The Blue Hour

by Laura Pritchett

  “And in love.”

  “Yes. That too.”

  “It doesn’t bother me. The age difference.”

  He looked over at her. “Me either. Besides, Jess is an old soul.”

  She held his gaze. “Plus, when people find happiness. Well, you know. Let them just feel it for as long as it lasts.”

  His eyes blurred with tears and he was about to make a joke about that—how he was prone to being a soft crybaby—but she reached out, held his chin in her hand, and without any warning or pause, she tugged his face toward her. Their lips touched, a small gentle tug, and then she pulled back but held her gaze steady. He had hoped for exactly this; still he was startled by this new knowledge about the rest of his life.

  The crows came in waves. Some groups swooped down in the field in front of them, some to the left, some came right over them to go farther east. The black blur of them looped, rose up, cackled and whirred, swooped to the side. Antoinette clicked her counter and he murmured his estimates by tens, though he was having trouble concentrating. Sixty years since the last new kiss; a long time, to be sure, and until a few weeks ago, he’d been operating on the idea that he’d not have another.

  When finally there was a lull, they leaned in toward each other, tallying.

  “About seventy-five, that’s what I got,” she said, staring down at the clipboard, perhaps too embarrassed now to look up.

  He nodded. “I had ninety, so let’s put eighty. My age.”

  She recorded the number and they stood, facing the mountains, eyes searching for more.

  “Are you very cold?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “It aches. This cold.”

  “We’ll warm up soon.”

  “I wish I had more time. I do like living.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “No. If you want me to be honest.”

  “I do. Want you to be honest, that is. We should be honest with each other.”

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat, looked at the sky.

  “There’s so much to lose, otherwise.”

  “There always is.”

  “She wasn’t easy, was she?”

  “No.”

  “You’re probably glad not to be taking her into town. To the doctors and such.”

  “Those Alzheimer’s Association meetings, they were fine, I miss those a bit. I made a few friends there. Renny Cross, for instance. I miss seeing her.”

  “But Dora had that ailment. She never felt very good.”

  “An autoimmune disorder.” He stamped his feet again, begging for the flow of blood. “It seemed like the diagnoses and the way it took hold of her body was in continual motion, but one thing that stayed constant was that she was miserable.”

  “She was depressed a lot.”

  “Well, chicken and egg. One makes the other worse. I sometimes think this world is making people sick.”

  “Zach.” She looked at him and then went back to looking to the mountains. “You’ve had a tough row to hoe. Most of us do. Living is just hard. But yours has been particularly difficult.”

  “I have this mountainside. These birds. This view. Here with you.” This last bit, he hoped, would elicit a smile, but it did not. She had a pensive, serious look.

  “I don’t mean to be disrespectful,” she finally said. “But I never liked her much. I feel like I should say that now, I want it to be known, in case it matters to you—”

  “Don’t worry. Not many people did.”

  “You didn’t think of leaving her?”

  He glanced over at her. “’Course I did. Doesn’t most everyone?”

  “And?”

  He let his eyes roam across the mountain again, across all the shades of white, the shadows on the north-facing slopes. “Couldn’t do it. She’d tried to be a good mother, gave me my kids. And some of it was brain chemicals, a disease, stuff she didn’t ask for or deserve. She could have tried quite a bit harder. On that matter, I am sure. But I’m not a leaving sort of man. You can’t just go walking away from some stuff.”

  Antoinette looked at the sky. “I wish your soul well, Dora. I do. I hope you’re warm and safe and comfortable and peaceful. But sometimes I’m angry with you on behalf of my friend, here, Zach, you see, and I feel like I should just admit it aloud.” Then she finally looked at him. “So you’re eighty?”

  “Just turned.” He was nervous about that; a good bit older than she was, but she was smiling and nodding at something behind him. “On the wire. Pigeons or doves?” Suddenly, again, there was a flush of counting. One hundred sixty starlings, forty-five more crows, twenty doves, two song sparrows, five chickadees. Then the birds settled and stilled. No new ones came; none of the current ones left.

  “Let’s sit in the car for a moment to warm up,” she said, and when they were there, with the heater running, she said, “Do you ever feel that you gave the world more than it gave you?”

  “Well, I’m not sure the world ever owed me anything.” He looked over at her, her nose red and her cheeks pale from cold, her lipstick worn off, her lips chapped, a little more worn down than she was this morning. “I’ve been thinking on something of late, though. About the eras of our lives. Mine have been much like everyone else’s, I suppose. Happy childhood years, though growing up can be difficult. Then early twenties, the flush of it all. Then the child-rearing years that came a bit too early and were a bit too hard, but had their moments of good. That blurred into the career years.”

  “That’s when you became serious about this. This birding.”

  “Yes. Taught the kids as I taught myself.”

  “And then?”

  “Those overlapped with the Taking Care of Dora Years. Then the Alzheimer’s Years. Now I’m at the cusp of something new.” He wanted to say more but couldn’t quite form the words. Something about how they could be called the Alone Years. Or Peaceful Years. Or, Southern Sun Years, because when the sun was this far south, it reminded him a bit of death, of the end of the journey. Or maybe, just maybe, it would be the Years of Spotting Something Rare and Beautiful. But before he could get a word out, she’d climbed back out of the car, and they stood on the road again, counting a complicated mixture of starlings and redwings. It was December 17, Bird Count Day, and this particular day was as rare and special as he’d ever have.

  Waterfowl, particularly the geese, moved around less during the middle of the day. That meant the best counting at the lakes was done between eleven and two. There were two lakes; one down low, and this one, smaller and up in the meadow.

  Visiting the meadow would be tough because of Sy, but it couldn’t be avoided. There’d be some waterfowl and it would likely be the best place for raptors; the golden and bald eagles were strong, both the adults and the juvies. In the cottonwoods by the south side, if anyone could spot them, would be the great horned owls.

  As soon as they stepped from the car, his eye stopped on a strange shape in the frozen expanse of meadow; it was the remnants of a bonfire, it looked like. But then another strange shape caught his eye, on the other side, near the trees. Two bald eagles, enormous.

  They stood, staring at one another. They at the bald eagles, the bald eagles at them.

  “My god,” he breathed.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  They stayed like that for five heartbeats, six, seven, and then one of the eagles took off and then the other. He felt Antoinette shake herself away from the magic and back into herself. “Oh, Sy,” she said. “I miss him. He was such a good veterinarian. This place . . .”

  He glanced at her. It was at Sy’s funeral where this idea had bloomed in the both of them, and they both knew it, though neither had yet said a word about it. How had it happened? At the reception, she had done something—he wasn’t even sure what—a vague warmth, flirtation, hint? A strange silent signal? It was akin, he decided, to the dings of the warming metal things he’d just heard; how his heart suddenly pinged wit
h a small ray of warmth sent toward it. He cleared his throat to say something about that moment, but Antoinette spoke first. “I can’t believe how this day started.”

  “Oh, well. I shouldn’t have . . . Dora’s brain—”

  She laughed. “No, I meant Bird Count Day. How people would go out this time of year and shoot as many birds as they could. And now. It has evolved into the best day. Audubon changed everything. Stop shooting the birds, count them. ”

  He stamped his feet again; the ache was intense. “For me, it’s like hearing the national anthem. Everyone coming together, everyone across the whole nation, counting the birds. Citizen science at its best.”

  They could see some of the other counters from a distance, across the lake, but he didn’t see any birds. If they were out there, they were being still, and without motion, they were invisible among the jumble of tree branches and undergrowth. He turned to her. “How much longer you got those grandkids?”

  “Till Diego is back. Another year or so.”

  “That was a raw deal.”

  “It was.”

  “Although he shouldn’t have been stealing cars, I suppose.”

  “There’s some. Canada or a cackling?”

  He paused and looked at the sky. “Cackling. They have faster wingbeats.”

  She marked her sheet and said, “No, he shouldn’t have. But it was mostly a drunken ‘I’m-a-single-dad-cutting-loose-with-my-friends thing,’ not a regular habitual activity. And now the kids, without their dad around.”

  “Did you know,” he said, “that there are eighty-six billion neurons in the brain and that there are one hundred trillion synapses between them? And those kids already have them all. How you keeping up with them?”

  “They’re in school during the days now,” she said. “I’m cutting back on my hours at Moon’s. It’s true, that I come with them. I wouldn’t mind dating a man who enjoys kids, wants to teach them a thing or two. Sees them as an asset, rather than a burden. Embraces the full catastrophe of life. What did you say recently about Sy making us all braver? That his death would teach us to reach out more?”

  “Did I say that aloud?”

  “I thought you did. Maybe I was just thinking it too. Surely we all are. Otherwise, the grief of standing in this meadow is too great to bear.”

  The Rare Bird Documentation Form was his favorite of all the forms, and, in particular, he appreciated that there were exactly three ways of being rare. Also, that he got to check a box on the matter: Unusual Species _______, Unusual Date ________, and Unusual Habitat ______.

  He sat in the car staring at the form while Antoinette tucked herself in the trees to pee. If he had any power, if he were god, he’d let each person fill out one today; his wish was that everyone would see something unique. Not so much if the rare sighting meant climate change, which was foreboding and gave him a sick feeling in the stomach, but a good kind of rarity. To see something startling—plumage or vocalization or behavior—was what they all needed. That’s what brains and hearts needed to grow.

  “Name the species you consider ID contenders and explain how you eliminated them,” the form said. This gave him pause. It sounded like the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, which could have been a lot of things that slowly got eliminated. Not a brain tumor. Not depression. Not normal cognitive decline. He glanced at the trees but there was no sign of Antoinette, so he picked up a form and filled it out for Dora.

  Species: Dora

  Age: 78

  Sex: F

  Date of Observation: The last 7 or so years.

  Place: The Village of Blue Moon Mountain.

  Distance from species: Close up

  Viewing Conditions: Constant and uninterrupted

  Photo taken, video, sound recording: All yes.

  Optics used: Microscope of brain slice.

  Other observers: Everyone on the mountain.

  Was this report done from notes made during observation or from memory? Both.

  Notes: Not rare. Familiar because of time together, familiar disease, familiar footfall of fate. Uncaring and indifferent universe that owes us nothing.

  He did it quickly, without much thought, and there was no sign yet of Antoinette, so he filled out another for her. Antoinette. Dark eyes. Crooked lipstick. Large. Bright red plumage. Rare find. Very beautiful. Indifferent universe that owes us nothing but sometimes treasures are found nonetheless. He thought he might be able to check all three boxes.

  Unusual species: Happy human, yes.

  Unusual date: So late in life, yes.

  Unusual habitat: Falling in fondness at a funeral, yes.

  He’d wondered about that, if he cared for her, or if it just so happened to be a matter of convenience and random order. Or just biology and human psychology and oxytocin and endorphins and yet he’d fallen for her, in the same way people all over the world fell for one another, which was simply by thinking and feeling in the other’s presence, and thereby seeing better, noticing more, as with the birds.

  He hoped she felt the same, and he was getting the idea that perhaps she did. He liked that saying about the brain: “What fires together gets wired together,” and thus tender connection would get wired to Bird Count Day, for example, and the two would always be connected in their brains. He so much wanted his brain to change, to be rewired for this final era, to be as bright and alive and smart and curious as possible.

  She came to the car and he hid the forms underneath the others on his clipboard. As she started driving, he smiled to himself. Perhaps he’d send them in to Audubon. As the count compiler of this region, he had a bit of influence, after all, and shouldn’t everyone see something strange from time to time? Today, for instance, he’d seen and touched his first real human brain, and kissed a new woman for the first time in sixty years, seen two bald eagles in a tree, and it was still early.

  “Welcome to Count Headquarters,” he said as each birder arrived at his home. “You’re part of a great tradition, going back one hundred seventeen years.” They would nod and hug him or shake his hand, or, in the case of Flannery, pat him on the head and say, “You sweet dear.” They came in pairs, stomping off snow. Some were laughing, but some were wincing, miserable because of the cold, and he didn’t blame them. It was bitter out there, and that was his job, to cheer and to warm and to keep the spirits high.

  Wendell was sitting at the table, holding his head in his hands, staring forlornly at a form. He likely didn’t want to fill it out, because that would require the spotter’s contact info, and he was not interested in sharing the fact of his existence. Flannery, after using the bathroom and pouring herself a cup of tea and adding some whiskey, settled herself next to him and started in on one, conferring with him from time to time. He thought he heard her say something about moving off the mountain come spring, maybe with her cousin Dandelion, and thought to ask her about it, but others were coming in, then—first Ruben and Jess, happy and full of love, and then Violet and Ollie, also full of love. Sergio and some friends from town piled out of the truck with something—what was that?—the skull of an elk they’d found. Angela and Lillie and Wyn came huffing in, complaining of the cold but happy all the same. Then Gris came in; she’d been babysitting Antoinette’s three grandkids, and now had to go to work at Moon’s. Suddenly there was chatter everywhere, a flock of whirs and cackles, catching up on lives and talking about the birds—the feeder versus field preference, the high number of crows this year. One of the kids tripped and was crying, and Antoinette was tending to her, and Flannery went to help, and Wendell was putting another log in the fire.

  He closed his eyes so he could feel it all. All this! He opened his eyes and they settled on Antoinette, who was now getting the kids coloring on the back of his extra forms with a handful of pens she’d scavenged from around the house. One spilled apple cider and the other one wanted to add a log to the fire and he didn’t think he would mind the chaos of it much, or, at least, he wanted to give
it a try. Nothing in life was easy. Whether opening a plastic bucket or standing in the cold or seeing if a relationship would work; it was all hard work. His eyes caught Antoinette’s and they both smiled, full with the knowledge that they had a secret between themselves, that they were going to give this a whirl.

  He needed to tell Dora. Just this last thing, to say it aloud to her, out of an old and worn obligation. He’d bury the brain as soon as the ground wasn’t so frozen, and with it he would also bury everything ugly, and clear his brain of all the things he could only admit to himself, the bitterness and raw rage and exhaustion, the guilt for the times he had not been kinder, and the resentment that he had felt far too deeply. It was either that or succumb, and he had always hoped he’d enter old age gracefully. That was the real thing here, of course, to fight for gratitude and spunk.

  He found her in the shed, still in the bucket, which was in the box. He didn’t want to talk to the box, or the bucket, and so he went to the trouble of prying off the lid again—despite the fact that he was very cold, and now each of his bones ached with a particular ping—and stared in at the brain. “I’m sorry it wasn’t better for you,” he said to the box. “I said it all the time, and I meant it. I’m going to go on now. Start anew. I wanted to do what was right. Death is our debt to nature, our debt to being born in the first place. We have a debt to life too.”

  He put her back and started his trek to the house, walking carefully in the rut of packed snow. The sun was above him at its noon-high position and still very far south and was a dull glow behind the clouds. He glanced from it to the bird feeder, where there were sparrows and one mourning dove. They’d likely all be dead by now, had he not been feeding them; the winter had been too cold, too windy.

  Something small caught his eye. A flash of blue. He breathed in. Tugged at his throat. It looked like a lazuli bunting, but that would be impossible.

  And yet it was. Simple as that. He went in the house. “Everyone, everyone, please!” He did not yell it but said it with such emotion that everyone was at once stilled. He was crying, in fact, and once they recovered from the startle of seeing this old man with a wet face standing there in such an unapologetic and unfettered way, they gathered, some at the kitchen window, others at the sliding glass door, both of which offered a view of his feeder. There it was. All of them documenting it, cameras clicking and gasps and note recordings. The orange-yellow throat. The gray wings, the white belly, and above all else, the bright blue head. “A lazuli bunting,” several of them said, which confirmed it. Then there was a long stretch of silence, and then the chatter broke out all at once, in fragments from every direction.