The Lord God Bird

by Russell Hill

  "I need a box of .22 longs."

  He put the box on the counter, turned again to the two men. "Are you telling me," he said, "that there's some girl who's dressing up like a Lord God bird and climbing trees in the Big Woods?"

  "Swear to God," Buzz Cut said.

  I laid two dollars on the counter. I could feel my chest tighten and I wanted them not to notice me, to forget that I had been next to them in the store. I wanted to get back to the house and make Robin cut off the red crest on her head. I was as terrified at that moment as I have ever been.

  14.

  We went farther back into the woods than we had ever been, a half day of rowing and then it changed and I knew we had come into Despair Bayou. The trees were farther apart and there were patches of sun on the surface. We found a likely tree, half-dead, strips of bark hanging, and Robin climbed higher and higher until she was a tiny thing, the black and white feathers and her red crest visible when I rowed away from the tree. I worked my way through cypress and tupelo until I was fifty yards off, but could still see Robin through a gap in the trees. I heard her KENK! KENK! and I replied with several double-knocks on my wood blocks. It was early afternoon and the heat was like a thick blanket, making it hard to breathe, and at first I didn't recognize the outboard motor. It sounded like the whine of insects, fading, then growing louder and suddenly I knew that it was a boat and I started toward Robin's tree.

  But the low skiff with two men appeared and one of the men shouted, "There!" pointing up toward Robin, and I froze, letting the oars drift on the water. They cut the motor and the boat drifted toward the base of her tree.

  In the sudden silence, I could hear their words clearly, skipping across the still surface of the water.

  "Come on, Billy, she's some kind of a nut. Let it alone."

  "How many times you get to fuck a bird, cousin? Hey! Little bird," he called up.

  I saw him raise his shotgun and I raised the .22, balanced it on my knee, just as if I were aiming at a crow.

  "Jesus, Billy, you ain't going to shoot her are you?"

  "No, just a little something to let her know we mean business."

  At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. It came in a long floating arc toward the tree, down out of the canopy, and it was the Ivory Bill, a female with the black crest that curved forward, the wings outspread, as big as a man's arms, and it came straight toward Robin, tilting a bit as it slipped between the trees. It was just as Tanner had described it, so magnificent that my heart stopped. It slid through a shaft of light, and Robin called out KENK! KENK! And it flared up, the wings black and white and I thought, there it is, all the pictures of my childhood wrapped into one instant, swimming in the air. Audubon never saw it. He painted it from study skins of dead birds. And now I was seeing it, rising, curling away from Robin. The men in the boat looked up and I heard one of them, I don't know which one, say "Holy shit! It's one of them birds," and the one with the shotgun swung the gun toward the bird, tracking it, and there was an explosion and the bird crumpled in the air, as if it had hit a wall, just tumbled, and it seemed to take a long time to fall, pinwheeling, the wings half folded, and I aimed the .22 at the man's ear, raised the barrel until it was just at the edge of his buzz cut hair and pulled the trigger. There was a pop! He reached up to swat the side of his head, a gesture that he might have made if he had been bitten by an insect, and he pitched forward into the bow of the boat.

  The other man shouted, "Holy Jesus, Billy!" And looked wildly about and crouched down. He reached back, yanked the cord on the outboard and it came to life, shattering the silence of the woods. The boat jerked, went forward and then lay on its side as he bent the motor in an arc. He never looked back. I listened as the motor receded, and then began to row as fast as I could toward Robin's tree.

  The Ivory bill was on the surface of the water, turning slowly, and there was no sign of a wound, but it was dead, and I scooped it up, laid it in the boat and went to the tree. Robin came down the rope, not bothering to take off the cape and when she collapsed into the boat I began to row, the boat surging with every stroke, listening for the motor of the other boat, hearing nothing but the whine of mosquitoes and the echo of Robin's KENK! KENK! in my head.

  15.

  Neither of us said much. I parked the car, Robin went down to the creek to wash off the mud and when she came back we wrapped the body of the ivory bill in the feather cape and put it under the bed. Then we waited. I don't know what it was that we waited for.

  "Do you think you killed him?" Robin asked.

  "I don't know. It's a .22. It doesn't pack much punch. It's OK for killing crows. It depends on where it hit. What it hit."

  "What did you aim for?"

  "His head. His ear. It could easily have gone into his skull. People are like birds. That part of the skull is thin."

  You think they could connect us to it?"

  "I bought a .22. I bought ammunition. We told the farmer we were here to find the ivory bill. We bought a boat. Look at you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Your hair. That red crest. They saw you up in a tree."

  "So what do we do?"

  "We should go away. Tomorrow. Go back to Arlington Heights."

  "And the ivory bill?"

  "Take it with us."

  "What will we do with it?"

  "I don't know."

  We finally went to bed. The house was stifling so we laid blankets on the ground behind the house and I stretched the mosquito netting over us. An owl called persistently from the woods.

  I woke in the light, but it wasn't daylight, only the moon. It hung above the tree line, huge and yellow and it illuminated Robin, who lay next to me under the mosquito net. She was naked and her arms were at her sides and the moon had turned her a soft, chalky white. How do I save the silver of moonlight on skin, I thought. The light on the grass. I might as well try to save touch or the owl's song or the smell of the damp earth. Or love, for that matter.

  She stirred, brought one arm across her stomach. It can't be done, I thought. We will fumble on, knowing we cannot save any of this.

  The sheriff's car rolled to the front of the house, the tires crunching on the gravel. I came to the door and stood, waiting, while a portly man got out of the car, adjusted his trooper's hat and came toward me.

  "How can I help you, sir?" I called out.

  He came to the steps, stepped up slowly until he was on the porch in front of me. He reached out a hand.

  "I'm Sheriff Culpepper. Big Woods County."

  "Good to meet you, sheriff. What can I do for you?" I repeated.

  "Buster tells me that you're an ornithologist."

  "Who's Buster?"

  "I'm sorry," he said. "Mr. Brieser. Owner of the farm who's renting you the house."

  "I'm not exactly an ornithologist."

  "That's what he said you told him."

  "I'm an amateur ornithologist. I know a lot about birds."

  "That so? He says you came down here to find the Lord God bird."

  "The Ivory Billed Woodpecker. I think there may still be some alive."

  "So folks say. You've got a wife here someplace, I believe."

  "No, my wife went back up to Chicago. Her mother is sick."

  "That so?"

  "Yes, sir. She left about a week ago."

  "Well, Buster said he didn't see much of her these past few weeks. He says she's a little bitty woman."

  "I guess you could say that. She's not very big."

  "You go back into the Big Woods much, mister"-he paused. "I'm afraid I don't know your name."

  "Hamrick. Jacob Hamrick. Jake"

  "Well, Mr. Hamrick, Buster says you got yourself a boat and you spend a lot of time back in the bayou. That so?"

  "Mr. Breiser seems to know a lot about what I do."

  "It's a small community, Mr. Hamrick. There's not much that goes unnoticed around here."

  "That's why I came here. To try to find that bird. Yes,
I go back into the woods in a boat. Is there some reason I shouldn't be doing that?"

  "No. Lots of folks go into the woods. Hunt, Fish. Your wife ever dress up like a Lord God bird?"

  "Why in the world would she do that?"

  "That wasn't my question, Mr. Hamrick. My question was, does she ever dress up like one of them birds?"

  "Good God, no."

  "Were you back in the bayou on Thursday, Mr. Hamrick?"

  "Yes."

  "You own a gun, do you?"

  I thought for a moment. If he knew as much about us as he seemed to, it would do no good to lie. The man who had sold me the gun had, no doubt, told him.

  "Yes. I use it to shoot rats."

  "You mind showing me that gun, Mr. Hamrick?"

  "I would if I could. I had it with me in the bayou a couple of weeks ago and it got lost over the side of the boat."

  "Well now, that's a shame. Nobody likes to lose a firearm, that's for sure.

  You see anybody else when you were back in the bayou on Thursday, Mr. Hamrick."

  "No."

  "You didn't happen to see one of them birds, did you?"

  "If I had, I'd be telling the whole world about it."

  "My problem is," he said, pausing to look at the crows that were going overhead. "I've got a fellow over to Crossett who got shot in the head last Thursday while he was in the Big Woods, and his cousin says they saw one of them birds, and Billy shot it. Billy is the fellow who got shot. By somebody who had a small caliber rifle, which, coincidentally, is pretty much what you bought from Ray Lewis about a month ago."

  "Are you saying I shot somebody?"

  "I'm not saying you did. I'm not saying you didn't. I'm just asking questions, Mr. Hamrick. I certainly wish you hadn't lost that rifle."

  "So am I."

  "You planning on staying here for a while longer, Mr. Hamrick?"

  "I don't see why not. I haven't found the bird I've been looking for, although they say it's been seen in Texas near the border and I may go on down there if this doesn't pan out."

  "Well, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know before you go anyplace," he said.

  "This fellow who got shot, is he OK?"

  "You take a bullet to the head and you aren't OK, Mr. Hamrick."

  "Is he dead?"

  "No, but he might as well be. Bullet went right in through his left ear hole, mixed up his brains a bit. He ain't never going to be the same."

  "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "Well, be that as it may. Somebody shot him and my job is to find out who did it."

  "And they say he shot an Ivory bill?"

  "That's what his cousin says. We didn't find it. Could have been some other kind of woodpecker, though."

  "Be hard to mistake one of those for something else."

  "His cousin, Junior, isn't the brightest bulb in the package. I wouldn't get your hopes up." He paused.

  "You got an address for your wife's folks up in Chicago, Mr. Hamrick?"

  "She's staying with an aunt. I'm afraid I don't have the aunt's address, but she said she'd be back in a week. When she comes back I'll let you know. Although I'm not sure what you need with her."

  "You never can tell, Mr. Hamrick. You mind telling me where you keep your boat?"

  "At the end of the county road that goes into Big Woods just past Louanne. It's chained to a tree, covered with brush."

  "You Chicago folks aren't the trusting kind, are you?"

  "I didn't want somebody to steal it."

  He smiled. "Down here, somebody might borrow your boat, but it would get put back where he found it."

  I tried to remember if I had cleaned out the boat, taken the bucket of mud, any feathers from the cloak.

  "I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything to anybody about Billy and his cousin seeing that bird. It would just bring all kinds of folks down here and things might get confused. And if you were to ask me, I'm not all that sure they saw a Lord God bird."

  He turned and looked off toward the woods at the far end of the corn field.

  "What makes you so interested in a bird that just maybe don't even exist any more?" he said.

  "I'm not sure."

  "If I was to drive all the way down here from Chicago and live in a house like this and go out into them woods and get half-eaten by mosquitoes, I think I'd be sure."

  "Maybe it's because everybody says there aren't any of them left. You ever see a picture of the Ivory bill, Sheriff?"

  "I guess everybody down around here has, at one time or another."

  "Audubon painted a picture with three of them in it. You know who Audubon was, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "I saw that picture when I was ten. Ever since then, I've wanted to see one alive"

  "And how old are you now, Mr. Hamrick?"

  "Nineteen."

  "You're a young man." He paused, turned to look back at me. "Sometimes young men do rash things. I hope you haven't done anything rash, Mr. Hamrick."

  16.

  I needed to do something with the body of the bird. There was no point in trying to stuff it. I didn't have the right tools or the right materials. But I could make a study skin, preserve it, only I needed borax and a sharp tool for cutting into small places and some tweezers. In the drugstore in Crossett I found a box of Twenty-Mule Team Borax, and I knew that it was the kind used for washing clothes, and wasn't as strong as the borax used in taxidermy, but it would have to do. I would buy some salt and use that to help cure the skin. I bought a box of cotton balls, a pair of stout scissors and I searched until I found a pair of tweezers that were long and narrow and a straight razor with a bone handle.

  The town was, as usual in midday, almost deserted, but I had the feeling that people were watching me. That I was the stranger from the north who looked for the Lord God Bird and I had pulled the trigger that had scrambled Billy's brains.

  Back at the house I laid the bird on the wooden counter next to the tiny metal sink. I filled the sink with water. Robin said she wanted to watch but when I made the first incision, she disappeared.

  "Don't go out where anyone can see you," I called out, but there was no answer. I knew she would go into the corn field, which was now head-high.

  I inserted the point of the scissors into the incision at the base of the tail and began to cut up toward the base of the bill. The bill was white and long and the end was worn and the eyes were still yellow, staring at me in reproach. Using my hand as a measurement, it was perhaps twenty inches long and the wingspread was almost as much as my own outspread arms. I opened the bird and began to peel the skin from the flesh, using the razor, careful not to cut into the skin or dislodge the feathers. It was already hot and I was sweating and I took off my shirt and then my pants until I stood naked at the sink, dipping my hand into the water in the sink so that I could keep the flesh damp and flexible.

  When I had cleaned out the body cavity, I took the neck, peeled the skin away, and using the razor and the scissors, hacked it off as close to the skull as I could. Using the tip of my pocketknife I picked out the remains of the stump and I used the knife and the tweezers to empty the skull cavity.

  What did your little brain hold, I wondered. Did you know that there were so few of you left? They kept cutting down the woods where you live, and your world got smaller and smaller. Leave or die, they kept saying, but you stayed.

  I scraped the skin carefully, cleaning off the shreds of flesh, soaking up the moisture with cotton balls. I mixed the borax with corn meal and shoved it into the skull, soaking up whatever was left of the brains, emptying it out, pressing more borax and corn meal into the body cavity.

  When I was finished, I peeled several boards from the back of the house and stretched the skin on them. It looked like a great feathery crucifix.

  We decided that we would wait until dark to leave. Hopefully the Sheriff wouldn't be watching although I suspected that he wouldn't let us go off without trying to stop us. Still, we seemed to have no c
hoice. Robin took the straight razor and shaved off the rest of her hair. Her small head was smooth and I rubbed my hands over it and held it, kissing the top of it and I told her things would be all right.

  But that evening, as it grew dark, I heard cars coming into the field in front of the house and when I looked out, there were several pickup trucks, a beat-up sedan and two motorcycles between our car and the main road. Men were climbing out, coming toward the house. I grabbed the .22 and chambered a round.

  They stopped when they got to my car, and they gathered around it and began to rock it from side to side, Eventually, it teetered on two wheels and tipped over, rolling on one side with the crunch of breaking glass.

  "Hey! Birdman!" yelled one of the men.

  I didn't reply.

  "Birdman! We know you're in there. You and that fucking cunt who dresses up like a bird. We know you're in there!"

  The heat was thick, pressing down, an oven that had been left open. Sweat ran down my arms and my face. Robin was beside me, her naked head shining, but she said nothing, just watched out the window next to me.

  "Hey birdman!" he shouted again. The other men were fanning out, going around the house. Two of them disappeared from sight. They had what looked like axe handles in their hands. Another man was taking more axe handles from the back of one of the pickups, tossing them to those who caught them, like baseball players who were waiting their turn at bat.

  "You put a bullet in my cousin's head, you Yankee son of a bitch." He started toward the house. The others began to move as he did.

  "You take one more step and I'll put a bullet in your head," I called out, and he stopped.

  "Well, how about that?" He turned to the man next to him. ""Sounds like we got ourselves a birdman in a cage."

  Beyond him I could see the plume of dust as another car came down the county road. I leveled the .22 at his head. The dust settled and the white police car turned across the field, coming to a stop behind the line of trucks and cars. The portly sheriff stepped out as they turned toward him.

  "Emmet Johnson, you better have yourself a good excuse for this party or there's going to be hell to pay," he called out.