by Celia Jerome
He stopped, tail up, ears perked, straining forward. A skittering in the brush?
“Red, heel up.”
He didn’t, of course. I pulled him closer on his leash and got a better grip on the nylon loop in my hand in case it was a fox or a feral cat, not the usual rabbit.
Now we both heard rustling in the trees. Red gave a low growl.
I scooped him up. It might be a sleepy squirrel or a bird, but no night-hunting owl was going to get my little dog. Red growled again, at me, not the owl.
I admit I was spooked, imagining threats without seeing any. “Hush up.”
The big dogs didn’t bark. I took that for a good sign, except one couldn’t hear, the other barely saw. Watchdogs, they weren’t. So why hadn’t I brought the flashlight out with me, instead of relying on the light from the porch and the windows? It was one of those big suckers with rechargeable batteries that weighed a ton, if one were thinking of swinging it at someone’s head.
Of course I was back up on the porch by this time, my cell phone in my hand ready to dial 911. My other hand, with Little Red in it, could still reach for the front doorknob.
I waited.
Nothing stirred but the hairs on the back of my neck. And I had to get Buddy and Shad back in the house.
Then I heard it. Not the bullfrog. Not the high rustling. Not the low skittering, but a tweet. A definitely scratchy, loud, unfamiliar tweet, the way Susan had described it. Only more of a twee, without the final t. I put my hand over Red’s nose so he didn’t start yipping and there it was again, Twee, twee. Kind of plaintive, although maybe I read more into the squawks.
I called back. “Twee.” I didn’t have that abrasive rasp in my call, but a “Twee” answered back.
“Twee?”
“Twee!”
Buddy barked, his woof loud and deep. The night instantly turned silent. “Damn, you scared it away. It must think you’re some kind of bird dog, Buddy, instead of a couch dog.” I whistled the dogs inside, and shut Little Red in, too, just in case the bird turned violent. I could run faster without the Pom.
I retrieved the flashlight from beside the door and went out again, feeling brave. I left the lights on, not feeling brave enough to face an unknown entity in the dark. I did step down off the porch to the edge of the glow cast by the windows. We had floodlights for the backyard, but the noise had come from the front, maybe across the dirt road nearer to Aunt Jas’s house.
I stayed where I was but called, “Twee? Twee?” This time my voice had a hoarse tone, from trying to make less noise. I didn’t want to wake my aunt and uncle, but I did want to catch a glimpse of this life-list bird. Not that I had a life-list, or ever intended to, but hey, if I started with the rarest avis I was ever apt to see, I was ahead of the game.
I raised my voice a little, not to the raucous screak I’d heard, but almost a caw. And it answered back.
“Twee?”
Okay, I talked to Little Red all the time, and he didn’t understand much beyond cookie, out, and bad dog. Trying to hold a conversation with a wild bird—from a foreign country, no less—was dumber. Talk to it, Grandma Eve had said.
“Okay, oiaca, tell me how to get you back to your friends.”
“Twee.”
Oh, boy.
“Then come on out in the open and maybe I can—” I didn’t know what. If it had escaped from a zoo or a private collector, maybe it would land on my hand like the chickadees Matt tried to entice. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a couple of dog treats. One never went anywhere with Little Red without bribes. These were soft liver chews that couldn’t do much for my pockets or my ambient aroma, if Big Eddie were here now. They might appeal to a bird.
I never did find out if pink-toed Patagonian oiacas ate meat or flies or fruit. Liver treats were all I had. I held my hand out without looking toward where I thought the last twee had come from. Matt said wild creatures didn’t like to make eye contact. My mother said the same thing about unfamiliar dogs, which took a stare for a sign of aggression. As if I’d take my eyes off a dog ready to go for my throat. A lost oiaca, maybe. Except, again, no one said if it was a hawklike raptor. The thing could be as big as an eagle, from the volume of its call.
Thinking of calling, I realized I’d left my cell phone inside when I switched to the flashlight. Which meant no 911, and no camera to take a picture.
Someone would have said if the bird was picking off rabbits or squirrels—or dogs and cats—so I figured I was safe.
“Twee. Twee, come on, twee. I have goodies.”
I could swear I heard what sounded like a disgruntled “awgh” before a louder “twee.”
“Okay, no liver treats.” Maybe I read too much into its screeches, anthropomorphizing big time, but I put my arm down, happy to do so. I regretted my lack of time on the rowing machine, and the muscles that went with it. No matter, I rationalized. Maybe the bird saw my raised arm as a threat. Maybe it remembered an outstretched arm holding a net.
Who was I kidding? I hadn’t a glimmer of an idea of the thoughts of a thing with a head full of feathers. How much gray matter could it have in a tiny skull, anyway? I think I once heard that owls’ heads were filled with eyes and optic equipment, not brains. They relied on sight and instinct and habit. Like with everything else, no one seemed to know the oiaca’s habits or instincts. This one’s wits seemed to be leading it to certain doom. Birdbrained, for sure.
“Come on, pretty boy. Or girl.” Everyone liked flattery, I figured. “I won’t hurt you. I have carrots inside. And crackers. Polly want a cracker?” Thank God no one was nearby to hear me.
The next “twee” came softer.
Maybe Oey, for want of a better name, was farther away, maybe listening, maybe trying to figure out if I could be trusted. So I kept talking. I wished I could remember more of “Ode to a Nightingale” than “Adieu! Adieu!”
“Rockin’ Robin?” I couldn’t remember much of that ancient classic either.
“Papa’s gonna buy you … ?” Wrong image.
“Bye-bye Blackbird?” Good hint, but all I got was another “twee.”
Damn, Willy, think.
“Birds fly over—No, don’t fly away. Unless you know where your home is.”
No response, and I was out of bird songs. I never could whistle, and the “twees” weren’t getting us anywhere. “Um, okay. Once upon a time there was a mama duck and she had a nest full of eggs. Only one of them was bigger than the rest. She sat on it anyway. And then the eggs hatched and there were six little fuzzy yellow balls of ducklings, and one gawky, long-necked, grayish—”
“Awgh!”
I jumped. “All right, no bedtime stories.” But I did have the “awgh” sound down now, kind of like a pirate’s parrot’s “arrgh,” or a bird with a bad taste stuck in his throat. “Awgh, yourself. So what do you want?”
Silence. Frustrated, I wondered what everyone wanted from me. Hell, it had to be more than I had to give. It always was.
When ten more minutes went by without a sound, I got up to go inside. “If you won’t meet me halfway, I’m not wasting my time. Like I told Matt, I don’t belong here. Grandma asked me to try. I tried. Now I am going to bed. Try not to disturb the neighbors, okay? Tomorrow I’ll bring some carrots and crackers, maybe lettuce, okay? Or you could leave me a grocery list.”
I almost reached the door when I heard a sad little “twee.”
I turned around and there it was, at the very edge of the porch light’s reach. The pink-toed Patagonian oiaca bird.
It had pink toes, all right, Barbie-shoe hot pink. After that, things got dicey. I sincerely doubted this animal came from Patagonia. And I wasn’t entirely sure about the bird part, either. The darkness made the feather colors hard to distinguish, but the wings glittered in rainbow shades. The head appeared parrotlike, with a big curved beak, round eyes, and more bright feathers. It was huge, bigger than the scarlet macaw at the dry cleaners around the corner from my apartment.
The problem—one of t
he problems—was that instead of plumes at the back end, this creature had shiny scales, translucent fins, and a forked tail. Like a fish.
Holy shit, it was a parrotfish. Not the multicolored tropical variety—oh, no. This … this apparition was my freaking sea god’s freaking companion, the one I’d finally drawn an hour ago. The one that could sit on the hero’s shoulder at Spenser’s pet store, then transform itself into a fish to accompany M’ma in the water. The one that could blink in and out of shape. In and out of sight. In and out of this freaking world. I’d drawn it disappearing as a starburst, a “pock” in the frame.
Damn it, Grandma Eve must have known from the way the thing vanished. “Go talk to it,” she said.
Mrs. Terwilliger at the library must have guessed. Books on mythical beasts and tropical fish, my ass.
Double damn.
“You’re no oiaca, are you?”
It shimmered, and then the head of a fish, gills, and dorsal fin appeared, only with a long feathered tail and wings. Except the fish kept gasping. It turned back to the bird, wheezing some, catching its breath.
“Stupid creature. Fish can’t breathe air.” I watched it change, then change back, until I was dizzy. “Pick one or the other, for crying out loud.”
It picked the fish, gasping, floundering, falling on its side in the grass.
“Crap, not that one.”
It didn’t change back. The wings tried to flap, but they hit the ground. The mouth opened and closed, silently crying while the gills made a valiant effort to draw in oxygen. Shit, shit, shit. I killed it!
I ran into the fenced-in dog pen, dragged out the kiddie wading pool my mother kept for hot days, so the big dogs could sit in it and cool off. The damned thing was full of leaves and twigs and old tennis balls. I tipped it upside down and dragged it toward the gasping fish-parrot. “Wait, wait. I’ll fill it.”
I ran back around and turned on the outdoor faucet full force, unreeled the garden hose and pulled it over to the pool, trailing a solid stream of water the whole way. By now I was gasping, too. And soaked.
As soon as the bottom of the kiddie pool was covered, I tipped it to make a deeper corner until the rest filled up. The fish dove in. All I could see was a pink and blue and yellow tail, a feathered tail, sticking over the lip of the pool. I kept the hose running until it overflowed, then set the whole thing level.
I wasn’t sure if it lived. I didn’t want to put my hand in the water, either. The thing was as long as a striped bass, legal keeper-size, with a wide mouth and big teeth I’d seen while it panted for air. What the hell was I supposed to do now?
It splashed. I saw the scales glisten under the water. I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “I guess we’re both breathing okay again, huh?”
I figured the critter must have been hanging out near the pond. Or in the farm fields with the irrigation system. I’d give it some time to recover, then try again to have a conversation. I wish I had my sketches with me. No, I wish I’d burned them.
I sat on the grass, not caring that my pants got colder and damper. “Now I can’t leave Paumanok Harbor. You know that, don’t you, Oey? I bet you planned it that way.”
Another splash.
“All right, you’ve had your swim. Now get out and talk to me. If you’re like every other creature from Unity, you can do it. I’m no Verbalizer, no Translator, but I’m all you’ve got, one piss-poor Visualizer.”
The bird head rose from the water, even bigger, it seemed. Beady eyes stared right at me—so much for no eye contact—until I felt like the one being examined and threatened. Then it hopped out of the pool and kept hopping, flapping wings, waving the fish tail, bouncing into the air, swimming across the pool, screeing, “Twee! Twee!”
“Shush. You don’t want any birdwatchers sneaking back to see you.” Lord, that was the last thing we needed. “Now calm down so we can talk.”
The non-oiaca stopped hopping, but kept the fish tail wagging like a dog’s. It was happy to see me? I wasn’t happy. “Go home. Go back to your own universe. Go on, get. You don’t belong here. It’s against the rules. You’ll get me in trouble. Shoo.”
I swear it chuckled. “Haw haw.”
Then a car raced down the dirt road.
Oey disappeared. It didn’t fly away, didn’t swim away. It frigging flicked out of this world the same way the troll, the night mares, and the fireflies had all done. Pock.
Yeah, Willy, in case you didn’t know, the shit just hit the fan. Again. Awgh.
CHAPTER 9
IT WASN’T A CAR MAKING ALL THE NOISE. A beat-up black pickup rattled to a stop right at my front gate. I could smell the exhaust from the rusted-out muffler way around the corner, and choked on the dust it had kicked up. Cousin Bernie kept the old junker at the restaurant to haul garbage and fetch fresh produce from Grandma Eve’s farm. I smelled those, too.
Susan got out. Usually she came home in a taxi from wherever she’d gone after the Breakaway’s kitchen closed, so she must not have spent a lot of time in the local bars. She left the keys in the clunker and the headlights on, so I might be wrong. At least she hadn’t dragged another strange man home, or spent the night in some motel in Montauk.
“Hey, Susan. I’m over here.”
She started toward me, walking a line that could never pass a sobriety test. Then she tripped over the hose strung across the yard. She screamed louder than the bird ever had. I waited to see if lights came on at her mother’s house across the road. Aunt Jas must have taken sleeping pills tonight if those vaunted maternal instincts hadn’t woken her.
Susan got up from the wet grass, then tripped again over the pile of muck I’d dumped out of the wading pool. This time I gave her a hand up.
She squinted, shook her head, and looked me right in the eye. Definitely hostile aggression. “What the hell have you done now, Willy?”
“I—” I started to deny everything, but she’d know. She always did. I wasn’t ready to talk about Oey yet, either. Chances were she couldn’t see it or she would have called out the cavalry. The people from DUE anyway. I didn’t want them swarming around yet, not until I tried to get rid of the birdfish on my own. The agents might decide the interloper was too much of a threat to Paumanok Harbor and the rest of the world as we know it. So they might expedite its departure. In a hostile, aggressive, and permanent manner.
I went on the offensive. “Why is it always my mistake? My sin? My fault? You’re no one to speak, driving drunk like that.”
“I am not drunk. Just a little high.”
“High? That’s worse! It’s a hanging offense. Or jail time, anyway.”
“Come on, there’s never anybody on the roads so late this time of year.”
“You were on the road, and the deer are there, too.”
“The deer can hear that old bomb coming a mile away and get out of the road.”
“The police are on patrol, especially with all the robberies.”
“So what if one of Uncle Henry’s cops pulls me over? You think they’ll arrest me? Not if they want to eat at the Breakaway again. Not if they don’t want their wives to know where they hang out after work. Not if they know Grandma Eve. They’ll give me a lecture, that’s all. So you can save yours.”
She headed back around toward the front of the house. “Let’s do this again soon, huh?” This time she tripped on one of the dogs’ old tennis balls. “Fuck.”
I didn’t help her up. I was wet and filthy enough on my own, and I was so mad at her, being reckless, taking chances, scaring away the oiaca that wasn’t an oiaca, I might have rubbed her nose in the mud. “You’re too stoned to drive, and too stupid to take a cab.”
She wiped her hands on the denim shirt she wore, not the one she’d left the house in. Then she wiped her nose on the sleeve. Yeck.
“When the hell are you going to grow up?”
“When are you going to stop playing big sister? You don’t understand anything, Saint Willow, including yourself, so how
can you possibly understand me? You don’t know what it’s like to almost die, to wonder if the chemo and the radiation will work. To lose your hair and not be able to work at your job. To have to depend on other people driving you back and forth from one doctor to another. And then wait to see if the cancer has shrunk. Then wait for the three-month CAT scan to see if it’s come back, and go through that every fucking three to six months for years. With everyone watching, waiting for the bad news. And you’re sure every time someone is going to hand it to you. Then what? You start all over again, only this time is worse? No, you’ll never understand where I’m at.”
A lot of people survived worse, and didn’t make a mess of their lives. “No, I’ll never understand why you are living your life like it’s not worth anything, shacking up with every man you meet, driving under the influence of booze and who knows what else. You fought so damned hard to keep living. Why are you trying to kill yourself now?”
She put her hands on her hips and stuck her chin out. She had a smear of dirt on it, making her look like a bratty kid, not a college graduate and a professional chef.
“I am not trying to kill myself, only have a good time. I deserve that.”
I pointed to the mud up and down her, the smelly old truck with its lights on. “This is fun?”
“It’s all there is.”
“It’s all there is here in this backwater bog.” Not even I believed that, but I said it anyway, to make my point. “This place is a horrible influence if you can’t find anything to do but go to bars or beach parties. You are a fantastic cook. You can get a job anywhere, own your own restaurant. Meet people with your same interests in cooking and feeding people. Write a book, write a cooking column, take more courses. Go abroad to study with the masters.”
“Hah! You had your chance to go to Royce University in England and you turned it down. You had your chance to go to London to visit a wonderful man, an English lord, no less. You didn’t do that either!”
“We’re not talking about me, and I like my life. Enough that I don’t try to escape it every way I can. And I am fulfilling my goals, not wasting my talent. Why, you could get your own show on television.”