“Heat makes people mean,” said Andy.
The window was higher than he expected. When he had unlocked it from inside the bathroom, the sill had only come up to his waist, but from out here on the ground it was over his head. He had to make a rickety tower of pigs to reach it, and he scuffed up his knees and scraped his elbows scrambling in. Inside, it was dark. The air-conditioning had been turned off and the air was heavy with the smell of cigarettes, vinegar, Pine Sol, and smoked meat. Two phrases kept going through his head, and he chanted them under his breath—“Fans acquired through death” and “It ain't for sale.”
In the morning it was drizzling rain. It felt almost cold. Ethel stood at the window of the motel room and looked out at the herd of plywood pigs hovering above the mud in the rain with their cheerful painted-on faces and their silly clothes. “I don't care if I never see another jigsawed pig as long as I live,” she said. Andy stood on the sidewalk, watching the diners with their umbrellas and raincoats scurrying in and out of the Kountry Kitchen Restaurant. And Jim Wade stood in the rain at the back door of his van, holding on to the edge of the roof with both hands and staring in at the brass blades of the General Electric 940566.
No one felt like eating breakfast at the Kountry Kitchen and they got home before noon. “Beans, corn, tomatoes, and pickles,” said Eula, but Jim Wade said he didn't think he'd better stay for lunch. Andy sat down on the floor and gathered as much of the dog as would fit into his lap and hugged him and hugged him, crooning, “Good dog, good dog,” while Ethel told the story of the man and his barbecue and his bulldog and his 1914 GE fan with the rare oscillator.
“I know that like to killed Jim Wade,” said Tom, “not getting that fan. No wonder he didn't want to talk about it.”
“Good dog,” said Andy. “Good dog.”
“That fan sitting on a shelf, just for looks, not doing anybody any good” said Tom. “You know, if it had been me, I'd of stole that fan.”
Then from out on the porch Ethel called, “Mossy pots!” and sure enough, on the moldy sides of the pots they could see little tendrils of green twining through the black scum.
7. BIRDING
Prothonotary,” said Roger, peering through the binoculars.
“Eeenh,” she said. It was a sound she made, indicating uncertainty or polite disagreement. In the three hours they had been together on this bird-watching expedition, she had made that sound twice. Roger was uneasy. He handed her the binoculars.
“Pine warbler,” she said. Marsh birds were her specialty, but because of the nature of her art she would be uncomfortable with a misidentified warbler. She did not know that Roger was in love with her, that he had been smitten ever since the day she had left a Hamilton Beach electric blender at the dump. She did not know that he had spent hours studying her paintings at the gallery downtown, admiring the sunlight on the black water, the glistening lily pads, the birds visible only in glimpses, almost hidden in reeds and grasses. She did not know how very much he admired the spare, straightforward titles she gave her pictures—Nesting Coot, Common Gallinules, Pied-billed Grebe and Young. She did not know that he had been stalking her in a civilized way for weeks, working up from the startling “Have a nice day” at an accidental meeting at the Dumpster to this bird-watching expedition in a wildlife refuge on a barrier island off the coast. She did not know that simply reading Peterson's description of her birds, family Rallidae, “… rather hen-shaped marsh birds of secretive habits and mysterious voices,” made him weak and shaky.
So it had not been easy for Roger, standing in the litter of the dump on that summer day a week ago, a swarm of sulfur butterflies congregating on a puddle of drool from the Dumpster and a spent “easy glide” tampon applicator at his heel, it had not been easy for him to draw a breath and say, “Have you ever seen the marsh birds in Little Tired Slough out on Cathead Island? Because of my plant work I have a permit, and I could take you there.”
And yet how easy it had been for her to heft her bag of garbage up over the lip of the Dumpster and turn to him as the swarm of sulfur butterflies rose up and surrounded her in a winkling yellow column, how very easy it had been for her to lift her hands, palms up into the butterflies, smile, and say, “Might we see rails there?”
On the ferry to Cathead Island they had sat side by side between canvas bags and ice chests, listening to a lively, talkative woman describe with animated gestures a study she was conducting on the life cycle of the oyster. Roger couldn't stop watching her dry-looking, rather gray tongue, which wagged restlessly back and forth in her open mouth during pauses as if it were feeling around for the next phrase. Delia sat very still, her hands cupped in her lap. Every now and then, with a practiced sweep she would lift her binoculars to her eyes, follow a gliding bird for a minute, then lower the binoculars and curl her hands back in her lap. Nothing but pelicans and gulls. What have I done, Roger thought, and then she leaned over to him and whispered, “Like the tongue of a bored parrot.” Roger longed to hug her, but he could only close his eyes and nod emphatically.
Since that shining moment, however, he had misidentified a warbler, and in their three hours of walking along the little sandy trails through the marshes and scrub, they had seen nothing more exciting than a kingfisher, an osprey, an anhinga, and some herons. She kept poking things at the edge of the marsh and making minute examinations of bits of dung.
“Otter,” she said, delicately picking around in it with two sticks. Roger stood and looked out toward the gulf, thinking of the birds he would will to this marsh for her: the big pink and green waders—a pair of roseate spoonbills with blood-red drips on their shoulders, American flamingos, a flock of scarlet ibises blown north of their range by a hurricane. Then a scattering of little jewel-like birds—painted buntings, golden-crowned kinglets, blue grosbeaks. and vermilion flycatchers. She put down the two sticks and stood up.
“They've been eating fiddler crabs,” she said.
In the midafternoon they sat down to rest on a plank bridge at the marshy edge of a little pine woods. The trees had been turpentined in the 1920s, and they were stunted and brushy-topped, with old chevron-shaped scars making something like faces on their trunks. The hot sun brought out the droughty, sharp smells of a forest that has lived a hard life—oozing pine sap, baking lichens, and dry sand. From the woods they could hear the raucous laughter of pileated woodpeckers, and from the marsh the herons gave out their hoarse croaks. Roger watched her feet dangling over the black water of Little Tired Creek in their battered tan boots and remembered Peterson's picture of a coot's foot, in the corner of a page, elegantly enclosed in a circle, the ankle relaxed, the toes swagging gracefully. “Lobed foot of Coot,” the caption read.
Then she said, “Feet!” and she pointed. “There's a snowy egret; I have nightmares about those yellow feet,” she said urgently, handing Roger the binoculars. Sure enough, at the end of the bird's gleaming black legs were a pair of startling yellow feet.
“You have nightmares about the feet of snowy egrets?” said Roger, lowering the binoculars. In an access of love, he began unpacking food and spreading it out on the bridge. Hard-boiled eggs, bread, cheese, pickles, Penrose sausages, jalapeno peppers, apples, and an alligator pear. “What do the feet do in your dreams?” he asked. He started handing her bits of food, which she ate solemnly, still looking at the edge of the marsh.
“Usually they just stand there,” she said. “But sometimes one foot will pick up and begin to step. That's what makes it a nightmare instead of just a dream.” Then she recited, “ ‘When feeding, rushes about, shuffling feet to stir up food.’ That's what it says in Peterson's.” She looked at Roger with her steady and earnest gaze. “Just think about it, Roger.”
But for the rest of the afternoon all Roger could think about was how much he wanted to protect this peculiar and delicate woman from every harm, to keep her safe and well fed, and to rid her dreams forever of yellow, shuffling feet. The sun was dipping down below the tops of the trees as they
headed back through the little woods to the ferry dock. She didn't talk, but now and then she would lift the binoculars to her eyes without breaking her stride and whisper the names of birds on an intake of breath: “Coot,” “Grebe,” “Sandpipers—Snowy, eeehn, no—” and she stopped. “Ha! immature little blue.” In the distance, across the last stretch of marsh, Roger could see the ferry dock. The water had turned from its midday aqua and indigo to a dark greasy gray. “I'll just take one last look,” she said, and she left the little sandy path and carefully stepped along a narrow trail through the marsh grass. She moved slowly, stopping and starting like a snake sneaking up on a rat. At the edge of a little inlet she squatted down and lifted the binoculars. her elbows propped on her knees. On the other side of the water, a little dark shape rustled in the grass and was gone.
Delia straightened up wearily, like an old fighter might stretch at the end of a great fight. She straightened her legs with her hands on her knees, then she straightened her back, then she straightened her shoulders. She turned and made her careful way out of the marsh. “Whoo!” she said, and she smiled. She stood in front of Roger and put one hand on his chest, fingers spread, and looked at him at arm's length. “A black rail,” she said. “Number 397.”
The ride back to the mainland was peaceful. The parrot-tongued woman was quiet, wearied by her day's study of the lives of oysters, and Delia had the beatific look of a satisfied birder. The boat captain set the autopilot and sat down in an aluminum chair with his book. The engine droned.
Delia turned to Roger. “I enjoy chickens,” she said.
But Roger was not surprised. She didn't smile, and he didn't expect her to. She was a serious woman, with her mind on birds.
“Not White Leghorns, though,” she said.
“No,” said Roger slowly. “Certainly not White Leghorns.” He squinted thoughtfully. “I would think Golden Sebrights.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding emphatically. “And Silver-laced Wyandottes.”
“Buff Orpingtons,” said Roger.
“Dominiques,” she said, beginning to smile.
“Punkin Holses,” said Roger, “Lakenvelders, and Salmon Favorolles.”
Then she laughed out loud and hugged him tight with both arms. She smelled like pine trees and lichens and hot sand. How odd, thought Roger, that after all, this is what it took—not a flock of scarlet ibises or golden-crowned kinglets, but just the names of chickens, hovering in the air like the sulfur butterflies at the dump.
8. FOUR CHICKENS
And the plane burst into flames on the runway” Delia mumbled under her breath. It was something she always recited at takeoff and landing, the most dangerous parts of airplane flight, she had read. Sometimes she would only say part of the sentence: “… into flames …” or even just “And the plane But this time she felt need of the whole thing, and even said it a second time, out loud, looking her seat-mate square in the eyes.
“And the plane burst into flames on the runway.” But he quickly turned away, stuffing his newspaper into the seat pocket in front of him. Then there was a gentle thump, a kindly voice warned them that items may have shifted during flight, and suddenly they were all on their feet, gathering packages and stirring up the smells of nervous, crowded people.
Delia had been in airports and on airplanes all day, making her way up the continent to the prestigious Birds in Art exhibit in Wausau, Wisconsin, where a painting of hers had been accepted. In fact, on this early fall day the air was filled with bird artists: from Sweden, Master Wildlife Artist Lars Jonsson flew in with a mysterious and fantastical icescape featuring six king eiders in the foreground; from Belgium, Carl Brenders flew in with a hyperrealistic gouache and watercolor of a rufous-sided towhee reflected in the rearview mirror of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle; and from Connecticut, Roger Tory Peterson flew in with a field-guide plate of flycatchers in profile, dutifully displaying their field marks. There were the old-fashioned gentlemen/naturalist artists and their Audubonesque bird portraits, there were the hot-blooded activist artists with their shocking pictures of dead birds and human filth. There were artists with tiny, precise watercolors of songbirds, and artists with life-size carvings of swooping fish eagles and mantling hawks.
But even in all this variety Delia was uneasy, and as she made her way through the airport she imagined a steady sibilance trailing behind her, one word spitting itself out of every sentence:
At Gate B-22: “Chickens!”
On the moving sidewalk: “She has painted chickens!”
At the baggage carousel: “Imagine! Chickens!”
“You have submitted a picture of chickens to Birds in Art?” Lou, the gallery owner back home, had said, standing back and looking at it.
“Dominiques” said Delia. “An old utility breed.”
“To the most important wildlife art show in the world, you have submitted chickens?”
“They are considered endangered by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy,” said Delia.
“Endangered chickens!” Lou said, and he flipped through the Birds in Art catalog, pausing pointedly at the John Felsing oil of roseate spoonbills in a south Florida sunset and the Guy Coheleach African fish eagle flying in front of Victoria Falls, its wings dramatically poised on the downstroke.
“Chickens!” Lou stepped back and held out his arms, palms up, to the picture of the two Dominiques scratching in the dirt. “Delia! Landsdowne will be there! Robert Bateman will be there! Hartsfield! Hartsfield himself could see this!”
But it was too late; a week later the letter came in the mail:
Dear Ms. Robinson:
We are happy to announce …
“I'm thinking about your reputation as a serious wildlife painter, Delia,” Lou said. They were having lunch together “to celebrate,” Delia had said.
“Chickens.” Lou began tearing his roll into bite-size pieces and smearing butter on them with slashing strokes. “Your title is Chickens, but what are you really telling the viewer with this painting, Delia? Is it about confinement? Man's dominance over avian life? Or is it simply a portrait of light? Which would be fine.” He laid down his knife and the last bit of bread, crossed his arms on the edge of the table, and leaned across his plate earnestly. “But in the changing world of wildlife art you must have the courage of your convictions. You must have convictions, Delia. … Do you?” He bit sharply into a piece of bread, cleaving it cleanly in two. It was almost a snap.
“It's just a picture of chickens, Lou,” Delia said bravely.
And as Chickens the painting had been crated up and shipped to Wisconsin, where it was carefully hung on a white wall in a glow of even light. “Chickens” had been crisply printed on a creamy card enclosed in a plastic sheath below the picture.
“Chickens!” a woman in a sable coat snorted, reading the title, and leaned in for a closer look. “I just don't know where wildlife art is headed,” she said to her husband, a bland, tall man with rimless glasses and an ascot, and together they glided on.
That night, at a Birds in Art fete hosted by museum patrons after the Friday evening private showing, Delia was seated beside Bruce Coulton, a painter of scenes of conquest and lavish sexual display in equatorial Africa. He had just stopped smoking, and jet lag and the longing for nicotine made him a trying companion.
“Mr. Coulton has torn himself away from his rain forest to honor us here with those magnificent flamingos,” announced their hostess, who had just donated a collection of Victorian crystal bird nests to the museum. “We do appreciate your leaving your exciting life and your work, which must be so consuming, Mr. Coulton. And you”—she peered around the Asian lilies to see Delia's name tag— “yours is the …”
“Chickens,” said Delia.
“Oh yes, the chickens,” cried the hostess, throwing up her hands. “I love your wonderful chickens!” She laid her hand on Bruce Coulton's arm and whispered, “I suppose we must paint what we know, and make the best of it, must we not, Mr. Coulton!”
> Bruce Coulton started in his seat and sucked in air between his teeth. But smoking was not allowed in this restored Georgian mansion, and after coffee and dessert, Delia, seeking air, found him standing in the middle of a little sculpture garden lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers. He breathed in deeply, eyes closed, the cigarette cupped in his palm as if he expected it to be snatched away from him. The cold, the dark, the glowing cigarette, and the eerie modern sculptures of tortured-looking animals reclining on pads of white gravel gave a theatrical, almost sinister feel to the moment, and when Bruce Coulton barked out, “Is Hartsfield here?” Delia started.
“He always comes the second day, for the opening,” she said.
“A grand entrance,” he said, squinting his eyes and sucking on his cigarette. “Swooping down on us all in that gray cape.”
“It would be a grand entrance no matter when he came,” said Delia.
Hartsfield had not painted since the winter day ten years ago when he had fallen out of a small boat while sighting an Atlantic puffin off the coast of Maine. But every year he made an appearance at the Birds in Art exhibit, moving silently through the throng on the arm of his companion, his cashmere cape slipping off his gaunt shoulders. The crowd would part at his approach, making way for the great man, and the museum director would stop him at each picture with a gentle tug, whispering the name of the artist and the title of the work. He never commented, but sometimes he would fold himself over at the waist, peer at one corner of a painting, and say “Hmmm” before moving on.
“I don't know why he bothers to come,” said Bruce Coulton, viciously stubbing out his cigarette in the gravel. “His mind is gone, his work is passe, he drools, and he's blind as a bat.” He paused and glared at the sculpture, a smooth, almost featureless pair of panthers reclining languidly on their bed of gravel, their stubby, undifferentiated paws not quite settling down. “Jesus! They look like victims of thalidomide.” He poked at one of the cats with his toe. “Where are we headed in this genre?” he growled, and then he stalked off toward the light, leaving Delia with the white panthers and the last wisps of smoke, feeling uneasy. It was the second time today that that question had been addressed to her, more or less rhetorically. She thought about Hartsfield's magnificent body of work in the museum's permanent collection: mantling hawks draped in their own wings, eider ducks in an Arctic mist, an imperial eagle and its prey. Then she thought about her own painting of the two Dominiques, and how she had struggled and suffered with it through a whole summer. In the end it had come to this—just chickens.
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