The Bird Boys

by Lisa Sandlin

  She kept the back door open to the breathy night, latched the screen door so the warm breeze ushered in a little bug and frog bass line. Oscar had a cassette tape deck he used in the kitchen, but right now Miss Blanchard’s radio was entertaining itself up on a shelf. Muffled TV from the lobby. The Rosemont favorites were Lawrence Welk (“Lord God, more frightenin’ than Night of the Living Dead,” Oscar shuddered), Disney on Sunday, Gunsmoke on Monday until football season arrived which it already had. Mrs. Bibbo, an Italian widow, had whispered to Delpha that Wednesday’s star, Kojak, a husky, bald detective sucking Tootsie Roll pops, was one sexy man. Mr. Nystrom considered M.A.S.H. unpatriotic while Mr. Finn the ex-doughboy liked it, so there was division on Saturday nights.

  At the end of this week, Chef/Acting Manager Oscar Hardy would pay Delpha $35. She’d negotiated a little more than minimum wage, and he’d pay her in cash money, under the table. No payroll taxes to run up and be paid over to the IRS. And, unlike the crop of dishwashers before Serafin, Oscar could always locate Delpha. She could promise she would neither nod off into a pot of butterbeans nor tiptoe away with a waffle maker, leaving the back door ajar to alley cats.

  Tomorrow Delpha would call up Miles Blankenship’s law office and talk to his secretary. She would learn that Mr. Blankenship booked $80 hourly (she got $2, with her hard-fought deal with Oscar), and, including coming and going, the attorney had spent two hours and some with her down at the police station. The “coming and going” and the “and some” counted. A month of dishwashing, along with her small savings, would pay him off, and that was more or less the time Serafin needed to guide his mother safely off to the Mother of Jesus.

  That would be tomorrow’s serendipity.

  Tonight she wiped her forehead on her rolled sleeve then racked more plates and saucers and those damn ramekins. Stopped a second to dial up the volume on the portable radio. Far as Delpha could tell, the DJs played the same songs over and over. That organ-grinder Tie a Yellow Ribbon song started up, about the wife tying yellow ribbons all over an oak tree so her husband out of prison would know she wanted him back home. Delpha’s eyes slitted. For sure, it was more likely to be a wife than a husband tying those particular ribbons. From reports she’d heard, which were 100 percent from women.

  Should she want advancement, like Angela? Anybody would say she was the low person on the totem pole—but whose totem pole?—washing dishes, worst job at the New Rosemont Retirement Hotel. Is this how she’d seen herself after prison? Truth was, she had no one clear vision from those years, mired in boredom or anger or frustration, complaints swallowed, lack of hope. Waiting so ingrained that it seemed she waited to hope. Or had only fuzzy hopes. Get this, go to this, do that, end up better if she could. End up with something of her own, whether that be a safe place to live or a man or a child or faith or the ordinary regard of people who would come to know her. At different points during fourteen years, she had spent time trying to construct a picture of each of these. And more than a few nights hollow-bellied with terror that she might find nary a one and have to keep on living.

  She’d had one vision: Never go back.

  She hadn’t, had she. So far. But it had been close, and the price had been high.

  Each tub of dishes run through. Blasts of steam. Her hair plastered to her neck. Tub of clean, hot white crockery. Knives and forks and serving spoons. Let ‘em cool before stacking in place.

  She turned off the lights except for the pull-chain fluorescent over the sink. Stretched tiptoe and dialed till she hit Aretha Franklin singing Do-Right Woman, Do-Right Man, scrubbed up the grill, wiped down the counters, swept, and fetched the mop and bucket. Mopped and wrung. Prodded her no-longer-sore incision. Then she snapped off the radio and stood for a while in the clean.

  She was not alone in this brick building. Maybe, all-told, twenty-five souls were tucked into this old place. But she was alone in this wide room, and she pretended. She pretended the side door to the parking lot and the door into the kitchen from the lobby sprouted iron padlocks, she pretended that all the retired people were upstairs in their beds dead asleep (though some wandered, some sat late in the lobby under a white-shaded lamp). She was pretending so that she could feel even more private. Felt nice, didn’t it?

  One blip of unease: would this pretending be good long-term? Was that a little like wishing yourself back in jail? She didn’t know. For now, it was enough to know that the screen-door hook was latched on her side, no intruders. This wide, black-and-green checked linoleum floor was empty.

  After she untied the apron and folded it, she stood in the big dim room feeling, unexpectedly, how slight a space she took up. How easy bones break and flesh tears.

  She glanced toward the screen door where the skim of a darker shade passed. She flashed to Aileen and her pronouncement about the tiny girl in the blue smock. Delpha walked over and peered through the screen—no ghost-child out there, only night. And the trill of insect-song, a September breeze now entering into Oscar’s orderly kitchen.

  The black outline that had frightened Aileen—Delpha had known what Aileen was talking about. She’d seen it around the rims of the big man’s eyes, seen it catch and kindle, spread to the center. Deeterman—Delpha had handed over the book he asked for, told him he could go. She would rather have been any place that day than there in the office of Phelan Investigations. If she hadn’t done what she did, she’d a had to stand there and let him kill her, and that was the truth. The death they’d brought her down to the police station to explain, to judge her for—cops were always the first judges—that man had picked it. Decided the place for it, decided the time. She was there. He was who he was, she was who she was.

  Delpha searched for guilt, and unlike Dolly Honeysett, she didn’t find it. If that made her different than other people, then that’s how it was.

  XIV

  RALPH BAUER, THE manager of Bellas Hess, was edging fifty, bloodhound face, but his graying brown hair had a cowlick back of the crown. He scribbled out a check, which Phelan folded into his jacket pocket.

  The manager caressed the tie tack stuck through an exhausted blue tie.

  “Bobby and Pete from the snack bar, huh?” Ralph sat down. “Can’t ever tell, can you. Pete was an Eagle Scout.”

  “I was hoping it’d be Mabel from Housewares,” Phelan said. “More interesting.”

  Ralph gawked at him. Phelan smiled.

  “Oh. Yeah, she’s that, all right. Candice!”

  A girl waltzed in the door.

  “Call in an ad for help at the snack bar. Then you go work it today.”

  The girl’s eyes, bordered in one black line topped by a white line, widened into two little targets. “Aw, c’mon, Mr. Bauer, I got on my new dress.” The pale gray dress was one of those tent ones girls were wearing; it stood out around Candice like a tin funnel. Ketchup and mustard, Phelan thought, might brighten it up.

  “Go borrow Mabel’s apron.”

  “Yuck. I don’t want Taboo reeking all over me.”

  “Then splash on one of those samplers from makeup. We got to pull together now. You know what that means, hon?”

  “Means I got to work the snack bar.”

  “Kids,” Ralph said when Candice had flounced away. “When I was a kid, I couldn’t get to work fast enough. Put two dollars in my mother’s hand, I was king of Tyler County. But now it’s everbody for hisself and hell with the rest. All the way to the top. That Watergate gang running the country, they held the truth under water till it run out of bubbles.”

  He took a long breath and looked up at Phelan. “Put it off long as I can. How’d they get in?”

  “Keys,” Phelan said softly, feeling sorry for the man.

  The hound dog eyes sagged. “Keys. So it’s Dean, my assistant manager. Me and Dean’s the only ones with keys. And I’d’ve sworn on a stack of bibles about him.”

  “Not necessarily. I’ll continue the investigation if you want, but you might save yourself a dime or two if you invento
ry the pill department. Your pharmacist, he’s a live wire, isn’t he. And the snack boys, they were on thirty-three rpm. Like chasing down spaghetti.”

  “Wait. Yeah. Ted mighta had the keys once when Dean was sick. Forgot about that. Oh God.” The manager propped his forehead in his hand.

  Phelan suggested Ralph Bauer call his headquarters and report that the situation was under control—and in only three days. That brightened Ralph some.

  “Pill department comes up roses, you call me back. But Mr. Bauer, I’m betting you got this one licked. You let me know, you hear?”

  Ralph Bauer called later to let Phelan know the pill department had not come up roses. Headquarters was happy and that was good, but the scene with Ted the ex-pharmacist was not one he wanted to live again. He thanked Phelan for his help. If he wanted to come by for a hotdog and chips any time, it was on the house. Oh yeah, and here was the home phone number of Ben from the camera department. Did Phelan have a pen?

  He had to locate the kid in a dorm out at Lamar College. He spoke to a groovy young man behind a desk that had behind it a wall of pigeonholes with notes stuffed in the little boxes. The guy picked up a phone.

  Ben flew down some stairs and, seeing Phelan, pulled up. The kid folded his arms and slouched hard-eyed behind the black-framed glasses, one joint of which was bandaged with electrical tape. Apparently, he judged that Phelan had made a fool of him.

  Phelan omitted a greeting. Just told him, speaking soft enough that Ben had to inch closer, his real profession. Asked Ben if he wanted to develop pictures for his private investigation business. Phelan would pay the going rate. He didn’t know what that was, but bet Ben didn’t either.

  Ben unthawed some at the word “pay.” So…would Phelan have a job for him any time soon?

  As a matter of fact. Did Ben have a car?

  Ben nodded.

  He have a zoom lens?

  “I could borrow one.”

  OK. He’d need to find a quiet spot where he could survey sightseers in the bird-land marshes in the area. Make the rounds, there was more than one of them, but specially High Island and Anahuac. Phelan wanted Ben to range around out there, take some nature pictures. Pay attention to any elderly male birdwatchers. Nothing dangerous, ordinary stakeout except he didn’t even have to hole up in a car. He would just play himself, a photographer.

  At “stakeout,” Ben’s standoffish arms had fallen loose to the sides of his Dennis-the-Menace livery—striped t-shirt, cut-off jeans, black socks and sneakers. A preliminary glow settled into his eyes.

  Phelan would pay minimum wage for the watching, same as Bellas Hess, but, as he’d mentioned, the going rate for the pictures. All photos had to stay private. Did Ben understand discretion?

  “Discretion” stood Ben’s pecker up. “Could I use black and white film? It’s the best.”

  “Less there’s a reason not to, use it. Like Ansel Adams. You know, Ben, this stakeout might take a week, might take two, more. Might have to miss some classes—”

  “I don’t care. My dad’s making me major in accounting. I’ll do it.”

  The kid seized Phelan’s hand. He wrung it like Phelan had hauled him from a bayou full of benzene.

  Phelan knew who Ansel Adams was now. Delpha had left a big rectangular library book on his desk. When he’d got around to it, he brought the heavy book to her desk, so they could both see what Ben had been talking about.

  She leaned into the pages.

  Sure enough black and white, as Ben had described. Craggy rocks. Twisted trees. Rivers. “Could be a cloud spilling down that mountain,” Delpha pointed out, “’stead of a waterfall.”

  They leafed through several more photographs.

  She traced a finger along the curve of the Snake River. “All these places and no people anywhere. Why these pictures look perfect, isn’t it. One perfect picture after the next, and people’d throw the whole thing off. You think…when he put away his camera, he sat on the hood of his car till the sun went down, just him and the mountains?”

  Phelan had raised his head and lowered it. They turned the pages, water like clouds, clouds like mountains. A river smooth as the last highway you ever want to drive.

  XV

  “GOTTA BE A mistake.” They sat side by side in the Apollo White office, receiving the mighty sunlight of the day. Phelan stared levelly at the heap of papers in Delpha Wade’s hands. “Told her the years 1898 and 1900.”

  Delpha looked sideways at him. “You tell her not to send more than that?”

  “Well, I…no. I mean, I told her those were the years we wanted. Didn’t say anything about other years. Order a Chevy, you don’t tell the dealer not to send a Ford.”

  “Says here these birth records were compiled by the Orleans Parish Volunteer Association in 1970. Bet they’re a nice bunch. And since we didn’t have a last name to give, Louisiana Archives sent you the whole shebang. You’re looking at a kindly favor, Tom.”

  Phelan shut his eyes and bracketed them with his hands. “Do the math, OK?”

  “Already have. Hundred and nine years’ worth. Of babies.”

  The copies spanned the years 1796-1905. The sheer number of pages recording the births in Orleans Parish, the thickness of the stack, caused Tom Phelan and Delpha Wade to behold them silently.

  “When I told Bell this was a heavy research case,” Phelan said, “I didn’t mean this heavy.”

  “We don’t need to go through all those pages. Look, if you’re seventy-five today, in September of 1973, then you were either born in 1898 or late in 1897, right? Same thing goes for Rodney. 1900 or late 1899.”

  “I don’t know, Delpha. My idea, but it seems pretty far-fetched now. I was planning to start checking out the homebuyers on your list.”

  “Sure. You go on and do the homebuyers. I’ll take the babies.”

  Phelan’s head lifted. “Wait a minute, ding,” he said. “My uncle E.E. grew up in New Orleans. Wish he still talked to me.”

  Delpha got up and dragged the client chair back to its designated position, across from Phelan. “His mama still around?”

  “Yeah, she is. Why?”

  “Talk to her. More details, more gossip. Ladies soak that up.”

  Phelan brightened. “Then I’m not asking him directly, am I?” He stood up. “’Scuse me.”

  Delpha went back to her desk while he closed his door and made the call. Fontenot put him through with neither greeting nor comment.

  “Well, if it isn’t my nephew Judas.”

  Phelan plunged ahead with his question.

  E.E. cut him off. “You want some noise ‘bout a old time antique seller in New Orleans? Down the quarter? What for you aksing me to do your job? Bringin’ in that lawyer, you coulda made mine harder.”

  “And for that I ’pologize again. Not my intention. But…what I’m wondering is if you’d mind me calling Miss Estelle to ask her for any stories about those shopkeepers. Old folks know stuff.”

  “You wanna call my mama—merde!” E.E. shouted, and there was a sharp rap, just like a diamond ring punching a wood desk.

  Phelan’s heart stuttered. “Listen, E.E., how many times I have to say—”

  “Yesterday’s her birthday. Yesterday, damn it, and oh, she fuss when I missed it before. Man oh man…what is it you want again?”

  Phelan told him as he let out lungfuls of breath, stealthily.

  All right, E.E.’d phone her—only because of the birthday—and also so he’d have an excuse to be late for the Lions Club lunch. Maybe miss the speaker. His mother would know somebody that knew somebody that knew something, and he could guar-on-tee they would all be old-time.

  “What about if they’re dead?”

  “Far’s Mama’s concerned, dead people’s even betta.”

  Slam.

  Phelan softly set down his receiver, stretched out his jaw and his neck. After a while, he got up and opened his door again, to let in some air same as the air in his office.

  “He’s not mad
at you anymore?” Delpha asked him. “For the lawyer?”

  “Naaah,” Phelan said. He crossed his right middle finger over his index, signaling just how tight they were. His eyes were cloudy. He looked tired.

  “E.E. told me once that I should know who I was, and if I had to fight somebody I should know who he was and if I did, I’d be OK.”

  She waited. He raked his fingers through his hair.

  “So?”

  “Far as the Bell case goes, all I know is who I am.”

  “Did a fast, good job at Bellas Hess, Tom.”

  Phelan turned to her, the statement like a stray fifty winking from a sidewalk. He got why Delpha’s voice had unthawed Bell—warmth or regard or whatever it was the old guy felt when she spoke to him—it was not something Bell often encountered.

  Delpha was staring down on the babies. Phelan walked over and read over her shoulder. After they’d both run their gaze over the second sheet, and the third, they looked at each other and smiled.

  The break was this: births were organized alphabetically by surname of the married couple. Regardless of the birth year, all of a couple’s children appeared under their parents’ names, stacked one on top of the other. At a glance you could see that Lucia and Salvatore Marchetti had produced Domenico, Vincenzo, Anna, Andrea, Stella, Giuseppe, and Giuseppina over a period of sixteen years. Gender, color, birthdates. Phelan Investigations didn’t know the surname, but they knew the years. Not difficult to ignore the unqualified and circle Moms and Pops making babies at the turn of the twentieth century.