Birds of Summer

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  It wasn’t until then that she noticed what she must have seen before and was too much in shock to understand. The two men were wearing uniforms. For a brief moment the terror subsided, but an instant later it returned, in a smothering surge of fear. It was a raid. The men were narcs, and they were looking for Angelo. They would go on up the hill and find him, and there would be the narcs with their guns and Angelo with his. And Oriole. She clawed at the fingers holding her arm, trying to break away to run out the door and up the road, to run and run until she found Oriole.

  “Hey, cut that out,” the narc said, but she went on struggling until Sparrow appeared in the doorway, Oriole’s black nightgown sliding off one shoulder, her eyes wide with fright.

  “Summer,” Sparrow’s wail was a counter-force, stemming the dark tide.

  “It’s all right,” Summer told her. “They won’t hurt us. They’re looking for someone else.” She held out her arms, and Sparrow threw herself into them sobbing.

  Comforting Sparrow, trying to tell her everything would be all right, Summer was only vaguely aware of the rumbling voices of the intruders until one of them, a big, heavy man with a saggy face, came out of the bedroom with Sparrow’s shoes. “Hurry up, ladies,” he said. “Get some clothes on. We’re taking you with us.”

  On the path one of the men walked ahead and one behind, the heavy tread of their booted feet loud in the midnight stillness. Between them Sparrow trudged obediently, clinging to Summer’s hand and occasionally shuddering with stifled sobs. It was Sparrow’s hand, small and cold and shaking, that held back the dark wave and kept the tightness in Summer’s stomach from turning into sharp, burning pain. Holding on tightly, Summer kept whispering, “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right,” a desperate invocation against fear, her own as well as Sparrow’s.

  A patrol car was parked on the Fishers’ road, near the beginning of the path—white and black, lights flashing from the roof, an iron grill between the front and back seats. One of the men got into the driver’s seat while the other opened the back door and boosted Sparrow in. It was then, in the moment that his back was turned, that her fear surged up—and she ran.

  Barely aware of the shouts and the thudding feet behind her, she sped up the road to the first break in the heavy underbrush. A few feet into the clustering bushes and saplings she threw herself to the ground, crawling under the sprawling branches of a huge rhododendron. When the sound of pursuit had retreated, she ran again.

  She was scrambling up a footpath between switchbacks when the noise of a motor warned her, and flattening herself between boulders on the steep slope, she watched as the patrol car went by below her, rounded the sharp turn and passed by again above her head. Back on the roadway, she went on running.

  It was not long afterwards that she heard the shots—a single sharp report and then three or four more in rapid succession. For a moment her stride broke and she stumbled and fell. She struggled to a sitting position, and vaguely aware of the pain in her hands and knees, she strained to hear over the noisy rasp of her breath. Silence. Back on her feet, she ran again, slower now as she fought the painful exhaustion in her lungs and legs.

  Not far beyond the switchbacks, the sound of another approaching car drove her off the road again, quickly this time as the noise swelled rapidly to a threatening roar. Someone was driving fast, ignoring the danger of sharp turns on slippery gravel. With barely time to find cover, Summer darted behind a spindly sapling, hoping desperately that its thin branches would block the probing headlights. Rounding the last turn the vehicle accelerated quickly and sped past, a large white van with flashing lights, and large blue letters across its doors. An ambulance.

  “Oriole.” The name was a pain that throbbed through her head as she began to run again. “Oriole. Oriole.”

  The gate was wide open. The yard in front of the house was full of cars and people. Patrol cars were everywhere. Near the veranda steps the ambulance was parked, its rear doors open. Lights were blazing—glaring, blinding light—spilling from the windows and from the headlights of all of the cars. A group of people were clustered near a van, and the air was full of the sound of voices, talking and shouting. Inside the ambulance a white-coated figure was bending over a blanket-draped figure on one of the litters. Summer had started forward when two men came out of the house and down the stairs carrying a stretcher. “Oriole. Oriole.” Her lips shaped the words, but her throat refused to respond as she lurched into a staggering run. But the person who lay on the stretcher, his face contorted with pain, was Adam Fisher.

  “Watch it,” someone said as Summer’s knees weakened suddenly and she clutched at the edge of the stretcher. And then, “Hey. Where’d you come from? Christ! Looks like we got another wounded. Joe! Joe! Can you take care of this one.”

  “It’s all right,” Summer said. “I just fell down.” The blood on her arms and legs seemed unreal, faint and far away. The white coated man was receding, too, even as he walked toward her, his voice growing soft and distant. As the world reeled past, blurred and fluid, only one small segment of the fading scene came through sharp and clear—the sight of Oriole coming down the veranda steps. Oriole, upright and unbloodied, smiling up at the big policeman who was leading her down the stairs. Then the darkness closed down.

  13

  “WELL, SO MUCH FOR Charlie Brown.” Fritzie, a twelve-year-old child-abuse case from Willits, threw her comic book across the room and sat up. “They never get anything worth reading in this dump, like Zaps or Slow Death.” Getting off her bunk she came over to peer down at the beat up copy of The Diary of Anne Frank that Summer was reading. “You like that?”

  “It’s okay,” Summer said. “I read it before, a long time ago. But I couldn’t find anything else that looked good, so I thought I’d read it again.”

  “It’s sad, isn’t it? I was supposed to read it last year in school, but I didn’t because I don’t like to read sad stuff.”

  Fritzie, who was in a children’s shelter home for the third time because her father had beaten her up, had pale, empty eyes and a big bruise on her left cheek. Last night, after Sparrow and Marina were sound asleep, she sat on the side of Summer’s bunk for a long time, comparing the various children’s shelter homes and the beatings that had caused her to be in them. She went into a great deal of detail about both, her pale eyes inward and unfocused. Summer felt she could get up and walk away, or even turn into some kind of grotesque monster, and Fritzie would go right on talking without noticing. It seemed that the beatings, as well as the foster homes, were gradually getting worse. The food was a lot better where she’d been last time, she said, than here at the Jensens’, and the Jensens were real uptight about TV watching—no sex or violence. Fritzie liked violence on TV.

  “They’re going! Jerry and Galya came and they’re going to take Marina and Nicky away.” Sparrow burst into the room, slammed the door behind her and stood leaning against it, staring at Summer accusingly—as if it were somehow her fault. Fritzie went back and flopped on her bunk. Leaning on one elbow she listened openly, but with limited interest, as if she were watching a dull soap opera.

  Summer shrugged. “Nicky told you,” she said. “He said their lawyer had arranged for bail and they would all be going home today.”

  “What’s bail?” Sparrow asked.

  “It’s money somebody pays; they don’t get it back if the person who got arrested doesn’t show up in court when they’re supposed to. So then the person who got arrested gets to go home until time for their trial.”

  “Will somebody pay bail for us so we can go home?”

  “Not for us, silly. We didn’t get arrested.”

  “Yes, we did. When those two policemen came. Wasn’t that arrested?”

  “No! They just took us into protective custody. Nicky and Marina, too. Only now Jerry and Galya are out on bail, so Nicky and Marina get to go home.”

  “Oh. I get it.” Sparrow drifted across the room, obviously deep in thought, and
collapsed on the bed next to where Summer was sitting. She was on the track, now, and Summer could guess what would be coming next. The question came—right on schedule. “When is Oriole going to be bailed?”

  Across the room Fritzie was still listening. “I don’t know for sure,” Summer told Sparrow. “But it’ll probably be pretty soon.”

  “Today?”

  “Well, maybe not today. But it might be tomorrow. I kind of have a feeling it might be tomorrow.”

  “Really?” Sparrow looked delighted. Jumping to her feet, she ran for the door. “I want to tell Marina. Maybe they haven’t gone yet. I’m going to go see if they’ve gone.”

  When Sparrow had gone, Fritzie sat up. “Hey kid,” she said, “what’s your old lady in for anyway?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?” Summer turned her back and picked up her book. But Fritzie wasn’t easily squelched.

  “It must have been a real big one if they won’t let her out on bail. When my dad put my mom and me both in the hospital, they let him out on bail.”

  “I thought you didn’t have any mother.” Summer said.

  “Well, I did then. A stepmother anyway. But she split, too, after that. But what about your mom? Was it murder? Did your old lady kill somebody?”

  This time Summer didn’t say anything. Holding her book in front of her face, she tuned Fritzie out and thought about the reasons the Fishers had been released on bail, and the possibility that Oriole might not.

  Oriole’s situation wasn’t at all the same as the Fishers’. For one thing they were landowners and that made a big difference. And then there was the fact that the Fishers had tried to get out of the pot deal and had been forced to continue because Marina was being held as a hostage. At first Summer had wondered if the police would believe the Fishers’ story about the hostage thing; but yesterday when Nicky had talked to the lawyer, he’d heard some good news. First, there had been a test that proved that the bullet in Adam’s shoulder had come from Angelo’s gun, and then Jude had broken down and told the truth about Angelo’s threats.

  So the bail had been reduced, and the Fishers had been allowed to go home, which meant that Nicky and Marina could leave the children’s shelter. But Oriole’s bail had not been reduced, and in spite of what she’d told Sparrow, Summer wasn’t at all sure when the McIntyres would be going home. As far as the police were concerned, Oriole was Angelo’s girlfriend and, as such, one of the criminals who was being charged not only with growing pot, but also of hostage-taking, resisting arrest and because of Adam and a wounded policeman, attempted manslaughter. The Fishers might be able to help by testifying that Oriole wasn’t really involved, but according to Nicky, Jerry and Galya felt that Oriole had betrayed their friendship by taking up with Angelo. So the chances that Oriole would be released soon didn’t look at all good.

  There was a knock on the door, and Mrs. Jensen came into the room carrying a big cardboard box. She put the box down on the foot of Summer’s bed. “Mrs. Fisher,” she said, answering Summer’s unspoken question. “She said to tell you she went by your house and picked up some clothing for you and Sparrow. And they’d like to see you before they go.”

  Summer got to her feet slowly. Under the heavy bandages, her knees were still stiff and painful, but there was more than physical discomfort behind her lack of haste. She felt very strange about seeing Galya and Jerry again. Although there were a lot of questions she desperately wanted to ask them, she knew she wouldn’t have the nerve. How do you ask someone about a close friend who turned out to be a traitor, particularly if the traitor happened to be your mother?

  In the Jensens’ large, comfortably shabby living room, the Fishers were waiting. Galya and Jerry were standing near the door. Nicky was sprawled on one of the couches, and in the corner, Marina and Sparrow were clutching each others’ hands and looking tragic.

  “Summer, honey.” Galya’s jangling bracelets and smothering hugs were the same as always, and even Jerry’s normal scowl seemed a little more benevolent than usual. “Now don’t you worry,” Galya was saying. “We’re going to do everything we can to see that you and Sparrow get home real soon. We’re working on it, aren’t we, Jerry?”

  It seemed that whether or not the Fishers had forgiven Oriole for taking up with Angelo, they weren’t holding it against Summer and Sparrow. But nothing was said about Oriole, and there was no opportunity to ask questions. Releasing Summer from her hug, Galya swooped down on Sparrow; Sparrow and Marina began to cry in unison, and Jerry disappeared out the door. In the total confusion that followed, Nicky was suddenly standing beside Summer.

  “Hang in there,” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right.” He kissed her so quickly she didn’t even have time to decide whether or not to kiss back. He went out the door, and a moment later the Fishers were gone, Sparrow was sobbing in the corner, and Mrs. Jensen was bustling through the room with a dustmop.

  Back in their room, Summer comforted Sparrow and got her started playing with some plastic horses before she went out into the back yard. The Jensens, whose own kids were now grown up, had a kid oriented yard—large and dusty and full of beat-up play equipment. Pulling a lounge chair into the shade of the high wall, Summer stretched out on her stomach, her book propped in front of her. She read page fifteen over three times before she gave up.

  She’d been trying not to think. It had been easy at first. When they’d first arrived at the Jensens’ custodial home, early yesterday morning, she’d been groggy from being up almost all night and from the pain pills the ambulance attendant had insisted she take before he cleaned and bandaged her knees and elbows. She’d fallen asleep immediately and awakened hours later, feeling woozy and unreal. The rest of that first day had slipped by like a half-remembered dream—meals in the big family room, being chatted at by the grandmotherly Mrs. Jensen and the constant confusion of the Jensens’ girls’ room, where Sparrow and Marina were staging a dramatic day-long celebration of their reunion and Fritzie was always on the lookout for a sounding board for her personal horror stories. When the day was finally over, darkness had brought quick and long-lasting oblivion.

  This morning, right after breakfast, there’d been the talk with Nicky. When she’d started to leave the family room with Sparrow, he’d asked her to stay; and when they were alone, he’d moved to the chair next to hers. He wanted to talk about Adam.

  It wasn’t surprising that Adam and Nicky had disagreed about what to do about Angelo, since they had always disagreed about everything; but this time it had almost cost Adam his life. Nicky had wanted to go to the police, but Adam had said it would be too dangerous because it would be impossible to know where everyone would be and what they would be doing when the raid started. His plan was for the Fishers to take care of Angelo themselves. They would steal a gun—Bart was often careless with his—and get the drop on Angelo.

  “It was crazy,” Nicky said. “Shoot Out at the OK Corral, with Adam and me being the guys in the white hats. Just like we used to play when we were kids, only this time with real guns and bullets. But Adam—God, Summer—he didn’t seem to be afraid at all. He kept insisting we could do it, if I’d help him.”

  But Nicky wouldn’t agree. And neither of them could talk to Jerry about it because he was too frightened about what might happen to Marina. So then Nicky had decided to take matters into his own hands. Last week when it had again been his turn to go into town and do his “everything’s normal at the Fishers’ act,” he’d called the sheriff’s office.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Summer had asked. “You promised.”

  “I promised I’d try to,” Nicky said. “I went to Pardells’ looking for you, but you weren’t there. And then Angelo took me home. There was no way I could get to the trailer; and besides, what good would it have done if I’d told you. I couldn’t tell you when the raid would be, because I didn’t know.”

  It was the truth, or at least a part of it. But of course the other part was that Nicky had been af
raid of what would have happened if she’d told Oriole. Afraid that Oriole would have betrayed her oldest and best friends to her latest lover.

  After that, for a little while, Summer found it hard to listen; but as Nicky went on, his face tense with horror, she found herself living the raid as he had lived it. Just as he had feared, both Angelo and Bart had been in the house when it began. There was the screeching of an alarm and a sudden roaring bark from the doberman, followed almost immediately by Jude pounding up the steps and into the house. And then Adam had grabbed Jude’s gun, and Jude had his hands up and was begging Adam not to shoot him and saying how he hadn’t wanted to do anything to hurt the Fishers, but Angelo had made him do it. Then Angelo came in the door, and when Adam turned toward him—Angelo had fired. Nicky had seen Adam fall, and it wasn’t until much later when it was all over, with Angelo wounded by police gunfire and in custody along with Bart and Jude, that he learned that Adam would not die.

  “How long was that?” she asked. “Until it was all over?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Maybe only a half hour.” Nicky’s eyes looked blind—as if they were still seeing nothing except that long thirty minutes. His voice caught as he said, “It seemed like—forever.”

  It was obvious that Nicky blamed himself for what happened to Adam. His familiar face, deep-eyed and lean like Jerry’s, but with Galya’s wide, full-lipped mouth, looked suddenly much older. Older and full of pain. Of course Summer told him that he shouldn’t blame himself, that if he’d agreed to try Adam’s plan, things might have turned out much worse. He wasn’t ready to listen yet, but she told him anyhow. And then, without knowing she was going to, she kissed him. It was a very short kiss because the Jensens’ family room was about as private as Grand Central Station, but it seemed to do more good than anything she’d been able to say.

  But now the Fishers were back home and only Summer and Sparrow were still at the Jensens’, along with Bobby, whose mother had abandoned him, and Fritzie, whose father beat her with a broom handle. It was anybody’s guess how long they would have to stay. There could be days and days in the Jensens’ Naugahyde family room eating Wonder Bread and fried potatoes and watching Lawrence Welk and Walt Disney Presents on the TV, and endless nights in the “girls’ room” with its linoleum floor that smelled of disinfectant and three sets of metal bunk beds, while other kids whose parents were in jail or who beat them, came and went and—like Fritzie—came again.