise of some kind because suddenly Max abandoned his bone and leapt at the window and began to bark and bark. The man jumped backward and turned and ran into the post office. He was watching Max still, and so he didn’t see her, and she had a moment or two to hide.

  But where?

  There was no place, and so she ran to the line before he turned. She got lost there with her back to the door and she waited like that, with her head down, for what seemed like hours instead of only minutes.

  When she turned around he was gone.

  She ran to Box 98 and looked inside and when she saw that it was empty she ran outside.

  The man with the grey cap was nowhere in sight.

  He knew now that she was after him. She had made a very, very big mistake. he next day she went back to work.

  11 . THE LETTERS

  Max found him.

  When Juliet unlocked the door to the jeep and opened it he leapt past her and took off down the sidewalk as if he knew exactly where the man was going and how to find him.

  Juliet tried to keep up, but Max was much faster, and more determined now, and he didn’t care if she was behind him or not.

  “Slower Max, slower,” she called as she turned a corner, but he paid no attention at all. He didn’t even glance back over his shoulder, not even once, and so she called out to him again. “You’re going to training school, Max!” she hollered. “You’re going to dog-training school the minute we get home.” But he didn’t care. He just kept chasing the man in the grey hat through the streets of Edmonton, and it didn’t even matter that there was no man there to chase.

  He kept his head down as he ran, as if he was pursuing a rabbit or a bird, and Juliet remembered that he had the scent and she knew that he would not stop until he found the man.

  Juliet caught up with Max at a busy intersection about four blocks from the jeep. He had stopped at the corner, and he was very quiet as he watched the man wait for the light to change. He seemed to understand that silence and an element of surprise were important if he was to catch his prey.

  The light changed to green, and Max looked up at Juliet for the first time, as if he was asking what he was supposed to do next, and when she whispered, “Get him, Max,” he ran to the man and caught him by the pants leg, and pulled him down.

  Juliet caught up then and noticed the pile of tied-up envelopes lying on the ground. She picked them up quickly and stuffed them into her jacket pocket. Then she grabbed Max and pulled him away, pulled him all the way to the jeep, and drove back to the bed and breakfast.

  She spread the letters out on the bed and moved them around. Then she moved them around some more and placed them in order according to the dates on the postmarks. The earliest, it appeared, was May 15th. May 15th? It was December now, and someone had mailed a letter on May 15th in Fort Worth, Texas. And these letters might not even have been the first batch. This bird-banding thing might have been going on for years. In fact, it must have been going on for at least one year if someone had found one of the birds in Texas in May.

  The letters were from people who had seen the address on the bands of birds that had come down.

  The most recent letter had been sent from Puerto Rico last week. “Regarding your swallow number 18,” it said. “It was sighted on the north side of the island and seen to leave at seven a.m.”

  It was too early for reports of swallow numbe
r 6 or whistling swan number 36, but Juliet searched for news of them anyway.

  She opened the rest of the letters then, starting with the earliest postmark and working her way toward the most recent ones. She was looking for a pattern, any pattern at all. Perhaps there were some clues in the kinds of birds found in various locations, or the times of departure or arrival, or medical symptoms, or deaths. But it all was very random.

  The birds seemed to be coming down everywhere from Virginia to Argentina, and most of them had been spotted in the very early morning or at dusk, as would be expected.

  Three dead Canada geese had been discovered, and fourteen swallows appeared to be sick but well enough to fly by the next day. There was no mention of any swans, and oddly, no one seemed to notice that the birds might have been drugged.

  The only pattern she could find was the fact that there were no patterns. However, three of the letters made her stop and think.

  The first was the one with the May postmark. She had been so busy thinking about the behavior of the birds that she had forgotten all about the behavior of the people writing the letters, or the people picking up the mail.

  Why, for instance, would a letter postmarked May 15th arrive in a mailbox seven months later? All the rest of the letters had been sent in December, so the man in the cap must have been picking up his mail on some kind of a regular basis.

  So why was he receiving a letter now that was sent seven months earlier?

  Juliet read the letter again. A banded Canada goose had been spotted off the coast of Guatemala in the first week of May. The person who had written the letter was so surprised to see it that she had written asking for information about the goose.

  Juliet understood why the woman had been so surprised. Canada geese should have been back in Canada by May.

  And Canada geese rarely, if ever, migrated farther south than the United States. So what was this one doing there?

  She examined the postmark and remembered that there had been political problems in Guatemala the summer before. The letter was probably one of those rare ones that got waylayed.