by Chris White
There have been hundreds of reported “encounters” with the ivorybill since, every one disputed. There were vocal recordings in Texas, a sighting of a subspecies in Cuba, countless grainy photos taken from difficult angles impossible to authenticate, expert sightings unconfirmed in Louisiana and Alabama. People have been accused of mounting stuffed specimens to trees and photographing them as living birds. They’ve been accused of mistaking gunshot echoes and “duck wingtip collisions” for the ivorybill’s tree knock. They’ve been accused of sentimentality, deceit, pride, and naïveté.
In 1994 the bird was labeled “extinct” by an international conservation organization, though it was later reverted to “critically endangered” based on the never-ending reports of sightings. One, in the Pearl River region of southeastern Louisiana in 2002, led to a thirty-day hunt by hotshot ornithologists certain they’d heard the putative double knock, convinced they’d found evidence of possible ivorybill activity in the trees. Finally the swamps spit them out and wouldn’t let them through.
In 2005, scientists from Cornell, some of the foremost experts in the world, announced that one of their number had seen a male Ivory-billed Woodpecker on a kayaking trip in Big Woods, Arkansas, and during the next fourteen months, they undertook a secret search and believed they’d spotted the bird over and over again, so they bought adjacent land to add to the habitat, made a video recording of a bird they claimed was, indeed, an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and revealed their findings to the world. Not long after the article, sound, and video were published, heated debates over their authenticity erupted like poison ivy. There was no definitive proof. They kept searching, from 2005 to 2009, to confirm their original claims, installed an arsenal of robotic video cameras in the Big Woods to watch for any evidence of an ivorybill, and people were kept out to give the bird a chance to show itself. Finally, they offered a fifty-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who could lead a project biologist to the bird. What have they found since? Nothing.
It’s like the late, great Henry Lassiter always said: “Bird sightings are like police lineups. People see what they want to see.”
This is surely his first true test, Adrian thinks. This insanity. This trillion-to-one wet dream. Adrian has a life to live. He has a marriage to excavate from rubble and two children who probably won’t look him in the eye. He exes out of his browser. He powers down. He unplugs.
• • •
The next morning, it’s Thanksgiving, as bleak a Thursday as Adrian has seen in years. The sky is uncharacteristically gray, and when he places his feet onto the floor, he knows there is nothing—no family, no work, no birds. No morning cinnamon rolls. No apples and onions cooking in butter scenting every corner of the house. No oyster stuffing. No house.
Jeff had to go in early to A Good Sport to get ready for Black Friday. He’s left a box of Honey Nut Cheerios and a half-blackened banana out on the kitchen counter, with a note that says, “Keep your strength up. Happy Thanksgiving!”
Adrian’s muscles ache. Anxiety is mounting under his breastbone and a dull haze hovers over his brain. The drugs, all his drugs, have leaked their way out of his body and left a gaping hole that he’s rattling around in.
Sheepishly, he eases Jeff’s medicine cabinet door open to see if there is anything he can borrow, only to help him taper off, but as he suspected, there’s nothing. Only an empty tube of testosterone gel, a gooey bottle of Rogaine, scattered Bengay pain relief patches, and a Speed Stick deodorant with no lid. Good, then. This affirms his decision to stop with the pills. Adrian sticks two of the Bengay patches to his shoulders, dresses, and wanders outside.
He will rebuild his strength. He’ll walk to the mall, and once he’s there, he’ll turn around and walk back. Each day, he’ll walk a little more, until he starts driving up Canyon to take his walks in the brisk air of the foothills. This afternoon, he’ll call Zander and Michaela. Maybe he can meet them for a hot chocolate somewhere and they can talk. They must be worried, as much as they’re confused and upset. He only hopes Stella hasn’t enough ill will to malign him to them. Surely they haven’t come to that. At her core, Adrian tries to believe, she is more hurt than angry. At her core, he hopes, she remembers who he is.
• • •
Boulder, May 2001, around 8 p.m. Zander was five and had just been put to bed by a woman Adrian hardly knew—Barbara, the nurse midwife, maybe fifty years old, sinewy as a marathon runner, frizzy gray-and-black hair—while Adrian stayed with Stella in the bedroom. He held her, standing, as she hung her body on him like a soaking wet coat, minute to minute, contraction after contraction, her mouth open against his neck and hands gripping his sweatshirt for more than an hour, when his arms started to shake. The midwife moved to them to say it was time to check the baby’s heartbeat, and Adrian looked helplessly around the room, then headed to the kitchen. The house was so thick with pain, no one remembered to turn on the lights though the sun had nearly set.
Stella, a doctor’s wife, had convinced Adrian that she wanted nothing to do with a hospital (or even the birthing center where she’d given birth to Zander) and absolutely no drugs during the birth; she would deliver naturally at home.
“Why,” he had asked her, “would you choose pain?”
She found the question insulting, it seemed, but he meant it sincerely. He had felt reckless when the subject came up around his associates at work, as if he were a suicide bomber indoctrinated by an enemy side. When he thought about it, though he’d attended dozens of C-sections and given probably a hundred epidurals, he realized he’d never even seen an unmedicated childbirth.
Now he was desperate for action and nauseous with worry, and though Stella wasn’t the least bit interested in the laboring tub they’d rented at the full package price of three hundred dollars, by God, Adrian would fill it. And heat it. Just in case. He also had an epidural kit in his back pocket, just in case. A vial of morphine, also, just in case. Keys, just in case. Portable oxygen in the car. And some local anesthetic just in case the midwife had to do stitches (though, the vagina is so pummeled and numb by that point, even some OBs forgo anesthetic and stitch at will). The Klonopin was for Adrian (all he was taking at the time).
Two long hours later, Stella decided to make the journey from their bedroom to the laboring tub. It took a full half hour to work her down the stairs; Adrian and Barbara half-carried her a few steps until she would sink to the floor during a contraction, when they would wait until she was ready to walk. Once she was in the warm water, they both knew there was no hope of moving her again. Within half an hour, she was “in transition.” Adrian muttered a few words to the midwife, suggesting that none of them had prepared for a water birth, but he was powerless. All he could do was bring ice chips to lay gently on Stella’s tongue like communion wafers.
He knew very well what was going on—her cervix was opening to its full dilation, ten centimeters, the size of a bagel (from the size of a lentil), when the baby’s head would start to urge through. Then the shoulders.
She was making a sort of screeching moan along with each contraction now, and Adrian squatted alongside the tub, taking her hand when she’d let him, letting it go when she pulled away.
Barbara spoke in soothing, firm tones between contractions. “Stay with it, now, Stella. Don’t forget to breathe.”
“Where’s my . . . ? Where’s Adrian?” Stella called.
“I’m right here, Stell, honey,” he said. He was just outside the tub, laying a careful arm around her upper back.
“I can’t feel you,” she cried, and began to wail with the next swell of torment, hair spiraling from her bun, eyes squeezed shut, face and chest mottled red.
As Barbara looked on, Adrian lifted his sweatshirt over his head, took off his socks, and unzipped his jeans. As they fell to his feet, the vials, syringes, and keys in his pockets clinked against the tile floor.
He knelt to Stella, leveling her chin in his hands, peering into her eyes. “Want me to come in there with you?”
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Stella gazed at him blearily, then sobbed, “Yes. Come in. Just don’t touch me, okay?”
He stepped into the deep water and lowered himself down.
Stella collapsed onto his chest, her face contorting, and bellowed into his ear. “Oh, God.”
He held her like that until she spasmed away from him again. She would lean onto the inflated rim of the tub, panting and breathing, then she would rock back into the center, growling deeply, utterly inside herself and the terrible limitations, the terrible limitless power of her body.
Before half an hour had passed, she began to bear down.
The midwife pierced the water with her flashlight, latex gloves on her hands, saying, “Good. Now, slow it down. Give it its time.”
Adrian wiped her brow with the washcloth Barbara had given him, as Stella drew in and out of the relentless ebb and flow of it. He spoke steadily to her, watched her, begged her, “Breathe, Stella, and wait for the baby. I’m right here with you.”
When Stella’s sounds began to catch in her own throat, Barbara told her, “Do what you need to do, darlin’,” handing Adrian the flashlight, her hands poised in the water.
Adrian illuminated the darkness between Stella’s legs—as she pushed, then panted as though she would hyperventilate, then strained and pushed—and there was a sudden matted swelling.
“It’s coming,” Adrian said, flashlight in one hand, the other floating in the water, feet propped against the sides of the tub as if he, too, were pushing. Stella bore down and bore down, until the whole sphere of the head thrust forward.
Adrian watched as the midwife unwound the umbilical cord from the baby’s throat, deftly and quietly, as if attending to a garden on a summer afternoon, and when Stella pushed again, howling, Michaela was free, floating under the water amid a gush of blood and fluid.
Adrian gasped and lifted her up and out—onto her mother’s heaving chest. The baby was covered in the emollient vernix caseosa, eyes puffy and nearly closed, hands opening and closing, taking sharp gulps of air. Adrian slid around the side of the tub to get behind Stella, to hold her as she came back to herself, and she lay against him, caressing Michaela, crooning, “Baby. It’s our baby.”
• • •
It is quarter to nine when Adrian lowers himself into a chair at the Trident Café, legs shaking and nose dripping, tamping down his thoughts but trying not to extinguish them completely. This is one of the hardest things about living—keeping thoughts alive without letting them overwhelm you; keeping thoughts at bay without letting them slip away. He honestly doesn’t know how people do it.
When the barista asks for his order, he startles at the realization that he hasn’t got his wallet, not only because he feels naked and unsafe without it, but because he knows now that he left the house thoughtlessly, like a sleepwalker, though he was trying to do something right.
“Can I just get a glass of water?” he asks, and when she’s gone, he closes his eyes and realizes he hasn’t brought his laptop or his phone either, and suddenly he can’t imagine what he will do without them. Then the café door opens and the chilly air washes in, and Adrian looks up to see Deborah, standing alone, looking at him without malice.
He palms the table for support and smiles feebly.
How is she here? Had he called her, somewhere in his somnambulistic, withdrawal-addled stupor? Temptation or signpost?
She hurries over in her peacoat and scarf, shaking her head, and reaches down to hug him robustly. “We were all so worried, Adrian. You look so good. What are you doing up and around?” Then she sits down without asking.
“I forgot my wallet,” he says.
“Oh,” she says, and grins tenderly, if tentatively. “Well, do you need to borrow some money?”
“No, no,” he says. With no Xanax or Vicodin, the anxiety is palpable, and he tries to remember how he had once calmed himself before any of it. How he had been a child in a canoe, floating downriver. He didn’t call Deborah, he realizes, just came at the same time they had met here before, when he pushed his knee between her thighs at the table.
She takes his hand.
“I can’t stay,” he says, “I’m working out.” He eases his hand out from under hers, just as he has done pulling a tooth from under Michaela’s pillow while she was sleeping.
“Do you want to come over later? I heard you were . . . living with a friend. Should I make you some turkey soup?”
Adrian can’t figure out how she knows he’s staying with Jeff, but there it is. Her eyes are gleaming. He breathes in through his nose, straightens in his seat. A child, in a canoe, floating downriver.
“No,” he says. “No, I’m . . . Can’t do that. Anymore.”
Chapter Twelve
* * *
Once back at Jeff’s, winded and chilled, Adrian searches frantically around the house for his phone, before finding it between his bed and table. When he checks his messages, he finds nothing from Stella and the kids, just a private message from the man beside the water.
4601 (11/26/09): Hey Haven’t heard back from you? Thinking of notifying those follks at Cornel. I don’t want this guy to get away from us. I guess it has to be validated someway. You probly don’t need the money but $50000 is a hell of alot to somebody like me. (Not that thats what its about)
Adrian stares at the screen a moment. Somebody’s been doing some research, but, he reminds himself, this is really no concern of his.
He retrieves a Revive from his watery cooler. Sits on the couch. Drinks. Looks around the silent room. Jeff’s TV blinks: 12:00, 12:00, 12:00, 12:00—
• • •
After a short nap, Adrian calls Stella to set up time with the kids. Stella answers almost right away, and when she does, Adrian hears the clattering of pots and pans. He can almost smell the giblets simmering away with celery and onions on their way to becoming gravy. He can almost see the pies sitting out on the sideboard, sugar crystals sparkling atop the apple and the even slick of the pumpkin to be topped with whipped cream. Stella says, “No problem,” but that he should have the kids home by four, so they can “get ready for dinner.”
Once showered and shaven, he drives to the house, texts Zander to say he’s arrived, then waits outside. After a couple of long minutes, the kids slink out to the Saab with their heads down, wearing jackets Adrian’s never seen before. In as animated a manner as possible, he hops out to greet them and let them in the back, but Zander shuffles around to Stella’s spot in the front passenger’s seat. Before Adrian can think about the proper new order of things, Michaela slides into the back, says, “Oh, okay,” and slams the door.
• • •
Soon, they’re drinking white hot chocolates at Starbucks, Michaela swinging her legs under the table without saying a word and Zander gazing, glassy-eyed, at the hipsters working the bar, his eyebrows lifted slightly in wry, exaggerated boredom.
“Well, I’m feeling a lot better, you guys,” Adrian tells them with a measured grin. “So, don’t worry about me.”
A gaping silence ensues while the children maintain their previous postures and expressions almost perfectly.
Adrian tries again. “I’ll bet you’re looking forward to a great dinner, though, huh?”
Michaela says, “I am, at least.” She glances furtively over at Zander, who frowns back at her as some kind of signal.
Adrian looks questioningly at the boy. “How about you, buddy?”
“No, yeah,” Zander mumbles and looks down at the crumpled paper napkin on the table.
Adrian has perhaps never felt more sorry than this.
He pulls himself in closer to the table, takes Michaela’s hand and kisses it. “Been missing you two.”
“Mom says you’re ‘too sick’ to come home right now.” Zander still won’t look at him.
Adrian doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t know what excuse he expected Stella would give, but he wasn’t prepared for this one. “Well, I guess I could have died, so . . . I’ve been p
retty sick.”
Zander crosses his arms suddenly, thrusts out his pelvis, and shoves his legs out beneath the table, sending the chair scooting. “We know what’s going on, Dad.”
Michaela looks worried and watches Zander to see if he’ll make any more sudden movements.
Zander says, “You and Mom are fighting.”
Adrian wishes for words to fix this, even to address it. He says, “It’s going to be okay,” but of course, he doesn’t know that. He’s still waiting for signs.
“Hey, you know what, though?” he says. “I have a surprise for you.”
• • •
When he pulls the Saab along the field in front of the old shell of a house, though both kids wear their doubting smirks and grip their empty Starbucks cups, once they follow Adrian’s pointed index finger, all seems redeemed.
“Oh, my God! Daddy!” Michaela shrieks.
Zander’s already thrown off his seat belt and is yanking at the door handle, as a small palomino horse steps from just inside the missing front door to the breezy field, its ears back and head high.
“Hold on a minute,” cautions Adrian. “We’ve got to be very stealthy. Hang on!”
They come together in a little pod. Adrian gathers Michaela under his arm, ruffles Zander’s hair.
“All right. Now, don’t scare them, okay? Be very quiet and very slow. Be ‘one with the field,’ ” he whispers, grinning.
Michaela whispers back, “One for the field.”
“Okay?” he asks Zander, and the boy smiles and nods.
They begin their surreptitious trek toward the old house, the three of them, all breathing high in their chests, cheeks flushed, eyes trained on the palomino. Though the horse is acutely aware of them, it sets off no alarms, and to Adrian’s surprise, they make their way across without incident, stepping cautiously around piles of manure and the occasional hole, elbowing each other in the ribs. When, in the doorway, a second horse, a paint, pushes from inside the house past the first, shoulders and rumps colliding, they both squeeze out like fish from a bottleneck into the open pasture, and the children laugh out loud.