The Lord God Bird

by Russell Hill

  The third day I saw him.

  27.

  I heard the sound of the outboard motor long before I saw the boat. I poled the pirogue into some palmettos and waited for it to pass. But when it came into sight I recognized the man sitting in the boat, one hand on the arm of the motor, slowing as he approached, cutting the motor and letting the boat drift silently toward the base of the tree.

  His tan shirt had half-moons of dark sweat under the arms and across his back. I watched while he floated, looking up into the tree, then across the water toward where I hid. I remained motionless, frozen, my breath coming in shallow exhalations through pursed lips.

  It was the portly sheriff and he drifted for some moments, the boat turning in a slow circle while he looked up into the trees. He looked again at the palmetto thicket where I was hidden and pulled the motor to life, the noise shattering the silence of the bayou. He moved slowly off, in the direction he had come and I waited until the sound had faded before I came out. He was still looking for something and perhaps he was looking, as I was, for Robin. That he had come to the same tree where the bird had been shot told me he had been there before. He had probably been guided there by the man who had been with Billy when I had scrambled his brain. No one else would have known the exact tree.

  When I told Robert I had seen the sheriff in the bayou at the tree where the bird had been shot he said, "He lookin,' same as you."

  "Is he looking for Robin or for me?"

  "He lookin' for her, knows that if he find her, he find you."

  "So he's still trying to track me down."

  "They say he a stubborn man. Not like the sheriff we got. He content to let things lay so long as they's no aggravation in Union Parish. But the sheriff of Big Woods County, he the kind of dog what don't let go. You gots to hit that kind of dog with a stick, beat some sense into him 'fore he gets eat by a panther."

  "You suggesting I beat some sense into that man?"

  "No. I just tellin' you what is. You gots to be careful, pokin' 'round the woods."

  I spent more time in the bayou and in the woods north of there but no one had seen anything of a woman or heard anything like the sound I described. Sometimes I whacked the two pieces of wood together like the sound of the ivory bill slamming at a tree trunk, but I never got any answer.

  It was darker now, Fall had come on and there was cold rain.

  Then I saw him again. I was sleeping at the old house, careful not to tramp down the weeds in front of it, never lighting a lamp. Crows rose on the trail leading to the house, rising in a raucous cloud, a sure sign that someone was coming. I thought it might be Robert, but I took my pistol and went to the outhouse, closing the door so that I could look out through the cracks. He came out of the woods into the clearing and waited, staring at the house.

  I watched as he approached the shack carefully, sidling along the wall, peering in the window. He grew bolder, went to the door, opened it slowly and stood back. He disappeared inside and I slipped out of the outhouse, stood behind it with the door left open, my pistol in my hand. I eased the safety off. It seemed a long time before he reappeared. He stood in the doorway, surveying the clearing in front of the shack, looking back at the track where he had come, then at the outhouse. He stepped down onto the dirt and came toward me.

  "I know you're somewhere, Hamrick," he called out. "Maybe you're hiding in the shitter. Maybe you're in the brush some place, but I can smell you. If I don't find you today, I find you tomorrow."

  He came to the outhouse, looked in the open door to make sure I wasn't there, then turned toward the house.

  "Maybe you're here, maybe you aren't. But I'll be back." He took a step forward and I stepped out behind him, clamping my arm around his neck, pulling his head back abruptly and with the other hand I pressed the .38 to the side of his head.

  "You found me, sheriff. And if you move a muscle I'll spread your brains all over the ground."

  I pressed the muzzle of the pistol harder against his temple. He stood still. I could feel the heat from his sweaty body, the softness of him pressing against me. His hat had come off and his hair was wet, thinning and slicked back.

  "You won't shoot me," he said.

  "I shot your boy in the woods, put a bullet in his brain."

  "That was different. I don't think you're the kind of man who can pull a trigger on me. Mister Hamrick"

  "Last time I saw you, you called me boy."

  "The last time you saw me I offered to give your wife safe passage. Looks like you made a mistake."

  "The last time I saw you was four days ago in the bayou, looking up at the tree where the Lord God bird was shot by that peckerwood whose brain I scrambled. Somebody told you where it was. And you were looking for something."

  "I was looking for you."

  "And why would you look there? Somebody tell you they saw a woman in the bayou? A woman wearing a cloak made out of feathers?"

  "There's all kinds of gossip running around. There's gossip that the Lord God Bird was seen and gossip among the niggers in Union Parish that there's a woman who's got the magic to call out to that bird and there's gossip that a white man lives among the blackies way back in the woods, but it's mostly gossip. The stuff stories are made of. Except that you're right here."

  "You're in Union Parish, sheriff." I tightened my grip on his neck. "Looks like you're out of your home county. You aren't even in your own state."

  His voice was not much more than a croak. "That don't bother me none. And it don't bother the sheriff of Union Parish none, either. You're choking me, son."

  I loosened my arm, but kept it pressed against his throat.

  "What made you go into the woods to that tree? Did somebody tell you they saw the woman in the feather cloak?"

  "I don't think she's anywhere near the woods. But gossip had it that you were back among the blackies and you were looking for her, so I went looking for you."

  "Where did you hear that I was looking for her?"

  "This place is full of secrets, but you're an outsider and no matter what you think, you ain't no secret. You gonna shoot me, Hamrick?"

  "I'm thinking about it."

  "You ain't gonna shoot me."

  "Maybe I'll find a sack full of snakes."

  "Not that, either."

  "Somebody said she was in the woods, maybe in that tree, or near it. Otherwise you wouldn't have gone there."

  "Like I said, people talk. I heard talk that somebody saw the woman in the bird suit, but I couldn't tell if it was new talk or old talk from when Billy got shot."

  "That's a lie!"

  "You believe what you want, Hamrick. I ain't seen her and I ain't talked to nobody who has."

  "So how do I find out who said they saw her?"

  "You don't. Maybe nobody saw her. Maybe it's all just talk. Why don't you talk to those blackies you been so close to? They know more about what happens in the woods than anybody."

  I loosened my arm, sliding it down to his chest, then stepped back.

  He stood a moment, catching his breath before turning to face me.

  "You ain't the skinny kid I seen before," he said.

  "No. You're still the same fat sheriff."

  "No need for that. You ain't going to shoot me, that much I'm sure of."

  "Not unless you do something stupid."

  "Not likely."

  "I'm going to tie you up," I said. "I'm going to leave you in the house and when I get far enough from here, I'll tell someone where you are. They'll come for you and you'll go back to Crossett. I'm not worth the aggravation."

  "You think I can just forget you put a bullet in Billy Galloway's brain?"

  "You mistake me for somebody who cares what you remember, Sheriff. I don't give a shit what you remember. I can tell somebody you're tied up in that house or I can forget all about you. Nobody's going to come looking for you out here, and you know that."

  He was silent. Then he spoke.

  "You let me loose and I'll go
back to where I came from and if you're gone when I look for you again, then you'll show some sense."

  "No," I said. "We'll do it my way this time. You can walk to that house or I can put a bullet in your knee and drag you."

  He turned and began walking.

  I trussed him up, hands behind his back, sitting against the wall, with his ankles bound together and a bowl of water on the floor beside him.

  "What you gonna do now?" he asked.

  "I'll go back the way I came, to Marion and from there I'll send someone to cut you loose."

  "That's all?"

  "No. I'll ask some more people about my wife. People who move about in the woods. It may be a day or two before they come for you."

  "It was a Lord God Bird what Billy shot, wasn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "I thought so. Everybody said there wasn't no more of them. They all died out when the loggers came. But you and your wife saw one. It came to her. Story has it she was dressed like one of them way up in that tree. Is that true?"

  "Yes."

  "You believe she could call the bird like the blackies say?"

  "I don't know what they say."

  "Some of them say she had some kind of charm that the bird could hear a long way off."

  "I don't want to talk about her any more, sheriff."

  "Suit yourself. You gonna leave me here, then?"

  "That's right. Maybe you got some kind of charm to call somebody to find you."

  28.

  When I got to Robert's house there was a knot of people gathered. I found Esther who had a black shawl over her shoulders. Some women were in the house at the stove and there was food on plates on a plank in the center of the room. People stared at me, and there were faces I had never seen.

  "Jake," Esther said. "Robert dead."

  It took a moment for her words to register.

  "How?" I said. "When?"

  "Yesterday," she said. "He just give up, I find him sleepin' in the shade by the church only he don't wake up. He gone to Jesus."

  "He was your father?"

  "No. He like everbody to think he my daddy. But he my granddaddy."

  "How old was he?"

  "Old as Methuslah. He be a boy in the fields when they freed the slaves. Then he come back in the bayous and he live here ever since."

  "So he was ninety years old?"

  "Maybe more than that. He never know for sure when he was born. My mama run off when I was a chile. He and my grandma raise me. Then she die."

  "I'm so sorry," I said. "He was a good man. He took us in. He cared for Robin and me when we were in trouble."

  "Not you. The girl was what he said was special. He think she got some hoodoo and she call the Lord God bird to her."

  "What was hoodoo?"

  "That be what Robert knows from his grandma. That be special charms what come from Africa. He mix it with the Lord's words. He say it make powerful charms."

  "Not enough to keep Robin from harm."

  Esther reached out to stroke my arm, as if to reassure me.

  "Robert say she not of this earth. Robert say when he was a boy the woods was full of the Lord God bird. That bird have a special magic. But they cuttin' the woods down and the bird gone away. Nobody see one 'til your lady call out to it."

  "I can't find her, Esther," I said. "I don't mean to add to your troubles, but I can't find her and the sheriff from Big Springs found me. I've left him tied up in the house where we lived."

  "You not goin' to find her," Esther said.

  "How do you know that?"

  "She talk 'bout another bird in the woods. She say that the other bird would be the daddy bird and it be looking for the lady bird what got shot. She dress up like the lady bird so she might talk to that other bird."

  "She told you this?"

  "She told it to Robert."

  "Why didn't you tell me this? Why didn't Robert tell me?"

  She turned away from me to embrace a woman who had come in the door and I stood, waiting. A blackness had descended in the room and I had trouble breathing, as if my chest had suddenly collapsed against my spine. When she turned back to me I repeated the question.

  "Robert say you got to spend some time lookin' for her yourself. Maybe you see the Lord God bird, too. I tell him he should tell you what he knows, but he a stubborn man. He say it be good for you to go in the bayou where she was."

  "Did he expect me to find her?"

  "No. He knows you won't find her."

  "How did he know that?"

  "He find her hisself when he find his pirogue. She fall from that tree."

  I was suddenly cold.

  "She was dead?"

  "He say creatures had carry part of her off. The feathers was still there. He say he take care of her and when you come back he tell me to keep quiet, let you work it out for yourself."

  She touched my arm again and said, "I gots to tend to these folk. We bury Robert this morning in the churchyard. They all come to pay their respecks."

  I found Ezra among the people gathered outside the house and told him that there was a white sheriff tied up in the house we had lived in.

  "What you expeck me to do?" he asked.

  "You can let somebody know, get word to the sheriff of Union Parish. He's got water, he'll be all right for a day or two."

  Ezra said he would do that, but I could tell that he was nervous and wanted me gone. Robert was no longer there and I was a danger to them all, a magnet that would draw white men, upsetting the delicate balance of their lives.

  Something moved in the dirt at my feet and I bent to look and it was a wasp. It was dragging a beetle twice as large as it was, pulling it along. The insect had been paralyzed by the wasp's sting and its legs moved sporadically but the wasp was determined, sometimes buzzing its wings, towing the carcass a jerk at a time. It came to some rocks and pulled the insect under the edge of a rock, pushing at it, tucking it out of sight before backing off and flying away.

  I did not know if I were the wasp or the stunned beetle. One moment I had been watching Robin high in a tree, and the next moment something happened and she was gone. I tried to imagine her by herself, climbing the cypress, and I knew that things had gone wrong, that she was like the half-paralyzed beetle, climbing only because it was somehow familiar, as if she could once again bring back the bird and the house where we made love and the long slow nights and then I was the wasp, busily tucking her body under a rock, stowing it away where it was safe. I felt empty. I was the skin the snake had shed. I remembered Robin saying she had felt like the empty snake skin and now I felt that way, too.

  I stumbled off through the woods toward Marion but I didn't go north. I ended up in New Orleans and then went east. They said there were ivory bills in the swamps of northern Florida and I spent two years there. I guided some biologists from a university the second year but we never found any sign of the ivory bill

  Sometimes, when I was out among the northern Florida rivers I thought about Robin. An egret flashed white in the sun, low across the green water and another one slowed, wings outstretched, stopping gently on the muddy edge.

  And in my head was a Louisiana egret, standing on a rock, fixing its golden eye on us, its sharp beak as yellow as a school pencil and then there was a swallow and the soft coo of a pigeon and the quickness of breath and the rising of a thousand egrets, their wings filling the air and she shuddered and the birds were gone, the echo of their wings still in the empty air.

  The cloud of birds returned, egrets again, so many of them settling over the water, turning it into a pulsing white surface, the current slowly moving them downstream, piling some of them against rocks where they flapped their wings and moved to float again and in the rapids they rose and half-flew and settled again, pooling in the quiet water. She rose and fell, only to rise again, over and over and over until the birds emptied into the sea.

  A woodpecker in the forest beyond the river drummed on a tree, and a meadowlark somewhere beyond the ca
ttle trilled and it was silent, the heat rising from the brown grasses and she was filled with lassitude and wanted only to sleep or to lie in the shade until dusk came. Overhead a single crow, black against the hazy blue rowed silently toward the wood.

  I heard the sound of falling water inside my head and I pursed my lips and there was softness and muscle. I imagined cracked crab and chilled wine and the shadows lengthened on the river. A bird called from the wood, a clear bell-like voice as if it were speaking to us. She slept, her arm under her head and I watched the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her rib cage and I picked the hair off her cheek and tucked it back. All of this was in my head with the falling water.

  29.

  I went back to Arlington Heights several years later and found that my father had died and that my mother no longer lived in the house on South Mitchell Street. My brother had graduated from college and was working in Chicago. The lilacs were still there.

  I have not been back to Arlington Heights since then. Sometimes I think of Robin standing in the empty room of the tiny house we rented from the farmer, naked, her arms lifted.

  "Imagine I'm a bird," she says. "What kind of a bird do you want me to be?"

  "Right now you look like an egret," I say to her. Her skin is white, almost porcelain, and her neck seems longer and as I look at her, I imagine an egret, wings outstretched, rising to leave the water in the ditch by the roadside, lifting its wings gracefully, catching the air.

  "What does the egret sound like?" she asks.

  "Not pretty. It's a croak. As if you startled a big frog."