by Celia Jerome
I wondered if dogs worried about growing old. If they worried about making it up the stairs, or getting outside in time to avoid accidents. Were they ever concerned that no one would be around to fetch their kibble and clean their water bowls? According to my mother, Little Red feared he’d been abandoned again every time we left him alone, which kept him anxious and aggressive. She felt he acted hostile because he was afraid of being abused again, or afraid of bonding to another person who might break his heart.
I thought he had a mean streak. And a stupid streak that forgot who bought the dog food. Like now, when he was tired and wanted to be picked up. Other dogs might sit down in front of their owners, or simply stop walking. Not Little Red. He lifted his leg on my shoe to get my attention. Luckily, the well was dry by then, and also luckily I wasn’t wearing sandals. I didn’t know if I had that much tolerance in me. I picked him up anyway, tucked him inside my unzipped sweatshirt and promised to buy him a boy dog’s coat, no sissy plaid with ruffles and bows. And nothing that matched my winter jackets.
Funny how you could love something so annoying.
Which reminded me of my mother. When would she get the idea I didn’t belong in Paumanok Harbor, didn’t want a vanload of kids, didn’t feel responsible for perpetuating her genes or protecting her whole damn town?
Feeling guilty—what else were daughters and granddaughters for?—I stopped by the big house to ask if Eve wanted to go out to dinner with me, my treat.
She had a casserole in the oven. Vegetarian lasagna. Oh, boy. I locked the dogs inside my mother’s house and brought the brownies back with me.
The table was already set for two, with flowers and candles and the hand-thrown blue pottery dishes. For me? I was touched.
She handed me the garlic bread to put on the table while she carried out the lasagna. Trying not to drool, I asked, “So have there been any spottings of the oiaca today?”
“Someone thought they saw pink toes under a shrub near Jas and Roger’s house. Someone else said they heard a tweet from the field nearest the bay. I keep it for summer flowers, because the wind is too strong for tender vegetables and there’s a low spot that gets poor drainage.”
Where the parrotfish could wet its gills.
“It’ll likely flood tomorrow with the rain that’s coming.” A cold front, according to the weather station. A squall off the water late tonight, according to Bud at the gas station and Elgin, the harbormaster.
I’d trust Bud and Elgin any time. I wouldn’t be sitting outside too long, waiting for Oey to show up.
The lasagna was too hot to cut yet. I would have scooped it up with a spoon, but Grandma Eve insisted it set and firm up. I ate a piece of garlic bread. “Did anyone go check that field?”
She chuckled. “I got the Boy Scouts to lead the observers out, the long way around. For a fee. And they sold enough cans of mixed nuts to pay for a camping trip next spring. The Girl Scouts get their turn as tour guides tomorrow, if the storm passes.”
“Any problems with the cars? Anyone else giving you grief?” Her food, my concern. Fair trade.
“Only the idiots who thought they’d carry in supplies to build a platform in the middle of my corn maze. And the group that wanted to charter a plane for a flyover. They’d likely scare the poor bird to bits.”
Some bits with feathers, some with scales. The lasagna contained neither, and was as delicious as it smelled, when she finally put a serving on my plate.
“But people behaved?” I asked around a mouthful.
“Mostly, especially after I made tea for the EPA folks and the Audubon Society photographers.”
Heaven knew what was in Eve Garland’s tea. I never drank the stuff.
She smiled. “The Wildlife Federation and National Geographic people come tomorrow. I hope they’re thirsty.”
I never trusted her smiles, either. They reminded me of the witch in Hansel and Gretel inviting the children into her parlor. “Come here, my pretties.”
This time the smile seemed genuine. It made her look younger, too, more rested. I could give my mother a good report. No need to call out the reserves.
“Not much noise last night, right?”
She took another bite and nodded. “I heard some commotion from your house. Then it got blessedly quiet, thank goodness. Whatever you did seems to have brought some calm to the street. I don’t suppose you want to discuss it with me, do you?”
“You already know your visitor is not going to appear in any rare bird sighting magazine. No cell phone photo will show up on the Internet. After that, I don’t know why it’s come, or what it wants. I’ll try again tonight when it’s more vocal and may be easier to track.”
“Do you need to borrow my galoshes and rain gear? Or a heavier jacket? Bud says it might turn cold, too.”
“That’s really thoughtful of you, but I’ve got all of Mom’s stuff in the closet.”
“Here, I’ll pack up the rest of the lasagna for you so you don’t have to cook tomorrow. And don’t forget the brownies. I know how you love something sweet.”
I felt all warm and cozy. Until she said she made the lasagna for Lou—and set the pretty table for him, I supposed—but he couldn’t get out from the city. DUE had news of some psychic disturbance in the lines of power, maybe connected to that missing professor, some kind of hero in his heyday.
“None of their precogs have more specific information, so every agent is on alert.”
Lou was on a diet, too, so she didn’t want my brownies around.
I wasn’t complaining. “Maybe it’s just the coming storm throwing off the charts or the meters or the mentalists.”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised if whatever it is leads them back here, not with all the peculiar occurrences. And you’re here now.”
Which meant I’d have the whole Department of Unexplained Events on my doorstop, checking my moves? Or else they thought I caused the irregularity on whatever woo-woo counter they used. Grandma Eve obviously did.
She ranted on while she packed the lasagna, how the renovation of the old Rosehill estate into a Royce Institute outreach center was taking too long. The grand old house couldn’t pass inspection for a meeting hall without more extensive remodeling than originally thought.
Part of the delay, she griped, slapping the lasagna into three different plastic containers—“So you can freeze some for later”—was that East Hampton Township didn’t like taking Rosehill off the tax rolls as a nonprofit, or the Bayview Ranch, either, destined to become an equine rescue and training facility, also sponsored in part by the Royce people.
“They ought to be here now, not leaving us with no one but you to figure things out. That’s why the whole university got established in England, to look after the descendants with psychic abilities. Well, we’re descendants, too.”
And I was chopped liver? No one from Royce saw the troll. No one from DUE found the night mares’ missing colt or figured out the lantern beetles’ symbiosis with the blubber-shedding leviathan in the salt marshes. I did. And I’d take care of the fishbird, too. On my own. Without calling on their high and mighty experts. They couldn’t even find their missing professor.
I twee-ed all the way home, with a week’s worth of meals and a day’s worth of desserts. And determination.
They couldn’t blame me and they couldn’t make me fight their battles. But I’d show them what Willow Tate was made of. I’d wade into trouble, just like one of my superheroes, and save the day.
Right after the thunderstorm. I saw the first bolt of lightning and ran the rest of the way home, where I pulled Little Red into my lap and a blanket over my head.
So there.
A half an hour later the storm seemed to pass. So the weather mavens could be wrong, too.
I went out and refilled the tray of tidbits to tempt all tastes, including the squirrels I had to chase away. The wading pool held enough water, but I filled a bowl from the kitchen tap in case Oey was too fastidious to drink where he ba
thed.
I circled the house, tweeting, whistling, okay, begging. Come back, little shebass?
It wasn’t working. I got no spark, no rush, no answers, only the wet wind in my face. And Bud was right, the evening turned much cooler than last night. And darker, earlier, with the rain-heavy clouds scudding along like a video clip.
So I went inside, got my sketch pad and a warmer jacket and the brownies. Then I dragged one of the porch chairs closer to the pool and sat, drawing what I had seen last night and thinking about it. Thinking hard, trying to make contact, knowing full well I had no clairvoyance or telepathy, only what and when the Others chose to share. I thought hard anyway, and drew fast.
Bird. Fish. Fish. Bird. Oey. Pretty, strong, smart. Oey. Lost, alone, needful. Oey. Oey in a willow tree, Oey swimming in a stream alongside one, Oey cold and hungry, shivering. Oey going back where it came from.
I drew until my hand got tired, thought until my brain went numb. I sat out there until it grew too dark to see a damn thing, even with the porch light on. The wind kept trying to grab my pages, and spatterings of rain blown from the trees blotted the marker ink. And I needed a glass of milk to go with the brownies.
I decided to wait inside for the blasted thing to call me. If Oey wanted my help, my company, it had to meet me halfway. So there.
When I opened the fridge to take out the milk, a chill hit me. Not the usual refrigerator cold, but like a shadow across the landscape, or what they used to call a goose walking on your grave, whatever that meant. Maybe I was coming down with the flu. Or—heaven help me—receiving a premonition. Was this how my father felt? Shivers in his blood, a ticking clock in his chest, a big fist squeezing his head?
I didn’t know what, but I knew something was desperately wrong. I raced around, checking the dogs, checking the furnace, checking the phones for messages.
Oey! It must be in trouble, trying to reach me via mental telepathy. No, I’d see pictures. That’s how most of the Others communicated.
Grandma Eve? Maybe my mother had a premonition, too, when I spoke to her. Maybe she caught the power from my father, the way they say Matt caught his new perceptions from me. The last thing I needed was a foggy new “gift.”
I called my grandmother and woke her up. Not a good thing.
“You’re okay?”
“I was before you scared the life out of me with the phone call. And no, Lou is not here, if you were calling to check up on me.”
“I, ah, just had a feeling.”
“You’ve been listening to that jackass father of yours again, haven’t you? Either find the bird, or go to sleep and let the rest of us get some rest.”
I couldn’t disturb my father on his date. Mom would have called if there’d been an emergency, which I couldn’t do anything about from here anyway.
Maybe the coming storm? A lightning bolt I hadn’t heard, the change in atmospheric pressure? But the dogs were all sleeping, relaxed. I heard they could tell changes like earthquakes and people’s seizures.
It had to be Oey. I went to the door. “Oey, come on, boy, girl, whatever. We need to talk. Show me you are all right.”
The feeling of dread stayed with me. “Twee! Twee!” I yelled, pouring my heart and my fear into the call.
“Twee?”
“You came! Are you all right? Hurt? Hungry? Lonely? Come in out of the storm.”
But it wasn’t Oey calling from the woods. It was Matt, standing on the porch, his head cocked, listening to me call a bird no one could see.
“What are you—?” But I knew. One look at his face told me the beagle had died. “Oh, I am so sorry.”
I held my arms out and he came to me and we just held each other for a long time there, inside my front door. It felt right.
He’d come to me, not his poker buddies. Not his obnoxious niece. But me. And my heart went out to him. I could hardly bear the weight of the village’s expectations on my shoulders; I couldn’t imagine having a beloved pet’s life in my hands. People depended on Matt to perform miracles all the time.
“I don’t know how you do it.” I made him come sit on the sofa before he fell down, he looked so tired and empty. I rushed to put on the coffeemaker.
“You never get used to it,” he said when I got back, “but you have to go on, to save what you can.” He laid his head back and sighed.
I waited.
“That wasn’t the hard part. Homer didn’t have much of a chance going in. We all knew it. The hard part was your mother.”
“I’m sorry. I know she can be overpowering. I shouldn’t have told her you needed her.”
“I did need her, but she didn’t call. Not on the phone anyway. I felt her talking to me, as if she stood next to me in the operating room. I thought I was delusional, not fit to take out a splinter, much less put poor Homer back together.”
I kept quiet. What could I say?
“She told me Homer didn’t want to live if he couldn’t ever run again. That he’d be mortified if he couldn’t control his bowels, couldn’t play with his people. He knew he’d never recover and the pain would be too much.”
“He was a good dog.”
“Not really. He escaped every chance he got. The Camerons were his third adoption. They named him Homer, hoping he’d stick. He didn’t. But do you know what? I believed her, your mother in Florida or wherever she is this week, that she knew what Homer wanted, that she’d somehow found a way to tell me.”
Yeah, I’d have a tough time with that, too. Or I would have, a few months ago. “The mind is a wondrous thing.” Lame, I knew, but all I could offer.
He took my hand. For comfort, I supposed.
“So I talked to the Camerons. That was harder still. I brought them in to say good-bye, for their sake. Homer couldn’t know, I had him so sedated for the surgery. Except I felt your mother standing over my shoulder. ‘He knows,’ she told me. ‘He’s glad. He loves them. He thanks you.’”
We both cried.
Damn, I never let the dog die. In all my books, I’ll kill off the hero. He can always come back in the next volume. His girlfriend? So what? But never, ever, would I let the dog die. It’s a rule. It’s not fair to the kids who read your books. I’ll never forgive Fred Gipson for Old Yeller. And now … instead of comforting Matt, I was sobbing on his chest. He stroked my shoulder and I think he kissed the top of my head.
I fled to the kitchen so he couldn’t see me all splotchy-faced and red-eyed. Men hated crying women, I knew. It makes them feel helpless, and Matt had enough failure today.
Chattering helped overcome the grief. “I bet you never had dinner tonight. It’ll just take a few minutes in the microwave. I have some of Grandma Eve’s vegetable lasagna. It’s delicious.”
He was beside me, handing me a tissue. “That’ll be great. Thank you. But, Willow, I didn’t really hear your mother, did I?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible. Anything is in this place. Or maybe you knew what she’d say.”
“Do the right thing. For the animal.”
“You did.”
I pushed my drawing pads and notebooks and pens to one side so he had a place to eat at the dining room table, then served him right out of the plastic container, with a paper plate under it, and a bottle of water. Just like my grandmother. Hah.
The lack of ambiance did not affect his appetite. And the lasagna didn’t suffer too much from the indignity of being nuked. The food revived him enough that he apologized for bothering me so late, without calling.
“It’s no bother, I promise. I wanted you— That is, I was going to ask you to stop by tonight, but Chief Haversmith said you’d be playing poker.”
“I couldn’t. Not tonight. They moved the game to the firehouse. The volunteers are on alert anyway. No one was saying why, but it’s better they are at the station.”
“I heard there’s a bad storm coming. Maybe something else in the wind.”
Something that let my mother’s thoughts travel up the eastern seaboard? S
omething that had me attuned to Matt’s sorrow? Something worse that had DUE sending out warnings? I didn’t feel that bone-deep chill anymore—his arms had been great heating elements—yet a sense of impending doom stayed with me. I felt sorry for my father if this is what he lived with.
“I know what we need, brownies with ice cream on top.”
“Gee, the chief suggested a stiff drink, and the guys left me a six-pack. But you’re right. That’s why they call it comfort food.”
“With a dash of Kahlua, then, if the chief said so. And afterward we’ll go looking for the oiaca bird.”
“Oh, is that what you were doing? I thought you were feeding the racoons. I some saw run off when I drove up. I couldn’t believe you’d invite them inside, though.”
“Damn, did they eat all my offerings?”
“I’ll go check while you scoop the ice cream.”
“No, we’ll go check together, after we eat dessert.” I let him scoop, while I poured the coffee.
“You think it’s here, in your yard?”
“I think it was last night.”
“You saw the bird?”
“I saw something out of the ordinary. That’s why I wanted you to come, to give me your opinion.”
“I’m not much of an expert on ornithology, any more than I could answer your questions on entomology when the lightning bugs came by.”
“How are you at ichthyology?”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
CHAPTER 13
THE WIND HOWLED SO FIERCELY we couldn’t hear each other speak. Thank goodness I hadn’t brought Little Red out. He’d have been blown to Connecticut. He’d have to use his papers tonight. Or keep me up all night, whining.
Matt pulled me closer and shouted in my ear. “No bird would be out in this. It couldn’t fly against the wind, and it’d get blown into the houses or trees.”
But a fish could hunker down in the pond near Susan’s parents’ house, or that low spot in the fields. A creature from the otherworld could vanish whenever it wanted.
The porch chair I’d left out had been blown into the backyard, and the wading pool got overturned. Leaves were down, weeks early, and branches and twigs covered the grass.