Inexplicably, a scene from the old Andy Griffith Show popped into Caleb’s mind. It was the episode called “Opie the Birdman,” and it told the story of three tiny songbirds that Opie raised by himself after accidentally killing their mother with his slingshot. At the end of the show, Sheriff Andy, Opie’s dad, convinced his son that the time had come to let the birds fly away, to open the cage and set them free. After Opie frees the third bird, he says, “Cage sure looks awful empty, don’t it, Paw?” Andy nods in agreement, but then says, “But don’t the trees seem nice and full?”
This whole scene played itself out in Caleb’s consciousness in a millisecond, and it occurred to him that this pigeon might never visit a tree again, might never coast silhouetted against the skyline—unless he did something to help.
In less than a heartbeat, Caleb decided to try to save the life of this gravely injured pigeon. This is probably a waste of time, he thought, but he simply could not stand there and watch this poor thing suffer without trying to do something to help.
Caleb and his family had all had pets when they were growing up and, like every family that owns cats and dogs, they had established a relationship with a veterinarian, specifically Dr. Wilborne at the Westwoods Animal Hospital. Caleb didn’t even think twice about his decision. He would bring his injured friend to Dr. Wilborne, and Dr. W would fix him up so Caleb could set him free to fly again and fill the trees wherever he chose to roam.
The cost didn’t matter, and bizarrely, another sitcom, Seinfeld, popped into his head, specifically the episode where a vet has to fly in “really tiny instruments” to operate on a squirrel George accidentally drove over with his car. George was more worried about the cost of the operation than about the squirrel, much to his girlfriend’s disgust, but he okayed the operation and paid anyway.
Caleb planned on telling Dr. Wilborne that money was no object. Caleb wanted to save this pigeon and he would do whatever it took to do it.
Caleb ran into the garage and found a cardboard box filled with Styrofoam peanuts. He remembered that his mother had ordered a cheese tray from the Wisconsin Cheese Factory to give as a Christmas gift to Echo, the nurse who gave her her chemo treatments, and UPS had delivered it in this box. Caleb was glad he had not cut it up and put it in a trash bag or crushed it flat. This box would be perfect. Its sides were high enough so that the bird would feel secure and, yet, it couldn’t climb out if it panicked.
Caleb carried the box outside, set it down next to the injured bird, who was still panting and whose wound was still oozing blood.
Being very careful not to hurt it further, Caleb gently slid his hand under the pigeon’s body and cradled its small form in his palm. He picked it up—it felt warm—and the bird flapped its wings weakly in fear, but then calmed down when Caleb placed it inside the cardboard box. Caleb picked up the box and carried it to the car. He placed it on the back seat and strapped the box to the seat with the safety belt.
He then got in, started the car, and slowly backed out of the driveway. “Don’t worry,” he said softly to the dying pigeon. “It’s only a ten-minute ride to the vet’s and then you’ll be good as new.”
Caleb glanced repeatedly into the box as he drove, and he could see that the bird was getting weaker. Caleb drove faster, and his mother and her errands and his brothers and the grapefruit halves and the Wise’s lightly salted potato chips and what kind of fish he could serve on a Friday after a fish Thursday were all tiny sparks of distraction that floated through his mind and were ignored, like the specks of dust that build up on your eyeglass lenses and that after a while you don’t even see.
Caleb pulled into the fire lane in front of the veterinary hospital eight minutes after he pulled out of his mother’s driveway. He turned off the car, got out, and opened the back door. The bird was still breathing, but there was blood on the bottom of the box and its eyes looked glassy.
He carried the box into the hospital and walked right up to the counter with it.
“Hi. My family has been coming to Dr. Wilborne for years and I found this injured bird in my yard and I need him to take a look at him.” He said all this in one breath and before he finished speaking, the veterinary technician manning the front desk had stood up and looked inside the box at the pigeon. She then picked up the phone, pressed two keys, and said, “Dr. W, I need you in Exam six stat.”
She hung up the phone and picked up the box. “Have a seat and I’ll bring it to Dr. W immediately.”
Caleb nodded and said, “Listen. You tell him money is no object. I’ll pay whatever it costs.”
The tech looked down at the pigeon and replied, “Well, I can’t imagine it will be too expensive, but I’ll tell him what you said.”
Caleb watched as the tech carried the bloodstained cardboard box into the back where she would meet Dr. W in Exam 6 “stat,” and then he sat down on an orange plastic chair. Never any fabric on a vet’s waiting room furniture, Caleb thought to himself. Ticks and fleas and animal hair can’t stick to plastic.
Caleb looked at his watch. It was already past ten and he hadn’t done anything yet that his mother had written on The List. He should have already been to the bank and been on his way to the grocery store, but here he was, in the waiting room of Westwoods Animal Hospital, waiting for word about an injured pigeon that he had found in his mother’s yard and that he had driven here in a cardboard box.
He wondered if he would be home in time to make his mother’s lunch. He knew she could fix herself something if she wanted to, but she had become very dependent on him. He also knew deep down that she hated being so helpless and that she would definitely prefer to do everything herself, but she couldn’t, so Caleb did.
Caleb’s mom had always been fiercely independent. Even when his dad was alive, Mom had set her own agenda. Dad’s death diminished her and now her illness was making her a prisoner in her own house, with her own son as the warden. Caleb knew that this was killing his mom as much as the leukemia, but there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.
Ten-thirty. What was going on back there? Maybe they’ve got him in surgery already and they just haven’t had a chance to come out and tell me, he thought.
Caleb hoped his mom had made herself breakfast. He decided he would not be able to stay here much longer, and that he would have to come back to pick up the pigeon after it had recovered. He already knew where he would set it free. There was a grove of trees by a lake near his mother’s house where he and his brothers had once gone to summer camp. He would wait until his bird was completely healed (the pigeon was now “his” bird) and then take it there and let it fly up into the trees. Caleb smiled at the thought that he would be doing his part toward making the trees in that sunny grove “nice and full.”
Suddenly, the door in the waiting room that led to the exam rooms opened and Dr. Wilborne strode into the room. “Caleb!” he boomed with his hand extended. “Good to see you, boy! How’s Mom?”
Caleb shook Dr. Wilborne’s hand and smiled. “She’s good, Doc. You know her. She’s not gonna let anything keep her down.”
“That’s terrific. You give her my love, hear?”
“I will.” Caleb nodded. “So how’s my bird, Doc?”
Dr. Wilborne grew a puzzled look on his face. “Your bird? Was the pigeon a pet?”
“No, no, it was just a bird I found in our yard. But I figured I’d bring it in and have you fix it up. How’s it doing?”
“I’m sorry, Caleb, but I put it down as soon as Vicki brought it back to me. It was mortally injured and there was nothing I could have done to save it. Euthanizing injured wildlife and pigeons is a regular part of our business, Caleb. We don’t even charge for it. People are always bringing in raccoons and squirrels and birds that have been hit by cars. Once I had to go down to Route Nine and put a deer to sleep that had had three legs broken by a tractor-trailer. One little girl even brought in a skunk once.” Dr. W smiled. “I put that one to sleep out back in the woods. They release their bodily fl
uids when we give them the needle, you know. Luckily, I didn’t get sprayed. I didn’t want to chance the hospital getting blasted, though.”
Dr. Wilborne paused and put his hand on Caleb’s shoulder.
“So we put your pigeon to sleep, Caleb, and it went very peacefully.”
Caleb just stood there. His fantasy about setting the healed bird free withered and floated away like dust.
But I guess he is free, Caleb then thought to himself. It’s just another kind of freedom, I guess.
“Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it. Can’t I give you something for your time and the, uh, materials?”
“No way. This is our way of giving a little something back. If we can put an injured wild animal out of its misery, then that’s payment enough.”
Caleb nodded and shook Dr. Wilborne’s hand again. “Well, then, thanks again. And I’ll tell my mother you were asking for her.”
“Good. You do that. And my best to Alan and Paul, okay?”
Caleb nodded and turned to leave. Then he stopped and turned back to Dr. Wilborne. “Just out of curiosity, Doc. What do you do with the … you know, the remains?”
“We’ll cremate it.”
“Oh, okay.”
Caleb walked out of the building and got into his car. Just as he turned the key in the ignition, though, the floodgates opened and he began sobbing like someone who had just lost his best friend. It took Caleb several minutes to compose himself before he could drive. When he was calm enough, he headed home. He figured he’d better stop home first to check on his mother and explain what happened. She would probably be worried and he didn’t want her to get upset. Stress was no good for her immune system, the doctors had told them.
Caleb drove slower on his way home than he did on his way to the vet’s, and it was about fifteen minutes before he turned the corner to his street.
Caleb’s heart dropped. There was an ambulance in his mother’s driveway and his brother Alan’s car was parked behind it.
Caleb sped down the street and screeched to a halt in front of the house. He jumped out of the car and ran into the house. Alan was standing in the kitchen with two EMTs. When Alan saw Caleb, his eyes widened and a furious look exploded on his face.
“Where the hell have you been?” Alan shouted.
Caleb didn’t take the bait. Staying calm, he said, “What happened?”
“Mom had a stroke and fell and hit her head on the bathtub. She pushed the emergency button she wears around her neck but we think it took her too long. By the time the ambulance got here …” Alan’s voice was now trembling and his eyes were watery. “By the time the ambulance got here … it was too late.” Alan paused and looked behind Caleb. Or maybe he was looking through Caleb.
“Mom’s dead, Caleb.”
Caleb’s legs buckled and he collapsed. Luckily, the two EMTs caught him before he hit the floor. They carried him to a chair and sat him down, his face pale and his forehead covered in sweat.
“I was only gone for a couple of hours. I had to …” Caleb stopped. He knew he couldn’t tell Alan about the pigeon.
“I had errands.”
Alan did not ask Caleb about the errands, and Caleb just sat there at his mother’s kitchen table with his head down.
“I had errands,” he whispered.
It was late in the afternoon by the time everyone left and Caleb was alone in the house. The coroner had taken away his mother’s body, and Caleb and his brothers had met with the funeral director to arrange Mom’s funeral and burial.
No one had come right out and blamed Caleb for his mother’s death but he knew what they were thinking. If he had been home, maybe they would have been able to save her. But he had been out on his errands, and they knew that he left her alone for a few hours every day, and the truth was that this was just something that happened. The fact that he was at the vet’s trying to save the life of a wild pigeon instead of at the bank or the grocery store or the drugstore meant nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Caleb got up and walked over to the kitchen sink, where he poured himself a glass of water. As he drank, he realized this water was the first thing he had put in his stomach all day. Rather than restore him, it made him queasy.
Caleb went out into the backyard and stood by the rear fence with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the darkening sky. Caleb had always liked dusk, that in-between time when the light was so strange and beautiful. Mom is gone, he thought to himself. So is my pigeon. He realized that he had suffered through two deaths in one day, although he knew that he would be ridiculed (and probably castigated) if he even spoke about the death of a lousy pigeon in the same breath as the death of his mother.
But it was true, and Caleb keenly felt both losses, felt them in his heart, and felt them in the deepest recesses of his soul.
Caleb sighed and decided to go inside and try to eat something. Just as he was turning to leave, though, he felt the slightest wisp of a breeze flutter across his face. He looked back at the fence and there on the peeling crossboard sat a tiny spotted gray chick. The chick’s head was cocked and it looked straight at him. Caleb didn’t move, and the bird sat there, fearless, and stared at him with what appeared to be great interest.
Then the oddest thing happened.
The chick flew off the fence board (it was more like a short hop actually) and landed on Caleb’s right shoulder, where it sat for a moment and looked directly into Caleb’s eyes. Apparently satisfied, the chick then let out a little chirp and flew off into the trees.
Caleb looked up, and in the deepening twilight he could just make out the tiny round body of the chick, perched on a branch so thin, it was still bouncing slowly from the bird’s landing.
The little pigeon was the only bird Caleb could see, and yet it occurred to him that he had never seen these trees look so full. As if able to read Caleb’s thoughts, and needing to express his complete agreement with him, the chick suddenly let out a series of whistles and chirps that Caleb knew, in his heart, were manifestly triumphant.
Caleb smiled and went back into the house, where he drank water and thought about Canada Dry ginger ale and lists written on long sheets of yellow paper.
7
Tory Troy
Dr. Baraku Bexley
“I read your short story.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I read ‘Skyline Pigeon.’”
“Oh, really? And how did you get your hands on that, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I met with Mr. Mundàne.”
“How’d you find him?”
“What do you mean?”
“How did you know he had been my teacher?”
“Tory, haven’t you noticed the large briefcase I carry around with me all the time? Inside that briefcase is my Tory Troy file. It is quite exhaustive.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I have copies of all your school transcripts, your work and earnings history, all your residences—all three of them—utility bills, bank statements, medical records … essentially, I have your entire life in my briefcase. I even have a copy of the detention you received in seventh grade for giving your teacher the finger. As well as the speeding ticket you received when you were sixteen and you took your mother’s car without permission. Not to mention every prescription you’ve ever filled, and every long-distance phone call you’ve ever made.”
“You’re kidding, right? It can’t be legal for you to have all that stuff, can it?”
“Not only is it legal, it’s required. If I don’t review all your records carefully and something surfaces at your trial—if you even go to trial, of course—and you get off on a technicality, I will be the one who will get in trouble, not you.”
“It just seems so invasive.”
“It is. Intentionally.”
“So you read my story.”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Do you want my literary review, or my thoughts on how it factors in
to my work on your case?”
“Both. Start with what you thought of the writing.”
“Competent.”
“Competent? That’s it?”
“Actually it’s more than competent. It’s modestly accomplished.”
“Jesus. ‘Modestly accomplished.’ Dr. B, you are a cornucopia of tact and thoughtfulness.”
“Are you insulted?”
“Not really. You’re probably right. What else? How about the characters?”
“I think the Caleb character is you.”
“Oh, you do, do you? Why’s that?”
“What do you think? Why would I feel that way?”
“Probably because in the story Caleb brings an injured bird to the vet and then gets upset when it has to be put to sleep. Euthanized.”
“Are you Caleb?”
“No. The incident in the story actually happened to a friend of mine, and after he told me about it, I wrote the story.”
“It happened to a friend.”
“Yes.”
“And he told you about it.”
“You sound suspicious. Don’t you believe me?”
“Of course I believe you. Why don’t we move on to a discussion of the people you work with at the animal shelter. We’ve already discussed Jake and we can come back to him later. What can you tell me about … Marcy?”
Dialogues Page 5