The next day was gray and cold, with a low sky and a forecast of snow. The crowd formed a line in the icy sculpture garden, and slowly the galleries filled. The excellent lighting in the museum made it seem as if the people themselves were on display— their hair shone, their faces glowed, and their jewelry flashed and glinted. They flowed through the rooms like a viscous liquid, forming little stagnant pools near the works of the most famous artists and babbling with awe and admiration.
At ten o'clock sharp Hartsfield arrived. He paused for a moment in the open doorway to recover his balance after the dangerous work of stepping over the threshold, and a cold wind gusted into the museum.
Hartsfield's clothes draped off the angles of his gaunt old frame like plumage—the gray cape forming itself into long folds like primary feathers, a ruby scarf peeking through mufflers of brown and tan at his throat. His friends gathered around, and art was forgotten as everyone watched Roger Tory Peterson, Robert Bateman, and J. Fenwick Lansdowne greet the great man. No one touched him for fear of upsetting his balance, but one by one they nodded and bowed and smiled and murmured their greetings.
Then the methodical tour began. “Osprey and Atlantic Salmon, by Larry Barth. Sooty Shearwater, by Charles Greenough Chase. Purple-crested Loerie, Dino Paravano,” the museum director murmured confidentially, and “SOOTY SHEARWATER…that's CHASE, CHARLES CHASE,” Hartsfield's companion clarified, in a louder voice.
“Mmmm,” said Hartsfield, pausing and stooping. “Hmmm.”
“Chickens, Delia Robinson,” said the museum director.
Hartsfield stooped and peered. His lower eyelids had lost their elasticity, and they sagged away from his eyes, giving the illusion that at any moment both eyeballs might roll out of their sockets. Delia fought back an urge to cup her two hands helpfully at his cheeks. Slowly Hartsfield reached out and made a trembling, pinching gesture. “Dominickers!” he said in a voice that sounded like a gleeful squawk, and his companion roared, “CHICKENS!”
9. LIBRARY PICNIC
Smokey Bear is the most destructive animal that ever walked the North American continent” said Gawain. He was sitting in Hilma's kitchen drinking coffee and talking about fire. Three medium-sized bass were twitching in the sink and Hilma was sharpening her long knife. On most days she was happy to clean Gawain's fish and listen to him talk about environmental salvation by fire, but on this day she wanted to talk about Roger and Delia, the bird-watcher.
“Nothing wrong with watching birds,” said Gawain. “You can learn a lot by watching birds. Take the falcons that used to nest on bluffs of the Wisconsin River in the early 1900s. The bluffs were open then, kept open by natural fire. Now, because of fire suppression, those bluffs are grown up in thickets, and the falcons are gone. They need an open vista, same as our red-cockaded woodpeckers here. You see it everywhere, Hilma, and birds are just one indi- cation of it; we have caused more environmental damage through the exclusion of fire than any other thing we've done.”
“But Gawain” said Hilma, “she seems so…well, she has such a one-track mind. It's just coots, gallinules, and rails. What about Roger's music? What about his roses? What about his heirloom hot pepper work in New Mexico?”
“Hilma,” said Gawain, “I remember the fire Roger had up in that beautiful stand of longleaf pine two years ago, fire creeping along no higher than a man's head, creeping through the young trees, burned every inch of those woods, and, Hilma, I swear to God, not one needle on those trees was browned. And the next fall that woods was twenty-five acres of solid wire grass in full bloom. A man who knows fire that intimately, and uses it that elegantly, you don't need to worry about the love life of a man like that.”
Hilma cleaned the fish on the sink drainboard and stealthily tucked away two of the fillets in the back of her refrigerator.
“Fire is nature's finest tool,” said Gawain, shoving his coffee saucer back with both thumbs and standing up emphatically. Then he scooped his fish into a plastic bag and was gone, and Hilma was left picking fish scales off the walls and wondering about fire and the tools of love.
That night Meade and Lucy came for supper to eat the fish with lemon and little green onions, and to make plans for the library's fall fund-raising picnic. After a discussion of casseroles and finger food the talk turned to Roger.
“He found her at the dump” said Meade, “a poor little thrown-away forlorn creature. So like Roger to help a person like that, but now she has wormed her way into his affections, and what is he to do?”
“It wasn't exactly like that, Meade,” explained Lucy. “They had their first real meeting out on Cathead Island.”
“Well, that's no better,” said Meade. “All that heat and salt water, even a reasonable man might lose control of his affections in a place like Cathead Island, and then what is he to do when he finds his feet firmly back on the mainland?”
“I am so worried about Roger's work with heirloom peppers,” said Hilma.
“If only she had not thrown away that blender,” said Meade. “If only she had taken it to the Goodwill like a sensible woman.”
“Roger, come up here and get you something to eat,” said Eula, spooning food onto a plate with one hand and shoving chairs to the side to make room for one more with her hip. “Tom's gone to Jacksonville to put Andy on the airplane, Louise is back in the back rattling around with a piece of a sign she made me pick up off 98, I've got fifteen squash casseroles for the library, sit down there, Roger, you know I've got plenty. Now what's this everybody's telling me about you taking up with some woman, she's not from around here, they say, a Yankee is she, now that's all right, Roger, don't get me wrong, some of those people are just as nice as they can be, what is she, she stuffs birds, something about birds, Tom told me.
We're really happy for you, Roger,” and she gave Roger a little hug and sat down at her place to watch him eat. “Ethel's my own flesh and blood, Roger, but …” She reached over and squeezed Roger's hand as if she were feeling for lumps in dough. “Now tell me all about it.”
“She doesn't stuff birds, Eula,” Roger explained, “she paints birds.”
“Paints them?” said Eula. “Seems like most birds look pretty colorful already—redbirds, bluebirds, jaybirds—now there's a pretty bird, a jaybird. Of course you've got your drab sparrows in the fall, they could use a little extra color…. She paints birds, now that's something new to me—and very interesting.”
“She paints pictures of birds, Eula,” Roger said. “Mostly marsh birds. She paints the birds and the plants and water around them.”
“Oh!” said Eula, covering her face with a napkin. “Pictures of birds! What was I thinking of? Roger get some of this good squash casserole, Lucy told me ten, but I made fifteen. The library will never miss it. Pictures of birds! Well, I declare! Just like Audubon!”
Lucy and Hilma were making cheese straws for the library fund-raising picnic. “You didn't worry when Roger was married to Ethel, Hilma,” said Lucy. “Roger actually began his heirloom pepper research in the early years of his marriage. And Ethel certainly never encouraged him in his music.” Lucy paused, remembering “little hands that held me tight, just wave good-bye tonight.” “And yet he kept picking and fiddling.” Lucy screwed down the handle of the cookie press and extruded a row of crimped cheese straws. “And although Ethel is my dear friend, I can't imagine a worse woman for a man to be married to,” she added.
“But we were used to Ethel” said Hilma.
“And so will you get used to the bird-watching woman,” said Lucy, snapping off a cheese straw with a flick of the wrist. “You will meet her at the library picnic, and she will say something wise or kind, and you will come to like her.”
“You said ten, I made fifteen, but then Roger came for lunch, and I gave one to Gawain, you know how he can get sometimes, so there's thirteen.” Eula stood back modestly and wiped her hands on her apron. The casseroles were neatly lined up on the scrubbed kitchen table in desperately miscellaneous containers, e
verything from dented stainless steel and chipped-up spatterware to the last one, in a porcelain potty with two ears. Lucy wasn't sure how they would fit in with the rather elegant setting, a brand-new “plantation” house lent to the library for this occasion. But she said, “They smell so good, Eula.”
“That's the nutmeg,” said Eula. “I always add nutmeg to squash casserole, it does a little something. Yes, I will say, I'm pleased with them. Roger was very complimentary, but then I always love to feed Roger. He told me about this little bird-watching woman he met down at the Dumpster, she paints PICTURES of birds, he tells me, like Audubon.”
“He's throwing himself away,” said Meade. “The finest man I know is putting his heart into the hands of a woman who never held anything more precious than a pair of spyglasses.”
“I imagine she puts those spyglasses down now and then” said Lucy, and there was a thoughtful pause.
“She's not from around here, but I'm sure she's a fine woman,” said Eula. “I know Roger wouldn't take up with anybody wasn't nice; well, there was Ethel, but Roger was young then. Plus Ethel's not so bad, she's just a hard woman, needs to keep to herself.”
“My God, is it a house or a funeral parlor?” gasped Meade. The house was massive, dark red and purple brick, with many glittering windows. But the towering Corinthian columns looked oddly insubstantial, as if they were made out of Styrofoam. Eula dug in one of the flutes with her thumbnail; it did not leave a dent.
Steve, the librarian, looking harried, helped them carry the casseroles around back, where card tables covered with white linen were arranged in a kind of courtyard between two wings of the house. “Wait until you see the inside,” he said ominously.
Eula cupped her hands around the casseroles and fretted that they would be cold, even though Lucy had assured her that they would be reheated before serving. “PICTURES of birds, PICTURES of birds,” she kept reminding herself.
Meade stood imperiously on the steps, overseeing all and thinking. He is throwing himself away, and I will be required to look her in the eye and say something pleasant.
And Hilma went to work layering cheese straws on a silver platter and repeating Lucy's words to herself: “You will meet her at the library picnic, and you will like her.”
At six o'clock people began to arrive, dressed to the teeth in raw silk and linen and dark fall suits, the women relentlessly cheerful, the men sweating and smiling bravely. They had each paid fifty dollars to eat a bit of chicken, a scoop of squash casserole, a few string beans, and a dish of ice cream, and to get a peek inside this house that had been a-building for over a year now. The courtyard was filled with the chirps, cackles, and squeals of a crowd of people determined to have a good time. And then, at the top of the steps, there was Roger.
“Oh,” said Hilma, and cheese straws began slipping dangerously close to the edge of the platter.
Delia stood behind him, dressed in white and tan and looking rather drab and solemn.
“Well,” sniffed Meade, “she doesn't look like much.”
Perhaps because of his years of walking in densely planted fields of tobacco and peanuts, Roger had a graceful way of moving through a crowd, gently slipping between the people as if they were sticky, floppy leaves that he must not bruise. Delia followed in his wake less gracefully, her head lowered and her arms stiff at her sides.
She's nervous, thought Lucy. And they were a frightening sight: Hilma, frozen with her platter of cheese straws, looking stricken, Meade drawing herself up regally, and Eula clutching a squash casserole and saying, “Oh, here's Roger! Don't he look just like himself?”
The introductions were awkward and stiff; Hilma couldn't manage to shake hands because of the cheese straws, and Meade, straining to strike the bird theme right away, told Delia she looked just like an English sparrow in her white and tan. But unfortunately everyone's mind instantly settled on other aspects of the English sparrow—an introduced bird, not native to North America, often thought of as a “nuisance” species—and there was an uncomfortable pause. Only Roger knew just what to do. He took the squash casserole out of Eula's hands and gave her a hug, he gave Meade a tiny kiss on the cheek, and then he stood with an arm around Hilma's shoulders and talked easily about this house: Eula's son Tom had sawed 6,000 board feet of heart pine for the flooring and wainscoting, the doors were solid mahogany, and the windows had been milled at an old variety works in north Alabama. The house's owner, who had made millions of dollars selling funeral insurance in Atlanta, was something of a sportsman, and Roger had heard that the walls of one room, above Tom's wainscoting, were covered with murals of hunting scenes. Lucy, sensing that Delia might be feeling as if she had fallen into a nest of snakes, suggested that they move through the crowd back to the house. “We will give ourselves a tour,” she said brightly. “Delia can tell us what she thinks of the painting.”
“I’m afraid it won't be quite like what I do,” said Delia feebly.
“I should think not,” said Meade in a loud voice. “Coots, gallinules, and rails are hardly sporting birds.”
“Although Tom has shot coots,” put in Eula. “Kind of a fishy taste to a coot—not as bad as an anhinga though—now that's a nasty bird to eat. We only ate them once. I don't know what you call an anhinga where you come from, but we call them a snake-bird,” she said to Delia.
“I just call them anhingas,” Delia gasped simply.
Inside the central hall it was dark and cool. The walls were painted a “hunter” green, and the bright new pine wainscoting and flooring had been darkened with a layer of walnut stain. Everywhere was the smell of new wood and plastic and the gleam of high-gloss polyurethane. A few people came and went from the bathrooms upstairs and downstairs, saying “Ooh” and “Aah” and “What a house!” and “Isn't it just beautiful?”
Roger scouted ahead and found the “media room” with the murals, and they all gathered in the doorway and gazed inside.
On the wall behind a giant television an ostentatious dawn was breaking, and all around the room, much larger than life-size ducks and geese were frozen in flight behind computers, fax machines, and telephones. The paint had been ponderously applied, and the birds had a heavy, almost static look. Labrador retriever dogs with thick red tongues splashed in dry-looking water, and huge, square-jawed men in tiny boats on garishly colored lakes and marshes aimed guns at the stationary birds. “SHOOT ME” was the unmistakable theme of the artwork; and where the painter left the theme, the taxidermist took it up and drove it home: sticking out from the mural on metal rods were real ducks and geese that had indeed been shot and were now gathering dust in full flight.
No one said anything for a minute. Then Roger whispered, “Good God,” and Eula said, “Just look at them, poor things, all that flying and not getting anywhere.”
“They look so—well, dead,” said Lucy.
Meade began examining a giant white and black goose flying over the fax machine, its withered orange feet dangling into the paper tray, its glass eyes gazing desperately at the big-screen television on the south wall. “This bird is NOT in Peterson's!” she declared shrilly.
But Delia just leaned her head back against the wall. She touched her forehead gently with her fingertips. Then she looked at Hilma and reached out a trembling hand. She said, “I think … I can't…Please …”
“My dear child,” said Hilma, and she took Delia firmly by both arms and led her briskly out of the room, down the hall, and out the front door, where Delia squatted on the edge of the steps and vomited into the new foundation planting of boxwoods.
On the other side of the house the library patrons began lining up to serve their plates, but Hilma and Delia sat together on the steps for a few minutes. Every now and then Delia would shudder, put her head in her hands, and say, “Whoo!” and Hilma would pat her gently on the back and say, “There now, my dear!”
10. EARLY MUSIC
Things were not going well with a watercolor of three limpkins in a buttonbush, and
after an afternoon spent pacing back and forth in front of the painting and eyeing it warily, her two hands clutched in her armpits and her teeth clenched, Delia had gone out into her little neglected yard and ferociously snatched up clumps of daisy-type chrysanthemums by the back steps to give to Hilma. But pulled away from their neighbors, the little plants looked scraggly and sparse, unsuitable as a gift for a new friend, Delia thought, and with dirt still under her fingernails she had gone over to the university to hear a concert of medieval music played on period instruments. She had thought that she would be soothed by these small sounds, tweaked and puffed from violas and krummhorns like the music of civilized insects, but the next day when she faced the limpkins once again, she imagined that she could still hear the relentless whine of the hurdy-gurdy buzzing in her ears.
She had been working on this picture for so long that she had felt her style shifting as different areas of the painting neared completion, and now that it was almost finished, the sections began to merge ungraciously, with rattling edges. Delia felt shaky and uneasy, as if she might never be able to paint again, but would instead live a squashed and stunted life, crippled by odd nervous tics, strange twitches, and repetitive gestures.
Quite a Year for Plums Page 6